Epic Fails

Hangar Flying
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I’ll kick us off on things that absolutely 100% did not go according to plan.

I like analog photography, I enjoy analog photography gear as well. Enter the Gossen Luna Pro light meter.

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I had acquired mine locally for the princely sum of $25 dollars. Worked great, and was a great visual tool when teaching. The problem was that the battery contact wires were 40+ years old at this point. Somewhere in there was a broken wire giving my all kinds of issues with intermittent shorts.

Easy enough to fix, a few screws, unsolder the old wires, solder in a new 9v connector and wires. I have a reasonable soldering iron, but for whatever reason the leads are dang near welded into the board. I had my iron up past 900f(~480C), and was having issues getting the solder to melt. Managed to unsolder an adjacent transistor, get that back on, but partially melt the mask on the board as my iron tip is doing an impression of a nuclear reactor at melt down. Finally get one lead free with a combination of way more heat than it should have required, and pulling on the wire way harder than I should need to.

Now rather than being smart and trying to figure out exactly what a better answer would be, I shall simply repeat the brute force method that sorta worked. I proceed to burn a hole in copper surrounding the other through hole, snap the lead off in my hand, and then gouge the board with the pliers I resorted to after breaking the wire. I have now however at least gotten the wires off.

I do the smarter thing (that I should have started with) and add a bunch of low melt solder to what’s in the through holes, and am able to wick the mixture off no problem. Solder in the new wire, screw it back together, and we’re done. Right? Oh no…

There is a detent to hold the diffuser in place on the top of the meter, that is a VERY small ball bearing. Did I know that I even had a detent ball in the meter? Heck no. Was I paying attention for the sound of a tiny ball bearing hitting the table or the floor, of course not. By a miracle I am able to locate it some days later. Pop everything back open and go to reinstall the detent ball.

I have to remove the board from the case to flip everything over to put the diffuser assembly back together. On the front there is the indicator needle, which features an coil spring, like in a watch, but of a miniscule thinness. I get the diffuser assembly together (all together having spent about 5 hours over several days working on this), and go to set my tweezers down. And somehow hook the spring on the indicator needle with my tweezer tip as my hand passed over it. Instantly stretched it out into a piece of straight wire.

Nothing to be done, it’s basically just a shelf filler now. It does look the part next to a Kodak Retina I had bought to see if I could repair it (the answer on that was no).

I’ve got PLENTY more including such things as getting a screwdriver suck IN my engine, while it was running.

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And because I suggested this, it would be remiss of me not to make a contribution.

Two stories that highlight why I should not be allowed around high voltage:

  1. Back as a teenager and trying to get the lawn mower started. I had removed the spark plug to check and while holding it asked my brother to give the pull start a good hard tug. Holy mother of god - I was holding the uninsulated part of the plug as a couple of thousand volts coursed through my hand. It was numb for hours.

  2. More recent, a couple of years ago and I still haven’t learnt my lesson. I had planned on re-tensioning the electric fence to the horse paddock. Brain in neutral I thought I had turned off the energiser. Plus I also needed to pee. You can see where this is going right? Turning my back, while ‘mid stream’ on a couple of curious horses who had wandered over to check out what I was doing, said stream intercepted the hot wire. I discovered as 20kV pulsed through my manhood, that I had in fact NOT turned the energiser off.

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We have a saying in America; Don’t ■■■■ on an electric fence. Not sure how that translates down under.

Probably literally the same.

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I guess it counts since it led to my callsign/gamertag.

As a kid, probably pre-teens, my dad had a tractor-style lawn mower. In retrospect it was ridiculous to have for a standard suburban lawn. I can only assume it was a mid-life crisis purchase. Anyway, the first time I was tasked with using it to mow the lawn, I had difficulty stopping it, and was involuntarily stopped by a fence.

Of course, I have no memory of this incident.

Quite a few years later when attending Aviation Challenge, the fighter pilot version of Space Camp in Huntsville, we had a story-sharing session to decide everyone’s callsigns. My dad offered up this story and henceforth I was “Clutch.”

I probably have a few more fails locked away in my memory box somewhere between model building and airsoft.

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Not ■■■■■■■ on an electric fence is probably a universal wisdom. But in my defence and in the moment:

a. I thought I had turned the energizer off.
b. I was facing away from the fence, but one of the horses who was showing extreme interest in what I was doing, was at that time a bit of a biter!

Hence the rapid 180 when he seemed to be zeroing in on my willy.

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At least twice I have had my picture taken when working with 220 volt electricity while the circuit was still live.

When I accidentally sparked the circuit with a screwdriver I had turned off the wrong circuit. The second time I was cleaning aluminum chips off of a breaker box when some of the chips fell inside the box and arced the circuit.

All I can say is the size of the flash and the arcing noise scare the crap out of everyone in your vicinity.

Wheels

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One more while I think of it, and to make Eric feel better. This proves you are still a better mechanic than me and was probably a more expensive cock-up than you made with the rotor head.

Back in the day I had a mid sized hatchback. Not just any mid sized hatchback but a Holden (GM) ‘Torana’ that I was in the process of turning into an A9X clone:

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I already had the body kit fitted, fat tyres and the body had been primed waiting for the paint. I hadn’t made up my mind on the final scheme, white like that photo or red. But getting around in a primer/undercoat grey car was also pretty cool at the time.

I was also rebuilding a 5 litre (308ci) V8 to replace that 202ci straight six that currently resided in the car (which was decidedly uncool). I had spent as much on parts for that motor as I had on the rest of the car combined.

After getting the engine finished and fitted & following a very gentle running in period, I picked up my father who had helped a lot with getting this beast together and I said words to the effect, ‘lets see what this baby can do shall we’?

On paper it was good for a 7000rpm redline. 1st gear - lots of tyre smoke and it sounded glorious. 2nd gear - Hmmm somethings not quite right and bang, lots of smoke from the engine bay and a large oil trail to where we pulled over.

Closer inspection revealed a con rod had punched a sizable hole in the engine block.

We finally got to the bottom of the problem. I don’t know how many of you have heard of ‘Plastigauge’? For very important components, such as big end bearings, it is a way to ensure that you have the correct clearance when the bolts are torqued to specification.

When I checked the big end bearings they were spot on. Problem was that when I re-tightened the bearing caps, I didn’t re-torque them My ‘lets see what this baby can do’ ended up not only ‘spinning’ at least one big end bearing but causing it to come adrift which unbalanced the crankshaft, causing the engine to… as we say ‘eat itself for lunch.’

I did eventually get another V8 into the car but had to make do with a stock/standard engine.

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Wasn’t actually my fault but I may have contributed to this one… we had to move an old welding machine so I was “volunteered” to help the electrician … we duly moved the machine but it’s new location required a new longer three phase lead. So the electrician got the cable cut it to length, prepared the end to wire to the machine and then we managed to get into a long chat about cars he was building an ac cobra kit car . He then proceeded to wire the plug on the other end of the cable

We plugged it in and flicked the switch… there was an almighty bang shower of sparks and the entire welding bay went quiet

In our haste we had not connected the other end to the machine and the wires had touched :high_voltage:

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This is something remember my dad almost religiously telling me about and when a friend back in the 80s had a re-con engine in his Ford escort he had to “run it in” is this still a thing
I haven’t heard about it for years

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I haven’t had any Epic Failures with electricity (yet) but boy have I lucked out with Big Power tools a bunch!

For example; client asked us to take down a young tree, just a big sapling to be honest. about 9 meters of beech. I make a front cut, neatly aimed at the place we wanted the tree to fall. I start in on the back cut but the saw keeps stalling. So Hessel brings up a wedge to ram into the cut to make it open and not pinch the blade (it pinched the blade, that should have told me enough!). Bert wants to have a go, because I am getting mighty frustrated with the stalling old bich of a saw.

He proceeds to not only hit the wedge, making that fly, but also be right over the tree as it starts to come down. It is a sheer miracle that man did not even notice the danger he was in. Hessel, who had just finished forestry school went white as a sheet.

I bought us a very snazzy electric chainsaw the next day.

In my crew we have a running gag: Electric tools are like men: press the button, whirrrr they go. Gas-engined tools are like women; put this bit like this, that just so, give it a tug, another one and maybe, if the mood strikes her, she’ll go. Anne-Marie never managed to operate the gas-powered mower I rented when our electric one was down. Third time she called me in to get the %#$& thing running she told me never no more! She’s definitely hetero :rofl:

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I believe it is on motorbikes. I’ll defer to the resident power rangers in the forum though. :squinting_face_with_tongue:

The whacker plate I borrow from a neighbour has a faulty kill switch, so once you’ve started it, the only way to stop it is to pull the HT lead from the plug. I can confirm that the insulation isn’t enough to stop the voltage.

The “fix” is a farmers universal solution for everything. Bailing twine. It’s the farming equivalent of JB Weld for budding engineers. You always have some lying round.

A quick loop round the HT lead and hey presto, instant kill switch improvisation puller-majiggle. No more shocks. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

However it didn’t stop me from pulling so hard I pulled the end of the HT lead off the first time I used it. :man_facepalming:

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Totally! It just struck me how completely literal the phrase was, compared to one of my favorite sayings from an Aussie aquaintence years ago who used to stop arguments or digressions with, “I’m not here to ■■■■ spiders, mate.”

Hopefully not literal, that one.

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Actually the opposite. Old cars and some new ones with iron cylinder liners/sleeves still need it. A fresh bore will have fine cross-hatching that needs smoothing out.

Modern bikes etc, with their fancy nikasil and the like bores and very fine tolerances the key is to bed the piston rings in which occurs during the first 20 minutes or so of running. The matra with a modern bike - Go hard early.

When I bought my 1098 Ducati, the dealer was running them in on the dyno pre-delivery. I watched them do it. Start bike, let the oil get up to operating temp, take it to the rev-limiter, shut it off and let it cool down, repeat three times.

In fact taking it easy can be detrimental. The rings never seal properly and you get oil blow by etc.

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