Hmmm? Isn't it? Banana?

Flatter than a pancake

I nearly died a horrible death today. I was nearly squashed by this car. It was up on Axle stands back where it is in that shot, but rather foolishly not the shiny yellow ones you see there, but some older ones. Shittier ones, in fact. That I no longer have much affection for.

I was working right under the back axle replacing the main pivot bush and link arms for the Watts linkage (the car is live axle, for those that know or care) which required me moving the suspension relative to the body to get it to all line up. To give an idea for those that aren't immediately aware of what this entails, I was under the car up to about my lower hip, with my legs initially pointing into what would effectively be the bottom right of the picture. Well and truly underneath £250,000 and 1 tonne of car, just to emphasise the point.

So. I had the car chassis on the (shitty) axle stands, and the axle (and so the rear suspension) on our shitty little jack with a block of wood on it to get the throw/travel to move the axle far enough to make the rubber bushes of the linkage line up. This meant taking all of the car's weight to start off with. Unfortunately, as I did so, the block of wood cracked in half, and the car fell sideways, and partially off, the jack. Over a ton of car was descending onto my head, basically. At some speed and with a bit of a bang, I can tell you. Fortunately, it only fell an inch or so onto the axle stands as they were still in position, and I had managed to spin myself around as the wood started to go and jammed my foot against the jack to stop it completely falling over. So all should have been a bit twitchy in the sphincter stakes, but all ok.

Truth be told, I shat my pants, and no mistake.

But that isn't the end of it, is it? No, cos that wouldn't be funny, would it? Oh no. As the chassis drops and hits the axle stands, with the car still quivering and reverberating, the pin in one of the axle stands shears and the full weight now lands on one axle stand and a crooked, half fallen over, jack - which is only prevented from falling completely over by my foot. If the jack falls over, the car will slide to its right, fall off the other stand and squash me to fuck. It has no wheels on, and I am directly under the suspension. I trust that this is sufficiently spelled out for the people inexperienced in these matters. I would be, to put it in its proper medical terminology, proper fucked and no mistake.

So Muggins, here, is now pretty much stuck underneath the car, trying to hold the jack straight with my foot to keep the car off me. I was holding the jack, and so the car, and seemed able to stop its descent, but after a small amount of assessment (I imagine almost instant, although it felt considered at the time) decided that while I could maintain equilibrium, any movement would mean the car fell. I was thus totally stuck where I was. Fortunately, Ben (the other guy working there) had heard the first bang and looked over in time to see the car settle momentarily on the axle stands, then make a cracking noise and sag a bit more. So he shat himself (by way of empathy, presumably) and ran over asking if I was alright. I answered pretty calmly, but said that yes, I was alright, but that perhaps could he get a screwdriver or something through the axle stand so it could take the weight of the car.

Now, I have something about my personality of which I have never practiced or actively developed, but of which I am curious about and not a little proud. In times of great stress and pressure, only work related in my experience so far, I tend to go a bit over-calm in my demenour. This is, I assume, probably borne of my motor racing past, where so much of it is done at flat chat and with huge pressure that being able to converse and get your point across is pretty useful. Everyone has seen pitstops from F1 on the TV, but imagine trying to do them without any of the kit, and about a quarter (at least) of the people. Hard work, I assure you. As an example of this weird 'seeming calm' I have even been stood right next to (well, about 10 feet from) a racing car that is on fire and, quite conversationally, suggested to the Fire marshall that he should "Perhaps consider putting that burning car out, before it explodes". He didn't quite get the urgency until I pointed over his shoulder at the car rapidly being consumed in flames with the driver leaping out of it, and said "Um. Fire. Burny stuff, mate. Put it out, would you?" He then proceeded to panic and fall over his extinguisher before eventually putting it out.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to suggest that I am Mr Super Cool and am unfazed by anything, by any means. Far from it in fact- in all these instances, my heart rate is massively high and I am (where appropriate) shitting my spine out if it's scary, but I just seem to box it up until it is dealt with and adrenaline carries me through. From the outside, people think I am totally calm (unless they know me well and know the signs) but inside I am flapping big style. The advantage I have, I imagine, is that flapping makes my brain work faster, not stop. I have been very grateful for that in the past.

Anyway, so the downside of this, is that Ben (not by any means the sharpest tool in the box) is standing at the side of the car while I am suggesting what he needs to get to help me get out from being squashed flat under the car:

"Ok, I need you to get me something to use as a pin for this axle stand, and get it back under the chassis, because this jack is pretty much holding the car up."

He utterly fails to see the urgency because I sound so calm and conversational although I am shitting bricks and genuinely concerned that I am going to get squished, and starts mooching gently across the workshop to his toolbox poking about for something that he doesn't mind getting scratched (even if his tools are all shitty and fucked anyway). I realise that I haven't got my point across quite as perhaps is required. So I resort to shouting and swearing to get my point across

"Ben? Let me spell this out for you. If you don't get this fucking axle stand under this car this jack WILL fall over and I WILL get squashed. I am struggling to hold it up with my foot and can't do it much longer. Now stop fucking about and get this fucking car held up NOW!"

There is a bit of a clatter as he twigs that I am really not joking and drops some stuff before he comes belting over with something - in fairness when he realised I was serious, he reacted pretty well. It's just if I had not been under the damn thing, his bimbling would have been funny.
It was only when he had come back and dropped down on the floor to help that he realised it was quite so close to going shit shaped in a basket. We got the stand back underneath on a lower setting and let the jack down while I reacted against the lean of it until the car settled properly.

When all was sorted, we worked out that the car had slid sideways about 3 inches and Ben kept saying "You must have been shitting yourself!" lots.

Well. Yeah, pretty much. I was. Lots. I called the axle stand lots of names for a while to calm down, too. That'll teach it.

posted by Brock @ Tuesday, May 16, 2006