one day last year I was in the gym and went to the lat pulldown machine in the middle of my workout. someone had it on 200 lbs or something, so I pulled the pin out of the weight stack, and the entire attachment fell on the back of my head. this was a really heavy metal attachment, must have been like 20-30 lbs fell on my head. I got really dizzy for ~30 seconds and had a big bump on my head, but that was somehow all that happened.

to this day, I’m kind of scared and cautious whenever I change the weight on those machines.

  • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    18·
    7 months ago
    1. In the days before YouTube, I changed the brake pads on my car based on instructions in a Chilton’s manual. I may have also been slightly drunk while I did it. I Dunning-Krugered those fuckers right on. Three out of the four pad sets were fine, but the outer pad on the front driver’s side wheel wasn’t seated all the way into the caliper and must have slipped at some point. I remember driving on those pads for weeks and thinking the car felt rough/pulled to the right whenever I would brake, and then I noticed one day that the pad in question was just kind of dangling from one side of the clip. I don’t remember if I took it to a professional after that or fixed my own fuckup.
    2. The day after Halloween one year, I decided it would be funny to turn one of our Jack-o-lanterns into an improvised incendiary device. Improvised flamethrowers are a bit of a family tradition, so nothing new there… However, rather than reaching for the carburetor/choke/throttle body cleaner, I went for the first spray can that I could reach: brake cleaner. In case you’re not aware, igniting brake cleaner is a Very Bad Idea because the fumes are basically a choking agent that can and will kill you if you get a big enough whiff of it. Luckily, I must have been far enough back with my barbecue grill lighter that I didn’t inhale any of the stuff. Moral of the story: when making an improvised rapid wasp nest remover, use carb and choke cleaner spray, not brake cleaner.
    3. Ran with scissors once. Once.
    • SSJ2Marx@hexbear.netEnglish
      14·
      7 months ago

      brake pads

      Ooh, this reminds me of one time I got into a fight with my mom over something stupid and jumped on my motorcycle to clear my head, completely forgetting that I was only halfway through replacing my brakes and needed to bolt everything back together. Luckily the front brakes were in place, but the morals of this story are never walk away from unfinished maintenance and never ride angry.

      • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        7 months ago

        Holy shit, yeah.

        Also reminds me of another one where my car was being worked on, so an uncle lent me an old like 1983 Ford Escort with a 5-speed manual. He warned me that “sometimes the brakes will make a chkkkk, chkkkkk sound.” Cut to a week later when it turns out that, no, the brakes don’t just make a sound – the rear lines were completely rusted through, and the pressure loss caused all four to fail while I was trying to slow down from about 55 MPH on a country road to make a sharp right-hand turn. That led to some very panicked ratcheting through gears to engine brake, and luckily the front brakes still seemed to be able to grab a tiny bit with nothing in the lines. I drove the rest of the way home at about 10 MPH, and when I explained what had happened, I got called “ungrateful” for not being more appreciative of the death trap shitbox that had just tried to kill me.

        And these fucks wonder why I cut them out of my life 20 years ago.