Luck Be A Lady…

mikeracca

mikeracca

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Feb 18, 2022
440
Catalina 36 Port Orchard
…For one of my boats previous owners. I was warned that the factory battery charger was a fire hazard. Well, the truth is well earned as my charger has actually caught on fire. There was no sign of a fire extinguisher being used so the fire burned itself out before it spread further. Lucky!

So who else out there has had any close calls? This could be used to teach others the lessons we learned, or even for a few laughs.

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jviss

jviss

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Feb 5, 2004
7,089
Tartan 3800 20 Westport, MA
I'm not clear on the timing of this. Did this fire occur before you bought the boat, and just no one noticed?
 
Timm R Oday25

Timm R Oday25

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Mar 2, 2019
609
Oday 25 Milwaukee
Lucky indeed . I was cleaning out our barn over the weekend . I had to remove a wall plate to move a cabinet. The wiring going into the outlet had been chewed through to bare copper . All three wires were within a fraction of an inch of each other . there was perhaps 100 years of mouse bedding on top . it wouldn't have taken much to arch out the wires....
 
rgranger

rgranger

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Jan 19, 2010
12,617
Hobie 16 & Rhodes 22 Skeeter Charleston
mikeracca said:
So who else out there has had any close calls?
Click to expand
Back in graduate school I was replacing the flash lamps on a laser in the lab. I had unplugged it (to be safe) but forgot to discharge the capacitors before I stuck my hands in the box. I came-to to the sound of my heart starting and the stink of burnt flesh in the air. The tip of my index finger (the one that was NOT in the box) had a cone shaped scorch mark indentation. The discharge went through my right arm, across my chest and out my left hand....:facepalm::yikes:

Hmmm ... 'splains a lot:biggrin:

Now, anytime I am working with something electric, I look for capacitors AND I keep my left hand in my pocket as much as I can. An accidental discharge will have to go out my feet (rubber shoes) and should skip passing through my heart.
 
mikeracca

mikeracca

.
Feb 18, 2022
440
Catalina 36 Port Orchard
jviss said:
I'm not clear on the timing of this. Did this fire occur before you bought the boat, and just no one noticed?
Click to expand
I’m not clear on the timing either, I just know it was a previous owner, not me. When I found the unit I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, so I posted a pic here saying what I found, then I went to research it a little. Before you guys warned me it was a fire hazard I had already found many other accounts about this, and many many pics of very badly damaged boats. I made the decision then to replace the unit and get this one out even if it was still good. I don’t know if there is enough left of it to do anything even if it was powered up, I didn’t want to see.
 
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mikeracca

mikeracca

.
Feb 18, 2022
440
Catalina 36 Port Orchard
Another “shocking” story…

I had an uncle that owned a skating rink, and he gave me an arcade game that didn’t work for my birthday one year. Great gift right? Well part of the gift was he would pay for the local college to repair it as well! Yay! It got repaired and for a few years I played the hell out of “Tempest”. It was a fun game, and challenging too. We moved about an hour away and when the game came home my dad didn’t tie It down in his truck. He figured it was heavy enough and it wouldn’t move. Well on the freeway a gust of wind caught it and threw it out of the truck… and now I have a broken arcade game again :(.

Im in my early teens and at this point I have taken a couple classes in electronics so I know stuff… I decided to run some tests to see if I could figure out what was going on. A trip or two to the library and I discover my game has no deflection of the electron beam that draws the picture. I discover this is partially controlled by a device called the “flyback” and the book said it has high voltage when powered up, and that there was a plug that needed to be checked where it plugs into the screen.

so I powered the game off, unplugged it and then went to unplug the flyback… next thing I remember was my arm hurting and in about 6 feet away from the cabinet laying on the ground. My dad is looking at my like WTF and I say I now know why it’s called a flyback… I stayed well away from that part of the machine after that… plus my plug was clean and the glass wasn’t broken so I could move on anyway.
 
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