Topic: Worst injury working on your bike??? Here's a pic of mine!!!

[seanbarney41]

Not while working on my bike, but riding 70MPH into gravel pit at New Hampshire Motor Speedway WITH full gear on.

ran out of run-off drag racing?      One time I was doing some carb tuning on my cb350 twin...it was something that needed the engine warmed up so I rode around for about 5 miles.  When I got back to my garage I immediately set to work so that the adjustments could be made with the engine fully warmed.  I crouched down witha screw driver in hand and lost my balance and started to fall backwards...I quickly dropped the screwdriver and grabbed the bike to keep from falling...oh no...not the header!...ouch

[bikebitzofvt]

Thanks y'all for sharing!  Needless to say I'll be adding an extra dose of caution to all that I do for the next little while !!!

dylboss - was that at Loudon?  Racing or track day?

Just *carefully* unloaded my 2 newest additions to the stable - 78 gs400 & 83 CB550SC.  Managed to get 'em back on the ground without any mishaps! 

[madmtnmotors]

I tend to wear safety glasses more often now than when I was younger. About 20 years ago I was working at my poorly lit storage unit, had a 750 engine sitting on a small cable spool. Removed the cylinder head followed by the cylinders. As the cylinders came free one of the cam tensioner components fell to the floor at my feet. I set the cyliders to the side and bent over to retrieve the wayward part.

You know, when you are looking straight down at those cylinder studs, they don't look quite so long, especially when your focus is on the floor below. Just as my outstretched arm reached the fallen piece my eyes reached the newly exposed ends of those cylinder studs. I literally thought I had gouged both my eyes out. Managed to escape with scratched corneas. The cornea is comprised of five layers and I managed to scratch through four of those layers in my left eye. No ill effects to this day, and I'm now fairly religious about wearing safety glasses. I am very thankful to still have my vision intact. Riding without it is hard to imagine....

[Spanner 1]

Does riding mower count ? ... not even working on it !
My buddy wanted a loan of my riding mower and the little 6 ft. trailer it fits on. My buddy not being a mowing 'expert' like me (  ), I offered to ride the 12 H.P. beast up onto the trailer for him.
Backed up ( as you do ) to get a 'run at it ' up the ramps and the effing trailer ( not 'home' on the hitch ball ) reared up , jumped forward, hitch rammed the tailgate of his Pathfinder producing a lovely big dent and a footlong bare metal scratch..... by this time I had reacted by slamming the throttle forward in the mistaken idea of trying to move forward  on the trailer to put weight on the front and so drop the hitch socket down away from the bodywork. Yeah, that worked great , hitch dropped alright and bounced off the rear bumper and now were doing a 'wheelie' and the fricken' hitch rams thru' the back window ! THe 'wheelie' sends me knees over head and the riding mower lands upside-down on top of me with the steering wheel pinning my chest to the ground !
No one hurt , but what a disaster.... if I only had it on video, you'd laugh yer ass off 

[conseann3ry]

Bleeding the brakes on my buddy's pickup.
"I'll tell you when to hit the pedal"
"Hit the pedal!?"
Stream of brake fluid pressure washes right into my eye.  Thought I was going to lose my eye or something, once I got to the ER though they said brake fluid is fine for the eye, radiator fluid as well, just an irritant.  I was lucky.

[Retro Rocket]

Does riding mower count ? ... not even working on it !
My buddy wanted a loan of my riding mower and the little 6 ft. trailer it fits on. My buddy not being a mowing 'expert' like me (  ), I offered to ride the 12 H.P. beast up onto the trailer for him.
Backed up ( as you do ) to get a 'run at it ' up the ramps and the effing trailer ( not 'home' on the hitch ball ) reared up , jumped forward, hitch rammed the tailgate of his Pathfinder producing a lovely big dent and a footlong bare metal scratch..... by this time I had reacted by slamming the throttle forward in the mistaken idea of trying to move forward  on the trailer to put weight on the front and so drop the hitch socket down away from the bodywork. Yeah, that worked great , hitch dropped alright and bounced off the rear bumper and now were doing a 'wheelie' and the fricken' hitch rams thru' the back window ! THe 'wheelie' sends me knees over head and the riding mower lands upside-down on top of me with the steering wheel pinning my chest to the ground !
No one hurt , but what a disaster.... if I only had it on video, you'd laugh yer ass off 

I would almost pay to see that.....

[swellguy]

While shortening a bolt with a hand held grinder recently, I had the misfortune to have the metal cutoff wheel disintegrate at high speed:



That's a cellphone self-portrait while waiting in the ER to see an eye specialist. I was wearing eye protection but now my wife insists I wear a full face shield.

[70CB750]

That's nasty!

[damagedduck]

swellguy..that sucks.i had a cheap ass habor freight 4' cut off wheel blow apart with 2 of my kids standing in the driveway,scarred the crap out of em,& me too a chunk about 3' smacked me in the thigh just short of mister happy!the boys learned a very good lesson about saftey that day.alway check the speed rating on cut off wheels,
i was wearing safety glasses. should have had a cup on!

[wardenerd]

I was working on my 550 and from the right side ( did I mention it was an F model) I leaned over to flip the choke , reattach a gas line and open the petcock and smelled something burning.  It was my leg against the dunstall pipe.  Two square inch burn right over the ten year old divot in my shin bone.

[dylboss]

Thanks y'all for sharing!  Needless to say I'll be adding an extra dose of caution to all that I do for the next little while !!!

dylboss - was that at Loudon?  Racing or track day?

Just *carefully* unloaded my 2 newest additions to the stable - 78 gs400 & 83 CB550SC.  Managed to get 'em back on the ground without any mishaps!

Yeah that was in the bowl on turn 6 at Louden.  Track day.  Guy on my inside took turn wider than I expected.  Couldn't recover.

[MidTNJasonF]

I have had more than a few small injuries over the years working on aircraft ramps and in machine shops. Mostly just cuts and such. I have had fewer at home in the shop with the cars and bikes but still a few.

The only recent one that required medical attention was when I decided to get a part from storage in the attic.  I have those handy pull down stairs in the garage and grabbed the pull string one evening. I looked up just as the table leg that was in storage up there slid down the stairs and hit me right in the eye. I guess it had fallen or shifted and landed on the closed stairs. It split me open between the eye brow and eye lid across the width of my eye. Man that was alot of blood. Took a few stitches and a bunch of that super glue stuff to close it all up in the ER.

The scariest was the grinding wheel particle that broke loose and managed to find its way into my eye through the only gap between my face and my glasses. It was a tiny little spec of a particle but boy did it hurt. I wasted no time getting down the road to the optometrist who flushed and put some dye in my eye to look for damage. It was only a scratch and it was more scary than truly painful but I found some tighter fitting safety glasses for use when grinding or cutting.