This is reposted from another forum.....

Quote "So my time almost came to an end this morning... im very lucky to be alive.

First of all, GO HUG YOUR WIFE/HUBBY and tell them you love them.

i had an acetylene bottle in my truck, the valve was bumped so slightly and over night the truck filled with the gas. i noticed the smell, and opened the doors to air out the truck. i drove the truck out of the garage to get some more air movement. i went to roll the pass side window down and as soon as i touched the power windows. BAM. with me in the truck. i lost all hearing out of my right ear and got a scratch on the back of my head. all things considering, im alive.

so now ive got the question out to toyota about a 2012 TT. 125 to canada only, 15 in standard. i want a standard...

pictures tell 1000 words.

dont take any minutes or seconds you have for granted... it may be your last...

peace everyone,"

And the pictures..........

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Our local weld shop would not sell any bottle, even co2, unless you picked it up in a pickup.

They do walk amoung us.....

Glad he is are as well as he is. I go to airgas regularly to get my bottles filled. It seems like they all get empty at the same time. Then maybe I don't go for a year or so. Lately they made me sign a paper every trip to carry the bottle home in my old suburban. First off I don't move a bottle without the cap on it. But second, I don't do it with closed windows and never leave it in the truck overnight, or in a garage. They have rented me a bottle that leaked down as soon as I started using it too.

This is why I poo-poo the idea of the propex propane heater set-up in the other thread.
I'm not worried about a crash, I'm worried about a leak. :bomb:

Damn.

Glad I dont use acetylene torches..

I'm amazed at how it peeled all the outer skin off, it must of filled all the inner panels.

you didn't have the steel cap on. If the cap was on that would not happened, also ALL pressure tanks need to have proper venting. Common sense

IME, the welding supply stores won't even sell or refill any pressure cylinder without the proper cap, and most won't do so unless you have a way to transport it outside the passenger compartment. You can't fix stupid!

That is strange. The gas must be heavier than air and when it settles it filled the inside of the panels.

The safety cap is really the key to not having this happen. AMAZING he wasn't killed!!!

the most likely is a little bit air tight, the coming out under pressure worked its way in the doors and on, he hit the power window...... Lucky if he just opened the doors and backed away

The question I have about this is where is the the black Acetylene smoke? anyone ever lit off a ballon filled with acetylene? Boom then a huge ball of fire and a black cloud. You would think that thing would have gone up like a roman candle. Inside that SUV should be black as soot. As a former auto appraiser I would be investigating this further. This is one for Myth Busters.

on the cap. no welding shop would fill a bottle and let it go without the ca on it. I believe it is actually a safety volation. This guy most likely was transporting to or from a buddies house and neither had the brains to put the cap on. Also note he states when he hit the window switch it went boom .This implies a cumbustion yet there are NO burn or singe marks anywhere in or on the truck. The airbags can be clearly seen as can the door panel and there are NO signs of a fireball. I smell some poo here

You had an Angel on your back! When I took my welding classes, the instructor spent an entire class on safety and how to handle bottles. Thank God you're safe.
Phatnine11

I'd alo like to know how one could be on the inside of a concusion bomb strong anough to rip spot welds apart, split panels seams and peel exterior panels outwards, and not even have his ear drums ruptured

EDIT : I missed the part where he said he lost all hearing in his right ear

I call

Scott and Rick said why.

Is acetylene not odorized? I forget. LPG and LNG are naturally smell free, methylmercaptin is added to alert one of its leaking by smell.

I'd think that he would be in worse shape also. Maybe the door was open when he went to open the window. It does seem a little fishy.

Yes it is. I believe he said he smelledit, but either way it definitely is

notuce how the panels peeled. Back and to the right....back and to the right .............


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkCQ8qR5-i0

Since he said he let it air out before he hit the switch, possibly there was enough oxygen to make a clean explosion.....

Ok, what did we learn from this?

You got a lot to learn
You play in the fire
You might get burned
You gotta sacrifice
You're playin' the victim
Of your own device
You try to understand
The comb in the ashes
Isn't what you planned
You, it gets you every time
You're chasin' the visions
They're nowhere to find........

My guess is that since the drivers door is fairly undamaged compared to the rest of the vehicle is that he was probably half in the vehicle when he decided to roll down the windows. He could have been blown clear out the open door. But, just a guess.

I don't know of any protective cap for an acetylene tank in "B" or "MC" size. From the looks of that SUV I doubt anything would have fit in there except for a B (T code) tank or MC (D code) tank. Unless he laid it down which I doubt any welder would do. BTW, sounds fishy to me. I've been riding with B yanks, MC tanks and MAPP bottles for many moons and have found that a tank was left on over nite many times. No biggie, just air it out and go. I did singe a pair of underwear when playing with methane gas when I was 12.
Trivia question: anyone here know where the "B" & "MC" designations originated? The winner will receive a book of methane gas igniters + postage

http://my.firefighternation.com/forum/topi...all-cylinder-of

as a past Divemaster, and dealing with pressurized steel and aluminum tanks;
common dive tanks have an operating pressure of 3000 lbs and their blow valves
set at 2250 lbs, (as well as most pressurized tanks).
Which is to say the pressure was below the blow valve setting.
I have seen steel tanks far beyond their inspection dates, most with massive
internal corrosion found during hydroscopic testing.
Even one that blew sitting in a trunk of a car that sat in the sun. The vehicles'
trunk lid and the fender were blown outward and massively deformed, like the
hulk had ripped it open. The tank only showed a 7 inch rip along the side of the
tank, and yet it did all of that damage. Its' pressure was also below that of
the blow valve setting.
I am thinking that the tank failing and the act of pushing the switch on the
electric window was coincidental.
Nevertheless; he WAS lucky, if he was in the vehicle, like he said.

The acetylene I've used to weld and the acetylene produced when you put calcium carbide (fun stuff ) in water smell the same, that is to say horrible. Scotty nailed it. It'd be difficult to miss that smell. Also, I can confirm from experience that acetylene makes black smoke that stains anything nearby when it explodes.

Does it make sense that the airbags deployed?

I am inclined to throw the , but I am also trying to come up with an alternate scenario that could have caused that damage

One major reason that I am thinking BS is that if something like that happened to me and I posted it on a forum, I would explain how in the hell I survived, how far I was thrown, etc. This guy does none of that.

If he was actually sitting in that vehicle with the door closed, or even open, there is no way in hell that he would have survived.

FJ BOOM!

natural selection has failed again. most avoid it thru clever legislation these days

We work with Acetylene every day, and I know that when you light a torch you get a lot of black soot. With that being said I've never had a large explosion so I don't know if that would cause a clean "burn". I think that what we should learn from this discussion is that any pressurized container should not be left in an enclosed vehicle for any length of time. They should be fitted with a protective cap, and should be secured in the vehicle at all times. If they are just laid in a vehicle with out a protective cap and you get in a wreck you have a missile in the back end of your pickup or car. Just because you've left a gas cylinder in the back of your vehicle many times and have had no problems doesn't mean that at some point it won't come back to haunt you! Check out youtube and search O2 cylinder explosion. It shows the force of a small bottle exploding. If you have any doubt about hauling it ask you local welding supply company to deliver it.

To sum it up

If I'm going to die I want it to have something to do with pornstars and handcuffs not something as stupid as a gas cylinder or my car falling on me!

Someone on another forum said that if he opened the doors the gas in the main cabin was able to flow out. This left the gas trapped in the body panels. Also the cap doesn't stop the valve from leaking only protects the valve from being hit and damaged.

Still can't explain why there is no smoke damage.

This sounds about right. I always transport the tanks upright with caps on. I store them the same way, If I do not have a vehicle to carry the tanks upright, then I ask/hire a buddy to haul them for me.

If the door was open there would have been plenty enough oxygen to acetylene ratio to burn clean enough and not leave a black soot. Only pure acetylene burns with a black soot, the slightest addition of oxygen and it starts burning clean. If he had pulled the vehicle out to air it out and the vehicle was still running it is very possible that the airbags would deploy. The crash sensors would have picked up on the intense shake of the vehicle assuming an impact. I have no first hand knowledge of the incident but it all seems very plausible and real to me. Maybe this is a job for Adam and Jamie at Mythbusters.

B tanks were for auto headlights. MC for motorcycle.

I would think the shock wave alone would have done more than just blow one eardrum, probably could have killed him or caused massive internal injuries. That is like detonating a bomb in a bathroom, especially if the door was open the shock wave would have been directed there. I think it blew but he was no where near that door, or BS all together.

After looking at the pics it is obvious that a rapid pressure increase happened inside, still baffled on how. The roof looks like it lifted off and was the weak point in the front that saved his life, if we are to believe his story. However, the pressure to bend metal and detach the roof should have been plenty enough to cause at least a concussion and not just hearing loss.

right!!

If a little oxygen allows clean burning, why is the flame so dirty when the torch is lit w/o the O2 being turned on? There's plenty of O2 in the ambient air. I agree there's more to this story than we've been told.

BTW, welders know that laying the acetylene bottle on its side allows liquid to exit through the valve, NOT a good thing.

The Cap'n

Because the Acetylene is burning exactly as it is exiting the tip and not haveing a chance to mix with the oxygen. The oxygen has to be introduced before the flame (before the tip) to get the clean burn.

I agree with the theory that the concentration was only explosive inside the body panels, since the doors had already been opened. This is consistent with the size of the concussion based, on the owners injuries and the vehicle damage.
A uniform concentration at barely explosive levels is likely to burn very cleanly, so no soot.
I doubt the tank exploded - shrapnel would have probably killed the driver.

All I had was an ether (quick start) can blow up on the back floorboard of a Type 1. Bugs put out some good heat. Momentary excitement on an icy road, in the dark, in Kansas ..... circle game.

Now if I had had electric windows ...........

Ron, If you don't mind sharing with us; On a scale of 1 to 10, what was the "pucker factor" at that moment?

Better there than in your meth lab

you guys seem to be focusing on the soot when ignited. My point is look at the internal parts of the truck. Not in a soot marked way, but in the assumption that there was an exlposion creating a fireball, and NOTHING got melted or burned ??? This would lead me to believe there was no " ignition " it was a concussion " explosion" so what would have cause the gas trapped in the truck to have expanded so rapidly yet not ignite ?