Possible catostrophe averted!

[lobsta1]

Was just out doing some more splitting. This is using an older home made splitter from Craigs list. Bought it used four or five years ago. It had an old Briggs on it. I replaced it with one of the Honda clones for $107 from ebay. It's been great until today. The pump output hose runs across the steel gusset holding the beam. I had put a garden hose over it for chafe protection. Guess it was not enough. I'm splitting & the next thing I know oil is spraying everywhere from the hose blowing out. The gusset is deflecting it in all directions. I jumped up & shut off the engine. Took an oil bath doing it. I'm lucky I had only been splitting about 1/2 hour. Otherwise I might have been burned from the oil. However, as soon as the oil flow stopped, there was a POOF & the oil over the muffler & on the engine ignited. I made a mad dash for the shop & grabbed the 10 lb extinguisher I keep there. All it took was a few puffs & the fire was out.

Oh well, I did want to change the oil & put a new filter on it.
Al

 

[smokinj]

that will get your heart racing

 

[SolarAndWood]

Hydraulic showers suck. Especially hot ones.

 

[lobsta1]

It's only about a 5 gal. tank for the hydraulic oil. I got it shutdown before the tank emptied by more than half. It is still amazing to me how much the oil saturated everything. The oak crotch I was shearing through, the wood already split, all over the H-beam, the motor, the ground & even onto the seven cords stacked in the shed. So when I heard the POOF & saw the flames shoot up, I kicked this 61 year old body into hi-gear to go & get the extinguisher. All I thought of was the almost full gas tank exploding.
Al

 

[Flatbedford]

Man, I'm out of breath just reading this! Sounds like hairy couple of minutes. I've had similar incidents with a cutting torch. Sure gets your blood pumping.

 

[savageactor7]

Good damage control lobsta.

 

[blades]

Popped a pin hole leak on Sunday Hi pressure line sure made a mess 9 year old splitter (HF 30t). Was on off side from eng. so not much excitement.

 

[Gooserider]

I know there is the old and often wisely repeated caution about not looking for leaks by running ones hand over the lines as a high pressure leak can "inject" oil into you, with extremely nasty health consequences...

My own messy oil experience was about 3-4 tanks of gas into my splitter - I looked up and saw a lot of "smoke" coming out the side of the engine - ran around to hit the kill switch and saw that the oil drain plug had fallen out... I actually was loosing very little oil, apparently the engine was sucking enough air into the block to keep the oil away from the drain, so what was blowing out was just the crankcase vent gasses... I didn't start to get oil pouring out of the engine till I turned it off - I stopped it up with a finger while I grabbed the drain plug with the other hand and put it back in. I lost so little oil that I didn't need to add any to bring the oil back up to the OK range...

However my entire pile of "done" splits got lightly oiled - just hope that after a year or so of seasoning that it won't be a problem when I burn it...

Gooserider

 

[Flatbedford]

Maybe you'll get a little more heat with your oil impregnated wood. Maybe you've created a higher BTU biomass/hydrocarbon hybrid fuel?