How have you shortened your life span working on your hooptie? (Page 1 of 2)

My mother lived that kind of life and passed the torch to me.   I am doing my best to live up to her example.

Nahh... just some joshing. I like her articles on Jalopnik muchly. I hope Jalopnik lives on post-whatever is happening with the auction/sale/whatever.

Even the anti-Miata piece I liked, despite the fact my track day car is a Miata. I agree, Miata owners are often horrible to be around, including me. Given an opportunity, I too can launch into endless blathering about the Miata. But I try to restrain my verbal tsunami to speaking in response to queries.

There is a section of the Miata cult that does make me nuts. The "Mysteriously Cranky Highly Impressed With Their Own Opinions Humorless Middle Aged Rabid Miata Fan Boys." The kind of people that will start a flame war on a forum about Anything. I'm a Miata owner and in the older demographic, yet they drive me to say to myself, "damn son, it's just a car."

Ha, no offense taken. I chuckled, but my Internet Sarcasticometer is highly tuned to notice the nuance between kidding around and legitimate ballsackery—and also defaults to the benefit of the doubt unless further proof is given. In other words, chill. Chilllllll.

Oooh. Exhaust. I totally forgot about exhaust. I kept my old muffler as carport art for a while after it rusted off. Definitely encountered the sharp edges on it and its replacement more often than I wanted, too. That's a different means of entry into the body than direct oral ingestion, though.

Coolant tastes sweet until it tastes like burning.....

I cut the cage out of our car without proper ventilation and got metal poisoning.  That completely and utterly sucked.  Imagine middle of summer hot out, and being wrapped in blankets and still cold.  And vomiting.

Twisted 6 vertebrae lifting a transmission into the car by myself.  That sucked and even after getting straightened out my back has never been the same.

I'm sure all the oil/grease/mtf/etc that has been on almost every part of my body at some point hasn't helped either.

A little WD-40 over-spray, and when doesn't WD-40 over-spray, in your Dr. Pepper is not tasty.

Stress is definitely #1.

If you think german cars are stressful,  try running a german car with a 80's american turbo engine.

As a chemist, the stuff I work with daily is probably much more dangerous than the car stuff.  So you can say that earning to pay for my hooptie is probably the most dangerous part of owning it.

Also, I can't imagine that semi-regular application of brake-clean or carb cleaner to my eyeballs has been particularly beneficial.

I live a pretty unhealthy lifestyle to begin with so my guess would be, it ain't Lemons prep or racing that is shortening it.  In fact, I would say finding a hobby that keeps me so heavily engaged both mentally and physically is probably lengthening said life. 

One of my other hobbies has me around lead paint a lot so...

Why, just the other day I mixed up a sketchy concoction of anti-rust paint, commercial reducer and activator and sprayed it in my 2 car garage. I have never, cough..., felt, cough..., better

Honestly, I have inhaled, injested and absorbed so much toxic crap, I am surprised I have lived this long.

I routinely perform blood letting while performing even the most basic race car maintenance.  I haves knack for finding the sharp corner we forgot to smooth over or cover up.  I assume blood letting still has the same benefits it had in the dark ages.  So I think That benefit should balance out the gas baths and brake fluid showers.

I'd say a good 1/3 of this stuff is settled down into the bottom nether regions of my lungs

Not directly life shortening...  But I have steel wire in my eye from a grinding wheel that came apart (I was wearing safety glasses but it was a weird angle and the debris came up under my glasses).  No MRIs for me, so that will not help in diagnosing future problems. 

I can tell that the grease/gas/solvents that we use are no good for me - I get the runs every time I use them. 

I, finally, have tinnitus from when the muffler/exhaust fell off our Corolla and the header was cut right in front of the floor pan transferring much of the sound directly through the floor.  At some engine RPM, the sound hit a harmonic and the whole inside of the car amplified the sound and I could feel in my chest.