Avoiding Catastrophe, Just Lucky?
 

This past weekend I checked the oil level and it was low, real low. I added a qt and 1/2 to a warmed up engine and ran it. Checked again and it was good. The oil level light on the dash indicted just above red and the pressure (druck) was dancing between 4 and 6.

I took here for a little drive today. All things fine. I have notice a bit of oil drips over the past few months so after the drive I popped the hood. Seems as though I forgot to put the oil cap back on. :eek: It was where I left it. The deck lid kept it in place.

I figured maybe the oil would have sprayed a bit but I didn't see anything and the level was fine.

Not sure how bad that could have been but I am sure it wasn't good.

Ever avoid catastrophe by being lucky?

Roughly on topic. A safety class I attended in the early 2000's mentioned that one "practices" setting up potential catastrophe about 250 times before the hammer falls. This was industrial safety, three straps vs two on a heavy parts lift sort of practice. Stuck in my mind though.

Only a lifetime full of stories!

I just hope I'm not done yet :)

Lucky I wasn't around, several times.

Number one has to be leaving a Taco Bell when I was in high school. Not 20 minutes later, 5 dead. We saw the pair in the parking lot.

Another, the Texas Seven, Oshman's sporting goods, nearly 20 minutes later, they came through.

Land Cruiser, the 7 feet long motor to x-fer came out and then fell from the hoist. I was walking away to fetch a tire for it to rest on before lowering. That's the motor that took us to the sushi bar.

I've shared the story of how I changed my steering rack and several weeks later the steering started to get tighter on my 951. I took a drive through the country at very "spirited" speeds on winding 2 lanes roads. Spirited meaning fast. We won't discuss how fast.

Then I pulled into a gas station and the steering wheel broke completely free from the steering rack. A previous owner had put in an undersized steering column shaft lock bolt on the column and yours truly didn't tighten it enough, so the universal joint on the column worked completely loose from the new steering rack.

I was able to reconnect it somehow and drive it home.

Signed,
Yours truly,

A VERY LUCKY total dumbass.

The other story was how I was driving my rusty 912 in high school and the idle started rising. The car really was rusty...How rusty?

So rusty the "b" pillars were rusted through, and in sharp corners doors would fly open due to chassis flex.... but hey, it was a porsche.

There were 4 girls in the car (5 total including me). Not able to fully understand why the idle was rising, I kept loosening the idle screw until it met the limit.When it hit the limit, I started bending the tab in to loosen it further. (there were girls in the car... no time for common sense diagnostics)

But the idle kept rising. The car was sitting low. It had the right stance.

When I got home, I noticed the torsion tube had broken completely loose from the chassis. As the torsion tube rotated backwards and the car lowered, the motor was moving backwards, which stretched the gas cable.

When I was at University, a group of us went on a skiing trip, about 800 km (say 500 mile).
One of the guys had been allowed to take his father's 1974 Fiat 130 (pride and joy, as in "wheels cleaned with a toothbrush" pride and joy).
The father had spent the day before going over the car to make sure all was well.

We got to the 250 km (150 mile) mark when the engine seized.

His father had forgot to replace the dipstick after checking the oil.

BTW, low oil warning lights on 1974 fiats only illuminate after the engine dies.

Many decades ago, 1964...3 buddies asked if I wanted to go cruise Salem. Friday night, they had some beer. Sounded fun, but I had to work the next day, so I passed.


They missed a turn on the return to our small town...only 4-5 miles from home. Only two survived the crash.

Thinking back? I was fortunate to have survived that time period. Lots of crazy close calls...most involving cars. Midnight drags that could have gone wrong, and other stuff. Stupid youth, I was...

Back in the 1970s the interstate that goes from Montgomery, AL to Atlanta, GA was not complete. There was a stretch in GA that went through a bunch of little towns and had some fun curvy roads. I was in my 914 having fun late at night (no AC so drive at night to stay cool) and just as I pulled back onto the boring interstate the tube in my tire ripped and I had essentially a blowout. As I put on the spare I realized if that had happened while on that curvy road I would likely have crashed.

Back in the dark ages of the 1970s I was running Michelin XAS or XWX it has been too long to remember without googling the tread pattern. Anyway, the tires had enough stick to pull the tire off the rim. Tubeless tires were new. I ran tubes in the tires as an extra precaution to help keep the tire on the rim. That was the prevailing thought of the day to have extra safety. Evidently I picked up a small nail and instead of just a slow leak the tube tore a long slice and instantly went flat. I was driving along at 55 or 60 (It was the BAD old days of 55 speed limit) and the rear tire blew. I was wiggling all over the road for a second.

Did this very thing in a Cessna as a student pilot on my long cross-country. Oil was everywhere inside the cowling and I had to add about 3 quarts when I landed for fuel.:eek:

Not driving related, but I was definitely lucky. As a young guy after the Army, I was working as a crane helper at a steel company helping the operator manage 60 ft. long bundles of reinforcing steel. One time when unloading an incoming truck of stock & putting the bundles into 12 ft. deep bins, I noticed a piece of tie wire sticking out toward the end of one of the bundles we were lowering into a bin. The operator had stopped & was talking to somebody, so I got down there & for some reason tried to remove the wire. The bundles were wrapped in three places with quarter round, which we hooked onto to move the bundles with the strong back. Anyway, the piece of wire wouldn't come out so I got out of the bin. As soon as I did, the quarter round on that end of the bundle gave way and it fell into the bin. Never again did I get into a bin under a bundle of steel & should have figured that out anyway.

Sure.

But in a one degree of separation missed catastrophe: My father was scheduled to take an early morning flight home for Christmas when he was a cadet at West Point.

The flight was to Oakland, California.

The night the before his flight home he was asked to perform extra duty at West Point so he rescheduled his flight to one later in the day.

I don't have the newspaper clipping here, but the flight he missed crashed and four other cadets were killed. His photo was published along with his obituary in the local paper since he was still on the manifest.

I am trying to find the article but have had no luck. I did call my sister to confirm I am not miss-remembering.

You guys were one extra duty at West Point in 1950 away from not having to put up with my gradu!

Me and my buddies in high school were out partying in my friends parents Olds Delta 88. We got the bright idea to push over some street signs for the Hell of it.

On maybe the third sign something broke loose (maybe engine mounts) and my buddy went to get his friend's FJ40 and we towed the car back to my buddy's house and parked it in front. He figured he'd break the bad news to his dad in the morning. About 2 hours later a drunk driver came around the corner and totaled the Olds.

One of my friends grew up as the rich kid but still turned out great. He dad gave him a GTO when he was in high school. He was smart enough to not go drag racing with it because if he got a ticket his dad would ground him and that away the car.

He went out with a buddy one night to do some burn outs. They even brought some bleach to make extra smoke. After a while he looked at the tread and they had corded the tires. :eek::eek:

He drove to school for a week but rain was in the forecast so he went to his dad and started to hem and haw about needing money for a new set of tires. His dad looked up and smiled and said, yea, the rears are shot, I borrowed your car and did a few burnouts. Here is the credit card, go get some new tires. :D:D

He had dodged a big bullet.

You are The Lubemaster after all, that has to count for something.

Does anyone remember the 35W freeway bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River 100' below in 2007?

I rode over that bridge 30 min earlier on a MC. I was one of the last people to see it before it fell. I can still describe the trucks and construction equipment on the bridge.

So that would be one.

Wow! Thats amazing. I always wonder how the folks who missed certain flights that ended up crashing...how it effected them. I have read where many have survivor guilt. Interesting.

You discovered the automatic rust proofing system! As a multi-time, multi care winner of the Exxon Valdez award, I know! SmileWavy

Back when I was young and stupid one of my motorcycles was an RD Yamaha . Was cruising along one day and came to an open stretch of road and opened her up . I was laying down on the tank and she was just singing along with that exhaust melody only a 2 stroke can sing . And then in an instant I heard this awful noise and the rear of the bike was wobbling and skidding .

The chain had snapped and somehow became intangled in the spokes/swingarm/hub and it was instant stop ! I never measured how far I skidded but it corded the tire down to a HUGE flat spot . It was NOT my skill that kept the bike upright just dumb luck and it wasn't my time . I had a lot of time to think about what happened and what COULD have happened as I sat by the side of the road waiting for my dad to come pick me up .

Ended up replacing the tire , chain and rear wheel/hub assy and kept riding her for a few years.......... was still young and stupid :D

While far from the “closest I've come” this is one of the more amusing motorcycle stories I can share:

The beginnings of my long career as backyard mechanic began in 1966 (age 17), with a '54 Triumph 650 motorcycle. These early Triumphs were magneto powered, and this particular bike didn't have a kill switch .. so when parking, I would merely stall out the engine in-gear, brake engaged.

One of my first “repair” jobs involved disassembly of the clutch pack, which was held intact by a single center nut. I don't even remember now why I'd disassembled it, but I had. During a spirited test drive to celebrate my new found mechanical prowess, my throttle stuck open partially, giving me an immediate surge of adrenalin midway into the first of a series of sharp uphill turns. Squeezing the clutch lever, I was horrified as the lever went flat against the handle. No clutch. I had failed to properly torque the hold-down nut, which secured the clutch stack.

Thankfully, the early Triumphs didn't have those sissy air cleaners on the inlet, nor did they yet have dual carbs .. so I was able to reach down and barely get my right hand over the single inlet, choking the engine out, while going through the turns steering with only my left hand. By the time I was able to pull over at turn #3, I had a pretty good sweat going. This was my first lesson on tightening fasteners to their specified torque.