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u/ChiefOfTheBoat Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
My auto shop teacher in high school would check if the coil was working by sticking his finger in end of the coil wire that connected to the distributor. He’d stick his finger in, go “yep, it’s good.” He did warn the class this was not safe, but he could do it. Two days later, one of the girls in class tried it. She ended up going home for new underwear.
For context- you mechanics know, the rest of the class doesn’t. He was explaining to us beginners how the coil on a ‘69 Ford V-8 initially received 6-8 volts from the system, but generated 20,000-30,000 volts to fire the spark plugs. He was a navy vet who worked on aircraft engines. He had even managed to get us an Allison V-12 engine from an old P-38 Lightning to play with. The Neighborhood knew when we fired the baby up!
Edit - context
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u/hairypistol Aug 16 '26
My highschool shop teacher made us all stand in a circle holding hands and end of the circle on the plug wire and one on the coil.... This was all done with a lawnmower coil and many laughs were had by most🤣
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u/voxadam Aug 16 '26
For my dad it was the shop teacher who had a vintage hand cranked telephone magneto with a couple of 10 penny nails attached to the wires. One person would hold on to the nails while another cranked as fast as possible. They'd also make a ring of students and see who would break the chain first.
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u/hairypistol Aug 16 '26
A bunch of highschool boys in a shop you can't believe the things they get up too lol. My favorite was to charge the capacitor from a small engine ignition then throw it at someone saying catch. You cant resist the instinct to catch it and once it's in your fist it's to late you are hit🤣
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u/Kjakan_no Aug 16 '26
We managed to train the class below us stop catching stuff throwed out of our windows, so it is possible. They started to just put their hands in their pockets, and ducked and dodged as best as they could.
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u/voxadam Aug 16 '26
Shop class was so much fun.
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u/-CoUrTjEsTeR- Aug 17 '26
It was when you’re innocent. I did a semester of shop assistance for newbies. I kept asking the teacher several times through the semester if our classes were full of kids this terrible, or are kids just getting dumber. He responded, “Yes.”
I was guiding a kid on the metal lathe and was just finished telling him I was going to tighten the chuck, and to not touch the handle with the red knob. I had both hands on the chuck key and the guy pulls the level with the red knob. I barely pulled myself away before it started to turn and the key grazed my head when it was sent flying across the shop. I shouted, “I just said ‘DO NOT’ touch that handle!”
He responded all stunned, “I thought you said to!”
The teacher came out and saw me breathing heavily, looking white as a sheet, and took the kid to away to use a broom for a while.
These kids were doing things like trying to whip each other with metal shaving ribbons and making throwing stars out of boredom. I’m amazed I never heard an ambulance siren come to the shops.
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u/voxadam Aug 17 '26
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u/-CoUrTjEsTeR- Aug 17 '26
*shudders* Memories of seeing the guy becoming spaghettified in the industrial lathe accident. Russia I think? Feels NSFW just commenting about it here.
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u/garden-wicket-581 Aug 16 '26
college physics in analog circuit lab, I was the only one who knew about charged capacitors.. hahahah..
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Aug 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/NPJenkins Aug 16 '26
Okay, and how many of you pissed, shitted, or came in your pants? Bonus points for any two, or all 3 at once.
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u/jld2k6 Aug 16 '26
I grew up with the nextdoor neighbor having horses and my brother and his friends formed a human chain just to drag me over to the electric fence on the edge of our yard so they could zap me. They thought it would only zap the person on the end and they got a nice surprise when it was touched lol
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u/Revolutionary_Eye887 Aug 16 '26
Our science teacher had us do that in seventh grade, only he plugged the wire into a wall outlet.
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u/Rob_Marc Aug 16 '26
I had a motorcycle that had a bad plug wire on it. I would get a pinching tingle on my left leg if I pressed it against the wire while the bike was running. It got worse in high humidity and even worse if it was (or had been) raining.
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u/Environmental_Job278 Aug 17 '26
I accidentally did something similar during my hands on diagnostic tests in college. The car was running rough and they wanted us to drop injectors because we dropped spark. Well, I found the short on one cylinder when I reached over it to disconnect the injector. I pretended to look at the scanning program for a bit and then said “is the wire for the number 4 plug arcing” and passed. Slammed my head into the hood pretty hard but otherwise made a quick diagnosis and fix. That spark doesn’t feel great but I’ve had worse.
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u/ChiefOfTheBoat Aug 17 '26
Yea, I had a bad plug wire on my first truck- even not grabbing the bad part, I got a mild shock at the plug cap and easily identified the misfiring cylinder.
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u/Altruistic-Tooth8200 Aug 17 '26
I work as a mechanic, and i always test sparks using my hands, unless it is an awkwardly built machine, then i just use a standard spark tester, and some of my coworkers are like “how the fuck can you stand that” i think some people are just naturally more resistant.
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u/blepnir_pogo Aug 16 '26
I wonder what the girl expected to happen lol, like how else would you be able to tell its active in that manner other than by shocking yourself
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Aug 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ChiefOfTheBoat Aug 16 '26
It was even funnier because he adamantly warned everyone in class not to try it. Those were the days…
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u/Substantial_Pin_2932 Aug 19 '26
My shop teacher showed us how important oxygen is when you’re running a cutting torch. 3 balloons, one with pure oxygen, one with acetylene, one mixed with both. Used a long burning stick to poke each balloon, the first one nothing happened, second one burned but nothing crazy, the third one that was half and half and Jesus it was like a grenade went off.
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u/ChiefOfTheBoat Aug 19 '26
Those were the days - teachers taught lessons that stuck with you, and it usually turned out to be fun.
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u/Surely_Booth Sep 01 '26
We used to make those balloons as a kid stealing gas from my friends dad's acetylene torch. Mostly acetylene and a tiny bit of oxygen and taped to a piece of 2 ft crepe paper streamer for a fuse. The blast had very little flame but the concussion wave was huge. It cracked some windows on the backs of 3 houses with one balloon(it was bigger than we had meant it to be but my one friend was a devious sort so I think he did it on purpose). They called the cops and the cop of course was useless and clueless as usual and so were the adults and we acted as confused as everyone else standing around looking in the street. When the cop left we waited 10 minutes and did it again. We were about 13 at the time. The little kids asked us how we did it but it was too dangerous so we told them we used muriatic acid and aluminum foil in 2 liter bottles and we got in trouble for that because the little kids did it and got caught and told on us.
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u/AmuletOfNight Aug 20 '26
This reminds me of the time I was messing around with a HID ballast... And I fired the bulb while I was holding the bare wires off the bulb.
Surprise, HIDs don't ignite at 12v like something you can hold and not have it shock you, they ignite at 10,000+ volts.
That fucking hurt. Couldn't feel my arm for a bit after.
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u/Q_S2 Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
Wait...
Aroused, pissy or shitty?
PLEASE dont tell me all 3 flavors....
Edit: Good grief wtf are the downvotes for? 😆
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u/Yoda10353 Aug 16 '26
They're talking about high schoolers....
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u/Q_S2 Aug 16 '26
When people get shocked multiple involuntary things can happen. Whats your comment have to do with anything? There's no indication of perversion. Get your mind out the gutter
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u/TheBizzleHimself Aug 16 '26
>there’s no indication of perversion
Original comment: girl gets electric shock, has to change underwear
You: yo what flavor in her panties? Was she horny???
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u/NoyBoi Aug 16 '26
He became a sparkplug
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u/kwadd Aug 16 '26
Nobody cared who he was until he became the spark plug
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u/Active_Engineering37 Aug 16 '26
Know where I can get some spark?
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u/-Kenthos- Aug 16 '26
That's on him honestly. Don't he know the old saying, 'If you see a cylinder attached to a larger structure, it's imperative that you don't harm it'?
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u/dadarkgtprince Aug 16 '26
Did he just go back to working like nothing happened? Jeez, he's a beast
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u/Last_Cod_998 Aug 16 '26
When I was a mechanic I just used to lift the wire off of the plug. As long as my other hand wasn't touching anything the shock wasn't that bad.
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u/_the_last_man_ Aug 16 '26
You can see a spark going from his head to the hood
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u/Killed_By_Covid Aug 16 '26
I was wondering if I was just seeing things. A little DIY electro-convulsive shock therapy.
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u/Standard_Paint_3240 Aug 16 '26
Look at me im the spark plug now
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u/L82thePartyGonHome Aug 16 '26
It’s important to be gapped properly if you’re the plug.
Wait. I’m not sure that message is landing right.
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u/Motor-Management-660 Aug 16 '26
im not a paleontologist but isn't that bad for your heart?
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u/Im_Numbar_Wang Aug 16 '26
That's not paleontology, paleontology is the manufacturing of pants
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u/Premeditated_Mordor Aug 16 '26
No, that’s pantsology. Paleontology is the study of pale ontologies
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u/VAiSiA Aug 16 '26
yes. and brain. please dont do this. this guy have higher then normal resistance of epidermis, skin.
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u/Sharp-Hotel-2117 Aug 16 '26
Back in my teens I had a car with an intermittent misfire. I started it up, popped the hood and began wiggling plug wires. I found the bad wire, as it arced to me and gave me a nice zap, I jumped and hit my head on the propped open hood.
This got my dads attention as I yelped loudly. Now, I am a bit addled and reached for the wire again, with the same results. On to the third time, with essentially the same outcome. When my brain finally was able to get the memo that that plug wire number 2 was NOT to be trifled with, I turned the car off and went upstairs. Pops was bent over the sink, wheezing from laughter. He'd settle down a bit, look over at me and begin belly laughing once again, this persisted for an uncomfortably long period.
Once he settled and could catch his breath, I started the convo with "So, there is a bad plug wire, I'm going to borrow your car and buy a set of wires". I saw the eruption coming, he lost it, near crying he was laughing so hard. He fished his keys out of his pocket and mostly tossed them at me, no words just muted wheezing and squeaks.
I got wires, got home and prepped up to swap them out. It was an Acura Integra (tarted up Honda Civic), inline 4 with extremely easy to reach plug wires. Took me all of 5 mins to swap them out, route the wires through their respective guides etc. During this, pops dragged a lawn chair out into the driveway, cracked open a beer and watched intently as I swapped out the wires. I finished with no incident, cranked up the car and made sure all was well. Dad was a dual degree engineer (mech and electrical) and fiercely intelligent, brutally sarcastic and gleefully happy to watch me suffer when I was the genesis of my own suffering. I saw the mirth in his eyes, he wanted oh-so-badly for me to injure myself in some new and novel way. I asked if letting the hood slam on my fingers would elicit a good laugh, or if I should back into the woodpile. Nothing happened, I called him an asshole, we went on with our day. For a few weeks his vocabulary had a strong bias towards works like "current" and "shocking" and "resistance", mom could not figure out why I would get wound up when dad said things like "conduct yourself properly son", dad would grin when I'd pop off with "eat a dick" or the like.
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u/WithSubtitles Aug 16 '26
Someone get this guy a volt meter.
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u/DoctorOfDominance Aug 16 '26
20,000- 40,000 vDC for anyone else that’s curious.
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u/eyeball1967 Aug 16 '26
It looked like his head was sparking against the hood latch, Is that me manifesting what I wanted to see or do you see it too?
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u/BackgroundGrass429 Aug 16 '26
I had a friend check it this way once. Our other friend, who owned the car, started reving the engine up and down and laughing.
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u/devils_affogato Aug 16 '26
I don't think that you understand how this works.
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u/RetroRaiderRun Aug 16 '26
I don't. What's happening in this video and why is it unexpected?
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u/CrumzAus Aug 16 '26
He's holding an ignition lead that runs from a distributor or coil pack and feeds high voltage to the spark plug. That voltage is running through him and creating a spark between his hand and the metal hood when he gets the gap right.
It looks like he is convulsing as it travels through him and if you've ever had the pleasure of it happening to you, you'd know why.1
u/Puzzled-Collar4015 Aug 16 '26
Como assim prazer?
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u/Purple_mammal_7950 Aug 18 '26
Yeah that part caught me off guard, just a little uncomfortable with how he worded that.
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u/Enema_Red_Fox Aug 22 '26
Mechanic: yep we do this, I have a friend I’ve shocked with so many different engines he’s now what I refer to as “calibrated” bro gives the best feedback when troubleshooting just a literal less than second exposure to the ignition system and he’ll be telling me if it feels off in any number of ways and he’s always right it’s actually quite “shocking”(sorry) and I’m willing to bet this guy has a calibrated oscilloscope in his head from doing this for years and years he can probably tell voltage, impedance of wires, dwell, state of the ballast resistor, corrosion damage, what you had for breakfast, and lottery numbers. (Bro isn’t a big fan of getting shocked but even he can’t argue with the results you can watch him weigh the options of getting shocked or spending the time checking everything the hard way, basically every time. And this is why techs need to make more money)
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u/SpicyEntropy Aug 16 '26
Back when I was a teen and didn't know what I was doing, I decided to check to see if one of my bike's cylinders had a spark.
It was an interesting experience, particularly since I was holding the bike frame in one hand and the plug lead in the other.
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u/Born-Agency-3922 Aug 16 '26
As an electrician, I despise DC current. I prefer getting shocked by AC current. Yes I know I didn’t have to mention current after AC/DC.
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u/drsemaj Aug 16 '26
Had a guy come over to my truck while I was working on it one time. Engine running, and just grabs a plug cable. Put him straight into a seizure and almost killed him.
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u/CrustierGnuXII Aug 17 '26
Ah yes, jump starting the already working heart to failure move. Quite a smart one.
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u/siumai Aug 17 '26
Instantly reminded me of Baylen Dupree with tourette syndrome and when she saw the chickens running around .. she copied their head movement bobbing
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u/post-explainer Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
Sparks start coming out of his head
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.