Changing valvecovers almost killed me. ;)

I wanted to change my valve covers.
very easy thing I thought, it should only take 20 minutes. but sparks and almost flames!

Please note to self, remover the battery, or just disconnect the +!

The driver side valve cover grounded it self on the alternator bolt and the gas line going to the TBI. A few sparks but it could of gone bad fast. the car was off but the valve cover is very tricky to replace on the drivers side. remove the alternator bracket and sparkplug wires.

other then that it looks great. i put photos in the pic and video section.

So you made your own fireworks for your New Year celebration.

I'm being serious when I say thank you for the PSA about how not to do it. It's lucky that there was no damage on your car, but you could have also saved someone elses by posting this.

They look great too BTW.

Nobody else here heard him say 'gas line'? He might have compromised the integrity of the line where it did a bit of arc welding.

Nah. It'd just make a little black dot on it, and maybe add a burr from the thinner metal of the valve cover, but I'm sure the integrity is fine. I'd be stupified if it weren't.

Its also next to the evap line. The hard hose go's around the valve cover. and int the tbi.

Evap is the line that takes out air of the fuel tank.

back in the day, my buddy took off his chrome air cleaner and put it on the sill over the rad. He was standing on his front bumper (4x4) and leaned over to fuss with something and pushed the air cleaner on top of the two battery posts. Best part was he was shirtless so all the hot sparks flew up and hit his chest, lol. I was on the ground rolling. Burned two holes right through the top of the cleaner.

He started taking the ground off after that. I learned my lesson at the expense of him

In 1974 my buddy's '64 Chevelle battery fell over and grounded against a brake line, we were out cruising and he went to hit the brakes and nothing. He finally got it stopped by gently running into the side of an old VFW post building, opened the hood and the battery was tipped over and the brake lines were glowing red, got it back in shape and about 15 minutes later all was fine.
When you do work on the car you disconnect the negative battery cable, not the positive. I got tired of doing it so I installed a battery disconect switch.
The FSM says to disconnect the negative cable to do anything down to checking the air in the tires.

Some time ago, it was a hot, humid day and I was working on something under the hood. I was concentrating on the job at hand, but eventually became aware of an increasing pain in my left forearm that didn't seem to be related to the job. When it finally got bad enough to distract me from whatever it was that I was doing, I saw that my salty/sweaty arm had been draped over the top posts of the battery. Even 12 volts can do something to you if you're conductive enough.