I left it out earlier, but my friend was tapping a pipe as well. Not sure if it’s the same type of pipe you’re talking about, but hers was a glass pipe that she was trying to knock the remnants/ashes out of.
Still though, it shouldn’t have broken, it’s not like she was tapping it any harder than she would’ve with a bic lighter.
Also, beyond being startled by it, she was fine.
Although it didn’t happen in my car, the OP’s story reminded me of something that happened to me several years ago. I’d left a six pack of craft beer sitting on my dining table, thinking I’d put a few cans in the fridge later, when I’d freed up some space. Of course I don’t get to it for several days, and the beer cans remained on the table. Until one day I was doing something in another part of the house and heard BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! from the kitchen. I went to investigate and discovered several of the beer cans had exploded, leaving a huge mess on the floor, and walls.
At the time, I had no idea why the cans exploded, but I now realize the beer was probably undergoing refermentation. That is, some yeast had survived the brewing process, and beer was continuing to ferment in the can, which can cause excessive pressure in the can. After it happened I opened one of the cans that didn’t explode, and the beer seemed extra fizzy (although I’d never had that particular beer before, so at the time I wasn’t sure if that was what it was supposed to be like). And it was summer and I keep the thermostat set rather warm, because I am frugal to a fault, which probably didn’t help. But really this was a quality control problem at the brewery.
Yes, that’s what happened here, too. Gentle since it’s glass, usually the pipe is the fragile part. I’ve had lots of lighters blow up like in a toolbox from age and in the console of cars from heat (especially) but I’d never witnessed it and didn’t know they fail like that.
After reading all these tales, I don’t feel strange about it anymore. LOL
I got a .22 and a 12 gauge in the Jeep.
I’m not suggesting that he was trying to deceive you, but service guys ALWAYS show the customer the heat exchanger and tells them they were only weeks away from death. It must be taught in furnace school, along with using liquid soap to check for gas leaks.
Disclaimer: This has been my experience with three furnace replacements.
I’ve got something similar in my car, but it goes “pew! pew!”
In my youth, I was told this was so one could drop the pipe out a car window and destroy evidence.
I don’t blame you for your skepticism-- I’m always leery when somebody like an auto mechanic I’m not familiar with tells me “you need to fix this or your car will blow up!” But I could tell there was something very wrong with the furnace, and this was a trusted neighborhood HVAC guy we’ve had do stuff for us for many years.
And re: this part of my post?
I found a pic I took of the pipe back then:
There’s no official cause of this yet, but there’s a big hole in the floor right above where the furnace used to be.
A game controller? Eric Cartman?
On second thought, the .22 doesn’t really “Boom”
This happened to my sister. As I recall the story, she got into her car in her garage, started it and was preparing to leave. Suddenly there was a loud BANG that startled the crap out of her. She looked around and saw nothing amiss. The car was still running fine. Then she attempted to open the garage door and discovered the problem: the garage door torsion spring had broken. Those things pack a lot of energy, and I can believe that one suddenly snapping could be pretty loud.
So, way back in prehistoric times, I heard this song, and I could never understand it. There was a lyric that went:
"You know the ones with the cars that go ____”
The cars that go what?, I thought.
Then, one day, I was in a parking lot, and some guy had his car stereo blasting, and this song came on, and when they played that line the boom his stereo made shook my car.
Oh - now I get it.
Must have been in the single-digit Hertz.
I was driving my car on the interstate, and had just pulled into the exit lane and was decerating when I heard a loud “boom” and the brake went slack under my foot. I managed to get safely off the road with the emergency brake and very very gentle pressure on the regular brake. I think I hadn’t driven the car enough over the pandemic, and something froze up, and whatever holds the brake fluid failed explosively.
That was a little too exciting for my tastes.
For awhile I rented a very small house with a furnace in the floor for heat. The furnace had to be lit by hand, and ever having had a gas appliance that didn’t have a pilot light, I would turn the gas on, then stick my hand down by the burner and use a cigaret lighter to fire it up. This was always accompanied by a loud BOOM. One day my soon to be father in law was over when I lit the furnace and calmly advised me to a) put the fire next to the burner before turning the gas on and b) not turn the valve wide open when lighting the furnace or his daughter would be a widow before the wedding.
One time during my childhood, the prehistoric oil-burning furnace in the basement went whoomp during the night, blowing its door off.
I was too young to comprehend what happened, but after that, never again trusted the thing enough to walk by it.
I was in a truck that turned over sideways on a steep incline. As we went over, I thought “I’m going to go through the windows, and when I do, I’ll be cut”. So we land, and everybody else climbs out, and I’m lying there feeling the warm blood run down my neck, and the driver pokes his head back over and asks if I’m ok. And I look up at him,
and see the carton of warm milk dripping down on me
and say “Yes”.
The schizophrenic tenant in the three-room flat out the back was heating up the un-opened can of baked beans in the gas oven when --boom-- blowing the oven door right off.
That wasn’t why he was eventually asked to leave…
Well, there’s yer problem!
So many car and furnace “BOOM!” tales. Does an airplane “POW!” story count? A few years ago I was on my way to teach a week-long class in a village off the road system. The plane took both passengers and freight, with the two separated by a movable bulkhead. I was sitting just forward of the bulkhead.
Passing over the last mountain range before the village, I heard “Pow! Pow! Pa-Pow! Pow!” and immediately thought, “someone’s shooting at us!” Then thought, “from where? We’re too high up.”
Turned out part of the cargo were snack packages for the village’s one store. And bags of potato chips and cheetos and such turn out to be much louder than you would think when they pop due to altitude.