Either you’ve experienced it, or not (kind of like sex): the car’s engine blows up while on the road. It’s probably an experience (blown engine) that today’s younger generation isn’t quite as likely to have as those of us with a bit of history under our belts, especially with the cars of yore. In a comment on yesterday’s Yugo article, JustPassinThru described how his Yugo engine self-destructed:
Finally…with a new clutch 400 miles old…it tossed the alternator belt. Big deal, huh? Except that the belt managed to get into the TIMING BELT case…and pop THAT off. Yup…and does anyone think Fiat or Yugo engineers thought to make the engine a “clearance” design? Let me disillusion you…I busted a piston crown and bent a valve badly enough to freeze up the camshaft.
I have my own, although not quite as dramatic or Rube Goldbergian as that. I’ll relate it after the jump. In the meanwhile, start dusting off your memories. What we’re looking for is catastrophic failures; not just a bad alternator or steaming radiator. Those are just foreplay.
I was on a road trip with my then-current GF out east, in my 1963 VW Beetle. It was May, but the weather turned record hot, right while we were on Skyline Drive/Blue Ridge Parkway. She took a turn at the wheel, and I could tell she was driving it too slowly in fourth gear on the uphills. But did I say anything? I just knew the air cooled engine was not getting enough air from its fan, and was too hot. But nothing happened, yet.
About a week later, we were on I 70 in Indiana, heading back to Iowa. It was a cool day, and the 40 hp 1200 was happily bopping along at its usual cruising speed, between 65 and 70. All of a sudden, a horrible clattering out back erupted. I knew instantly it was the death knell. I managed to keep it sort of running on the shoulder to the nearest exit, which thankfully was very close by. At the gas station, I lifted the “hood”. Nothing externally looked wrong. Then I grabbed the fan belt pulley, which bolts directly to the crank shaft. It readily moved forward and backward in my hand. Game’s up!
We hitch-hiked back to Iowa, and borrowed her Mom’s little 1973 Corolla, a bumper hitch, and one of those special VW towing hitches that mounted directly to the front torsion bar tubes. They were quite common back then! The Corolla had no trouble towing the Bug back home. I never did fix it; but just parted it out, since it already was a veteran of a nasty front end accident. Moral of the story: air cooled VWs don’t have radiators to make it obvious that they’re overheating. Or don’t let the GF drive.
My only (to date) engine failure was also a Volkswagen – my 1971 Campmobile (minibus) which I had been driving off and on for eight years (rebuilt the engine somewhere around the third or forth).
We were all loaded up for a trip from Atlanta to Oshkosh for the annual airshow (did I mention I had painted the van in WWII B-17 colors and markings?), but this was one of those “I hope she makes it” type of journeys, as the stock 1600 engine had been feeling like it had no gumption at highway speeds.
Sure enough, about an hour south of Peoria, she just simply lost all power. No bang or clattering (of course, with the stinger muffler, I may have just missed it). Coasted to the side of the road, and after tinkering with the engine for a while (yes, I always carried my full toolbox), decided she had ‘gone west.’
I called my buddy in Peoria who we were planning to join up with on the trip, and he drove down and towed us to the next exit, where I stripped easily removable stuff off the engine, and left the title with the gas station attendant, telling them to call the nearest junkyard to come get it on Monday.
My young sons cried all the way to Peoria – loosing the van was pretty much like loosing a member of the family…
Hmmm. can’t post pics from an iPad…
Oh, and this all happened around 1994 or so.
I had an identical model VW van with the same result bang it digested a piston
Oh, boy! I have a couple of stories to tell! I probably already mentioned them before on here and over on TTAC, but here goes for the record:
The first one: August 1973, a week before I got out of the air force, after I sold my avatar two weeks previous, I had a buddy’s 1973 VW Super Beetle automatic stick shift (hint, hint) while he was on Okinawa for a few months and due back the day after I left the air force.
On a very hot 100° Sunday afternoon, I was out for my customary drive in the countryside and when I stopped, I noticed the engine suddenly running rough. I opened the hood, but nothing, so I drove it back to base, got my tools, removed the plugs and found nothing wrong, but it was clearly not firing on all four. I tinkered around, but no deal, so I took it into town to the Yuba City VW dealer on Monday and they said they’d check it out. Well, when I called them, they gave me the bad news: #3 piston was burnt out. The good news: they’d fix it under warranty! I picked it up Thursday evening. Moral of the story: No one ever told me you had to keep a VW engine revved, and I was driving it like I drove my ’64 Chevy, quietly! Lesson learned! Never drove a VW since. At least I wasn’t stranded until…
The second one: September 2007. Our 1992 LeBaron convertible had an ailing engine for years, but wasn’t going to invest $$$ for a different one. On a beautiful, picture-perfect afternoon on my way home, I suddenly felt a lurch then another…then…nothing! I coasted to a stop in a school parking lot a couple of miles from home. Had to wait another couple of hours for the hook to show up to have it towed to our mechanic. A ruined evening, for sure. The next day, my mechanic said he’d check it out and let me know. He did. Bad news. Engine was shot, something let loose inside but didn’t burst through. Anyway, it was finished. He bought the car for $500.00 for his co-worker, put a new engine in it, fixed the A/C, put in a new computer, which got fried too, somehow, and I think it’s still hopping around town somewhere!
Sad story all around, but there you go! Happens to the best of us!
Mine are all “stupid kid” should have “known better” and were more like near strandings. Not ironcially they all involve the oldest most abused vehicle I’ve owned to date, my first car the $600 Chevy Celebrity (I call it a $600 car cause that’s the offer a paint and body man made my father (in 1992) after the car had been in the family since 1985. The rejection of that offer made sure that I had a car.)
January 1995 my Celebrity finally frys it’s alternator after 120,000 miles. Off to the dealership it goes for a NOT “Genuine Goodwrench” replacement. You need to remember that the Iron Duke was not a serpentine design but was an old “3 belt” design. So the cheap ass alternator lasts about a 2 weeks before locking up and throwing the alternator belt… in the middle of a February NW Ohio blizzard… while I was driving home from my after school job at 9pm at night on a state highway. Being the stupid kid I was I kept driving home in near whiteout conditions, headlights, dashlights, and even the battery idiot light dimming. I went 7 miles down empty roads, hardly able to see a thing, not knowing how the engine kept running, to struggle into my parents garage. My father ponyed up for Genuine GM parts after that.
A few years later in college (again in February – damn that month) I was heading out of Defiance OH for the extended President’s Day weekend at home a good 30 miles away. An ice/sleet storm was breaking out and one of the reasons I was scheduled to go home was that I had an alignment job scheduled with my Dad’s tire/alignment guy. Things were icy, I was crawling accross Defiance County into Putnam County and the car was handling very strangely. The drivers side front tire seemed almost to have a mind of it’s own. Being the stupid kid I was I kept soldiering forward, not stoping for anything but stop signs. I crept into the driveway in creeping darkness and into a parking spot in the driveway. Getting out of the car I noticed that the driverside tire had made a track down the driveway that was a bit meandering compared to the passenger side tire. The next day my Dad took the car into town slowly (roads were still trecherous) and decided to wait on the alignment. About 15 min after the guy got the car on the lift he came out and told my dad he couldn’t do the alignment. Puzzled my father enquired why. The mechanic motioned him back into the lifts. He walked over to my car, grabbed hold of the tire with both hands, and yanked it free, HUB AND ALL! The ball joint had given out and the only thing holding the tire on the last day or so was the CV joint. My father nearly fainted dead away.
Hmm the Volkswagen theme continues. My shady-used-car partner and I were cruising up the highway in our shop car, a Rabbit Diesel with about a billion km on it. One of the endearing facts of the VW 1.5 diesel is that at about a zillion km, the valve seals pack it up. All of a sudden they pack it up. This allows the engine oil past the intake valve and even if you turn off the key and stop diesel flow, the car races out of control as it consumes its engine oil.
Fortunately I wasn’t driving, my partner was and the car started to rocket ahead, much better than its normal 48 ponies. He tried to slow the car with the brakes to no avail, so it was shift to neutral and head for the side of the road. By this point the car was red hot and was eating coolant at the same time. Huge plumes of acrid white smoke were billowing from under the hood. Partner thought he could try to stop the carnage by blocking the air horn but that would have involved opening the hood. Not a good idea should the engine explode. We ended up by hiding in the ditch lest something be hurled at us with great velocity.
It took a good five minutes (and this seemed longer) for the engine to eat all of its oil and most of its coolant. It finally screamed to a “gronch!” kind of sound as it seized. We looked at each other and started to laugh.
The real irony is we were actually on our way to the wreckers to get more Rabbit parts and of course swipe more than a few more. Our Rabbit must have had some fear we were going to scrap it. Anyway, we had it towed back to the lot and soon found a new(er) motor and our Beater Bunny (as we called it) was back on the road in no time!
My lord, that is all too familiar!
’90 Grand Am Quad 4. Money shift (1). Got a “like new” junkyard engine. head gasket eventually let go on the 2nd engine pulling out of a Target parking lot (2). Fixed it with a “miracle in a can” concoction that actually lasted about 24 months.
’92 Grand Am GT 3.3L. Drove it without a serpentine belt. That was not the best decision (obviously) and it blew up in a giant cloud of smoke (3).
’94 Grand Prix SE 3.1L. Floored it coming out a school zone, loud POP!, loss of power, faint smoke from under the hood and out of the exhaust pipe. I only had the car for 4 months. This one was my wake-up call that I might need to take it easier on my vehicles in the future.
or ease up on the 90s vintage Ponchos! 🙂
I don’t have a blown engine story. I have a catastrophic transmission failure story, but it is really boring. It happened about 3 weeks ago backing out of my driveway in my 99 Town & Country. It could have been a much better story, as we were backing out to go visit our son in college 60 miles away. We must have still been close enough to the St. Christopher medal in the other car. I had not realized that those worked like WiFi, but maybe they do. The car started lurching and banging its way down the driveway. I could tell that this was going to be expensive.
I had been getting quite smug about how smoothly the original tranny was shifting (at 209K). After the tow, my mechanic got it apart and told me that the planetary gearset decided to break. The story has a happy ending, though. I could not get the repair cost past the finance committee at home, so I gave the car to a co-worker who fixed it and is now enjoying one of my favorite cars ever.
And I (my wife, actually) got a 2012 Kia Sedona. The Chrysler (even as a temporary paperweight) qualified me for a $1500 competitive vehicle rebate. Now I have a 200K powertrain warranty (between the factory and what the dealer added on top of it). So if I eventually get one of these stories to tell, at least it won’t be expensive.
Once Chrysler got the worst of the bugs worked out of that transmission, that generation of GC/TC were simply great. My son still drives our ’98, with 240,000 on it. I told him already that what will kill it will eventually be the transmission…
We replaced the ’98 with an ’06 GC, which was totaled by a direct lightning strike during a bad thunderstorm (son number two was driving on his still-with-wet-ink learners permit). Replaced *that* with an ’05 TC. It’s very obvious Chrysler did quite a bit of “value engineering” between the two generations.
I only have one transmission story to tell. I guess I’ll never get to see if the VW VR6 had any ills (well, after the heater core blew at 75K and threw hot antifreeze in my face) because the transmission went south 10K later.
The Jetta always shifted rough, especially the 2-3 upshift, So I didn’t notice/think that there was something wrong. Then one day coming off the San Mateo Bridge/Interstate 880 interchange, during rush hour metering light traffic, I gun the throttle (as onramp warrior procedure) and, nothing. But a spinning tach to the redline. Then a lurch, and a grind. and 0-60 slower than any 240d could possibly accomplish.
It was in a long string of (what seemed like early) major component failure. I drove it like this for another month until the transmission finally quit, basically shifting it through the gate like a manual.
Mine was a more of a learning experience than an exciting story.
I had a 1998 Hyundai Accent that needed a tune-up. Since those engines were so easy to work on, I bought new wires and some Platinum plugs for it, thinking that engine needed all the help it could get. Remember, this is before checking an internet forum was a common activity.
The car ran better for a couple of weeks, until one night, driving home from work on the highway, I heard an ungodly bang and saw sparks flying between the cowl and the hood. The car was running pretty rough too.
I pulled over to the side and opened the hood. It turns out that Accents of that vintage don’t like Platinum plugs much. The ceramic part of one of the plugs had separated from the metal part that was screwed into the engine itself, but was still connected to the spark plug wire. The sparks were from it floating around in the engine bay until I pulled over.
It had flown out with such force that it actually caused a small dent in the hood that was visible from the outside.
Needless to say, I had it towed home and quickly replaced the platinum plugs with some cheap Champion plugs from Wal-Mart. I never had that problem again.
I’m more of a transmission killer, than an engine killer. I think I’ve grenaded five trannys over 30+ years of driving. Only one engine, though.
I had a 1979 Pinto ESS, which was an obscure sport package offered late in the run. I found the car on the back lot of our local Dodge dealer. It was five years old and had 20K miles on it, and for $2K (IIRC) it was mine. The car developed a rear main oil seal leak on the 2.3 Lima motor. At first it was a minor nuisance, but after a while, it became worse.
I was pretty good about keeping up with the leaking, it was only about a quart per month, until I started my first agency job. It was 20 miles from my home, and a further 20 miles away from my university. I was doing an 80+ mile day five days a week. Unfortunately, I got lazy about checking the oil level.
One day, I’m on my way back home when I feel a weird misfire from the motor. Then my oil pressure idiot light comes on. Then, the fun begins. The car begins a series of loud knocking noises accompanied by more stuttering and now a huge plume of white smoke. The smell of hot anti freeze, motor oil and babbitt bearings is farkin awful, too. It finally expires in a residential area, with all of the neighbors coming out to see what’s on fire. Some fine citizen called the fire department, and the police arrived on scene, too. I had a small carnival going on there for a while. I should have charged admission.
I had neglected to check the oil in the motor for a number of days before the fatal event happened. One junkyard motor later (I added some Racer Brown parts to it while it was out) and I’m back in business. I kept the car a couple of more years after that, but by then it was eight years old and had 120K+ miles on it and it developed another rear main leak. It was time to get out of it.
EDIT: Now, if you ever want to do a feature on how to grenade transmissions, I’m your man.
I do recall a story where I THOUGHT I had ruined something. In the summer of 1989, I bought a 29 Model A from a relative in VanWert County Ohio (Dan knows where it is). The plan was to drive it 120 miles to Indianapolis with my fiancee following me in her nearly new 88 Accord. It was a nice car and I had no doubt it would make it. We got onto I-69 and settled in at about 50 with her following me. Did I mention that it was in the upper 90s that day?
After awhile I noticed gobs of white smoke billowing from under the car and then it suddenly konks out. I coasted to the side of the road. I hoped it just needed water. She drove to the nearest town Actually, she decided that the nearest town was too small and drove to the SECOND nearest town.
I got the car started finally, and drove to the nearest town, and wondered why it was taking her so long to find me. Before cell phones. Anyhow, she finally found me. We got to the parts store on the main street. I thought that it was a burst hose (everything was soaked), and replaced it. Car would not start again, so we drove home (75 miles) in the Honda and I borrowed a pickup with a car trailer from a neighbor. Drove back. Winch the A up. Damn. Radiator and headlights too tall to go under the crossbar at front of the trailer. Back it down, turn it around (by hand) and winch it up backwards.
Somewhere in all of this, the photographer for the weekly newspaper took our picture. We were kept off of page 1 by a chicken coop fire the same day. I am not kidding. Anyhow, my poor fiance got to see me at my most frustrated that day and married me anyway.
It turned out to be a lesson in the Model A’s one real flaw – the cooling system. All of the water boiled, then soaked the distributer. This episode may have blown up other engines, but fortunately, this was the nearly indestructable Model A. I suspect that every one not scrapped during WWII is still running somewhere.
“We were kept off of page 1 by a chicken coop fire the same day.”
God I miss living in small town Ohio… 🙂
The next door neighbor to my parents (and of course by next door in Putnam County I mean across the 40 acre field) has a Model A rumble seat coupe he only drives on special occasions. Given that I generally see the listed top speed of a Model A as 45 mph I’m amazed you even made it to Fort Wayne pushing it at 50mph!
@geozinger, don’t worry the emptier parts of the West are just as bad a small town Ohio. I’ve often argued that Gallup doesn’t need any homeland security dollars cause no self respecting terroist would dare attack anything here. It would take to dang long for the rest of the planet to find out about it.
Unfortunately the congressman holding his fist out for some Homeland Security dollars doesn’t see it your way, Danimal.
“VanWert County Ohio (Dan knows where it is).”
So do I. The Van-Del drive-in is quaint, right off the Lincoln Highway and I would ALMOST drive that far to see a movie!
Oh boy, you guys are ringing my bell again. Several years ago, my wife and I went to visit our old college friends who live in Canton, Ohio. Rather than take the interstates we decided to take mostly back roads, but especially US 30 across the northern part of Ohio over to Canton.
I don’t remember exactly where we picked up US 30 right at the moment, but it was a lot of fun. We drove through all of those little towns and a few bigger ones on the Lincoln Highway. We even inadvertantly became a part of a parade in one of the towns. I’m sure there was some guy in the crowd wondering why there was a gray Malibu Maxx in the parade…
The trip reminded me of the summer family vacations we used to take, when I was very young and while the Interstate system was still being completed. You could only go so far on the Interstate, and then you’d have to get off and travel on some local roads to get to your destination. Or sometimes you could pick up another Interstate route and finish your trip. It brought back a lot of fond memories for me and my wife.
@geo:
Right near the Van-Del drive-in, on the old road, there were actually new “Burma Shave” signs installed, as the company brought them back on a limited basis on sections of old U.S. highways. Seeing those on my way to Ft. Wayne really made me smile and brought feelings of “remember when…”
Dad’s 1950 Plymouth would’ve felt right at home!
That’s it! The CC upper midwest contingent is going to have to meet for lunch or dinner at Balyeat’s in Van Wert!
I’m in, besides I owe Geozinger a couple of beers. Might as well wait for Educator Dan when he comes to town, too!
EDIT: Have to include Mikey in this as well.
That’s not a bad idea.
As we’re running headlong into the holidays (Thanksgiving is next month and the downhill ride to Christmas next!) shortly, I wonder if next spring would be too far out…
We’d have to see if EdDan were planning another trip to the Great White North…
Nope. Not till possibly 2013. All the Fruchey’s (and Westrich on my momma’s side) have to come to New Mexico for July 2012 nuptials. Sorry guys. Although I’ll be much more open to it if I have a big road trip car by then.
And since we’ve digressed to other component systems, I’ll share that I blew the differential in my 1971 Vega… Now lest you disbelieve, you need to know I had replaced the 2300 with a Buick 3.8L and THM350, which made the diffy the ‘weak link’ in the drivetrain (if you don’t count the severe wheel hop when doing a burnout).
And speaking of burnouts, I tried “dropping it in drive” in front of a frat house at Ga. Tech to “impress” everyone… One loud BANG later, I was sitting there with very little motivation… and a severely deflated ego.
I was driving to work one day in 1996 in my 1985 Honda Civic that had 157,000 miles on it when I heard a strange loud clicking noise coming from under the hood. I had purchased the car new and had followed all the maintenance on it. I had changed the timing belt at 45,000 and 90,000 (60,000 and 120,000 were recommended), but decided to not change it again as the car was high mileage. So it was no surprise that it was the timing belt, and the Honda has an interference engine. The mechanic took it off my hands for the price of the tow.
Wow, lots of great stories! I’ve been one of the lucky ones, I’ve never had an engine died on me. Though that does not mean I’ve never stranded in a car somewhere. Does not need a catastrophic engine failure to get a car stranded, could be as simple as a blown radiator hose, or dead battery, though these were not as murderous financially. I’ve experienced one blown transmission, though, and that was as bad as a blown engine in terms of pain it caused. The car was a 1992 Subaru SVX.
My favorite of my Dad’s blown parts stories is one from his high school days when he decided to borrow his Dad’s Oldsmobile 98. The car was a mid 60s model and this would have been in about 1973. My future mother was in the car with him and they cruised up to the local dairy bar to get a burger and a shake. Dad enters the parking lot and seeing his friends already parked there decides to be macho and pop the automatic into neutral and goose the throttle. He hit’s neutral just fine but when he gooses the throttle the radiator hose explodes and starts spraying coolant all over the parking lot. My grandfather was not amused.
Personally the only dead by the side of the road failure was in 1984 when my Volvo 164 ate it’s fiber timing gear in Vestal New York, fortunately right next to a gas station with a shop, so I got a ride back to college and came back the following week on the bus with a stack of cash. I also ate the motor on a 1985 Ford Ranger in 1993, when suddenly a long plume of oil smoke and oil started coming out the tailpipe. I made it home but when I popped off the oil filler cap the cam lobe had lost 1/8″ of metal so we swapped for a junkyard engine.
In between (around 1987) my sister and her roommate were returning to New York from a road trip to the Midwest when her roommate’s 67 Mustang decided to eat it’s 6 cylinder engine in Southern Indiana. Since they were under 21 the only thing they could rent to get home was U-Haul truck, fortunately they could both drive stick. I think this Mustang ate a second engine at which point she gave up.
I had a noisy little bomb of a Triumph Herald first legal car I liked it everyone else thought it was a POS but it had a loud exhaust loud radio and seemed to go ok Headin home one morning I did my usual downshift into the intersection of the steep hill we lived on and instead of the cacking exhaust on over run I got silence and then tyre squeal as the car slid sideways to the curb it stalled, once stopped it refused to restart on lifting the bonnet to investigate I see oil dripping on the road from a triangular hole in the left side of the block conrod gone. My father had it towed home then later away for scrap not worth repairing he reckoned.First blown car but certainly not the last,
I have another one, but none too exciting. My ’66 Ford F-100 ate a fiber cam gear at the dump, no less. I had Stephanie come, and she towed me home with a tow-rope, behind her Forester. That must have been a sight.
I replaced that gear with a heavy-duty steel truck gear set, and it’s howled like a blower Bentley ever since.
But the gears will outlast the truck!
I’ve been lucky enough not to have any dramatic catastrophies (so far), just the slow but equally expensive kind, like checking the Peugeot’s oil one evening and seeing those psychedelic colors that come from coolant. But I have seen a big one, and heard of another big one.
The one I saw was at the Historic Races out at PIR about 20 years ago. A rare Ford GT40 came out on the track to race. This is one of the cars that Henry the Deuce built to say FU to Enzo and win LeMans, which they did in ’66-’69, after a similar string of Ferrari victories. Anyway he was racing well, until suddenly Bang, Smoke, coast into the pits. He threw a rod, big hole in the block, I saw it. Wow, he threw a rod in a million-dollar car. You have to admire the kind of man who would take his precious investment out and mix it up on the track. Of course he could afford the repair, that’s not the point. So many of these cars end up behind velvet ropes or just locked away, not being the cars they were built to be. It sounded and looked fabulous.
The other one was told to me by my best friend in jr. high school, who swore it was true. A guy had just finished a big racing engine in his ’57 Chevy. Hadn’t gotten around to the three-on-the-tree tranny yet. Out showing off one night (my friend swears he saw this) he winds it out in first, throws it up into second and pops the clutch. Only he missed and caught reverse. The whole underside of the car explodes like the 4th of July, the new crank is bent, and the driver gets a serious whiplash.
I have a theory: The average person…has average luck. But there’s no such thing as the “average person,” right? The average person has 2.1 kids. That tenth of a kid is tough to find sitters for.
Now…the average guy, has average luck. But then, on the one side of the Bell Curve, are people who’ve won the Lotto…TWICE. Balancing them out…is me; I hit the trifecta of luck of a different sort.
I’ve cataloged the Yugo already. That was the most dramatic, but also the most predictable. With the wisdom of years, and 20/20 hindsight – I can say with confidence that only a FOOL would take a Yugo any farther from home than he could walk.
But, there were others. That Grate GM Feeling…at age 19, making a dollar an hour over minimum, I felt rich enough to do with a NEW car. The reason for that was that I lost all I’d invested in my Super Beetle, which disintegrated into rust – and was also a satchel of trouble after having been rear-ended, requiring a replacement engine.
So, I bought a Chevette. “Highest quality build of any GM car, EVER!!” trumpeted the buff books. So, I’d be better off than if I spent a thousand more on a Rabbit (actually, that’s probably true, as my mother’s later experience proved). Parents cosign on the note, and I got me a new-new CAR!
With all the problems associeted with 1970s Detroit iron. And all the problems related to domestic-brand dealers. Early on, the brake warning light came on. Brakes felt okay, so I took it to the dealer. In and out…and then, at home, an odd rise in the hood at center catches my eye. I pop it…and the damned mechanic left a roll of electrical tape on the inner fold; closed the hood on it. Nice work.
But now I’m curious…what did he need to be taping off? I find…he’d CUT THE WARNING LIGHT SENSOR WIRE!! That’s right…couldn’t even be bothered to unplug it; just cut it off and taped the two ends to the wire-loom. Mister Goodwrench at work.
The odometer broke at about 8000 miles…one of the drums froze up and then the tenth-mile digit would just click! every time it rolled to zero. Out goes the speedo, in goes a new…that reads 20 mph fast at 60. Waited a month for an “adapter” that made it only TEN miles an hour fast at 60.
Awright. That’s the way it is. But it’s mine, and I owe more than it’s worth, and by this time I’d gone back to school. Making $52 a WEEK part-time work, night work, 25 miles from home. And glad of the chance; anyone who was an adult in 1980 knows what the times were like.
And one morning…after being in class all Friday, and working all night, I go and start the thing up…and there’s this odd knack-knack-knack! when it’s at fast idle. Disappears at regular idle. I go by my (independent) mechanic’s shop, and he pronounces…”Wrist pin.”
He’s busy, and he doesn’t have time on a Saturday morning to babysit me. And I don’t have the MONEY to have it torn down. And I don’t know how catastrophic that might be….so I opt to drive home, 25 miles in the country in New York State in winter.
Sure enough, it lets go. A frame-shuddering BANG! and then the engine makes some horrific noises at it spins down and I grind to a stop. And now I have FIFTEEN miles to walk, to get home, after being up all night…and I’m due in to work that night. Goes without saying, I didn’t make it.
Somehow, I managed to convince my old man to pay for the rebuild…there’s an ugly story that follows, but it’s not germane to the topic. And I saved the job…for a few weeks. I was “downsized” at the boss’s earliest opportunity; and finished community college with $28 in the bank and a big stock of mac-and-cheese dinners.
And what comes of that is, 31 years later, I will still NEVER own a GM vehicle. I made exception with the Metro; but something their Planned Obsolescence Department engineers and foists off on the public? NO WAY.
Interesting 1980 I was driving the ancestor of that Chevvette a 1965 Vauxhall Viva but with 78 Chevette 1256cc motor it axtually went well as it weighed nothing very little steel went into its manufacture, flimsy would be the best way to describe the body shell but mechanically it was ok.
The Metro is a Suzuki and has as much to do with GM as a Pinto…
“The Metro is a Suzuki and has as much to do with GM as a Pinto…”
Exactly, and that is why I bought one…and another…
Unlike the Vega or Chevette, the Metro offered honest value. But even then, I had to deal with the GM mindset at dealers…fresh out of the Navy in 1995, I wanted to buy a Metro new. A friend had one, I drove it and liked it.
And THREE dealers in my area basically tried the bait-and-switch. They patiently, as if talking to an idiot, told me how for “almost the same money per month” I could have a Chevrolet Malibu Blandwich. I couldn’t get it through to them that I didn’t WANT a Malibu, or anything else; and that I was willing to PAY LIST on a Metro. I’d even arrange my own credit, if that was their problem. Could be the easiest sale they’d make all week; produce the car and sales order, and I’m gone.
No, they wouldn’t. Didn’t even stock any. Wouldn’t look for any elsewhere. Fuggem.
OK, not me, but one of my college roommates managed to blow up not one but TWO engines, in the SAME WEEKEND!
It’s a Friday night and he’s driving a 1983 Lesabre sedan equipped with the 5.7 diesel home from college in Flint, MI to a suburb of Detroit – about a 75 mile trip one way. He calls me from a phone booth (this is 1985), somewhere about half way to Motor City, saying that the engine is consuming mass quantities of both oil and coolant (blown head gasket of course). I advise him to get a tow. He decides to load up on extra oil & coolant and try to drive it home; dead engine #1. That was a darn nice car, too, and it would get almost 30mpg on the highway.
On the return trip to Flint on Sunday evening, he’s piloting a late 70s Caprice with the Chevy 350. Again, I get a phone call (I was the “car guy” in our house) stating that the temp light came on, and that the car had died as he was trying to make it to the next interchange about a mile away. He was about 30 miles outside of Flint, so I loaded up my tools and headed out.
The engine would crank and crank and crank with no signs of life. It had fuel; it had good spark (still have my home-made spark plug ignition tester with a permanently attached ground wire and clip). Then I noticed that the battery had mysteriously not run down yet after way too much cranking. I pulled a few plugs, and they were wet with coolant (ruh-roh). Inserting the compression tester confirmed what should have been obvious – there wasn’t any compression!
Root cause – a failed radiator cap. That little return check valve in the center of the (probably never replaced) stock cap had failed to seal, and had allowed all of the engine coolant to escape out the overflow reservoir and down the inner fenderwell (leaving a nice big brown coolant trail). Both heads were seriously warped I suspect. The ‘temp’ light on the older American cars is basically telling you that you are already screwed (only Cadillac had a secondary head temperature sensor with an additional light and buzzer).
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when he explained to his dad how he managed to kill two of the family cars in one weekend!
GM Holden used the same cheap trick the temp light comes on just as the engine locks solid
Not just the ‘temp’ light, also the ‘oil pressure’ light. They should just be called “replace engine” lights.
Wow, my stranded stories are minor compared to all this. Batteries going dead at drive-ins (ahem, speaking of virginity), and… there was this one time, a plug wire melted by coming into contact with the header, because that was my first time replacing the plugs and of course it didn’t even occur to me to make sure the wires had been routed well clear of the headers. Left a nice white mark on that header that still hasn’t worn off (yes, I still have the car)!
Another time a brake power assist failed and I crashed the car… miles from home… does that story count?
I loved the car and had to find a storage place in that town and store it, then 4 months later came back with a friend, replacement master cylinder, tools, and money. We weren’t allowed to work inside the storage place, so had to drive the car (brakes didn’t fail again, amazingly) to a local AutoZone parking lot, then had about 6 hours until it would get dark to fix her. We accomplished it, and I drove her home that very night. A front rebuild followed once home.
My first blown engine came about in 1993 with my Chevelle. I was still getting my sea legs as a “mechanic” and decided to do a cam swap on the tiring 350. Knowing how delicate the break in was I enlisted the help of a friend’s dad who was an actual mechanic. What I didn’t realize was that said mechanic had about a fifth of Johnny Walker in him and unfortunately his lack of judgement led to a large puddle of oil on the garage floor and a siezed engine.
My second engine failure was spectacular! I was on my way up I55 in my 80 AMC Eagle to visit my parents. I had made a few of the typical mods to it, 2100 carb, TFI ignition, Header and exhaust. That 258 really woke up but my foot was a bit more confident in the engine’s ability than the engine itself.
Cruising at a bit above the posted limit I started seeing smoke in the rear view mirror, then the rattle came, then lots of smoke and banging, and then quiet. I coasted to the shoulder, popped the hood and found that I had blown the front corner of the block clean off!
As a testament to that 258s toughness. I was able to start that sucker back up and limp it another 3 miles to the next exit and into a parking lot before she finally locked up for good.
Here’s one I forgot about:
I owned a very rusted-out 1961 Bel-Air 2 door sedan, black w/white top. The thing was a 3 on the tree, 235. Manual AM radio and nothing else except a heater. The interior was beautiful, but the body was shot. Funny thing – there was always a faint knocking deep down in the engine, but I paid it no mind. My buddy and I eventually fixed the body and I revamped the interior by adding a padded dash and a 1960 Chevy Impala steering wheel, changed the interior to black, installed 1963 Corvair bucket seats and dyed the rear bench, installed an under-dash 4-track tape player (this was 1969 and it was obsolete then), and my friend painted it Camaro Rallye Green when I left for basic training. The car was easily spotted from the air! Well, over the holidays while I was in California (I didn’t drive out there), the car was still home in Jennings, Mo. The engine threw a rod when dad went to move the car one day. It punched a hole in the block. My buddy sent me a few greasy, oily pieces of cast iron a week later! Eventually I sold the car and I bought my avatar in June, 1970, in California.
I’ve had 2 engines grenade over the years. I had a .030 over 283 Chevy in my Vega that had a solid lifter cam which (theoretically) allowed 7000 RPM. It chucked a rod at the top of 3rd gear and oiled down 400 feet of dragstrip on a Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t too popular in the pits for awhile. The top end was all that was salvageable.
I had a crankshaft break on an NTC400 Cummins pulling max weight on a long hill one night. It sounded and looked like I had driven over a landmine. 700,000 miles on an engine was asking a lot back then.
Dear lord, this site is dangerous. Only blown engine I remember – not on my car, and I didn’t do it – was an act of sabotage on a kid who ratted out some people. I know nothink! My kids aren’t getting licenses ’til 19 at the earliest!
My mom’s 1964 Buick Riviera 425 w/ Turbo Hydramatic. I was 17 or so, running errands for her. Full throttle acceleration from a traffic signal, in drive, it blew just prior to what should have been the 1-2 upshift. Hole in the side of block, mom had a used 425 nailhead installed.
I professed then, and even today I wasn’t abusing the engine. But lets just say it was running at the hardest end of the normal range. I have not blown another engine to this day and they all get a dose of full throttle occasionally.
Well I have blown two engines that I can recall right now. I have ruined others but avoided catastropic failure on the road. Both were Nissan NapsZ engines.
I had a Z22 in a 1981 Datsun pickup that used a quart of oil every tank of gas and then started to get worse. I was coming home from Austin one night (to Conroe Tx) and the engine just started slowing and stopped. Engine was frozen solid. About a year prior to that I had to change a water pump and one of the bolts snapped off. Away from home I epoxied the seam and it stopped the leak. The funny thing is that when I had to swap the engine, that was pretty confusing to the mechanic who was going to use the same water pump. He just couldn’t understand how I had welded it so well.
Just last year I spent a pile on a Z24 engine for my 87 nissan truck. Broken recovery vessel and it overheated with no warning. Frozen solid.
Much as I like them, I don’t think I will buy another napsz engine. They run great but seem to hate head gaskets.
Back in 1999, I worked for a pie company, delivering their pies within a 100km radius. The vehicle was a 1994 Toyota Hiace 2.8L diesel van. My circuit was around 1800km per week, so by 1999 the Hiace had over 400,000km on the odometer. It was all open-road running, so the body and engine were still good as new.
The local Toyota dealer who supplied the van new, serviced it every 10,000km. The service book had run out of space, so they recorded everything electronically. At the 420,000km service, I asked when the cambelt was due to be replaced, they replied that their system would tell them, and the system said it wasn’t due. Wrong!
So a couple thousand km later, I was cruising along as usual at 5am, when the engine suddenly stopped. No noise or smoke or anything, it just stopped in an instant. “Hmm”, I thought, “that’s odd…I’ll drop the clutch and see if that re-starts it…”. Horrible noises and instant wheel lockup ensued…
It turned out the cambelt was well overdue for replacement, and the instant silence was when it broke. The bad noise when I dropped the clutch was the sound of a valve going through(!) a piston… Sigh. My boss and I went to the dealer when the engine had been dismantled, and the chunk missing out of the piston was quite spectacular. The valve was in the sump in tiny pieces. Yet, Toyota’s reputation for bullet-proof engineering was obvious, because even after 420,000km, the engine didn’t need a rebore, and the crankshaft was undamaged! So one new head and four new pistons/rings later, I was back on the road. You’d think this story ended happily, but oh no…
With the engine rebuilt, I was taking it easy through the running-in period, but it was using an awful lot of oil. I told my boss and the Toyota dealer, they said it was just running in. Then, at about 426,000km, it started smoking bad…lots and lots of thick, black, rich smoke. It was getting awful hot too! I reported this again, but to no avail. At 429,000km I was driving along cautiously, temperature gauge fairly high, when the engine went “pfffffft”, and was then instantly silent. Again… This time though, it had got too hot and siezed… After 30 minutes of cooling down (me and it!) I got it going again and took it the 3km to the dealer (picking up my boss en route). The enormous cloud of black smoke following us into the dealer was proof something was seriously wrong.
Anyway, long story short, it turned out the piston rings were slightly wedge-shaped and only meant to go on one way up (wider part at the bottom to stop oil forcing up as the pistone descended). But the dealer had fitted the rings upside down, so that every time the piston was on its down stroke, oil was being forced from the sump into the combustion chamber…
The happy ending is once the rings were the correct way up, the van ran happily again for another couple of hundred thousand km. It was finally scrapped, with 674,000km on the clock, in 2007, as rust was setting in and it wasn’t worth fixing the rust. I’d long moved on to another job by then though.
Gotta love the Toyota engineering, gotta hate the dealer stuffing up! I drive Nissans now – and yes the cambelts are checked regularly!
Since we’ve wandered into components breaking, I’ll share this. Back about 1977, one of my high school buddies was working at an auto body repair shop, got a great deal on a salvage Buick. Not just any old Buick, but a GS455 Skylark. One problem, the front end was smashed from an accident and it was enough to have put the fan through the radiator and the original engine seized.
No worries, my friend Dave puts in a slightly warmed Buick 350 instead and off we went cruising. By this time the car was on it’s third owner, second engine and front clip and frankly the stuff in the 70’s just didn’t hold up to abuse as well we’d like to think.
Even though Dave had swapped in a 350, he never removed the GS455 badges from the replacement front clip he’d bought. The aftermarket headers and Thrush mufflers made the GS sound pretty stout. But you could goad Dave into doing something stupid occasionally.
One night while we were out in the GS, some punk in a Pontiac (IIRC) decided he wanted to drag. Somehow this clown got Dave’s goat (so to speak) and it was on. We lined up on a semi deserted piece of freeway, and when the traffic light changed we were racing.
As the tranny in the GS grabs third gear, we hear a loud BANG, and then this weird scraping rapsy sound. Of course we have no idea what had just happened. Dave pops the car into neutral, and yes the motor is still running, we can hear it rev. But when he puts it into gear, the engine revs, but no forward movement. By now the Pontiac was long gone and we were rolling to the side of the freeway.
We get out to check the car, and then it becomes obvious: The front universal joint had snapped, and fell to the ground. Luckily (and I do mean it sincerely, thank you Jesus) the driveshaft just slid along the road way. No pot holes, no seams, no cracks in the road surface. Had there been one, we would have found out what it was like to pole vault a Buick.
So, there we were with a car that had a perfectly good running engine and transmission, just no driveshaft. We walked about a mile to a public phone (as my kids would say, a what?) and called my brother to come pick us up. Thankfully, it wasn’t real cold that February night, but after we realized what could have happened to us, the cold really wasn’t an issue.
It was October 1979. I’d just started college and was driving my pride-and-joy, a ’57 Chevy 150 2-door sedan. With me were two rather attractive young ladies, Martha the brunette and her strawberry blonde roommate, Ladean.
The ol’ no-flame 235 was a chain smoker when I’d bought the car five months earlier, but a quick ring and rod-bearing job did the trick.
Or so I thought.
About a mile from campus, one of those bearings spun in its journal and the car began to smoke and rap, announcing its presence long before you could see it coming back on the dorm parking lots.
I managed to get it parked and upon getting out, Ladean announces, “I wanna what a blown-up motor looks like!!”
Of course there was little to see, all the damage was confined to the bottom end of the engine.
I spent Christmas break that year with my uncle Ron and good friend Scott, swapping in a 265-V8 I’d found in a junked ’56 BelAir. It used a quart of oil every 300 miles but hey, it ran better than the 6, and the gas mileage actually improved a little.
Two years later the 265 was in need of a rebuild and someone my dad knew had a 307 that “ran good when it was taken out” of whatever it was in. So I paid the guy $100 and got the motor.
Did I mention it was laying on the ground near the guy’s dog house?
By this time I was dating the lady who would become my wife. I proposed in that ’57, we made out in that ’57 and I wanted to take it on our honeymoon.
Hopeless romantic…how ’bout just plain hopeless.
God only knew how many wars that 307 had been through before it found itself on the ground beside the doghouse where I’d bought it. It took forever to get it running and never sounded particularly healthy. But we took it on our honeymoon.
About 20 miles from home a rod bearing let go and we limped it home. Next morning I tried to limp it to work (don’t ask!). The connecting rod had had enough, and broke in two just above where the studs hold the cap in place. What was left of the rod jammed itself up into the camshaft, breaking it in two.
I rebuilt the 265, even going for a new performance cam and cam bearings. That engine started but never built oil pressure.
After shutting it down I called in professional help, who quickly discovered the entire back half of the engine had been starved of lubrication and destroyed. They recommended a machine shop who would build a 283 for me.
$400 and installation later, that was the end of my engine woes.
At least in that car.
There would be another epic engine failure or two in other less memorable vehicles along my motorific journey…but you never forget your first.
And from the time Ladean asked to see “what a blown-up motor looks like”, my ’57 had a name:
Tusk. As in the Fleetwood Mac song that was climbing the Top 40 the day the “Blue Flame” 235 blew up.
The breakdown in the middle answers the question, “what does a blown-up motor sound like?”
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Postscript:
Sometime in 1988, while devouring the latest issue of Hot Rod, a high school shop teacher had written into the Tech column…”tell your readers when they install cam bearings in a 1955-56 265 Chevy, always make sure to line up the oil holes in the back cam journal, because that journal is not grooved” (it just has an oil hole at the top and bottom of the journal…that matches the oil holes in the cam bearing when installed correctly).
Unlike every other cam journal in every other SBC to roll off a GM assembly line from 1957 forward.
The letter continued…”If you don’t line up those holes, the entire back half of the engine will not receive lubrication”.
Finally after six years, I’d learned why the 265 I’d rebuilt didn’t get oil to the back of the engine….because of some long-forgotten technical detail unique to the first two years of SBC production.
I personally have not killed a car engine. Closest Ive come is bending a valve in my toyota pickup (drove another 3000miles on three cylinders). a friend in high school had a similar 22R and threw a rod right threw the block. Amazingly the car drove a half mile home with the rod destroying the block the whole way. I have destroyed a few boat engines by losing coolant flow small block chevy and an outboard come to mind,
First time posting…
In 1973, I had a ’68 Honda 350 with the overhead cam. Bought it from a friend who had “done a little work on the engine”. Apparently, when he put the engine back together, the timing chain tensioner wasn’t quite tight enough…
We were going to a field trip to Delco-Kokomo from Champaign for something at college. Early morning, I went to pass a car and get to the parking lot for the carpool. Engine went dead silent and I coasted to a stop. Made it to Delco, though. That evening, I pushed the bike home (about half a mile) and my friend and I surveyed the damage. Not overly gruesome, except that there were little bits of timing chain everywhere in the engine. As it turns out, we were sloppy mechanics and I had continuing problems with 1) leaking joints in the head stack, and 2) bits of Gaskecinch clogging the oil takeup. I ended up killing the cam a couple of times before I gave up on that engine…
Summer 1997. I’m leaving the Parnelli Jones tire store in Compton, where I work as assistant manager. My ride is my 1968 Mercury Cougar, my daily driver and weekend drag racer I put together in my parents’ garage. Being an immature 20something, I had beaten that car within an inch of life on numerous occasions. This time it finally had enough.
I merge onto the westbound 105 freeway and floor the gas. I barely make it onto the freeway when I hear a loud bang and the car refuses to move forward any further. I coast to the side and call a friend, who calls AAA and sends them to my location. Later examination revealed that the budget rebuilt transmission I bought from some fly-by-night operation in Gardena only a year earlier finally crapped out.
I fixed it and drove another two years before the head gasket blew. The car’s been sitting in storage ever since.
Early this summer I was driving my ’72 Olds Delta 88 convertible when the timing chain let go. The sudden wild error in timing created a huge backfire that destroyed the brand-new muffler I had professionally installed only hours earlier. I was absolutely livid. I limped it to a friend’s house nearby, we monkeyed with it enough to get it running, and I drove it home. It’s sitting in my garage as we speak as I take advantage of its dormant state by fixing all its various minor issues.
Hooboy, catastrophic engine failures…
1955 Thunderbird got when I was 17, back in about 1971 (only $1500 cars then). Do NOT over rev a 292 Y Block, as i found out the hard way. Drag raced a friend’s 1965 Mustang one night, missed a shift and wound it a little tight. 3 days later, cruising down the highway, and WHAM, engine seizure with a 3 speed with OD tends to lock up the rear tires when it stops. Hit the clutch and straighten things out, coast to the side of the road…. got it towed home, pulled the engine and replaced it with a 312 Y Block from a 57 Mercury sitting behind the barn, thinking I’d rebuild the original motor later. Tore down the old motor and WTF? The rear 3 or 4 inches of the cam are missing, having gone down thru the block, taking out the rear 2 pistons and rods, cylinders, EVERYTHING inside the block is gone. Leaving one helluva mess in the pan, how it didn’t go thru the block/pan I’ll never know. Kept that motor sitting around for years as a “you’ll never believe this one” example. Several more blown motors after that, but they were all under $100 Studebakers with straight 6s, so they weren’t really catastophic, just inevitable. They each threw the #5 rod out the driver side of the block, almost identical holes in all of them.
I have several and 2 of them involved my parent’s cars as they drove. The rest, are from my sundry fleet of wheels.
The first and oldest vehicle and time:
1964 Dodge Dart 330 wagon, year, 1973 (I think), had gone to Yakima Washington with the family one weekend to get fruit and veggies from the farms to bring back to can and make jams/jellies when in our Sunday best, on I-90 on the way back to Tacoma when the Torque-Flight transmission finally goes at I think 135K or so miles.
We get a ride back with a family in an older Dodge Dart (or Valiant from the mid 60’s) and they take us right to the house. Dad stays behind, get it towed to a nearby shop and I think comes home and he and my Mom go back I think the next day to find a used transmission and have it installed. We’d drive that old beast until 1977 when we finally sold it (had it since new).
The next one was in the late 80’s when the 1985 Honda Accord SE-I snaps its timing belt while out on road trip with a foreign exchange student, my grandmother as we head out to Mt Rainier and on the way, the belt goes, thankfully on the down stroke so no additional damage but we had it towed to the dealer in a dilapidated, I think late 60’s tow truck with Dad and me riding in it. I forget how the rest got home but we got the car fixed and drove it until we replaced it with a 1991 Honda Accord EX sedan.
The third one was me driving Dad’s ’83 Chevy Citation (2800 V6/auto) in August of 1990 to Klamath Falls Or from Tacoma Washington when on my way back home, the transmission begins to slip at highway speeds, I pull into a gas station late in the day as the sun sets and discovered it was leaking tranny fluid and had it topped off and I got home no problem. Had Dad get it checked and fixed. He drove that car until 1997 when he gave it to my oldest sister and her current husband when they needed wheels after moving out here from Tennessee.
Sept 1990, I drove to Bend Or for a job interview in my ’78 Ford Fairmont, headed down from my parent’s place in Tacoma via I-5 to Eugene/Salem before heading across the Cascades through the northern edge of Deschutes National Park to the town of Sister’s and then into Bend. They were doing construction on a good part of the highway to Sister’s and every time we’d stop, I’d get smoking emanating from the bottom of the car, a slow leak caused transmission fluid to drip onto the hot catalytic converter but no other issues and when I got back home, found the bolts to the pan had loosened up enough to cause a slow leak so I tightened them and I think topped off the transmission fluid and all was well until about a year or so later when the thrust plate to the torque converter gave way, spilling all the transmission fluid all over the library parking lot and I almost destroyed the transmission trying to get it out of the way and partially burnt the clutches. Got it fixed and it remained fine until I sold it in 1992.
My best friend’s 1962 GMC 1/2 ton truck in 1997 he’d bought the year before cooked its battery on a road trip we took up to the family mountain cabin from his place in Seattle to the Cascades, were on our way home when we’d stopped at a small town for gas, he smelled what smelled like rotten eggs (what an over cooked battery smells like) and tried to see anything obvious. Could not find anything so we hopped into the truck, fired it up and headed off on our merry way. Got about a mile or 2 down the road and around a bend when the gauges went wonky and then, BLAM, another BLAM! before it finally dies at the side of the road. The poor truck was running solely on the battery apparently and it ran out of juice and just dies.
We hitch a ride with a nice young teacher in Florida who was on a road trip across the country for her summer vacation (it was August if I recall) in her Ford Explorer Sport and had picked up an Aussie passenger that she’d picked up in Alaska if I recall and they took us back up to the small gas station where we’d gotten gas and we found a tow truck that could come get us with the name of Hank’s Towing IIRC and bought some cheap assed Budweiser beer since between us, we’d had little cash and it was $3 for a 6 pack and they drove us back to the truck to wait for the tow. We’d had visions some scraggly old guy in his dilapidated tow truck to come get us, meanwhile, we waited and drank some of the beer in the back of the truck.
The guy shows up in a modern Mitsubishi flatbed tow truck, mid 40’s with a neatly trimmed close cropped beard and he pulled the old truck onto that flatbed tow truck and took us to Enumclaw where we dropped it and us at the now closed Napa auto parts store (the sidewalks close up in town at 7pm, even on Saturdays) and we then called his folks for help.
It would be a while before they could come rescue us so we sat in the truck and talked for a bit and finally, mother nature took over and David took off across highway 410 to a grassy area on the other side, got into the grass a fair ways and did his business and I did the same and we finally walked along the highway past the now closed car dealers to a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner and got back to the truck.
Finally help arrives and we could not get it going (voltage regulator was not the answer) and we left the truck, David and I squeezed into the jump seats of his brother Dan’s ’92 Toyota SR5 extra cab truck back into Tacoma where we borrowed his Dad’s then ’88 Gran AM and headed home, not getting home until after midnight.
And finally, my ’92 Ranger truck. the master clutch cylinder goes out one cold night in Dec of ’06 and the original shop I had it towed to on Queen Anne Hill here in Seattle seemed shady so we towed it to Bremerton where it had been repaired when David had it at the college where he worked at the time. Got that fixed and then in 2009, the clutch slave cylinder goes out, leaving me stranded on I-90 on my way into work and the shop my insurance recommended (their emergency rescue program) was no longer so had to find a spot to take it to and finally was told of a place on Pine St near Seattle Central CC on Capitol Hill where I live and got that fixed and the trucks been just fine since, now it just leaks oil and coolant but still runs just fine at 235K+ miles.
Here’s another memory/experience:
Before I entered the service after high school, I was over at one of my buddy’s friends and they just got finished rebuilding a SMC for his old ’55 Chevy. Well, they fired it up and it ran just fine. He drove it up and down the street and all of a sudden this big pool of oil appeared under the car. Shut off the engine to take a look. Oil filter loose. OK, tighten it up. Check the oil. Read “full”. OK, start engine, drive up and down the street. On the way back to his driveway, all of a sudden the car stopped. Dead. Wouldn’t start, wouldn’t even crank. Push it into his driveway. Oil still read full. What’s wrong? Couldn’t even turn the engine by hand. Oh-oh! The guy who initially checked the oil wasn’t told the dipstick was from another car and had the actual “full” mark scratched ‘way up the stick, about four inches above the marked “full” mark! The engine simply lost all its oil when the filter came loose and it was locked up tight! That puddle of oil was almost five quarts’ worth on the street! Ouch! Not a happy bunch and we left shortly after that. I later heard they just pulled the pan and replaced the bearings and apparently were good to go about a week later. Glad it wasn’t me!
I found out (not the hard way, fortunately) that if the oil filter gasket isn’t positioned correctly, a ’58 Plymouth 318 engine can put all its oil onto the lube-room floor almost before you can shut it off.
Thankfully, I’ve never blown an engine. I’ve been stuck on the roadside twice though, and come close once.
My first car, a 1984 VW Rabbit diesel (back to the VW theme!) with a 4-speed stick. My drive to work involved driving for about 15 minutes on the freeway, then going up a long hill which I had to take in 3rd gear. About 1/3 of the way up the hill, I looked in my rearview mirror and the road behind me was obscured by a white smoke cloud! Temp gauge was starting to climb. Head gasket had failed between a coolant passage and one of the cylinders, and it was pumping all the coolant through the engine and out the exhaust. Fortunately, the place I worked was right at the top of the hill. After work, I refilled the coolant and drove home without incident, then changed the head gasket.
First time I was actually stuck at the roadside, I was driving my mom’s 1992 Roadmaster. My dad was in the passenger seat. It was October, and we were taking it for a long drive before getting it ready for winter storage. We got on the highway and I hammered the gas on the on-ramp. White cloud behind the car and the temp gauge starts to climb. We pull over and shut the car off. The engine had a factory block heater, which popped out of its hole and dumped all the coolant. It was bound to happen sooner or later, because the tabs that held it in the block had rotted away. My dad still chewed me out for “abusing the car”. Had to wait for a police officer to stop and asked him to call a tow truck.
Second time was this past summer. I was driving one of my Chryslers to a car show. Decided to take scenic sideroads instead of the main roads. Unbeknownst to me, a checkvalve in the fuel pump was failing. It was able to supply enough fuel at highway speeds, but the carb would be starved for fuel and go dry if you idled for too long. I had just overhauled the engine in this particular car 2 years prior, and the fuel pump was just about the only part that I didn’t replace. Go figure. I borrowed the phone at the house we stopped in front of, my wife brought some gas, and I was able to get the car to the carshow and back home. It died again in my driveway after I got out to open the garage door.
My one and only breakdown was during college one Thanksgiving eve in the mid ’80’s driving from Sonoma State to my parents home in Los Altos. I had recently purchased a pristine 1980 VW Rabbit (Fuel Injection ‘C’). My original plan was to drive down on Thanksgiving day but feeling homesick I decided to forgo the Wednesday night parties and start driving. Driving down the 101 through Novato my normally trusty Rabbit starts to cut out during any driving conditions. Didn’t matter what level of acceleration, incline, or RPM’s. It was then that I noticed how desolate that area is between Santa Rosa and the Golden Gate Bridge. The car would cut out and not start so I’d get out and push it for awhile.
After some time the Rabbit would start so I’d get back in and drive for awhile all the while realizing that the Waldo Tunnel / Waldo Grade and the Golden Gate Bridge were coming up. The Waldo Grade, which is soon followed by the Golden gate, has literally no area to turn off-it’s just lanes. If your car dies it’s in the lane and there’s nowhere for you to stand around for a tow truck. This was in the mid 80’s too so there are no cell phones and as I soon realized, no gas stations (pay phones) to speak of. I had CHP passing me by all night as I nursed my car down the road.
So I couldn’t stop to get help before the Waldo Tunnel so with the decision making ability of a 19 year-old I decide to chance it. So far it had taken me 12 hours to go about 30 miles. The Rabbit performed as normal as I enter the tunnel, cross the bridge, stop at the toll booth, and even through San Francisco. It again died just outside of SF as I entered 280 S. It started again and I drove to about the outskirts of Palo Alto when finally a CHP stopped to help. It was daylight now and they contacted my dad and got a tow truck.
Sometime later the Rabbit was at the shop (Reitmeir’s Werkstatt, Los Altos, CA) and I remember after a brief explanation of my Rabbit’s symptoms, the mechanic popped the hood and went right to the firewall to what l looked like a big coil. He unplugged the two plugs that went into it and then plugged those two plugs into each other. The Rabbit fired up strong right away and there was never a problem again. Somehow by-passing this canister/coil which to this day I have no idea what it is made the car run better than ever. If I had only known.
Shout-out here to Reimeir’s for the free diagnosis, and free instant repair.
Funny how so many of these stories involve VWs. Hmmmmmmm.
My brother-in-law and his wife recently bought a new VW Golf wagon. It had neither a diesel nor a manual transmission (the only two reasons worth buying a VW, IMO). I told him he should’ve saved some money and bought a Chevy. He said they really wanted a station wagon.
Here’s one more VW story. It was my first engine failure in 16 years, and as many cars, of driving. Ironically, it was also the car I paid the most for. Happened earlier this year, a 2002 Passat Wagon with the 1.8t. Just in case you might think that buying a questionably maintained Passat with the 1.8t and 150,000 miles might be a good idea, you would be wrong. I knew about the sludge issues but talked myself (my wife helped too) into thinking it would be fine. After just 10 months of ownership (and as many relays/sensors), the engine sludged up and lost all oil pressure, clattering to a stop in a cacophony of burnt valves. Ironically, this happened about half a mile from the VW dealer, that I had just left after purchasing a new oil dipstick to replace the disintegrating original.
Back around 93 I bought a 75 Volvo 245 (the one year oddball with the B20 pushrod engine) with a rod knock. Since I was replacing entire engine, I started it and firewalled it until it let go. Blew out BOTH sides of block and the bottom of the oil pan. And I never ever found the rod cap, and boy did I look for it!
Mine was a 1982 Buick Century with the 3.0L V-6, my first car. It had developed the death rattle at around 105K miles while I was away at college in early ’93. One day on a county road about three miles from my apartment, it threw a rod through the block, all the oil ran out, and that was the end. I wasn’t even doing anything fun. Just driving a steady 60. Rolled to a stop on the gravel shoulder and a passing driver gave me a lift home without my even asking. Called my father to come get the car, which he did and had a replacement junkyard engine installed.
For all that it was a pretty good car nonetheless.
The other one was my wife. Our ’00 Intrepid (yes, the 2.7 V6, why do you ask?) developed a timing chain rattle at around 90K in the spring of ’04 and I had an appointment to get it looked at. Two days before the appointment the chain let go as she was about to start it and the car was instant junk. Sold it to a rebuilder on eBay for $1200.
Unfortunately just about everything assembled with a 2.7 was instant junk from the get go.
My mechanic got advice from a wrecking yard where he buys engines: avoid any Chrysler engine with a 7 in the number (2.7, 3.7, 4.7). I did not ask if this includes the 5.7 too. I hope not.
The 4.7 was actually a decent powerplant. I think it might have been a quickie design to replace the 5.2 and 5.9 so they could meet CAFE and EPA regs.
The 2.7 and the way Chrysler handled it’s issues was just really horrible.
Now, the Mopar guy within looks at the 2.7 and wonders what could be done with it after a few mods.
“Two days before the appointment the chain let go as she was about to start it and the car was instant junk.”
Yeah, unfortunately you and a million other (former) Chrysler owners.
OK, I must confess, I have experienced sudden engine destruction. It was my own damned fault, and I was so mad at myself I’ve developed a mental block. I honestly didn’t think of this event until now.
One-year-old ’87 Celica GT, bought new, my pride and joy and daily commuter. Sweet 2.0 L DOHC. On the way to work one morning, after puttering through city streets I’m winding it out on the ramp to I-405’s Fremont Bridge. The following occurred within about two seconds: sounds funny, check the oil pressure, Zero!!!, cut the key and hit the clutch. Too late. Pulled over to the shoulder, opened the hood, oil everywhere on everything. Sympathetic cop comes by pretty soon and calls me a tow.
Dealer finds two gaskets between the loose oil filter and the block. Damnit. It’s one of those can’t-see, reach-up-from-below, sidewise, get-hand-covered-with-oil filters and I carelessly didn’t make sure the rubber gasket came out with the oily filter when I’d changed it a month previous. Damnit.
Dealer rebuilt the whole top end. Big bucks. Never was quite as perfectly smooth afterwards. I stopped changing my own oil after that. Damnit.
That must have hurt. Almost did it myself once.