I did something very silly!!!

orlando · Post by **orlando** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:34 am

I was debating with myself as to whether I should post this or not. I decided I would as it may help prevent some body making the same mistake.

A couple of months ago I installed a Weicher front strut bar, I was pleased with the outcome so I decided to order the rear one.

I received the bar and one day decided to come back early from work to install it. I thought I knew what I had to do. Got the 13mm ratchet wrench to remove the nuts and got myself inside the boot (trunk for you Americans) of the car. I managed to remove the two accessible nuts on the right side and decided to remove the difficult ones once I removed the rear seats from inside the car. I turned to the left side, still inside the boot lying on its floor and proceeded to unscrew the nuts when suddenly the lid of the boot shut on me trapping me inside!!!! I did panic for a few seconds when I realised I couldn't open the boot from inside but managed to calm myself down to decide what to do. Not Much really, apart from trying to make myself comfortable and finding the best possible position in a confined space to wait for 4 hours until the wife came back from work. I am not a big man nor a small one, 176 cm tall (5 foot 7 I think in imperial) but I felt cramped and the room in there was not much. Luckily I had some rugs I put in the boot to rest my head on the battery compartment when I tried to remove the nuts so I made a pillow with them, I had previously removed all the carpet so I was lying on the bear metal of the boot.
After a few minutes I touched the walls and they were wet from the condensation of my breathing I didn't like the idea of four hours waiting and was really worried as my legs cramp easily and they are very painful.

I would have been trapped there for about one hour and a half when I heard that someone opened the from gate. Luck was on my side, my son came home to pick up a text book he had forgotten and rescued me!!

After this happened and I had time to reflect on things, I know I did many things wrong that could have easily avoided the situation I ended up in. Firstly I should have had something holding the boot open. Secondly, I should have had something like a rug preventing the lock of the car to lock. Thirdly, I should have put my mobile (cel) phone in the boot of the car or in my pocket.

The learning experience from this, of course is that I have to be careful next time. The 90 or so minutes I was trapped also made think what would have happened if I lived by myself and had no son or wife to rescue me. I suppose, you could break the lock if you are desperate by kicking it.

So please be careful when working on your cars, take necessary safety measures. We all have heard stories of jacks going off causing injuries and even death.

I know that what I did was stupid and hope you are not as stupid as I was!!!

Quendil · Post by **Quendil** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:40 am

Me and my friend did the same when we were kids. We locked ourselves in a mk2 jag boot for 2 hours

TrevorB · Post by **TrevorB** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:53 am

That's funny Orlando, sorry.

ron · Post by **ron** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 2:17 pm

You should have got your son to spray the outside with a hose and then you could have checked for leaks!

madman · Post by **madman** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 2:29 pm

Thanks for getting the courage to share, as many might get carried away with work and forget safety aspects, of which I consider the mobile to be the simplest (assuming it is charged

)

Pod · Post by **Pod** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 3:36 pm

That could happen to anybody - and its not that silly at all

I've managed much sillier things - such as chopping off my finger when I grabbed a compressor belt which I had just replaced for a slipping one - just to check it wouldn't slip - it didn't

I'm sure somebody on the forum can beat that though!

Brucey · Post by **Brucey** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 3:41 pm

we've all pulled a few boners I'm sure.... and at least you came to no harm.

I've done some pretty stupid things; enough that it is tough to pick a clear winner....

cheers

MrE · Post by **MrE** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:17 pm

Oh my Orlando!! That would be a terribly harrowing situation to get yourself into. I'm so glad it all worked out okay, but nonetheless you must have been rather concerned for a while there!

A few weeks ago as I was getting ready to go to work (in my daily driver, not the Sixer) I locked both sets of car keys in my car with the motor running. I was outside my house in the driveway, the house was locked, the car was locked, and I had no access to tools or anything with which to break in, and it was raining. Fortunately I had my phone in my pocket so could call roadside assist to come and open the car for me, but I waited for an hour & a half sitting there with the motor running for the bloke to arrive. I was late to work that day.

-Ellis.

orlando · Post by **orlando** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:24 pm

ron wrote:You should have got your son to spray the outside with a hose and then you could have checked for leaks!

Absolutely Ron!! Better still, I could have asked him to start the car, leave it running for an hour or so and could've checked if exhaust fumes managed to get in the boot!!!

hornhospital · Post by **hornhospital** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 5:17 am

Thanks for giving me fodder for my nightmares!

I am VERY claustrophobic, and that story gave me the heebie-jeebies. You'd never last 4 hours (or even 1.5 hours) here. You'd be cooked through with the heat.

Now I need a Valium........

AusE24 · Post by **AusE24** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 7:35 am

Damn Orlando.. very scary.

regards

Greg

slofut · Post by **slofut** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 2:18 pm

hornhospital wrote:Thanks for giving me fodder for my nightmares! I am VERY claustrophobic, and that story gave me the heebie-jeebies. You'd never last 4 hours (or even 1.5 hours) here. You'd be cooked through with the heat.

Now I need a Valium........

Yea Orlando,
At first I LMAO, but as Hornhospital said, here in the south my car gets to 135 degrees daily during the summer. An hour or so in the trunk and you'd be cooked for sure. And you'd probably pass out within 15 minutes. As many times as I've laid in a trunk in the hot sun (only a few weeks ago in the 6) working on stuff with nobody around for the whole day...
Well, I appreciate the eye opener! This is one that I'd much rather learn here than on the job.
Bill

orlando · Post by **orlando** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 11:24 pm

Brucey wrote:we've all pulled a few boners I'm sure.... and at least you came to no harm.

I've done some pretty stupid things; enough that it is tough to pick a clear winner....

cheers

The interesting thing Brucey is that we question ourselves after the event: "how silly was I to do that?" For me as you said, no harm but certainly an eye opener!!

cecotto479 · Post by **cecotto479** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 2:59 pm

I once fixed a puncture on the front wheel of my push bike. I put it back on the bike and realised I had got the direction of rotation wrong, so I took the tyre off again and swapped it round on the rim.

slofut · Post by **slofut** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 3:46 pm

cecotto479 wrote:I once fixed a puncture on the front wheel of my push bike. I put it back on the bike and realised I had got the direction of rotation wrong, so I took the tyre off again and swapped it round on the rim.

tschultz · Post by **tschultz** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 3:31 pm

I think this was with your E24?

My first thought was that the taillight lenses are secured by nuts. You could have possibly removed the nuts, and pushed out the lenses?

Then if you had the 11mm wrench in your toolkit, attempted to pull off the 6 nuts and remove the rear taillights?

Either way, glad you made it out ok, sounds pretty sketchy!

GAflyer · Post by **GAflyer** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 11:14 pm

The very best aspect of these boards is learning from other's positive outcomes and experiences. A close second is learning from one another's mistakes. Those, of course, take a little humility to share.

As a cocky young Air Force pilot, en route to open my squadron at 4 am, long long ago, I had stopped for a convenience store coffee. My FIAT 124 Spyder's battery was in the boot, (like my M6) and when I tried to restart, and it wouldn't turn over, I unlocked the boot in disgust- threw down my keys in disgust- jiggled the cable, slammed the lid down and went to start it - immediately realizing I had just locked my keys inside the boot, with no other way to open it. After an embarrassing interval a much older sergeant passing by gave me a ride to work, no doubt having a wonderful laugh at my expense.

We've all been there. So glad you are unharmed.

P.S. For you wags who will point out, it being a FIAT, I could have simply pushed my hand through the rusted body and got them, the car was still new and solidly rust-free!

hornhospital · Post by **hornhospital** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 5:42 am

GAflyer wrote: P.S. For you wags who will point out, it being a FIAT, I could have simply pushed my hand through the rusted body and got them, the car was still new and solidly rust-free!

If you had 30 minutes to spare, you could have bought a 2 liter bottle of a carbonated beverage and poured it over the trunk lid. It surely would have rusted through enough to fetch the keys by then........

GAflyer · Post by **GAflyer** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 3:22 pm

Lol...possibly so. But having grown up working on MG's and Jag's, I knew a bit about rust, even at that tender age. Before I drove that FIAT it's first 50 miles, I had drilled every body cavity I could and filled it with enough rust inhibitor to Ziebart a Greyhound bus. When I sold it 25 years later it was still virtually rust free (although it never lived outside).

All good training for the rust woes of our present obsessions, I say.

GAflyer · Post by **GAflyer** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 3:27 pm

By coincidence, I was bodily in my trunk just a couple days ago loosening the shock upper mount nuts.

After reading Orlando's post, I went down last night and laid a thick cloth over the latch area of the trunk opening, something many of us may start doing....

GripGreg · Post by **GripGreg** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 4:23 pm

Good move, Rob! And, I've always liked the Fiat 124, if that's the one that resembles the Series 1 Corvair.

And Orlando, we've ALL done stuff like that, if we worked on our cars at all

My last dumb shit was not putting the overflow cap back on after adding anti- freeze!!
I left the keys in my Porsche & had to travel from Culver City to Altadena & back with the extra set!!!!!
After working 13 hrs, and having to return to work in the morning!!!!
Greg

///Moe · Post by **///Moe** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 8:14 pm

I once managed to lock my keys inside the boot of my MX5, 660km away from home!

The car was open and the roof was down so I had no problem getting inside the car, but the luggage area is separate and impossible to access from the passenger area. The only way to open the trunklid is by using the key, which I naturally put inside the boot while I took some of my luggage out. I then closed the lid, forgetting that my keys were still in there.. DAMN! The only key to the car was in the boot and I had to have a key to open the boot. The extra key was way back home and too far away for me to just go and get, so I figured I had a problem..

My only option at the time was to try and get the keys out somehow. I couldn't just break a window or pick a door since they were in the boot, and the lock was very difficult to pick so I had to do something else. I crawled underneat the rear of the car looking for openings and I saw a glued lid that were just about big enough for me to push my hand through (I have small hands). But the exhaust / rear silencer is directly underneat the floor and there's a heatshield above the silencer, partly underneath the lid that I had found. On the inside there's a floormat, glued to the floor, that had two motorcycle helmet's on top of it (I was at a trackday that weekend), so it wasn't exactly easy getting inside. I wasn't even 100% sure if the keys were in there at all, but I couldn't find them elsewhere so I just had to try. After some wrestling and getting my hands all scraped up from all the sharp edges I finally managed to get a hand inside, remove the floormat, helmets and inner covers just enough so that I could reach the locking mechanism from inside. Then I heard a satisfying little "click" and the lid was open! And guess what I found inside..? The key to the car!

I soon after bought all the wires and buttons needed to open the boot from inside the car (not all these cars had this as standard from the factory), to stop this from happening again. But I have had the parts layin around for maybe two or three years now without fitting them to the car, as usual with things like this.. I have thought about doing it many times but then always said to myself that I'll do it "tomorrow" or "another day" instead, you get the idea.. Anyway, this story just reminded me that I'll have to get it done someday!

slofut · Post by **slofut** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 8:42 pm

Well ok,
I don't tell many people about this, but it was very silly and funny since I didn't get hurt or bend the car.

Built a new motor for my Jag XJC, hot cammed up 350 chevy, had the interior out of the car but got the motor running and really just wanted to ease it around the parking lot. Had a large empty asphalt parking lot beside my building, Police Dept dead across the street. I idled the car into the empty lot ...sitting on a plastic bucket, and it sounded so good and I guess some Turrets kicked in and I just punched it a little. Car bolted forward towards said Police Dept and I found myself instantly in the back of the car tangled up in a bucket where the back seat would be! I managed to get to the front and hit brakes somehow and stopped the car just as it got to the street.
Took me a second to get enough composure to look around for anyone , especially a cop, that might've been watching. If I had not got it stopped it surely would have been in the front lawn of the PD! Got my ass back to the shop pronto and never made that mistake again.