Bloody knew it when I started work on this job.

Jun 29, 2019 Last reply: 7 years ago 51 Replies

Both of which happened to my Dad and Uncle when they worked in our garage with a pit (they dug).

dad parked a car one night, couldn't be arsed to turn the light on and managed to step on a board such that it moved and he fell.

Uncle was running a car and went into the pit to look for a leak. Luckily my Mum got us to call him in for dinner and we found him ....

Housing officer? I presume the property is rented or leased?

How often are those fines imposed? Are they allowed to fine? Is this really a government department?

Ironically, for small premises they are typically exempt from business rates. It may be cheaper to make the building a business and reduce his rates accordingly.

Ouch.

F*ck. :-(

OOI, did either re-assess their use of the pit?

Cheers, T i m

You can also use it to keep a spare girl, like Natascha Kampusch in Austria a few years ago.

A lift that can raise the car via the body leaving the wheels hanging free is rather more useful, though. A pal has a free standing one.

Somewhere to store wet concrete?

<snip>

Actually, my mate still has a bit and does use it to (just) store stuff, albeit not wet concrete. ;-)

But he also has both 4 and 2 poster lifts so can afford to.

Cheers, T i m

The local MOT station still uses a pit, so I presume either reality has been accepted or it is something that no-one has cottoned onto yet.

SteveW

It's now got hundreds of bottles of wine in it - sort of poor mans wine cellar.

When my dad bought his proper workshop, first fitting was a 4-poster lift.

Well, yes. The chap that serviced our Tecalamit (sp) compressor told us of a friend of his who was killed when he went to check a sump plug and pulled a car on top of himself.

My dad hated them too.

They made doing clutches and gearboxes a real PITA (brakes were great though).

Those two-post ones can become lethal over time, even if correctly installed.

My Dads gripe was that they had to be placed *exactly* or you would be in big trouble.

They also required that the sills and reinforced parts of the chassis were actually strong enough to bear the weight. Otherwise they'd punch a hole in the car and you'd find the customer demanding payment.

half-height ones (only for doing brakes) weren't too bad ...

After a few years we bought another 4-poster lift which had removable ramps, so the car could freewheel on the 2 front-rear struts. Much safer. But still a PITA for clutches. ....

Tecalamit. Bought in a fire-sale :)

I wired up the 3-phase aged 12 :) :)

<snip>

Go on, rub it in. ;-)

I was doing similar (as a holiday job) but nearer aged 15.

One of the main compressors (aerating concrete) had blown up after trying to pump it's own crankcase oil. ;-(

They sent me up a ladder with the end of some cable to a junction box to wire in a temporary compressor. Before I went in I just confirmed that it was indeed isolated and they shouted back up: 'No, be careful' ... <gulp> ;-(

They did similar with me and a French tower crane they had bought, re-assembled on site and needed wiring up again. I had taken French at school so they thought I'd be the most suitable person for reading the diagrams? ;-(

Whilst (again) it felt like pretty dangerous work (to me anyway), hanging inside the top of a crane with little in the way of training or safety equipment and bouncing a 1 tonne load on the jib to set the overload cutout / horn ... but I did and it worked. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

<snip>

My mate had to have his modified so that once the arms we set in position, they couldn't be moved, as apparently people had cause cars to fall of by swinging on stuff trying to get it out.

Being a 'one man band', at least it would typically only be him at risk (and was for the previous 30 odd years) <shrug>

Cheers, T i m

Or one is outsourced and the other isn't.

cover pit with boards. Drive reliant robin on, remove unused boards. Have meltdown when you realise driving a robin is not very sane.

NT

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