Do I Smell Smoke?

[dibbons]

I set a pair of old school 1034A mini-bulbs (painted yellow) on a green t-shirt on the inner fender of the '65 Formula S to find if the filaments were still viable. I used the installed Optima battery along with a pair of wires (one red, one black) with alligator clip ends for the testing. I found one bulb with no filaments still viable, and the second only had one of the two filaments still working.

I set the bulbs aside in a safe place. A very short time later I asked myself "What is the neighbor burning? That really smells bad". Then I look up to see the test wires melting away on top of the t-shirt! I pulled the burning debris away from the vehicle and breathed a sigh of relief. I forget to put the test wires away and they had fallen on top of one another and got hot enough to melt and then set the shirt afire.

Being the fact that the crossed wires were outside the purview of the factory wiring harness, I believe no damage was done to the vehicle itself.

 

[Professor Fate]

Lucky you didn't walk away and go have a beer... could've gotten serious!

 

[Plymouth 65]

That's why there fused circuits to prevent fires! You dodged a bullet. 65'

 

[67Dart273]

I admit I've smoked a few things here and there.

One of my stupid mistakes involved a cold day in a house under construction and a very rough crawl space. Around here (at that time) new construction crawl spaces were not very well regulated. This one was a mix of hilly, accessible to very poor accessible areas, clay, rock, sand, junk, scrap wood cuttings, etc. Not a fun place. I was 'down there' helping the guys finish up an LPG horizontal, forced air furnace with A/C. My job was USUALLY service, repair, "start ups" and the install end of refrigeration/ AC/ heat pumps. So I was trying to get "junk" out of the way and room to work, and the the owner/ general contractor stuck his head down. "How ya doin" etc "do ya need" etc, and then he says, can you slide that baseboard over, I'll get that out of here.

There was a LONG pair of baseboard heaters, 8' he had jerry rigged for heat. But one was had a length of "Romex" and it was still attached at one end.

"Just cut it"

"You sure it is dead? I asked

"Absolutely"

So stupid me cut it with my dykes. You are talking about no 10 Romex, 2 wire + bare ground, so a pair of hot 120V legs and a ground wire, for 240V. "KER F**KING BLAMBHO!!"

"Oh, sorry" he says

He did not want to pay for my dykes, which were Channel Lock but he "paid" for them anyway!!!!

 

[67Dart273]

Went in to service a walk-in freezer in an old cafe, that was badly iced/ frosted up I found it odd that the fans were connected by cord/ cap disconnect, as they would usually be hard0-wired AND THEY were connected with a 120V plug. This was unusual as most these units were 240

I got out my (then) VERY expensive Grainger heat gun and plugged into the evap fan connector. I DID HAVE SOME reservations, but was not quite that smart "yet."

Turned the damn thing on for about 2 seconds and instead of a nice dull red glow, I got a white-hot LIGHT out of the gun. Did not seem to hurt it though.

Even back in the 80's--early 90's these were 80 bucks or so

 

[cudamark]

Back in my line mechanic days, I was working on an old air cooled VW bus. I was charging the battery, which was located in the RR of the engine compartment. It had been charging for quite a while with me working on something else at the time. I was talking with one of my fellow mechanics when I decided to disconnect the battery charger. He was standing right next to the charger, so, I asked him to turn it off. He flipped the switch and said OK. Well, instead of turning it off, he had turned the charger to the "Start" position. When I reached inside and grabbed the negative cable, we had a nice hydrogen explosion which blew the sleeve off my work jacket and sprayed battery parts and acid everywhere. Good thing I didn't have my head in there! My ears were ringing for a while after that stunt, and we had to give the bus owner a new battery.

 

[67Dart273]

^^This very thing^^ happened in my home town, except it was a bunch of unruly high school students employed by the local slipshod Union 76 station owner. They had a fast charger on a VW bug, and one of them reached in to unhook the battery--under the rear seat, while another reached in and held the seat up. The charger was still under power. The spark blew the battery apart and acid all over the car and them. My understanding is that someone else nearby had the sense to grab a nearby garden hose and flood their faces and eyes. "I guess" there was no serious permanent damage, but that could have been very very bad

 

[g413]

If you're in California, you probably do (smell smoke) whether you're working on the car or not.

 

[cudamark]

^^This very thing^^ happened in my home town, except it was a bunch of unruly high school students employed by the local slipshod Union 76 station owner. They had a fast charger on a VW bug, and one of them reached in to unhook the battery--under the rear seat, while another reached in and held the seat up. The charger was still under power. The spark blew the battery apart and acid all over the car and them. My understanding is that someone else nearby had the sense to grab a nearby garden hose and flood their faces and eyes. "I guess" there was no serious permanent damage, but that could have been very very bad

Yeah, we had to hose down that engine compartment good to get rid of all the acid. I can just imagine what was needed to clean an interior!