The Military is starting to scare me...

So...I work with and around uniformed military personell and today, our shop lead tells me:

"hey, you know those jumper cables we have? yah we are not allowed to issue those out anymore because aparently someone (military) hooked them up backwards and blew a battery up...so we ordered digital jumper packs that warn you if the polarity is reversed....and also fills your tires with air"

...Now these starter packs sound cool and everything, but, SERIOUSLY? we cant issue jumper cables because people are to stupid to use them? wow...not impressed right now lol.

So to keep this safety related, apparently if you hook up jumper cables backwards, you can blow your battery up and no longer be allowed to use them

It's not the military though. It's stupid people. They're everywhere !

I accidenlty hooked up a set backwards in the middle of the night. Fried the trucks ecm. But never seen a battery blow. It sparked so crazy that it didn't take but 2 seconds to yank them off. I can't see how someone could leave them hooked up long enough to explode a battery.

I thought that's why military vehicles have the slave ports and slave cables.....pretty much protects the stupid people from themselves.

When I got my last M915 the wires on the starter and the alternator were fried.

I actually spoke to the mechanic at the unit it came from in south Alabama and he told be that while the unit was deployed they had replacement mechanics to come in and maintain the vehicles.

One of the temps had hooked up the batteries wrong and fried the above mentioned parts. It's not always dumb operators........there is plenty of stupid to go around.

I'll dig up the pics of a forklift that wouldn't start. After a bottle or two of ether, they remembered it had glow plugs. The operator was medically discharged and several people on the flight deck were hurt. It happened about three years before I got to my first ship, but they still have 8 x 10s of the scene in the safety office.

My brother [who can be stupid] was jumping a van and the battery blew up in his face and burned him pretty bad. He worked on cars a ~lot, and I believe him when he says he hooked it up correctly.

Sometimes stuff just blows up. BOOM!

Beerslayer said:

My brother [who can be stupid] was jumping a van and the battery blew up in his face and burned him pretty bad. He worked on cars a ~lot, and I believe him when he says he hooked it up correctly.

Sometimes stuff just blows up. BOOM!

Click to expand...

This can happen when a battery is frozen, ie drained of power and really cold. That is why you jump start by connecting to the running vehicles battery and then the power lead to the battery of the vehicle being jumped and then the ground to a bracket on the engine away from the battery. This bypasses the battery. Then just start the vehicle.

Beerslayer said:

My brother [who can be stupid] was jumping a van and the battery blew up in his face and burned him pretty bad. He worked on cars a ~lot, and I believe him when he says he hooked it up correctly.

Sometimes stuff just blows up. BOOM!

Click to expand...

Heck I had a battery on a lawn tractor that blew up when all I did was turn the key to start it. No Joke!

SMOKEWAGON66 said:

...Now these starter packs sound cool and everything, but, SERIOUSLY? we cant issue jumper cables because people are to stupid to use them? wow...not impressed right now lol.

Click to expand...

The movie "Idiocracy" is supposed to be a comedy, but I consider it to be more of a horror movie, for I fear that that is the EXACT direction that society is headed in!

As silly as it sounds I almost died from such an event. In OIF 1 I was with the Aco 508th INF 173rd ABN. Anyway I happened to be at the right place and not doing anything so 1SG asked me to go get slave cables from maintenance to jump the Commander's HMMWV. All fine so far right? anyway I got the slave cables from maintenance and pulled up a running HMMWV next to the CDR's vehicle, plugged the one side into the good vehicle and went to plug in the other end to the veh that needed the jump. As soon as I did so there was a flash and arch. I knocked the connection loose and the there was some fire (small amount) and the connection was partially melted. Where is the almost died part you ask? Well I opened the battery compartment and there was still a bit a flame on the inside and guess what? Seemed the Commander liked to store his extra frag grenades in that empty space beside the connector!

Yeah I asked the mechanics about it and they said they had repaired that set and must of connected it wrong.

-Dale

We aren't allowed to jump a truck in the USAF, that's MP's job. Unfortunatly I agree, I've worked with people who didn't see a wrench till they arived at tech school. The world is full of stupid, and ignorant.

Most USAF vehicles are common commercial trucks with no slave set-up. In fact my slave set was donated by MP cause they didn't need it any longer.

I had a body shop get the jumper wires crossed on my '03 Ram. Fried the ECM. They then had the marbles to deny any wrong doing! There was fresh damage on the battery cables with metal shavings still laying on top of the battery from the jumper wires clamps digging in. After a ton of heated phone calls I was in the clear, but so was the body shop. Surprisingly, Dodge replaced the module under warranty. Untrained morons are everywhere.

It's the bullsh!t coddling way of the world right now. How much do you think the signs across the highway cost to tell you the road may be wet, or snow covered, etc? It's everywhere...dumbing down common sense- IT'S RIDICULOUS!!!

I work hard every day to make things idiot proof. Leaving out valves on lines that would be useful because some idiot would close it and shut down the system.

The plant manager made a joke he said "you'll never make it idiot proof because they always make a better idiot"

I have had battreys blow up 3 times in my face and never had them hooked up backwards. 1 was frozen on a scraper trying to start in -30 weather. One I was jumping a truck and it was not making contact so I wiggled the cable and it blew the top off one out of four. Last one I had one one a charger putting 80 amps in it and it lost contact so like a fool I wiggled the cable and it blew the top off in my face with pieces going up through my hat. Until you see this happen you can not imagine what it is like and how much of A bang there is unless you see it happen. The last time was about 15 years ago so I think that I have outgrown the dumb--- stage.

Jumper cables are cheap... and they last almost forever.
How much money will be made with the new expensive jump packs that last about a year?

Seriously... follow the money.

OK, fantastic stories of stupid. The grenade one had me filling my shorts...not just stupid maintenace but was things so bad as to need to put live hand grenades next to the only (known) part of a driving maching that can self detonate?!?!

Gotta throw in my stupid story. Helicopter rotor heads are held on by compression of pieces of metal called split cones. These items can only be installed one way, period. Noway, no how can you put them in upside down AND install the rotor head correctly. Wrong. On the Huey, the split cones are hard to see once installed. If installed correctly all flight control adjustments are correct, nothing normally has to be done. to anything. Subject idiot (read I D ten T) installed split cones upside down. Checked rotor head adjustments with appropriate measuring devices and found them all wrong. Light bulb was burnt out, no idea something was wrong. Made all adjustments to make rotor controls fit correctly. Took almost an entire 8 hour shift screwing up this helicopter. Next shift comes on, is told everything is set, all red X's have been signed off and is ready for test flight (FCF to you rotor heads). Crew walks out to aircraft, does a quicky preflight and jumps in the seat. Night shift Crew Chief hooks up power, engines start and rotor begins spinning. Already feels "funny" but it's a test flight so "funny" things can happen. Got the bird to 100% and brought it into a hover (ten foot IGE). Bird was shaking so hard the windshield center post was flexing. Crew imediately landed and shut down in record time. Got out and watched Crew Chief climb up top and see if he could determine what went wrong. Crew Chief turned absolutely white with eyes as big as saucers . "Split cones are upside down Sir", says the Crew Chief to the Pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer. Many filled flight suits. Flight Safety gets called, Ground Safety gets called and Commender gets called. All want to see the upside down split cones...many filled flight suits later, Crew Chief gets decertified on rotor installation, retrained and back flying the next day (he was best buds with the maintenance chief). Strangly enough, no one ever was available to fly test flights (FCFs) on any bird he worked on for the rest of my time in the quadron, which was about 2+ years.

If the book says it can't be done, it can be done by a sufficiently stupid person. Not just any stupid person can manage idiotic acts of this magnatude, it takes a real moron to mess this kind of thing up.

Someday I'll tell the one about the engine rigging gone bad but that's it for today. Oh and I've never seen a battery blow up except when I threw a D cell in a bonfire. there's a reson for the warning but it sure was fun

I had a vr go bad while I was working under the hood of my plow truck with the engine running , luckly I was on the other side when the battery blew its top. Had to go clean my shorts.