Stupid fucking Jafro. And I did it to myself, totally oblivious to the fact.

Friday was like any other black friday. Waking up at 4 AM to go hunt down and skin the latest piece of electronic gadgetry and hang it on my wall (32" LCD TV for the bedroom). By 9 AM, mission accomplished. I turned my attention to other projects with all the energy still left over from the kill. So what to do? Some of you saw my air tools thread in the '92 civic forums. I hung my air hose reel up in what I thought to be the perfect place in the garage, cleaned up the workbench and then started welding in the rear sub-frame reinforcements for my AWD Colt project. This was so long overdue. I needed to make the Colt roll so I could push my other broken Mitsubishi into the garage and pull the trans.

After about 3 hours of measuring, leveling and fabricating brackets, I fired up the Millermatic, tacked down the pieces, and started laying down burly beads that will hold the '92 4-bolt Talon rear into this UFO. After I finished the driver's side, I took a break, opened the garage door, and got some tea. I finished up the passenger side at 10:00 PM and contemplated welding in the mounts. But nah... Instead, I took a shower, blew all the funk out of my sinuses from the dirty work, and resolved to finish it in the morning. I got to bed about midnight.

...

I wake up at 3:00 PM Saturday. My head hurt like my brain had shrunk and was rattling around in my head. My spine was killing me. Every joint in my body radiated pain and I was shaking. I had severe cold chills. I felt like I had contracted the flu so I took my temperature... 91.2° I went to the kitchen and got the last of the tea. Half an hour after I drank it, the vomiting began. Mind you, I hadn't eaten since lunch the day before, and I was running on empty other than the swig of tea that I managed to house. Once fully purged, I couldn't stop heaving for 4 hours. With the stomach empty I started trying to throw up organs and bones, but they wouldn't budge. There were several points when I thought I would suffocate from not being able to breathe. The gag reflex was unstoppable. Finally around 8 PM, I passed out not to be heard from again until Sunday around noon.

By this time, my cat's pissed. Wants to eat so bad. He's stomping on my nuts totally indifferent to my suffering. It's that pain which awakens me and makes me realize that other uncomfortable things in life really aren't so bad. I managed to get soup down a few hours later, and after a depressing rainy redskins-defeated day, I figured out what the fuck happened to me.

It's called "Foundry Fever", or better known as toxic metal vapor poisoning.
http://www.anvilfire.com/iForge/tutor/safety3/index.htm

The fucking Colt is stamped from galvanized steel... but you can't tell it because of how the forms distort the galvanized finish... then it's painted and undercoated. In addition to Zinc, it has cadmium and manganese in the cocktail. All 3 of which are extremely toxic when burned. After a little bit of googling, I ran across several stories of "xxxxxxx the welder" that died from welding galvanized materials. I knew not to weld on galvanized stuff, but wouldn't have guessed for a second that the Colt's sub-frame had been treated with Zinc because Mitsubishis are rust buckets just like all other steel cars.

I also have several friends with frankenstein-inspired cars that were made of several other cars welded together and none of them had fallen ill. One of my friends, Jason Tanin, actually has already built the same project that I'm building out of a Mirage 4-door. Many of you may have heard of him as "LilEvo". I bought his video and he welds his bucket together in his garage just like I was doing. Never complained of a single ache or pain. Well guess what? It made me sick as hell, and I'm never welding again without a respirator. I was wearing a dust mask but that doesn't do shit. I'm sharing my story here for other gearheads that might potentially subject themselves to this kind of toxic abuse. I hope to God that nobody here ever endures what I went through.

This morning, the effects were still barely present. My joints and spine still hurt but the headache is gone. I went to work and for once I was SO GLAD to be there doing my part for The Man. I didn't have a case of the "Mondays". I'm simply glad to be alive because several people less exposed than I was have died from this.