Exploding garage

Sorry, I'm a heterosexualist, so I don't get that magazine.

Having seen Steve's scan, you have my deepest sympathy. The largest thing I have blown up unintentionally was a fuel tank. No matter how long you leave them to purge, it's always a bit pot luck when it comes to brazing a patch in place. It reached about 100ft, fortunately it missed me on the way up and the Triumph it belonged to on the way down.

I welded lots of fuel tanks...

Put about half a cup of fuel in, and light it. It flickers yellow for 20 mins and eventually goes out when there is nothing left to burn. Now you can weld it!

My dad was killed by a combination of a Triumph TR7 fuel tank and a Burgerman type scenario.

I was there.. fuel is one of the few things that always scares the shit out of me.

You won't be wanting a bike, then. 20 litres of finest unleaded between your legs....

It's ok if it's in the tank, it's when the stuff's leaking that is worries me.

Strangely, the knackered carb on the Jensen that's spewing fuel everywhere isn't such a worry :-S

Well if you only use pump fuel your boost is set too low? Or compression too low? Or not enough nitrous!

f*ck! that would scar me for life! brave man pete! surpised you go near a fuel pump!

Hondas lovely vee-4 doesn't need stuff like that ;-)

In news: snipped-for-privacy@pipex.net, Vamp decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

21 years ago now, but the smell of fuel is still enough to make me extremely wary in enclosed spaces.

If it's outdoors, and I've got an escape route, I'm ok.

Old bloke who was a mate of my dads, was a rear gunner on the Lancaster bombers in WWII, proper nice old guy, brave as anything, he basically forced me to go back to the garage where it happened the next day. His words were "If you don't go back, it'll make your life a whole lot more difficult". Was a difficult thing for me to do as a 13yr old, but the old guy undid his shirt and he was covered in scars from being burnt in the war, he said "face your demons, and you'll be fine".

I did, and to this day I'm glad he made me go.

I'm still mega careful though.

Good bikes for smooth touring or scratching a bit on back roads but no real go? I rode lots of vfr's but they all sort of underwhelmed me. Typical sanitised good at everything honda. When you are rolling along and crack the throttle it leaves no stripe on the road, does not scare anyone, and is just too inofensive for me...I like to wheelie for 1/4 mile at a time going through gbox, or leaving smoke and rubber for the first 4 gears. I am a refugee from the dragstrip...

Better with a 1100 with 1500 big bore, 14.5 to one compression, flat slides, (no cuddly cv carbs or injection) and 2 stages of nitrous... One blip of the throttle through the open pipe causes car alarms and old people go off. They pick up so fast that blipping it is instant and it goes to 11000 rpm in about 0.2 of a sec with flames on the throttle closing. 250 TO 300 BHP is mental fun!!!

Ouch.

Local business man was killed when IIRC welding his pride and joy and not noticing there was a fuel leak.

My mate's brother was seriously burned while Waxoyling a car.

You know the bit where it tells you to warm the Waxoyl before spraying it? He dispensed with the usual bucket of hot water and stood the can of Waxoyl on a camping Gaz stove.

...and then he took you to one side, and said 'Now then... fancy a suck on this?', pausing only momentarily, to pluck a Werthers Original from the bag in his pocket.

;-)

-- JackH

This thread should hopefully make noobys very scared of what fuel can do. That photo in bike magazine looks it like a "fire" where my fuel explosion looked far FAR bigger and more instant/violent. according to those that saw it! Amazingly, a few neibours happened to be looking that way on Nov the

4th (missed it by 1 day! bugger!!) and the flash was huge! The flames were about ten times as high as the garage, dwarfing the huge pear tree behind it. I watched the skin dropping almost instantly from my bare arms, whilst trying to get out. And this happened to my bare back, and other bits too as I found out later. The initial blast felt like whack by a 2x4 across my back. I wanted to breath but everywhere was intense flame! I had burns inside my mouth and stuff... It hurt! But not as much as the crash that left me paralysed...

LIFE not bikes can be dangerous!

The reason I bothered to reply to Mark Phillips (bike) was because I now know how easy these things can happen. Hopefully people may take notice!

But I doubt it...

Sounds like he was nearly a canditate for the Darwin awards.

I.

I thinkhe woudl have been had he been oiling the chassis at the time. Fortunately he stood up to stretch his back and the which ejected a disk of flaming Waxoyl out of the can parallel to the ground simply stuck to him and removed the skin (and quite a bit of muscle) from his groin to his ankles.

Someone who saw it said it was like one of thos eexplosions in cheesy SciFi films. Not a ball of flame, but an expanding doughnut of flame.

8-O

Why am I not surprised? ;)

paralysed? didn't know that? can you move at all? i guess you're arms work or how else would you type?

sounds like you were lucky to be alive and i'm glad, how else would will hear some of these great stories and ask the guy who had an old banger with a V8 lump that laughed others off the drag strip!

Hold the press, "Vamp in '10 years behind everyone else' shocker".

A lot of hard work building neck muscles, combined with a pencil in each nostril :)