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Motorcycles, tools, and garages! A little bit of everything mechanical and technical.

Friday, February 17, 2006

Licking 9 volt batterries!

No, I've never done it. But in preperation for the wiring Dad and I are going to be doing to my house this week, I remembered a great experience I had with 120 volts and substantially more current. Or rather, an experience my friend Clinton had. It even happened in a garage! (just not dorkpunch garage).

Late one evening, much to Clints neighbours disdain, we were working on one of his killer snowmobiles, a John Deere 340 Liquifire. Incedentally, this is the same sled i jumped the Ridge Park Highway on, but thats a different story.

The sled was having carb troubles at the time and we had been trying to sync them out in the alley. It got dark and we gave up and pulled the sled into the garage. Clints shop was a pretty nice setup, although it was seriously lacking in electrical outlets and lighting at the time. To this end, we had set up a set of those fancy floodlights-on-a-stand setups to illuminate our hardships. The extension cord ran from the outlet on the wall across the bay to the light stand. When we pulled the sled inside, we drove it right in to this fancy bay and popped the hood.

Now, for those of you who arent to familiar with snowmobiles, on the bottom of the ski are wearbars. They keep the ski from wearing holes through them. In these wearbars are sharp little peices of metal called skags. Remeber how we had the shop set up? With the extension cord on the floor? Well, we drove the sled right across it. Actually, we parked it with the skis resting on top of the cord, which at this point had two nice cuts in it from the skis.

Good thing it wasnt plugged in! We commenced working.

It quickly became evident that we were in need of further illumination. I was convienently close to the outlet, so i reached over and plugged it in.

Several things happened in short order. We'll just skip the part about the electricity joltling through the skis, arcing across the tie rods, and seeking out a ground. It was pretty cool to see three guys LEAP away from the sled. It took me a little longer to figure out what the deal was and why there were 3 guys just itching to plug me in...




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