ker-POW

Wow, that's scary! Glad you are OK.

I had a similar moment, hooked a charger to a dead customer battery in the back of the auto parts store I used to own. The top and half the acid exploded past my face, missing me by inches. Sounded like a shotgun going off. I had the shakes for an hour.

On Thu, 31 May 2007 21:43:43 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, "Karl Townsend" quickly quoth:

You'll make sure you use a bit of anti-seize on that mutha when you put it back together, eh, Karl? You're lucky.

- Metaphors Be With You -

"Karl Townsend" wrote in news:jkH7i.12003$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net:

We were fixing flats one rainy day at the heavy equipment outfit I used to work at. (Hauling to the landfill, you had at _least_ one flat per trip :/) Usually there were 30-40 flats to fix on a rainy day. At the time, we didn't have a cage to contain tires when inflating. Had a ring blow off of one, through the garage door overhead, through the ceiling, through the rafters, and put a 4 ft dia hole in the roof. All 6 guys in the shop were wiping stains out of shorts. Nobody was hurt, as we always put the hose on them then got away from the area while inflating. Still scary as hell when it went off. We had a hell of sturdy cage to inflate them in before the next flat fixing day. You could have driven a tank over that thing and not scratched it. Our welder guy spent a week making it and it took a track loader or backhoe to move it.

I bet he uses half the can. One each side! ;-) Be careful, Karl.

I saw a sturdy cage once that looked fantastic exept for the bulge where it got 'proof' tested.

Wes

Glad you didn't get hurt.. Reminds me when I was a kid working in a garage doing brake jobs on ramblers. I think that was the one. The one with the tapered rear hubs. I used a puller that you wacked with a big sledge hammer. Once in a while they would come off like yours. Between that and changing truck tires.... I mananged to survive.

John

Studebakers have the same rear hubs. The trick is to put the castellated nut back on reversed and loosely, that a) hopefully prevents the puller screw from mushrooming the end of the axle and making you go buy a really expensive die to fix it and b) keeps the hub from flying across the garage when it does pop free.

nate

Oh yeah forgot to mention. As tempting as it may be, never ever use oil, grease, or anti-sleaze on a tapered axle's hub... yeah it will come off easier next time, but it's the friction that keeps it together, don't want to fret the mating surfaces. Also you can split the hub right open if it's well lubed and you tighten the nut down to a full 200 ft-lbs.

nate

That's a hell of a story! Glad you survived. :-)

Harold

Seems as though folks should take a dump before working on tires.

Perhaps install some adult diapers first?

You chronograph flying wheel hubs? :)

Changing brake pads on my E350 diesel one day, I couldn't get the left front wheel off to save my life until I called the local tire shop. Ask the experts right?

They said hit it hard with about an 8-pound sledge right at the top, on the rubber. Hit that sucker a ton and damn near ended up with 40 pounds of tire and 20 pounds of wheel on my toes and 8-pounds of sledgehammer coming at me like it'd been shot. :)

Worked almost too well.