Reminder: Be safe out there in the garage

Posted on Mar 20, 2016 in Featured | 2 comments

There are jackstands under Jeff Koch’s Dart, he informs us.

Springtime is upon us here in the Northeast (finally!). The salt is slowly dissolving off the highways, and that means—unless you’re one of those lucky souls who has a heated garage with heated floors and heated underwear—it’s time to get back to wrenching on our project cars and other collector vehicles, even if it’s just the annual oil change and tuneup.

However, as I learned the other day, a few months of hibernation over the winter can leave us neglectful of basic safety procedures, especially in our zeal to get our cars back on the road. I came out of the Wagoneer incident unscathed, but I shared that story of my near-miss in part to reiterate that old cars and trucks—any cars and trucks, really—can be dangerous if we let down our guard. I’ve learned my lesson, and hopefully all of you have too, but more reminders can’t hurt.

For instance, CrownCoupe64 wrote in with this story about a fellow club member’s hard lesson learned:

A fellow club member with some awesome Chevrolets had an incident with parked vehicles with some injury and damage that could have been much worse.

He was moving his prized vehicles around in his garage and left his 1960 Impala idling in park. Apparently, there is an issue with those old Powerglides working into reverse on their own.

He caught a glimpse of the ’60 Chev motoring away, and he made a dash and opened the door and dove in head first. He tried to operate the pedals with his hands, but not before the car rolled out the door and the driver’s door got bent backwards as it got caught on the open doorway.

It literally went downhill from there. The car picked up momentum and eventually stopped abruptly when it met up with his 1956 Bel Air. (it might have been the 1955).

Paul and two of his cars were damaged, but all have fully recovered.

And PHANTOM HAWK related his own youthful indiscretion:

While in the Air Force in Arkansas, we had one of the state’s winter ice storms. While cutting doughnuts on an icy parking lot [the only way my ol’ ’58 Studebaker Champion could ‘drift out the rear end’], the rear wheels ended up against the lot curb, which, of course, had an apron ‘dip’ for water drainage during warmer weather.

Not having any help, I figured the easiest way to get the car away from the curb was to put in in low [the wheels slowly spinning on the ice-covered pavement] and then push from behind. [Hey, when you’re twenty, you can do anything.]

Well…it worked…but once out of the ‘dip’ the ol’ Champion took off across the lot. With my boots doing a good bit of slipping and sliding, I chased after the green and white four-door while its tired six pistons kept driving the car ever onward. Fortunately, I was able to jump into the driver’s seat just before the ol’ Champ could drift into another parking lot divider. Parking and locking the car, I walked away a bit smarter than before.

Finally, Stu Norman gave us a start to the ten commandments of project car safety:

And the lord spoketh to the old car collectors, and he said unto them, “Thou shalt chock the wheels when thy engine idles in neutral.”