Would you like "beans" or cornbread with your fried donkey butt?

[Poboy kartman]

I know this is going to be hard to believe, but I was actually crazy long before I joined this forum. This is about my first "deathtrap". My father was accidentally electrocuted working under a house when I was 6.This all happened when I was about 8.........

WARNING! !! The following stunt was performed by a trained idiot and should never be attempted by anyone anywhere.

I REALLY wanted a mini bike when I was a little kid. Somehow or another I got ahold of a horizontal shaft Briggs and Stratton. I also got a drive wheel. (I was going to build this mini bike one piece at a time! ) Somehow I got a drive sprocket (10 or 12 tooth) and incredibly- they were not only the same chain size but also matched the bicycle chain I had and knew how to shorten/lengthen.

So now the stage is set- but I'm a long way away from a mini bike. Sooooo- at 8 years old with limited hand tools and resources- I designed and built this deathtrap. ....

 

[Poboy kartman]

I see that the first picture is upside down. This stupid phone wouldn't let me preview the post so I'll try to repost that so those on computers won't have to turn their monitors upside down.

So with a 2×4, a little plywood, some hardware and a trusty Radio Flyer wagon the first deathtrap was born. It took two of us to operate either Wilbur or Orville at the controls and the other starting the monster.

The throttle control was very simple. I figured out that a rubber band would hold the throttle wide open and a string attached to the right place would pull it to idle ( probably where the term " deadman switch got started"!)

I don't know how fast this thing would go but I can tell you that long before it reached top end, moving the wagon handle more than 1/2" in either direction would be catastrophic. It was a hairy ride. Of course- back then-we took every precaution- there was always someone ready to go get a grown-up to call an ambulance.

And it didn't have brakes....Come to think of it this reminds me a lot of another death trap of mine.....a certain hot rod '70 Chevelle......

Anybody else care to share?

 

[Poboy kartman]

I'm going to try and re-post that pic:

 

[machinist@large]

I know this is going to be hard to believe, but I was actually crazy long before I joined this forum. This is about my first "deathtrap". My father was accidentally electrocuted working under a house when I was 6.This all happened when I was about 8.........
.

And here I was going to blame your brand of choice for beer.....

 

[Poboy kartman]

And here I was going to blame your brand of choice for beer.....

Yeah it can't be that I don't drink the same brand as I did when I was 8.

 

[DaiSan76]

Yeah it can't be that I don't drink the same brand as I did when I was 8.

I drank Milwaukee's Best. Yucko Dear.

 

[KartFab]

And it didn't have brakes....Come to think of it this reminds me a lot of another death trap of mine.....a certain hot rod '70 Chevelle......

Anybody else care to share?

When i swapped out a motor on a 2 seat go kart, i was so excited that I got the new honda gx390 on there with torque converter, I didnt attach the kill switch.... I drove it around the neighborhood going about 40 mph, and realized I had no brakes. I just coasted around corners, then floored it on the straight a ways. I took it back to the garage. Apparrently the torque converter still needed a little cleaning.... another thing I didnt do..... needless to say the drive unit stayed engaged, the raw low end power of the 4 stroke 13 hp honda motor kept the kart chugging along at idle..... right into the garage door, just when i was reaching around to turn the motor off with the actual kill switch on the motor. Completely messed up the bottom panel on the door. I bent it back into functional shape, but there was a hole in it too!


This story has a happy ending though. We moved to a city just 10 miles away, and kept our home to rent out. When the tenants were moving in, they had a BBQ grill in the truck bed that hit that same panel. They replaced it with a brand new one the next day. THE END!

 

[Poboy kartman]

That was awesome and exactly what I was looking for. ...The times we cheated death despite our ignorance, stupidity, or we just plain got lucky.

Those of you that didn't make it will have to go out my other thread on a different forum....just make sure to provide adequate heat resistance to your device beforehand.....

 

[machinist@large]

When I was 6 or 7, my brother and I were playing on the farms old Farmall. My dad and great uncle had been using it to spread fertilizer, and had left it parked on the ramp up to the barn floor where they were storing same. While the tractor has a parking brake, it was just as easy to leave it in gear to hold it on the slope. That's where the trouble started.

We've got two small boys playing farmer on the parked tractor (my brother is a year younger than I). Some where along the line, the key was switched on, followed by play with the starter button (because it made noise, and the tractor moved a little).

With the nose pointing down hill, and the tractor in first gear, it only took the second or third (h3ll, it could have been the first!!!) tap of the starter button to have the engine running, and no one in control. Two small boys got an awesomely terrifying ride down the ramp, across the driveway, and straight into the fence line. Well, it was mostly straight up to that point, where the narrow front end slid past the tree, only to have the right rear axle snag on it, turning the whole thing into a couple of thousand pound sit & spin.

I really don't know who was the most afraid; me, my brother, or my great uncle who had to jump aboard a fast moving tractor doing an ~ 20' tight loop (did I mention that in the course of play, the throttle was set wide open?). As the one whose rear end was in the seat, I took the brunt of the blame. A couple of years before his death, my great uncle admitted that he and my dad were actually the one's to blame; they had never considered that farm equipment and small children don't mix well. And it was my dad who left the tractor parked in first instead of reverse.

In his will, My dad got the rest of the farm, his brothers and all the cousins spit the cash, and I got the Farmall.....

 

[Poboy kartman]

I blame your great uncle as well. I wouldn't trust you on my farm tractor today.

Thanks for the post.This is the stuff I was hoping for and it made my day.

Just in case anyone was wondering how the title has anything to do with the thread- I know it's a bit of a stretch- but "beans"=brains, cornbread=redneck, and fried donkey butt means a jacka $$ with road rash.

 

[OzFab]

Oh, if that's what you're looking for, how's this:

Not as far back as when I was a kid but, some years ago I was working in a wrecking yard (a scrap yard specifically for cars, in case you didn't already know). First day on the job, we're removing the engine & trans from a car. With everything disconnected, it was time to lift it out... with a forklift...

Now, here's the situation:
1. I'd never driven a forklift before
2. It had been raining
3. the geriatric pos forklift had badly maintained drum brakes & no rubber pad on the steel brake pedal (strange considering there were 3 mechanics in the place...)

So, once we got the forklift running :toetap05: the other guy I'm working with says "jump in" then walks away towards the car we'd been working on. The 50 or so feet to the car gave me a bit of a chance to familiarise myself with the vehicle & it's controls & I was able to line it up, ready to lift the engine.

With the tines above the engine but below the roofline, I eased forward until he said stop, at which point I put my foot on the brake. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, remember I said

2. It had been raining
3. the geriatric pos forklift had badly maintained drum brakes & no rubber pad on the steel brake pedal

When I put my foot on the brake pedal, being wet, it slipped off, straight across onto the accelerator, lurching the machine forward. Due to my cat like reflexes, I was able to correct quickly but, I still ended up literally standing on the brake (gripping the steering wheel for dear life & backside off the seat).

The end result: We got the engine out relatively undamaged (the fan was bent) which is more than I can say for the car itself:
-Windscreen shattered
-Front bumper unusable
-Front grill smashed
-Radiator bent & fractured

As expected, the boss came out yelling & screaming about the stupid amount of dollars I just cost him, at which point I rattled off the situation list above. He then turned to the guy I was working with, gave him a mouthful for letting me on the lift in the first place, then yelled for the mechanic to fix the brakes by the end of the day...

Oh, in case you're wondering, yes, a little bit of wee came out...

 

[firemanjim]

ok,well when I got my first job in the oil industry ( over 20 years ago) as a machinist helper. (shop cleaner, basically) My boss told me to ride witj the truck driver to go drop off metal shavings for scrap $. We where pulling a 35 foot goose neck. We unloaded, got the money,and the driver tells me, pull the truck over there to the taco truck...... I figured, "sure ,NO problem"..... WRONG
First time pulling 35' of trailer and new job too... Some how I swung too far,my trailer bumper clipped another trailer, (driver not around) I got nervous and kept going, hit barrels of shavings with front truck bumper knocking em all over , pulled out to taco truck, got out n ran to passenger side, yelled at the driver "LETS GO NNOOWWWWW!" ..... He hopped in, took off then asked ,what the h€¿¿ happened? I told him and he laughed the whole way back.... never left us two, never got in trouble......

 

[fowler]

ha ha id love to know what makes u tick
some weird crap u found growing on the back fence by the sound of it


first time i drove a bulldozer
it was a D10R catterpiller
it was about to rain and my boss said just go bring it in quick
i asked how u drive it
he just said "its easy just look at the controls and you'll work it out"

after about 2 mins i had it started and worked out it had a decelerator (the further u push the lower the revs) and had it in gear

after another 3 mins and allot of alarms i found the pack brake switch and ladder up switch

i got it going just fine
which was a serious mistake because i didnt know how to turn
even though it was going at the lowest speed like 0.4 kph it still felt like it was flying
after just mising a 988 loader i found the little paddles next to the gear selector are the brakes switches for each track

i got tired of 0.4 kph but wasnt game enough to go for another gear so i just set it on full noise
so now there was a dozer screaming its nuts off tramming though the yard at 0.6kph

eventually i got to the workshop and though the doors
i figured tracked machines dont roll well i just took it out of gear expecting it to stop

hell no it just kept rolling forward toward the other side of the work shop
i panicked and dropped the blade to the ground and brought it to a hault quick

it properbly looked like the most uneventful thing of all time but my *** was gripping trhe seat real hard


similar story that happening to someone else at work

a komatsu 785-5 truck
they all have an old cummins engine with an inline fuel pump
to shut the truck off u hit the key and it pulls the no fuel lever on the pump

but because its a rubish komatsu its full of problems
firstly they mounted the shut off solenoid on the front of the engine and use linkages to get it to each inline pump
as it gets old either the linkages wear and seize
or they have too much play and the solenoid doesn't have enough throw
anyhow u pretty much always got to shut them off by jumping down and pulling the no fuel lever manually

then our company hires car mechanics and expects them to work on our earth moving gear

u can sorta see where this ends up

one day one of the trucks were being driven thought the yard when it blew pressure line off the hoist pump, and as always this happens right over a storm water drain

the driver had the sense to first drive away from the drain
then he hit the key to shut it down
nothing happens
o he hits the emergency stop
nothing happens
so he turns the isolator off
big mistake
that turns off the electronic control of the fuel pump
now its free to rev to its mechanically governed speed

being a car mechanic thats about where his knowledge stopped
he just froze in terror of a large engine revving uncontrolled pumping a few hundred liters of hydrolic oil a minute onto the ground

luckily someone else was working near by and came over to see what was going on
when he saw the guy frozen and the oil everywhere he ran over and killed the engine

big investigation with the enviro guys coming in, work safe and all the big boys
the guy no longer works at our joint anymore
told he had to expand his basic knowledge before coming back to this trade

 

[Poboy kartman]

I drank Milwaukee's Best. Yucko Dear.

How'd you know? That's all I could afford when I was 8.
I never could understand how they didn't get sued for that name.

 

[fowler]

Do u guys get fosters over there?

I know they export all because no one here will drink it

 

[itsid]

Do u guys get fosters over there?

I know they export all because no one here will drink it

No one here either

'sid

 

[firemanjim]

No one here either

'sid

They sell it here,but VERY RARELY do I see any one buy it..... and they show some lame a$§commercials for it too....

 

[Poboy kartman]

They sell it here,but VERY RARELY do I see any one buy it..... and they show some lame a$§commercials for it too....

Foster's- Australian for beer.....I thought maybe it went bad on the way over. .....I've never met anyone who drinks it.I tried one can and it was enough for me. But if they ever start exporting kangaroo piss I'll be ready because I think I've already tasted worse.
Wait a minute- I think those sneaky Aussies already have. Foster's- Australian kangaroo piss- American for beer.

 

[OzFab]

That's why they export it, no one here wants it

Have you ever paid attention to the logo? A big F inside a bigger O, use your imagination...

 

[itsid]

Foster's- Australian for beer.....I thought maybe it went bad on the way over. .....I've never met anyone who drinks it.I tried one can and it was enough for me. But if they ever start exporting kangaroo piss I'll be ready because I think I've already tasted worse.
Wait a minute- I think those sneaky Aussies already have. Foster's- Australian kangaroo piss- American for beer.

Said the american....

The yellowish alcoholic lemonade that makes it over the pond from the US (labeled beer) isn't any better.

I mean honestly, there's a reason the czechs didn't want anheuser to call that fluid budweiser anymore.
And MGD ... honestly? that stood right next to a beer on a shelf perhaps.

The funny thing I noticed over the years is that Charly Harper for example always drank Radeberger Pilsener.
PP of course, but for a reason I think

So when it comes to beer personally I'm lucky enough to to be on this side of the atlantic

But I'd be happy to know what you would call a "good beer" and see if I can give it a shot.

And you should try and find either "Krusovice" or "Pilsener Urquell" (both czech) or if you want to know what I generally
have in the fridge "König Pilsener"

'sid