Stupid Human Tricks (Feel Free to Contribute)

[Turfman]

Get the new tractor. Have it in the driveway and look to see if it will go into the garage with the folding roll bar up. Daughter says no, it's too high, so I back it up a bit and look for myself. Daughter is good, about 4 inches too high.

One week later, daughter and wife are gone (thank goodness). Neighbor needs dirt moved so I go help. Have the roll bar up to be safe. Driving home in high range, loving the speed and the wind on my face. Back into the drive and get a run at the parking spot in the garage. BAM, roll bar hits the brick above the garage door and bounces me and the tractor forward a few feet. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif Scuff on the brick and scuff on the roll bar, big scuff on the pride, but there is no real damage and best of all there are NO WITNESSES.
/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Still a scuff on the brick and roll bar, wife occasionally wonders what the kids did to put it on the brick but never sees the one on the roll bar /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif. Sell house and build one with TALL garage doors, which runs up mortgage payment and leaves me with 30 years to pay instead of nine.

 

[hillslider]

I new this guy who had a bad temper and when he was working on his truck one day got all mad and turned to throw the screwdriver in a moment of anger and there it went.........right through the hood of his wifes new Thunderbird. I new it was time to go!!!!

 

[knucklehead]

Safety First........?

May 1985, future inlaw's house. Pre-trip hurried oil change of future wife's car. Car up on cheap jack, then a sudden attack of conscience about safety. Grab a concrete block, look around garage for wood blocking....none short enough. Grab an old scabby two by four, pick up a ratty 8 point hand saw, take a nice back stroke, start sawing. Blade wobbles; slide thumb over to steady blade, just like a thousand times before. Slide thumb over on back stroke, take mighty forward stroke - right across left thumb and nail. Had to let car down off jack to get to Hospital. 5 stitches - two through the nail, followed by an infection, and a piece dropping off. Now have a flat left thumb with no feeling on the side.

I was practicing safe jacking, but moving too fast.

 

[icat]

Sucks, that ain't nothin. Let me tell you boys a real DA story!

Seems this fella I knew once bought himself a brand spankin' new house. Be in as how he had never had a garage before he decides he needs to put his bicycle up on the wall so as he can git more stuff in thar. So this fella takes his new fangled Stanley Stud Finder and proceeds to look fur a good stud to mount the bracket to. Once he locates the perfect place, he stands on his tippy toes and drills a good ole pilot hole. Now what this here fella has forgotten is that the stud finder is also pretty good at finding copper tubing - matter of fact, I'd say it's a darn sight better at finding copper than it will ever be at finding studs. Anywho, our illustious hero proceeds to drillin and notes that the stud has a pretty good resistance - so he pushes a bit harder and pop - in goes the drill bit. The fella pulls back on the drill and much to his surprise gets a quick shot of water right square in the eye. Water is shooting out of the hole at an alarming rate, so this here fella sticks his finger on the hole and yells for the misses. The lady of the house comes into the garage and asks the fella just what the heck is going on and why on earth is water coming out of the wall. The fella says never mind, just turn off the water. So the lady runs to the street, but can't find the turn off. She looks and looks and looks, but it's not there. So she runs back and says to the fella - just put something in the hole so you can help me find the cut off. He asks her to look around and she finds a small screw. Thinkin the screw could be inserted into the hole and screwed in to stop the leak, the fella accepts her offer and places the screw at the leak point. Unfortunely, the second the screw comes in contact with the small tiny hole in the copper pipe, the pipe rips open and water comes flooding out at a most alarming rate. Now drenched with water and with no shut off in sight, the fella desides to abandon his post and look for the cut off. He finds it next to the house and shuts off the incoming water. After cleaning up the mess he cuts the sheet rock from around the hole and teaches himself how to sweat solder a joint. And that my friends is how I learned to solder. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[Junkman]

My wife called me on a Sunday morning after arriving at work only to find the water running out the front door due to a frozen and broken water pipe. She wants me to come to her place of employment immediately and turn off the water. I figure that it will take about 15 - 20 minutes to get there and then have to find the shut off..... took 2 minutes to find the telephone number for the fire department and about another 3 or 4 minutes for the fire truck to arrive with the sirens blaring. She asked how they knew to come and they told her that they got a call from "out of state". We live in CT on the MA line and her work is in MA. This is one of those times that you have to be able to think clearly in an emergency and know who can get there the fastest. Besides, the shut off was located in another store that was closed and the water had to be shut off from the street.

 

[BIGUN]

Hope you opened up that wall and let it dry out real good so you don’t come to the attention of the Texas Mold Police one fine day. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

The drywall installers did the same thing to my new house. The plumbers ran a copper pipe too close to the edge of a stud and the drywall nail pieced the pipe. My builder liked having the plumbing pressured up for just this reason. If a pipe was hit, it would be known immediately and the drywall guys could repair the wall after the plumbers did their repair.

 

[TheKid]

Month old 93 Dodge Dakota and camper shell. Back into garage and lift camper shell off so I can get a load of mulch. Unload mulch, back under camper shell and get it clamped back on truck. Start to pull out of garage when I hear lots of glass hitting the floor. I forgot to lower the rear window on the shell and its handle caught the handle on the garage door. That load of mulch ended up costing $175.00 /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

 

[JDgreen227]

Shoot, you learned a lot more than how to solder copper pipe, you also learned how to cut and patch sheetrock in the process. Some folks pay good $$ to learn those skills in a trade school....

Here's my contribution, not tractor related, but interesting. About ten years ago I wanted to install a ceiling fan in our bedroom and there was no ceiling light or wall switch, first I went up to the attic and installed a 2X6 brace between the joists then went back down and cut out the plaster in the ceiling and installed a fan box. Then cut out the plaster by the bedroom door for a switch box, went downstairs to drill out a hole for the wiring in the wall cavity...I was moving right along. Upon feeding the wire up from the basement I felt it hit a horizontal stud just over the top of the doorframe, and I knew there was a plate further up in the attic. Now, how to bore through the first one? What I did was, fastened a very expensive self feeding bit to a length of half inch EMT tubing, then fed it up through the hole in the basement floor. When I felt the bit touch the horizontal stud I piled up concrete blocks with enough room for a small hydraulic jack to put pressure on the EMT.

All set, turned the EMT with a pipe wrench, jack it up a bit, turn a little, jack a little....the bit bored through the first stud in about two minutes, I felt so SMUG. After adding another short length of EMT to the first one I felt it hit the plate. YEAH SURE. So turn and jack, turn and jack....after an hour the bit had gone up over a foot and still had not bored through the plate.

I got pissed off and went back to the attic, pulled up the insulation and tried to find the problem. Guess what? On the other side of the bedroom wall is a hallway closet, the ceiling for that closet was just loose plywood and when I pulled that up guess what was right under my nose? The very tip of my expensive self feeding bit, firmly bored into a 14 inch long VERTICAL 2X6 framing reinforcement.

Had I had the common sense to look at the area while I was up there putting the ceiling brace in, it would have saved me a lot of work. It took about half an hour to get the EMT back out of the hole it was embedded into, plus the bit is still there to this day.

Moral: If everything seems to be going right, you have obviously overlooked something.

 

[RebelYell]

Wanted my tractor and wanted it now. Dealers close to me had nothing, decide to buy one 50 miles away and get a trailer also. Dealer doesn't have ramps for the low-boy but he does have a small hill. We load the tractor just fine. Knowing I have a hill on my property I decide to take it home without ramps. I have no problem backing up to the hill although I did notice about a 2 inch drop off the trailer. I decide to back it out. The back wheels come off the trailer with no problem. Then I notice I cannot back up any farther. The BH is embedded in the hill and the back tires are off the trailer enough to where I cannot pull forward even in 4WD. ???? What to do, can't go forward, can't backup. Tried moving the BH with the controls, but it is in a bind. Starts raining hard. No one around witrh me scratching my head. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif Took the tractor out of gear, put the Jeep in 4 low and pull out. Tractor came off, MMM bent the back of trailer a bit. I just couldn't believe my first OH $%*& with the tractor and I don't even have it off the trailer yet. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif Rains for another week, I just got to look at the tractor the whole time, my nearby dealer calls in the meantime; he has a BX22 for me now. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[RebelYell]

Rain finally stops I get to mow with my new tractor. The grass in the field is getting high and I am pumped to try my new machine. Wife yells out the door "What are you doing, we have a dinner to go too." NOOOOOOOOOO way am I goin' to a dinner. She argues with me a bit and I say "I AM PLAYING ON MY TRACTOR, LEAVE ME ALONE" in my head; out of my mouth is "Yes Dear." I have several places to park my tractor where the former owners built for their calves. I pull into the area at almost full throttle and BAM, front wheels come a foot off the ground, the roof gets pushed up about an inch and the tractor is stuck, again. Second OH ^%$^ and I haven't used the tractor for 20 minutes yet. The attached pic shows where I keep the tractor now; but above the electric meter you can see a joist with daylight showing between the joist and the ceiling. This was where my ROPS hit. My wife saw this happen, she almost died laughing saying my eyeballs came 3 feet out of my head.