No question. Cars parked long term often have the wiring systems eaten by rats. Literally everything under the hood that has electricity inside it gets attacked. I have no idea why they do this.Originally Posted by schüler
Take the battery out to prevent it.
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Not another dime.
My Uncle had a contract for building out the old Spies groceries. Always cussed about getting hit on the commercial freezer units which I recollect him saying were 480. Also told a story about refurbishing homes on the reservation said those were some of the poorest wired dwellings he'd ever seen and some of the most creative "improvements" he'd seen.
-All views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect those of the author's employer-
Electricity is magic. I've only been zapped by 110 and stun guns and can't say I enjoyed any of it.
"Gunfighting is a thinking man's game. So we might want to bring thinking back into it."-MDFA
Beware of my temper, and the dog that I've found...
I got a double hit by an MSD box about 40 years ago. I had a '77 Dodge "Macho" Power Wagon, and had an MSD 6C box on it, with a huge coil and the pretty expensive Blue Max wires. The truck was a total piece of garbage and had constant issues. It developed a miss, which turned out to be a carb issue, but I thought it was an ignition problem. It was dark out, about 11PM, and I was standing on a plastic milk crate, leaning over and I had the lights off in my garage, so I could see any sparks jumping. It was, as it tended to be in Vegas, 100 degrees and I was sweating a ton. I had dripped sweat all over the milk crate, and I started to fall. I grabbed the coil wire and leaned forward as far as I could, pressing myself hard against the front right quarter panel. My pants were soaked and the fly was messed up on them, and the zipper was exposed. Apparently, my junk had come into contact with the zipper, which grounded itself to the truck, and my junk got zapped. Well, more than zapped. I had a rag in my right hand that insulated it from the radiator mount, so all the hits went through my junk into the zipper. I "danced" around for a few seconds, and fell off the truck. I didn't know what happened, "down there" for a while, but when I went into my bathroom, my shorts were full of blood. At the tip of my penis, I had a hole blown into it! When I took a shower, I found I had a tiny hole in my sack, too. Both bled way more than I expected they ever would. I doctored myself with Neosporin or whatever it was that I had and everything healed up fine. But I was paranoid when I got near the plug wires on that truck when it was running. A few years later, I would have a much less traumatic burn/hole in my hand when I somehow touched the messed up coil wire on my '79 Trans Am that had an MSD 6 box with one of those giant Accel coils on it.
When I was in high school, I had a CB with a 300 watt linear on it. I talked all over the world on it. The linear was very hard on tubes and I had to replace them several times. One time I was home sick with the Flu and I decided to change out the tubes before bedtime, in case the skip was rolling the next morning, so I could just fire up and start talking. Instead of my insulated shaft screwdriver I had made just for the job of tuning a variable cap to set the tube up, I used a regular one, thinking, "I'm not a dope, I'll be fine!". I was keyed up and talking to a friend of mine, and the next thing I know I was flying into my closet door, knocking it off track and landing on my boots and shoes. I had pulled out the mike cord from the plug and my friend said he heard a loud "BZZZZZT", and me scream before the radio stopped transmitting. I was pretty shaken up and my right index finger was a little burned and my heart was pounding like a machine gun. I went to school in the morning and was kind of shaky all day. My teeth were chattering at lunch. After that, I was super careful and managed to do several tube swaps without any issues and avoid all electrical shocks until the above incidents.
Just rereading this thread. A lot of AC/DC power supplies have huge capacitors to smooth out the rectified AC. They can kick your tail even after the equipment is powered down.
As a tube amp builder, this is so true. I have a custom jumper with a 220v/2a resister soldered in for draining the caps before I do anything inside, and will probably hardwire a cap drain into everything later.
"You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
"I've owned a guitar for 31 years and that sure hasn't made me a musician, let alone an expert. It's made me a guy who owns a guitar."- BBI
First, I don't trust anything I can't see. Let me rephrase that: If you SEE electricity, it's way too late. I had a good friend, well-versed in electrical work, who was electrocuted while lying on his back, drilling holes in the bottom of his camper. He was lying on damp grass, using a small drill, 110 current. Apparently he closed the circuit between the grass and a bad cord with his body. No one remembers him ever talking about the bad cord. I've been jolted many times - probably the worst one was when I was working on a truck's carburetor, kneeling atop the fender. It was an HEI (high energy ignition), 1977 Chevy. Anyway, I began to slide and to stop the slide, I reached out and grabbed the nearest thing - the distributor. HEI generates around 40,000 volts. I ended up about 10' away, ears ringing - guess that's what "getting your bells rung" means.
I know of a case where a guy was killed by the energy stored in a large capacitor. Never assume Zero Energy. Always Verify!
I was putting in a C Band dish in the summer of 1999, and I had to drill a couple of holes in my foundation to pass the cables though. I was sitting on the ground and I was using the giant, I'm talking colossal drill I bought when I was in high school. It had an all steel gearbox with 2 speeds in it, even at the high speed, it could twist itself loose if it stalled. So I put my 3/4" bit into it and start to drill the hole. I got zapped and yelled, "Yow!!", and for some odd reason, I pulled the trigger again, with the same result. I jumped up and pulled the extension cord out of the wall and took the drill in and fixed it. About 20 minutes later, I had a hole in my foundation along with a huge bruise on my arm from when the drill stalled right at the end, and I was probably lucky to not have had a broken arm. That drill needed a clutch, badly.
Wow.
Good stories.
As a EE, it amazes me people survive some of this stuff. Glad you guys are around.
To date, I’ve managed to avoid anything serious, myself.
One cool story bro; my intern job summer of 1981 was with the Naval Research Lab. We had a task to do some RF (mm wave) testing out on a jack up barge in the Chesapeake Bay.
Visiting the shore side part of the site, I distinctly recall being told I really should not walk in front of the emitter array while it was transmitting if I ever wanted to have kids.
I’m not sure they weren’t kidding. [emoji41]
Last edited by RJ; 03-16-2018 at 08:14 AM.
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