Safety First
By: Craig French
Back and hand injuries are the two most prominent areas of health concern to all powersport technicians. As a powersport technician you should be aware that along with the tools you have in your tool box and those available to you in the shop, your body is an integral part of your tool inventory. After all, a tool is pretty useless without the muscle and sinew to power it. If you make an effort to take care of your health, both at home and at work, you can pretty much guarantee a fruitful career in the powersport trade.
Shops are a beehive of activity; at least the ones that make money. Most technicians prefer to have a clearly defined set of tasks laid out before them each day; a set of well written work orders designed to fit the technician’s abilities and the time frame he has to work in.
The shop runs much smoother when tasks are well defined, and the technician feels he has enough time to do a good job without cutting corners. If the technician feels that he’s running out of time he becomes impatient, and may start to take shortcuts. When that happens, he tends to not only cut corners on the quality of his work but also on how he performs that work. Often times he’ll neglect to position himself properly to perform a lifting task or he will use brute force to perform a task rather than take a few moments to get the right tool for the job. In either case he opens the door to injury.
Three other behaviors factor into many back and hand injuries: lack of experience, complacency, and lifestyle. Lack of experience and complacency go hand in hand. This is especially true of younger technicians. At the start of your career you can often get away with using improper lifting or other body ergonomic techniques for a long time without suffering any noticeable consequences. The problem is that the immediate effect of soft tissue damage is rarely noticeable. As time progresses however, you may begin to notice those first little pangs of pain in your back every now and then. The damage is done. Working methodically and using proper lifting techniques is mandatory for a healthy back.
The same holds true for your hands. Sure, you can use your hands to hammer on breaker bars, or beat that stubborn skid frame into place on a snowmobile - for a while. The net effect over time is nerve, and tissue damage in your hands. One day you may feel a bit of pain or numbness in your hands. Once the damage is done, there’s no going back.
As far as lifestyle is concerned, how you take care of your body is up to you. I’m not going to get too preachy about the obvious benefits of a healthy lifestyle. However, you may have to change your habits if you believe that the three basic food groups include alcohol, nicotine and sugar. And if you notice that the depression in your couch is a perfect match to the shape of your rear end, you probably need to get a bit more exercise! Staying flexible (“yoga anyone”?) and keeping the pounds off go a long way to preventing back injuries.
Aside from using proper lifting techniques and staying in shape, there are a few additional things you can do to help prevent soft tissue damage to your back or hands while working in the shop:
Hunching over a snowmobile or watercraft for several hours is difficult, and a lot of serious injuries occur when removing engines from these machines. The lifting and twisting action involved in this task are murder on your back. An overhead hoist makes the job a lot easier.
The hoist should consist of an iron girder that’s firmly attached to the main ceiling structure of the shop. A wheel-mounted block and tackle is mounted to the girder in such a way that it can be easily slid along the length of the shop. Build yourself some custom engine lifting adapters by breaking off the tops off some spark plugs, then welding strong washers to the sides the plug hexes. When removing or installing snowmobile or watercraft engines, thread the adapters into a couple of spark plug holes, hook the ends of a sturdy tie down into the adapters, and hook the centre of the tie down to the hook on the block and tackle. Wrap another tie down around the engine for a back-up in case the main tie down breaks, and then lift away with the block and tackle.
The beauty of this system is that not only is it now easy to hoist the engine out of the machine, but when you put the engine back in the machine you can easily keep the engine raised slightly off the engine mounts while you reach under and hook up oil lines, electrical connectors, vacuum hoses and control cables. Some motorcycle manufacturers sell special engine removal tools that make the job easier and safer.
As far as your hands are concerned, it’s a good idea to wear padded mechanics gloves when you find it necessary to really torque on a hand tool, or whenever you use an air hammer (the vibration from air hammers leads to all sorts of joint and soft tissue problems in the hands). And resist the temptation to use the palm of your hand to pound on a ratchet handle or wrench. If you need to beat on a tool to make it work, then you need to use a bigger tool!
And last but not least, don’t be a hero. Ask for help if you need to lift or move a heavy object in the shop. I’ve seen a number of young, tough guys reduced to hunched-over wrecks by the time they’re 30.
The pay off for eating properly, getting some exercise now and then, and using proper tools and techniques in the shop is a long, rewarding career as a technician in the powersport industry. CPT
Shops are a beehive of activity; at least the ones that make money. Most technicians prefer to have a clearly defined set of tasks laid out before them each day; a set of well written work orders designed to fit the technician’s abilities and the time frame he has to work in.
The shop runs much smoother when tasks are well defined, and the technician feels he has enough time to do a good job without cutting corners. If the technician feels that he’s running out of time he becomes impatient, and may start to take shortcuts. When that happens, he tends to not only cut corners on the quality of his work but also on how he performs that work. Often times he’ll neglect to position himself properly to perform a lifting task or he will use brute force to perform a task rather than take a few moments to get the right tool for the job. In either case he opens the door to injury.
Three other behaviors factor into many back and hand injuries: lack of experience, complacency, and lifestyle. Lack of experience and complacency go hand in hand. This is especially true of younger technicians. At the start of your career you can often get away with using improper lifting or other body ergonomic techniques for a long time without suffering any noticeable consequences. The problem is that the immediate effect of soft tissue damage is rarely noticeable. As time progresses however, you may begin to notice those first little pangs of pain in your back every now and then. The damage is done. Working methodically and using proper lifting techniques is mandatory for a healthy back.
The same holds true for your hands. Sure, you can use your hands to hammer on breaker bars, or beat that stubborn skid frame into place on a snowmobile - for a while. The net effect over time is nerve, and tissue damage in your hands. One day you may feel a bit of pain or numbness in your hands. Once the damage is done, there’s no going back.
As far as lifestyle is concerned, how you take care of your body is up to you. I’m not going to get too preachy about the obvious benefits of a healthy lifestyle. However, you may have to change your habits if you believe that the three basic food groups include alcohol, nicotine and sugar. And if you notice that the depression in your couch is a perfect match to the shape of your rear end, you probably need to get a bit more exercise! Staying flexible (“yoga anyone”?) and keeping the pounds off go a long way to preventing back injuries.
Aside from using proper lifting techniques and staying in shape, there are a few additional things you can do to help prevent soft tissue damage to your back or hands while working in the shop:
Hunching over a snowmobile or watercraft for several hours is difficult, and a lot of serious injuries occur when removing engines from these machines. The lifting and twisting action involved in this task are murder on your back. An overhead hoist makes the job a lot easier.
The hoist should consist of an iron girder that’s firmly attached to the main ceiling structure of the shop. A wheel-mounted block and tackle is mounted to the girder in such a way that it can be easily slid along the length of the shop. Build yourself some custom engine lifting adapters by breaking off the tops off some spark plugs, then welding strong washers to the sides the plug hexes. When removing or installing snowmobile or watercraft engines, thread the adapters into a couple of spark plug holes, hook the ends of a sturdy tie down into the adapters, and hook the centre of the tie down to the hook on the block and tackle. Wrap another tie down around the engine for a back-up in case the main tie down breaks, and then lift away with the block and tackle.
The beauty of this system is that not only is it now easy to hoist the engine out of the machine, but when you put the engine back in the machine you can easily keep the engine raised slightly off the engine mounts while you reach under and hook up oil lines, electrical connectors, vacuum hoses and control cables. Some motorcycle manufacturers sell special engine removal tools that make the job easier and safer.
As far as your hands are concerned, it’s a good idea to wear padded mechanics gloves when you find it necessary to really torque on a hand tool, or whenever you use an air hammer (the vibration from air hammers leads to all sorts of joint and soft tissue problems in the hands). And resist the temptation to use the palm of your hand to pound on a ratchet handle or wrench. If you need to beat on a tool to make it work, then you need to use a bigger tool!
And last but not least, don’t be a hero. Ask for help if you need to lift or move a heavy object in the shop. I’ve seen a number of young, tough guys reduced to hunched-over wrecks by the time they’re 30.
The pay off for eating properly, getting some exercise now and then, and using proper tools and techniques in the shop is a long, rewarding career as a technician in the powersport industry. CPT
