Hello All,
I recently experienced a bad accident that I hope you will all learn from.
A friend and I were trying to start a '65 Plymouth Barracuda that had not
been started in 3 years. After the usual checks of the motor, I took about
two ounces of gas and poured some down the carburetor. After almost startng
immeadiately, I poured a little more gas, in hopes to prime the fuel pump.
I backed away a bit as my friend cranked away some more. This time the carb
backfired. Startled, I jerked back spilling what gas I had left on my hand.
The heat from the backfire was enough to ignite the spilled gas on my hand.
I received second degree burns on my fingers from the three seconds of
flame.
The sobering thought of all this is how many times before my friends and I
started cars in this manner. I absolutely agree it's the WRONG way to do
it, but it takes an incident like this to realize the stupidity of this.
After sharing this story with many of my car-nut buddies, I felt that if
this can be a lesson for all of us that there's room for all of us to raise
safety up another couple of notches.
I've had many years of working on old cars without incident, and I guess
this was a wake-up call. I hope everyone on this list uses my accident as a
cheap lesson for more saftey!
Tom
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 10:16:35 CDT