I'd just had my 1991 Ford Exploder diagnosed with a blown transmission. Since the labour cost was going to be somewhere over the $500 mark, I decided that I would do the replacement myself and save a few bucks. After all, I have an automotive apprenticeship, a large shop and all tools required to do the job. So one night, I drive it into my shop and proceed with the repair. I had to do it on the floor with the front end up on axle stands because my shop doesn't have a hoist. Everything was going great, I had the transmission and transfer case out and laying beside the truck and it was going quite fast and easy. At this point, I had to do a transmission cooler flush. Since the tranny grenaded, there was a great possibility that there were chunks of metal and clutch plates, etc. in the cooler. In order to keep that from going into the new tranny and destroying it, I bought an aerosol can of flushing agent. It works like this. There are two transmission lines to the cooler, an inlet and an outlet. You hook one of those up to the aerosol can and run the other to a drain pan. When they are all connected, you just press the button and presto! The cooler gets flushed out. In a few minutes, I had the lines all hooked up and ready to go. I had a large (about 2 1/2 foot diameter) drain pan for the discharge to go into. To avoid any possible over spray, I moved as far away from the drain pan as I could, lucky move for me. However if you recall, the Exploder is up on axle stands so my mobility decreased since my space was more confined. I also moved the trouble light that I was using away from the pan as well, quite near to my head. It's at this point that you may see the problem. I was using one of the smaller yellow 250W halogen work lights. This was like most with one MAJOR exception. The glass cover that sealed the bulb was broken and had been for a few years, so the bulb was exposed to the elements. Never any problems until now. So there I was, crammed against the back of the truck, exposed super hot halogen light right by my head and aerosol can in hand. I pressed down on the button and lo and behold, a whole mess of crap started flushing out into the drain pan. As I was laying there admiring the ugly brownish color of the liquid there was this great big "WHHOOOOOOSSSHHH" sound followed by a whole whack of pretty orange and yellow colors. Next thing I know I'm scrambling like a caged lion and in about a nano second I'm standing beside the Exploder (now you know why I call it that), looking at the nice fire now burning in the drain pan that is sitting directly under the truck. I take stock and notice that the latex gloves that I was wearing (to keep oil and grease from contaminating my hands) are on fire as well as my nice thick sweater I was wearing. Another nano second later and the gloves were off (what wasn't melted to my hands) and so was my sweater. That done, I managed to reach the drain pan and pull it out from under the Exploder to the middle of the shop where there was no danger of it catching anything on fire. It was at this point that I managed to gather my thoughts for a second. The very first one was, "why don't I have a *ucking fire extinguisher?" My next thought was, "how the *uck did that happen? The light and drain pan are at least 6 feet apart, there's no WAY anything should have caught on fire at that distance." The next day, I read the can of flushing agent and figured out what happened. The main propellant for the agent was......can you guess? Propanol. I guess there was enough of that in the air to ignite on the halogen bulb. To sum this all up, I managed to get second degree burns on my left arm and some first degree burns to both hands as well as substantial hair loss (burnt by the fire) on my face and head. Somewhere in my scrambling under the truck, I also managed to crack my nut on something and didn't discover that until my morning shower when I could hardly touch the massive goose egg on the top of my head. I had the Exploder towed to a shop to get the new transmission installed and I also bought a new fire extinguisher. One day, I may grace the pages of your site as an actual winner!!!

Submitted on 12/21/2004

Submitted by: Tony
Reference: Personal Account

Copyright © 2004 DarwinAwards.com

Daniel said:
Neutral: Personal Account
Well, maybe. I don't see anything radically stupid here, just a job gone wrong.

Jack said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Reminds me of some of the stuff that I used to do under my antique '74 Blazer... Good enough for a personal account!

Charles said:
Neutral: Personal Account
I'd say that for a personal account this is OK, but not th estupidest I've seen. Myself, I would expect all spray cans to use flammable propellants... and would handle things accordingly.

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