almost soiled my pants! I had the car running and had an extension on my ratchet tightening the float bowl bolts and the extension was touching the spark plug wires close to the cap and I got buzzed! its worse than getting zapped by an outlet. my forearm still tingling. is that normal?
If you have any health conditions, should get checked. Me,,, on slow days I like to put #7 on inner elbow at 3 grand an watch arm flutter,,,
Actually quite normal! you can check your plug gaps and wires,but even good wires will induce current into a metal object. The wider the plug gaps the more voltage it takes to arc across the gap,so make sure they're set properly. MSD is HOT! Be careful working around your high voltage wiring and cap. I mashed my head on the hood once doing the same thing! Luckily I didn't damage my hood
That is a lesson most of us learn if we play around w/ cars long enough. I learned long B4 the emergence of HEI ignitions to respect dist. cap and ign wires when engine is running. I got a hell of a jolt from regular pre-HEI ign. I don't want to imagine one frm one of the modern units. I don't do anything on an engine w/ it running except what I can only do w/ it running. That is one of the reason I went to elec fan setup - engine driven fan very dangerous - esp w/o shroud. Not being funny -- The zapping is what I called a "Well paid for lesson".
HAHA, dang you must get bored or have a slow heart. lol Worst bite i have gotten was when I had a full MSD set up on my 712 F100 when it was still a 351W set up. Knocked me off the truck and against a wall and I had a foul taste in my mouth the whole next day. Yeah, it hurt. I have been hit with test voltages of 180kilovolts and I don't think it hurt as bad as that danged MSG set up did. It is normal if you get too close to something running high voltage. It is mostly voltage with little amperes so it is not really dangerous unless you hit yourself in the head when doing the dance. Clint
Cant even count how many times I've been zapped in this trade. You try to be careful but sooner or later..WHACK. Best one was a teenager moving the dist. on my buddies 65 Comet 289. Had the big yellow super coil. We were use to little factory oil filled coils back then. Heres how it went. Hood open, right hand on dist., left hand on front edge of opened hood. Spark went through my body and jumped from my forehead to my left hand on the hood. My buddy damn near wet himself since it was dark out and the spark from my head to hand lit up like lightening. Felt like someone stuck a poker in my forehead. Lesson learned on high energy coils. Man did that hurt. USed to have fun with the spark plug cleaner at high school. You old guys will remember those machines. Think it was a Champion model. USe to sandblast the plug and test fire it. We would hook the ground prong of an extension cord to the spark test wire on the cleaner then sneak up on someone with the other end while buddy pushed the button. MAn would it give you a jolt. Teacher stopped us after we rendered a student unconcious. He was bent over the engine with his bare lower back showing. We zapped him and he jumped up so hard he knocked himself out cold on the hood. OOPS. They got rid of the machine after that one. His parents were pretty mad. Good clean fun as far as a bunch of wanna be techs go.
I am right there with ya. The worst one I did was I had a full Mallory system on my car and was working on the carb. I had already set the timing but had not locked the dizzy down. I had the ignition on so the fuel pump was running to set the float level. My coil was mounted on the passenger side shock tower. I reached over to make sure the fuel line was not kinked and hit the dizzy. The spark caught me right in the belly button. Knocked me off the car ( lucky I had the hood off) I hit the wall and kinda slid down it. After I got my breath back I enjoyed a good laugh with my "BUDDIES" that almost pizzed themselves. Took about 6 hours for the tingling sensation subsided. So as you can see, all of us have been there and done that. WELCOME TO THE CLUB!!!!!!! I did have a buddy in KY that was hit by lightning when he was about 15. He could take a plug wire off a running engine, stick his thumb in the boot, lean over and stick his tongue out and let the spark jump to the body of the car. That was kinda weird!!!!!!!!
Got zapped today by an scion xb another tech was testing compression on it since it was hydrolocked, and he had the coil packs out while I had my hand leaning over the radiator support. Was telling him the pressures and zap.
