About twenty-five years ago, at work, I was attacked by a breaker bar.I was changing a belt on a mobile crane engine, and had “wound up” the belt tensioner. The eighteen inch bar was "safely " wedged under the hood, or so I thought. As I leaned down to remove belt from crankshaft pulley, the hood shifted and the breaker bar swung round and hit me on the bridge of my nose. Could have been an eye, so I was lucky, I guess.
Blood everywhere, and some stars, too.
After the bleeding died down, I looked in a mirror, and, as I didn’t look any uglier than before, took two aspirin and went back to work.
Some five years after that , I wound up having to have surgery to correct a “Deviated Septum”. Trouble breathing. The surgeon said that I must have broken my nose a few years ago. No kidding.
Breathing has become difficult again, so yesterday I was under the knife ( or probably laser today) and had some material removed from inside my nose.
Consequently- no heavy lifting for a while- no tire changing, or transmission pulling, and absolutely no snow shovelling.
About all I can do is go out to the 15 degree garage and open the hood, to look at the belt tensioners on my 5.3, and be grateful that - no matter what strange quirks came on that engine, if I need to remove a belt for some reason, nothing is going to leap up and bite me.
My sister feels your pain. I smacked her in the nose with a playground swing when we were young kids. It wasn’t until her late 20s that she had surgery to fix it. Sorry sis’, but we’re all good now - aren’t we?
Dave, enjoy your resting time - start a jigsaw, build some Lego…
Ever changed a garage door opener spring. Same anxiety present as I’m on a ladder, holding the tension bar with one hand and loosening the set screw with the other. The whole time reading the WARNING label saying do not attempt…
I have, and once suffered a severe “slap on the back of my hand,” when one rod slipped.
After that healed… I NEVER made the mistake of ever using anything but rods that fit snugly into the adjusting holes, plus I never stand in line of said flingage!
Kirbert
(Author of the Book, former owner of an '83 XJ-S H.E.)
9
Well, no. I did have a garage door opener cable snap once, which scrambled much of the mounting hardware and dropped a chunk on my Mazda that required $400 at the shop to make right again. In the end, I had to put the garage door assembly back together, including reinstalling all four springs.
The nice thing is that it taught me the trick of installing a second cable that just runs through the center of the springs so if anything breaks it keeps things from flying around the garage. It also made me feel a little better when putting everything together, like hopefully it’d help keep me from causing a complete disaster.
Others have suggested that a torsion spring is a better idea than the tension springs that I have, primarily because it’s wrapped around a shaft so it can’t go anywhere when it snaps. I can’t bring myself to completely replace that scheme, though, especially now that I’ve installed those secondary cables.
I didn’t have any altercation with the springs but I did have an argument with a tilt door. I was hurrying back up the drive to the garage (about a 25deg slope) it had started to rain so I had my head down, unknown to me the door had come down to about 45 deg
My nose came in contact with the lower edge of the door, I sat down a little bit dazed, stood up and opened the door and went into the garage. That was when I realised that there was blood running down my nose.
I trip to the doctors and I’m lying on the table with the nurse one side and the doc the other. 3/4 of the way through stitching the flap of skin back on the nurse said ‘erm I think you’ve sewn the gauze to the mans nose’
It was a waste of time as the flap dropped off about a week later.
Reminds me of the machinist I used to know who had a talented cat…all he had to do was bash the thing and it made a bolt for the door.!!! …don’t know why that popped into my head???