Porting your wastegate? Wear your saftey glasses!

[turbojimmy]

I'm typing this up for my brother (darkred87T) because he still can't see too well.....I'm sure we'll look back and laugh but this has been an unpleasant experience for Mike.

Saturday morning Mike dropped by to borrow my Dremel so he can port the wastegate on his turbo. Saturday afternoon we had a wedding to go to and he was to meet me at my house and we would travel together to the church. When he gets to my house he takes off his shades and his eyes were the most bloodshot I had ever seen and the right one was swollen half-shut.

We figured he must've gotten something in there and it would work itself out. He couldn't drive because the sun literally blinded him.

He called Sunday morning and said it was a little better but it was still very irritated and he could see something 'in' his eye. He came over to my place and my wife and I looked at it. He had a piece of cast iron stuck almost dead center on the lens of his right eye!

We drove over to the ER (by the way, the best time to go to the ER is apparently early Sunday morning - no one's there). The ER doctor picked the cast iron out of his eye with a needle (makes me think of that rhyme: cross my heart, hope to die, stick a.....). She left some rust and a burr behind so Mike had to go to an ophthalmologist on Monday. The ophthalmologist picked more crap out of his eye with another needle and filed down the burr on the lens. The irritation is gone but now Mike doesn't think he can see very well out of that eye. The ophthalmologist says it will be fine.

Mike is in training to pilot train locomotives. I'm pretty sure you need both eyes for that. Actually you need both eyes for lots of things.

I'm not even sure I own a pair of safety glasses, but I do have lots of scary spinning, whirring and cutting type tools. Before I turn the next one on I'm going to get myself a pair.

Jim

 

[Grumpy]

been there an done it .. not a fun time

 

[87geeinn]

Just bought a Dremel to file down my transmission shifter cable bracket to fit my new deep pan and spent about 30 minutes CLOSE to the action and never thought twice about it. Thanks for the heads up. <--Maybe I should look like that little smiley instead of this one next time I whoop out the Dremel

 

[gergwheel]

i know exactly what he is going through. I had a piece of metal get stuck in my eye too, problem was i left it in there for 4-5 days, and by then it had rusted and all that fun stuff. so i go to the ER and they remove it with a needle and then have to remove the burr. i couldn't see right for about 3 days, then it slowly got better. tell him not to worry, he will be able to see 99% out of that eye again.

 

[Pronto]

I work with an electric handpiece all day. Carbide burs can leave some nasty splinters of metal that can get everywhere, even with using the vacuum. I look through a microscope so my eyes are protected but the splinters in the fingers drive ya nuts. Definately use some protective gogles with grinding metals, your eyes will thank you for it.

 

[wagon]

I have two pairs of safety glasses in the overhead in my truck. I have two or three pairs in my tool box just feet from my grinder, work bench and air compressor. I have a set of goggles in the box with my chainsaw, and if I can't find any of those, I have another pair or two in the basement, and if I can't find any of those, then I must already be blind. I have excellent eyesight, I can't even imagine having poor or marginal eyesight, and I sure don't want to find out what it is like to have no eyesight! Good vision is very important to me, yet I still find myself doing things without safety glasses when I need them. Then I usually scold myself and find a pair. Sometimes just using safety glasses isn't enough especially if you are grinding, or sand blasting. Everyone who works with toos should have goggles available too.

 

[Intimidator]

Safety glasses or goggles that fit over your regular glasses is a smart idea.

Don't forget the ear plugs or ear muffs air tools and many spinning electric tools are murder on your ear drums, don't ask how I know.

I wear ear pulgs to mow the lawn and at the dragstrip the hole time I am there.

 

[Quick6'n'-K.C.]

That sucks man, i hope Mikes eye/eyes heal up back to normal....

I work on heavy equipment all day long, a few years ago i stopped by the john deere store to pick up some new bucket teeth.
Well, apparently it was the wrong tooth to fit the bucket, i smacked the tooth with a sledge hammer ONCE and a 1/4 inch piece busted off and flew right toward my right eye(no safety glasses)...

It cleared my eye by 1/2 inch and scalped my hair off all the way to my ear about 2 inches.... I was bleeding and it happened sooo fast it scared the pee out of me.
I would have been blinded in that eye for sure.

Ever since then, i wear my safety glasses when i bust out the hammer or cutoff wheels at home and at work.

BW

 

[Phatman]

The bad thing about metal is it starts to rust quickly, I've been lucky enough to go through it a few times. I always try a magnet right away, don't rub it, find a cream to put on it overnight if necessary to keep the lid from rubbing it or you'll play hell sleeping. Go to a doctor as soon as possible, construction work is hot and safety glasses are a pain.....

 

[darkred87T]

The last couple of days has been no fun with the bad eye. The good news is, it feels 100% better and it's not red anymore. My vision is still a little blurred but I'm hoping that clears up over the next couple of days. I hope others can learn from my little incident. Fortunately for me it could have been alot worse. Thanks for posting Jim.

 

[Race Jace]

man that sucks. best of luck on a quick recovery.

 

[DCVING 6]

If I go near the underside of any car, using bench grinder, even buffing a car, I ALWAYS wear safety glasses. Having less than perfect vision already makes me very concerned about keeping what vision I have left.

 

[Pablo]

The same thing happened to me recently

I was grinding a part while doing my exhaust, looking up at the underside of the car while it was on a lift. I was wearing goggles but there was a small gap between the goggles and the face by the nose and looking up, debris fell on my face and went up the gap into my eye. At first it just fell like dust and i didnt pay much attention to it. About 2 hours later it felt like someone was jabbing a hot dagger into my eyeball.

I went through the same process where they dislodged the metal with a needle like object and then I went back to have the rust removed, the idiots said it would be fine because it had allready healed over the rust. About two months later, my eye just out of the blue started hurting. It got very bad so i went back. Turns out the rust that was healed over was now being rejected by my body and being pushed out onto the surface of my eye so they ended up having to take that dremel like tool to grind it off my eyeball. I went through the same pain after that as the initial injury.

Moral of the story, get the rust ring removed no matter what.

 

[darkred87T]

I got the rust ring removed too by that god aweful spinny needle tool that they stuck in my eye. They call it "burring".