I quite like this new QOTD (or whenever) feature here at CC, and thought I’d toss my own up. A few weeks ago I had the first repairs done to my beloved 83 Tercel: new tie-rods and front strut cartridges. Meaning I would need an alignment, so I made an appointment at Jerry & Walt’s. They cautioned me about needing new tires as the cord was showing on several. I promptly ignored them and continued on, loving the new found sense of “handling” and “steering” that was so noticeably absent before. Seeing as how I did have a complete set of new used wheels/tires to put on thanks to my roommate, I eventually got around to pulling off the original rubber. Holy $#!T!No wonder the car was still wobbly even with all the repairs. So I turn the rostrum over to you, the CC faithful: what was the most dangerous and neglectful you ever got with a car without any disastrous results?
I’m pretty good with keeping up with maintenance on my cars, but while I was going to my divorce, stress and lack of money kept me from keeping up with it on the Toyota minivan I owned. The worst of it that I experienced was that somehow my front end when out of alignment, which over months messed up my front tires. I didn’t find that out of course, until I align the front end – and then the ride was still terrible thanks to my screwed up tires. The engine was losing power a little bit, and was making some funny noises, but about that time I traded the van in – so I have no idea what that was all about.
So is that a Toyo/Les Schwab tire?
Did the same thing in college in the late 80s, driving my beater ’76 Cutlass sedan with the steel belt exposed in places on a couple of the tires, because I was too broke to buy new ones.
Put new suspension parts on a Dodge Omni and then drove it 15 miles or so to a tire/alignment shop. The front tires had about 25% left when I started. When I arrived they were bald.
Wow you must have had the adjustment waaaay off. I did the tie rod ends on a customer’s car who had just had new tires put on and Costco had informed him that he needed the tire rod ends based on the wear of the tires that came off. I told him he needed to have it aligned the next day to prevent undue tire wear. I saw the car a few weeks later and the tires were almost bald as he still hadn’t got it aligned.
You’re going to out me on a very similar but even worse example. I did not realize how fast the original tires on my Xb were wearing in the front, until one day I heard a funny sound with the window open. I got home, and couldn’t believe my eyes. Here’s how bad it was! Very embarrassing!
For many years one of the ways that Toyota has been cutting costs is to put tires on with only 8/32″ of tread instead of the industry standard of 10/32″ for non-high performance car tires or 13/32″ for AT truck tires and usually a softer tread compound too. If you go to Tirerack you’ll find quite the interesting disparity in the amount of miles that Toyota owner can get out of the same brand and model tire that was also OE on other manufactures vehicles. The trucks have particularly large gaps since they left the lot with only about 1/2 the useable tread life compared to the others.
Chrysler also liked to spec out tires with 8/32″ of tread to save a couple of bucks per tire. Not sure if they still are under Fiat control.
OTOH, putting good high-milage rated tires on a Toyota (specific: Tacoma V-6 AWD) magnifies ride flaws. Costco put on a set of Duelers for me; the shake was so bad the tires were rebalanced several times; one tire was replaced. Under their guarantee, we replaced them with a set of Michelins. Same problem. Took it to the Toyota dealer where I bought it and a “road force” balance got the ride more civilized — but not right.
Couple more trips to the dealer, then got the Toyota district rep involved. His conclusion: the ride was normal.
Parenthetically, Toyota replaced the original OEM tires on this truck at 15K miles as defective. Service writer at the time opined to me (but did not commit to paper) that Toyota’s steel wheels were likely the problem. But their solution for a cheap fix was to lay off the expense to the tire manufacturer.
One of these days, I really ought to buy some good alloy wheels and see if that makes a difference.
BTW, I can’t say enough positive about the attitude of Costco and their tire shop employees — these guys really busted their asses for me. Too bad they didn’t have the road force equipment.
From the factory the wheels and tires are marked for the high and low spot. They then line up those spots to make the tire as concentric to the hub as possible. The problem is that the mark on the wheel is a sticker which then gets removed or falls off.
Bridgestone tires are known for not being round out of the box and in the rare case that you do get 4 round ones then they will not stay that way. Typically Michelins are very good about being round, fairly well balanced and staying that way.
The base model Tacomas look extraordinarily stupid with their cheapo Dunlops on tiny little 14″ steelies. Clown car profile especially if it’s a crew cab Tacoma with the tiny base tires and wheels. Looks alone would force an owner of one of these to pony up for bigger wheels and tires.
i bet it drove much better with tyres that are round, but yeah Ive driven cars in appalling condition before the kind that if it stops you simply walk away, I drove a 71 XY Falcon from Cairns in far north Queenland to Sydney several thousand kilometers with bald tyres and smoke pouring from the engine 120 mpg on waste oil begged from service stations along the way, the damn thing kept running for a month until I located a cheap engine from a friends junk collection upon which it promptly threw no 3 rod thru the side of the block didnt matter I replaced the engine and some tyres and drove it another 6 months before abandonning the car in Orange NSW as it wouldnt start and I’d had enough of it. Align it ,nar no point everything was worn beyond effective repair just and end of life car I nursed it into the grave,
You need your own reality show.
Kiwi Bryce: Holden Tough!
Hey, I’d watch that!
Idea: “The Great Australian LeMons Rally”. Each team gets $500 and they have to find a beater to make it from Canberra back to Canberra via Melbourne, Perth, Darwin and Brisbane. All repairs have to be sourced from local junkyards or available in-stock parts/materials at Bruce’s Auto Parts Emporium or be penalized x amount of time.
FYI, some folks there make their own clutch plates out of wood. It lasts about 2,000 miles or so.
That “clutch pack out of wood” thing reminds me of one of the most ridiculous non-standard “repairs” I’ve ever heard of.
I forget where it was exactly, but at some point during the infancy of the internet, there was a message board I read regularly where some guy claimed over and over again that he was able to “re-surface clutch discs” by (I swear to god) shaking up a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola and spraying it through an access hole he had drilled into the bellhousing. Everyone LOLed at him, but he swore up and down that it worked and he even had pictures showing this procedure taking place.
There was a tv show on I think the Australian ABC showing some mechanical ingenuity from isolated Aboriginal tribes called “Bush Mechanics”. They did carve a clutch disc from 2 pieces of mulga wood (a very tough wood), plus lots of other things such as
– brake fluid replacement using a mix of shampoo and something I can’t remember,
– using a washer pump to replace a blown fuel pump,
– warming a battery in the campfire on a cold morning,
– stuffing a blown tire with spinifex grass
– cutting the roof off a car to use as a sled to carry extra band equipment
All this was on dirt roads, away from populated areas. With one exception I can’t remember seeing them come across another car while doing any of these shenanigans.
Well with the family 93 Legacy dad drove it an extra 8 thousand or so miles with no third gear until one day it took five minutes to find a gear so we could drive it home. When we got home the tranny was leaking and smoking and I had to sit out there (more like volunteered) with a fire extinguisher and cordless phone. A few years later the sheet metal around a rear strut tower broke from rust/metal fatigue and dad drove home on the axle stops. I say we got our money’s worth out of that car and New York Winters were a major factor in its death.
With my 87 Caprice Estate I accidentally let negative camber bald the inside of the front tires, did not care when it shuddered during check engine light scenarios, drove it into a few things on purpose, and soft roaded it on some seasonal roads. I then sold it to the Demolition Derby for a few hundred dollars.
However, the one that takes the cake is when I accidentally ran a red light totaling my 95 Voyager, I do not think you can get much more negligent than that.
If we’re looking to one-up each other with pure shame, I believe I once mentioned that a) I used to have a drinking problem, and b) I’ve never traded a car in for a new one. As a matter of pure honesty, those two facts explain why I am no longer in the Air Force as of April, my chosen screenname notwithstanding.
So yes, it does get more negligent than that.
When I was young, broke and recklessly irresponsible I drove lots of cars that were completely unsafe and in dire need of having tires, brakes and suspension parts replaced. I once kept a donut spare on a car for 6 months during which I took a 600+ mile road trip to Buffalo, NY – driving with the cruise control locked at 75MPH most of the way. It blew out eventually and I had to liberate another donut spare from an old, wrecked Nissan at an abandoned gas station somewhere along Route 17.
Then there was a Jeep Cherokee that had a hole in the radiator hose. I only worked about 2 miles from home so for a few weeks I would fill the radiator with water when leaving home, drive to work with water spilling everywhere and the engine about to overheat, let it sit all day and fill it back up with water for the drive home. Somehow, this did no damage to it and I drove it for years afterwards.
That’s not even the worst, though…
The worst was an ’85 Honda Accord with a bad master cylinder. It still worked, but it could only bring the car to a complete stop from ~10MPH if you stomped the pedal as hard as possible. I got used to driving slow and downshifting to take off speed, driving it like this for several months without any problems – even in a few snow storms. At some point I needed a new set of tires, so I brought it to the tire place and forgetting that NORMAL people aren’t used to driving a car that doesn’t have functional brakes, I forgot to mention this to them. The attendant there proceeded to pull the car into the service bay and drive it straight into the back wall of the shop. I thought this was hilarious, they didn’t and refused to put the tires on!
“The attendant there proceeded to pull the car into the service bay and drive it straight into the back wall of the shop. I thought this was hilarious, they didn’t and refused to put the tires on!”
Hah! That IS good.
Reminds me of a story from a few years ago. I had just had performance brakes put on the Acura and was dinking around town one night and decided to push the brake pedal to the floor, for no good reason. As I neared the bottom something popped and the pedal simply went all the way down with no resistance. It was like your Accord; stomping would get the brakes but no other amount of pressure would. I got home and looked and the brake line on the driver side had exploded. Weird. So i get a new line and put it on. A few days later at another red light I figured I’d try flooring the pedal again and the passenger side line then blew up. God I’m dumb.
My one issue with Hondas, aside from rusting like crazy, was that they had somewhat iffy brakes. When they worked, they worked great, but out of the 5 or 6 Hondas I owned, I replaced just as many brake lines and master cylinders. That’s more than I’ve had to do on all 30 other cars I’ve owned combined!
MG: Not so dumb, actually. Better it happened (both times) when it did, than during an emergency braking. I think it was talking to you to do just that…and you listened.
Amen. A “chatty” car owner talks and listens to his ride. Especially if speakers are blown (radio off) and the hum of the drivetrain becomes the cicadas.
You learn the rhythms, the cadence of your engine, transmission, and brakes. You instinctively “investigate” perceived weak points as you notice them. You monitor guages. You know your brake pads are thinning by the seat of the pants, the glidey feeling of the rotors, way before the squeak. You take note of how your car handles “that one big bump” with a few of your friends in it (a canary for your rear suspension).
I could go on…
When you listen to your car, it speaks honestly.
Okay, Sean, you win. I am not sure such things are reckless or simply playing on fate.
A friend’s son brought over a 93 Plymouth Voyager stating that the brakes were making noise and the steering was wobbly. When I took it apart, the one brake rotor was 1/2 gone on the inside. The metal formerly known as the brake pads were rubbing on the center web of the rotor! The steering was due to both tires having steel belts showing on the inside. I was amazed that it worked at all.
Failure to keep up with maintenance runs in my family… here’s what the brake rotors (if they could even be called that) looked like on my dad’s ’95 Sedan deVille when I changed them. They fell apart as soon as I took the wheels off…
My 88 or 89 Regal – can’t remember the year but I was young and broke in 1998 and needed a set of wheels. The engine had a horrible tap, the brakes were so far gone it wasn’t even funny and 3 of the windows wouldn’t roll up right. I finally HAD to get the brakes fixed but never bothered replacing the bald tires (which were somehow fine in snow).
I drove it for about a year and then the engine threw a rod at an intersection. What a horrid car. I guess I could have replaced the engine but I was done with it.
The good news..it made my next car, a 92 Taurus, seem like a dream.
Decade plus old 82 Celebrity, always had front end alignment issues. In college I was scheduled to drive home one weekend, the old man had volunteered to pay for an alignment at the local alignment shop. (Remember those, shops that only did alignments?) He had driven the car a few weeks before and thought it was out of whack.
So I’m leaving Defiance, OH to go home for this alignment appointment. It is a Friday in February and snow starts to softly fall, turning into sleet. The passenger side front tire feels like it is doing its own thing but given the terrible weather I’m only driving about 35 mph and I figured that it was because of the bad conditions. Although I’d never had a tire act like it was the caster on a shopping cart. (This is a FWD car remember.)
I park the car and stay the weekend. Dad gives me a “loaner” of the family car on Monday and he takes the car to the alignment shop. Still a little icy and he thinks the thing is really handling badly.
He calls me that evening and tells me that when the boys at the alignment shop put her up on the lift the passenger front tire nearly fell off! The ball joint was busted…
As my grandmother said, “God watches out for children and dumb animals.” I fell into the dumb animal category.
Ha! My grandmother always said it was “babies and drunks”, which explains how she lived so long!
I also had the L/F ball joint come apart on my Grand Marquis while I was driving. It happened two houses down from where I lived, and I was only going about 20MPH – but it was far enough that I still had to call a tow truck to move the car 100′ into my driveway. Super embarrassing.
Celebrities (A bodies) I believe had a rack and pinion . . . . or did it not?
Dad said it was the ball joint that was shot. I know the only thing holding the tire to that side of the car was the CV joint. It must have been driven around 40 miles that way.
My 1997 Ford Ranger XLT is somehow still chugging along, despite the fact that it failed an inspection recently. All I know is that the back suspension has major issues due to age, etc. There’s a ton of rust underneath. Shop told me that the repair bill will likely be in the thousands, obviously more than what it’s worth.
I’m not sure what to do at this point.
Let it… (taking off sunglasses) Rust In Peace.
(Cue CSI Miami theme music.)
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
make sure to look to the left at nothing in particular while saying that…
Flog for scrap and get another thing to drive. It’s only a car and you should’t let emotion nickle and dime you on old beaters. There are loads of good cars in the $2000 rage. A good Buick Century can be had for that, really granny cars with low kms and easy to find.
Your next ride will be fun, too and it will last a long time, too, since you take care of it.
Amen on the $2000 Century’s. Eighteen months, 20,000 miles, and just a few maintenance items are all she has asked of me.
Mine was driving for about a year with a rusted gas tank. If the tank was filled too high, gas would dribble out of the (constantly growing) holes in the side of the tank, down over the hot exhaust pipe.
You don’t often hear about randomly exploding cars on the rusty east coast and I’m sure there are, or were, a lot of cars with perforated tanks, but I still shudder to think of it.
Did that with my beater college car too. Probably even more than a year. On the rare occasion I could afford to fill it up, gas would leak out of the pinholes near the top of the tank and the interior would get a very strong gasoline odor. I worked around it by driving with the tank practically empty at all times and never putting in more than three or four gallons at once, unless I absolutely had to for a trip back home.
My father had a customized Dodge B200 van with the captain’s chairs and wood paneling and carpeting inside-the works. Well, whomever did the work punctured the gas tank with a screw because it would reek of gas whenever it was more than 1/2 full. Anything lower than that and the smell would go away. We couldn’t discern any decrease in fuel economy (as terrible as possible with a ’79 Dodge van with four people and their gear and all we got maybe 15 mpg highway) so it must have been leaking past the screw instead of a full fledged gusher. We never got it fixed, but my father did make sure the gas tank was as low as possible when he traded.
What made this story negligent – he and Mom (but not me or my sister) were smokers. They were careful to never light up when they could smell gas but I’m surprised we never exploded. Me, I tried to stay as far away from the gas tank as possible.
Do rental cars count?
No. God created rental cars for our sadistic enjoyment.
You should hear the Jacobs on a rental tractor unit @2500 rpm
My ’66 Galaxie needed ball joints, which I couldn’t afford at the time – so I drove it til I wore out the front tires, then swapped ‘em for the rears; repeat. Got about 3000 miles before it became a lost cause…
Worn ball joints, fill a grease gun with body filler, and grease it, doesnt last but it gets you rusting dunger thru inspection
It’s funny how many of these tales revolve around tires. Tires are the one thing that everyone seems to neglect; even “car guys.”
This thread brings up an old, old memory from the early 80s. My brother and I were about 75 miles from nowhere when we got a flat tire. One of the recaps had gone bad. Remember recaps, or retreads, if you prefer? Also, we did not have a spare tire. So, we ended up walking a mile or two to the nearest gas station (taking turns rolling the tire), where they had a tire that would fit. For quite a while thereafter, my brother drove around with three whitewalls and one blackwall.
I consider myself something of an expert on how to stupidly neglect a car. My most recent blunder was leaving my car parked for three days with one of the windows rolled down. The car was down in the condo parking garage, so rain wasn’t an issue, but this is a case where the questionable ethics of one of my neighbors came into play. The jerk stole my garage door opener, and left my door ajar, which caused the dome light and the handy “door open” warning light to run down the battery. So, there I was, all prepared for a pilgrimage to the hardware store, with a car that couldn’t start and couldn’t leave the garage!
A few years ago I broke the passenger side tie rod end on my PT Cruiser. I knew it was on borrowed time, as I cracked a curb I couldn’t see in a big snowstorm a few months earlier. I had just come off the highway, stopped at home, and left to pick up my daughter from school. As I made the first right-hand turn three blocks from home, I heard a THUMP followed by the front wheels pointed in opposite directions. Oops. Of course being three blocks from home, I WAS NOT going to call a tow truck. I manually turned the disconnected wheel straight and crept to my first turn, got out and turned it in the desired direction, and eased through the turn. Three more times for this drill got me “safely” up my driveway and onto the floor jack, where I did the half hour job with the new tie rod end that I had already purchased.
Years ago I had a BMW 700 as a project car. It had no brake hydraulics, and I could never find the correct seals for the master cylinder. I drove it sporadically for a couple years with only a parking brake.
That anecdote gives new meaning to the term “manual steering.” I think I would have done the exact same thing.
My ’78 Rabbit’s driver’s seat had begun to list heavily to the left. I could also see the tarmac through a rather large gap in the floor along the left side structural member. I solved this problem by inserting an appropriately-sized 2×4 (a serendipitous event) underneath the seat and the side structure. I was amazed at how nice it was to drive the car without feeling that I was constantly taking right-hand corners on my door handle. It felt like a new car. Sometime later (a month, six months, a year-who knows), I was driving to work when I heard a big bang from the rear end. I attributed this to hitting a large pot pothole at an intersection. Then I remembered that that intersection had been recently repaved and was as smooth as a baby’s butt. Once at work, I checked out the right rear to find that the twist beam suspension had decided to separate itself from the unibody. Terminal rust. I briefly considered an ad-hoc repair to keep the piece of crap on the road, but regained my senses and gave the car away to a VW shop that agreed to tow the thing away for free. But not before I took off the Panasports, the Momo steering wheel, and the Neuspeed strut tower brace. Argentina, don’t cry for me.
My 1977 for which I had paid $700 did the same thing. I knew it was rusty but it looked okay after a bondo workover and paint job. I had it about three months and the rear axle separated from the car. It was so rusty it couldn’t be welded. I sold the hulk for parts for $500. The engine was excellent, new rad, etc, so it didn’t end up too bad for me.
I knew the tires on my ’95 LS400 were going bald, but decided to put off replacement until my next couple of paydays. Bad move. I rush out to my car on a Monday morning, late for work, when I saw that the right rear tire was flat.
The center of the right rear was worn down to the cords, enough that it would no longer hold air.
My first car a 71 Victor FD was rusting terminally when it started to burn oil.The oil consumption was so bad that 3 lanes of motorway were obscured by smoke.I ran it until it died 2 days before the MOT expired on balding tyres with a blowing exhaust and a hole in the boot floor you could stand in
Vauxhall didnt invent rust but they sure made it work well.
Strange how Vauxhalls rusted so badly when the metal was so thick compared to today’s cars.I popped a dent out of my nephew’s Fiesta door with my fingers.Try doing that with a 50s/60s car
I treated my late and much lamented ’77 Silverado 1500 like a red-headed stepchild. It had a tired 305 that I NEVER, i repeat, NEVER, changed the oil. I would drive it until it started rapping, then fill it back up (usually taking 5 quarts LOL). Did that for 250k or so miles I put on it. Damn thing wouldn’t die… until I sold it and the new owner promptly changed the oil… then BOOM… no more 305.
That’s funny (except to the guy that bought it) the sludge was filling in all the gaps from wear.
I’m guessing that if you removed a valve cover underneath it would have resembled a greasy Jello mould… yummy.
Back in ’85 I took a six week course in Chillicothe, OH. The master cylinder on my ’65 Caprice had been losing fluid slowly for a while, but not being mechanically inclined then, I just followed someones advice and added fluid to the cylinder periodically. Brakes did ok, but if you sat and held them too long, the pedal would go to the floor. Well, one day I went too long and I lost brakes, while the car was parked. A friend there said he knew you could substitute something for brake fluid, seemed to recall he said transmission fluid. So we proceeded to fill the brake system with trans fluid. Now I had a pedal that wouldn’t move! So we sucked that out with a turkey baster and bought brake fluid. Now it was time to go back home to Fairfax, Va, with no time to test. Seems the trans fluid made the brake system that much more uncontained, and I drove all the way home from Ohio to Virginia, with barely enough braking power to come to a complete stop. I even got pulled over at a speed trap and it took me about 2 miles to stop, but the officer didn’t question it. Had to do a lot of pumping the pedal. How I got home in one piece I’ll never know.
In my youth I drove on many bald tires. I ran my 56 Chrysler almost out of oil — it took five quarts when I finally noticed the oil pressure gauge was pointing at something bad. When I was old enough to know better, I drove my 72 Duster from Atlanta to NYC without brakes. I know it sounds ridiculous but it’s true and I made it using downshifting for toll booths and such and the emergency brake if all else failed.
Hmm… The most recent comes to mind was when the transmission finally gave up forward progress in my ’77 Chevelle a couple years ago. Still had reverse, and about 2 miles to go on a sunday afternoon. I whipped it around while I still had forward momentum, shoved it into reverse and got a major crick in my neck driving it backwards home. Got funny looks for that one.
I let a wheel fatigue out on on another car till it separated from the hub, and naturally the spare was flat, so I drove it 3 miles to the closest garage on the flat – ruined the tire which had a pinhole in the sidewall already, had them swap the tire from the bad wheel, still have the hub of the wheel as garage art.
The one time I wound an engine well past redline- getting on the highway from a dead stop, stomp on the gas and let the recently rebuilt 2.8 wind out, I notice that it’s quit gathering speed while I was concentrating on not getting ran over, glance down at the dash, I’m doing 70mph in 1st gear with the engine at maximum revs the tach would register (7,000 rpm on a 6,000 rpm redline) Let off the gas, as soon as it dropped below 6 it hit 3rd gear hard enough to chirp the tires. Engine was no worse for the wear. Same car I had a ball joint fail as I sold it to the car lot after buying my current Explorer.
I got the Explorer red-hot once, doing some off-roading in Colorado, my electric fan apparently died at some point and I didn’t notice it till we got back to civilization and parked it, no sooner had I shut it off, than I noticed the temp gauge was deep into the red, and 5 seconds after that, it had steam blowing past the radiator cap, the overflow bottle, it managed to sneak past a couple hose clamps. I rigged a way for the fan to be run by plugging into the cigarette lighter, got it running again, and it cooled right off. I half expected it to be dead, but it made the 800 mile trip home with only a failed second gear in the transmission, I drove it that way for about 10,000 miles before fixing it, redline it 1st, lug it in third till and don’t get in any hurry.
As a teen, I bought a 63 Cadillac. 5200 pounds of GM goodness. The car had two decent L78 tires on the front, but needed some rears. Not to worry, I had some G78 studded snow tires from my svelte (3800 pound) Galaxie convertible. No prob, just stick those grossly undersized tires on the Cadillac and call it good. I never had a tire failure that winter (fortunately, this was not in the summer when they would get really hot) but those studdies would allow for some awesome asphalt-flinging burnouts.
My 59 Fury had a leak where the filler pipe connected to the fuel tank, so it was impossible to fill without leaks. Then the gauge quit working. I checked the fuel level with a long wooden stick that I would run down the straight filler tube (like the guys who check the big tanks at the gas stations?) If I only had 2 inches of wet on the stick, I would put some gas in.
I would occasionally park the car (with its always venting fuel tank) in my mom’s garage. Yes, the one with the gas water heater and gas furnace in it. I have since learned just how ungodly stupid that was. Somehow, I never blew the house up.
Its much harder to ignite a car than hollywood would have you believe.
I’m very good and always have been with maintenance, although for me, I did push tires way past the limit. In 1996, I obtained a very cherry, low mileage 1986 Olds Cutlass Supreme Brougham sedan (29K on the clock at the time). It still was shod with it’s factory Goodyear Tiempos (this one did have the upgraded suspension with rear sway bar and full instrumentation, the latter not commonly seen on a four door Cutlass G body, Supreme Brougham non-withstanding. I did notice a slight “bulge” on one of the lower sidewalls which in short order started to grow on the side and underneath. Only after the “bump” became more pronounced did I replace the tires. Dry rot, I’m sure had a lot to do with it. On two other vehicles, inner shoulders I drove down to wear the steel belts began to show.
How was the ride with the rear sway bar? I had one on my ’83 Bonneville and it rode extremely harsh.
I added one to my 76 and 77 Chevelles. Takes the place of a panhard rod, and took the fat-girl waddle out of the rear end over bumps, and took a lot of the understeer out of them. Mine has HD springs, which are a bit too stiff and makes it ride like a modern BMW on squishy tires. I need to soften the springs or the shocks to get the proper boat ride again.
Best suspension modification you can do to these cars in terms of feel, even with the tired and extremely worn out suspension, that car could flat stick when before it howled the tires and washed out the fun early.
I’ve wanted to put one on my Caprice, with something that size it’s probably just right. On my Pontiac it handled like nothing else (you could take a 90 degree turn at 25-30mph!)but damn bumpy roads jolted the car and threw me all over the place because it had that stubby 108″ wheelbase. I had the 1 1/4″ bar on up front too.
My ’65 F-85 came with some 70’s Montgomery Ward bias plies on rims in the trunk when I bought it a year ago. The two front radials mysteriously went flat on me last August and I threw them on until I could get them replaced. I’ve been running the bias plies since then and one is now completely bald. I really need to get this taken care of..
The car I had before, my ’83 Bonneville practically had no rear main seal left and would take a quart of oil a week. I wanted it repaired badly but was quoted something like $700 altogether to have it done.
Damn, I have not driven a car with bias plies for years. I’ll bet you can get some good tire squeal at fairly low speeds outta those old things. Powerslide! 🙂 I’ll bet they harden-up the ride on that old Cutlass, as well. I have found that radials on older cars really soften the ride, but tax the suspensions more, since the radials have so much more grip than the old bias ply tires.
Yep. my friends’ 71 Chevelle had a set of 4 nearly new bias ply tires on it when we got it running and driving again. They were nearly new 20 years prior…
Rode like a buckboard with them on, but man could we do hollywood style antics with it at low speeds, put the radials on it and it’d grip fairly well but it was much softer riding.
What amazes me is that they’ve lasted this long in use considering their age. When I first put them on I didn’t expect to use them more than a week. I’ve still got radials out back. On a good road they’re not a big deal, but driving on roads with the strips of pavement running along the side is just like being in a slot car, a real white knuckle experience! You get yanked all over the place. I actually did an experiment once on an empty road, lining the wheel up with the expansion crack in the middle of the road and the car stayed right on it!
Ride isn’t really much different, but it handles like a car without a sway bar, just floating and wallowing all over the place. The only good thing I can say is I like the vintage look they give the car, that’s about it!
I have a set of 560×15 crossply tyres for my Hillman original equipment Ive tried them once they turn an acceptable to drive in traffic classic car into a nonsteering nitemare, turn the wheel nothing happens and it gets worse at highway speeds. I’ll leave the oversize Michelin rims and modern tyres harvested from a 406 Peugeot on thanks originality isnt all its cracked up to be.
I drove my ’78 GMC around for three months with worn out front brakes and no rears, including a trip over a section of highway on Vancouver Island called the Malahat drive. I was towing a loaded trailer weighing 3700 pounds down steep grades, and the only thing I could do to slow down was use the gears and only brake at low speeds. When I got to the bottom, there was smoke coming out of the front wheel wells. That trip was the death knell for the rear wheel cylinders, which blew, and made the pedal sink to the floor when held down. Stopping in a hurry was a harrowing experience.
Coincidentally, I did the same thing with my Buick, except the master cylinder was shot and it too bled to the floor. It had great brakes when the pedal was mashed to the floor, but gradual stops, good luck.
I think the worst was when I still had my ’74 Nova. My ex BIL had put some tires on it at some point after he got it (1979 from my parents to replace his rusted out ’72 Vega while in Wisconsin). Anyway, was out doing pizza deliveries when the right rear tire, if I recall right blew. Got it replaced and discovered that I had not one, but at least 2 tires with bulges in their sidewalls too, as was the tire that blew.
So I got off work, and drove home with the spare and 2 bad tires. The next day, taking time off, I looked in the paper and found an ad for some Cooper Trendsetters, on sale, and the local Goodyear shop had them, so went and got those. It seems to me the were not all that great, but did the job so I did get my monies worth out of them.
The absolute worst was when I still had the ’88 Honda Accord, in 2000, I had some pretty bad Mitchellins on the car, they were the exact factory replacements and I had some damaged tires due to being poked on several occasions by nails and such, so had them replaced with some Yokohomas from Discount Tire. It was there that I discovered how great that place is. They saved my butt. By 2005, I had one tire do the ol’ tread separation thing (right front), two others get stabbed with nails or some such, too close to the sidewall to be fixable, so had to replace, and at least one of them was a newer iteration of that model of Yokohoma, and a used tire was procured to replace the blown out tire when I hit a pothole.
Otherwise, it was cheap retreads on my ’68 Newport back in HS, and then discovered that a disc had slipped, causing the caliper to scrape against the right front (or left front, I forget now) disc rotor, causing me to eventually scrap the car.
I actually never let my cars go so far as to be unsafe, though the ’88 Accord had seen it’s share of lack of regular maintenance, though it GOT some, so by the time I sold it in ‘2006, it may have needed new brakes, the clutch who knows, but it still worked OK (not slipping), the muffler was gone, it had been rear ended, and other body damage, and leaked water inside, but still ran though. Sold the thing for $900 in less than 24Hrs via Craig’s List. That’s when I got the 92 Ranger truck to replace it.
So far, no broken suspension parts, or anything like that, though I did just replace the left front wheel bearing on the Mazda Protege5, though it was not loose, it was raspy though. So far, the tires are wearing very evenly for Falken Super Steel summer tires.
I drove for, ahem, quite a while with a noisy water pump. It paid me back by seizing 90 miles from the nearest town…
My first car had a blown head gasket, but while I was working in the evenings/nights only 5-10min drive from home, I got to the point where I stopped topping the radiator up as it would just keep draining down to the top of the block & diluting the oil. Did that for 2-3 months before getting a rebuilt engine for it. It still drove well, didn’t overheat and would pull 6000rpm.
Went on a trip with a friend who forgot to take the spare tire for his trailer, sure enough had a blowout and drove probably 8 miles in the emergency lane to get to somewhere he could source a new wheel & tire – the wheel on the trailer had lost an inch of diameter by that point.
Radial story? Years ago, on a beater ’81 Bonneville I’d picked up as temporary transportation. It was a $100 car, at a time when I could have scrapped it for $200, so I didn’t want to do anything to it that wasn’t abso-freaking-loutely necessary.
30 miles from home, I notice a bounce in the rear. Stop, look, everything appears OK. Drive again, it’s still there. Doing 5mph down a surface street while looking backwards out the open door – still can’t see it. Stop, examine again. Seems the last time I managed to park on the bulge, now I could see it plainly. Had a spare and a jack, but turned out the tire iron was wrong. 6pm on a Sunday. Had to do 20-30mph on the shoulder all the way home. By that time the bulge was the size of a half grapefruit.
Strangely enough, same car, opposite side, a few months later – heard a loud bang out on the driveway. Turns out the tire had blown, taking off a 6″x12″ section of tread. Still can’t quite wrap my head around that one.
Worst thing I did…my Datsun PL620 sat for two winter months in an Indianapolis parking lot while I worked a temporary assignment for the railroad…and when I got some time off to go home, it wasn’t much time. I jump in the thing…and the clutch travels right to the floor, no resistance. Fluid all leaked out!
Indianapolis winters don’t tend to be that cold; it wasn’t so horrible to crawl under and open the bleeder screw on the slave cylinder and pour some brake fluid through the system. Half-fast bleed, and everything’s working. Or working well enough.
Or so I think.
On the Interstate…destination Cleveland. I-70 to Columbus and then I-71 to within a block of my apartment. So I put the mind in Quaalude, roll on.
Until I get to the Columbus cloverleaf…I go for the clutch to change gears, and there’s NO CLUTCH.
Oh, this is great. Well…I’ve got just about enough gas to make it the whole way…so, I figure out how to float the gears without destroying the synchros….and amazingly, no delays or stop-and-go’s. I do have an issue once on the off-ramp at home…there’s a stoplight. Getting OUT of gear, no problem. How to start this thing? I don’t know that I can trust starter or battery to crank and start in gear.
But it didn’t let me down. Fired right up, got rolling…float into second, then third, and that was all I needed. Two more lights, and then I’m home.
Asinine, in retrospect. Especially since it was after dark, with an old vehicle and no tools. But I was needed at home and I was tired…not thinking clearly.