Earlier this month a coworker and I made a road trip in my assigned, employer owned 2018 Chevrolet Impala. This trip is where the sparkle faded, the new smell went away, the bloom fell off the rose, or some such applicable euphemism. But the aggravation is not from what you might initially think.
For reference, the Impala has right at 27,000 miles as of this writing.
We made a trip from Jefferson City to the town of Salem, taking the blue route seen here. With a population of nearly 5,000 Salem is perhaps best known for its proximity to Montauk State Park, that mecca of trout fishing for a sizable part of what seems like the planet.
After leaving Salem we were meandering up Route 19 in a northeasterly direction. Route 19 isn’t overly scenic but is highly representative of roads in the south-central part of the state – hilly and curvy. Somewhere around the line between Dent and Crawford Counties, we heard a metallic “clang” followed by rushing air. The conversation was something along the lines of…
Coworker: What the hell was that? A tire?
Me: No.
Coworker: You sure?
Me: Yes. It’s driving just fine.
Coworker: So you know what it is?
Me: I have a pretty strong hunch.
After pulling into a county road, I hit the trunk release button next to the steering column. White dust rolled out of the trunk as the lid sprung open.
This is what we saw, which confirmed my hunch. The fire extinguisher had discharged.
How or why I do not know, but it did.
Having to report the incident, I called the fleet manager upon arrival at my employer’s facility in Steelville. I started off the conversation asking what our practices and general direction was in mounting fire extinguishers in light duty vehicles. He said it had been a consideration but nothing had been resolved. He said the construct of the trunks of passenger cars and some C/SUVs wasn’t overly conducive for finding anything solid for mounting the holding brackets given the cardboard spare tire covers and carpeted walls in the trunks of passenger cars and some C/SUVs.
When he asked why I was curious I told him. His response was an “oh, shit” with my assuring him I was not upset but very glad this happened in the contained trunk of a sedan, not the open area of a C/SUV. We talked about it more, with his later doing some more intensive research into mounting options.
After visiting with some coworkers at Steelville I wheeled the Impala into one of the bays so the mess could be vacuumed.
That fire extinguisher did its job but just in the wrong place. Everything except the boots and ice scraper went into the trash.
I made a gross error when parking the Impala in the bay. In order to hear the spotter as I was backing up from my outside parking space, I had rolled down the front windows, inadvertently leaving them down. The exhaust of the two shop vacuums blew out half as much dust as they ingested, creating an immediate and rolling dust cloud that went straight for the open windows.
Regrouping, I backed the Impala outside. There was enough dust on the car for a crime scene – every fingerprint on the surface was highly identifiable.
Mess finally under control, we left for our return trip to Jefferson City, opting to stay on Route 19 to US 50, the route seen furthest to the east.
On the south side of Cuba there is a railroad overpass. Approaching the overpass I noticed there was a train going overhead. As we went under the overpass there was a load “BAM!” that sounded like a shotgun blast inside the car.
A chunk of concrete hit the windshield, nearly penetrating the glass. Thankfully it was down low near the dashboard so my line of sight wasn’t compromised.
I pulled over to call the fleet manager a second time.
Thus my question of the day: What has been your most aggravating road trip? Nothing here was the fault of General Motors but rather just freaks of nature.
A postscript: With the current virulent events in the world, I am working from home but have the Impala parked at the house. With employee interviews an hour away last Thursday, I was leaving at a rainy 7 am only to discover a flat tire. Help showed up to give me a different vehicle (a 2015 Dodge Grand Caravan in this lip-smacking color) and to take the Impala to have the tire repaired.
Not only had I picked up a sharp rock but I had also collected a few nails. Such is life.
i will cheat a bit by relaying a story i witnessed – didn’t happen to me. I live approx 1 hour from an amazing fall salmon fishing region. At a convenience store around 9am, i pull in and see 4 guys shuffling around an SUV, engine running. These boys had been driving for several hours of the wee morning, and had stopped for gas/coffee before hitting the fishing spots. The driver locked the keys in the running truck. The tension was noticeable, and one of the guys told me they had already been there 45 minutes – and help could be another hour. They would really miss out on the fishing, as the good spots are first come first serve. They were trying to convince the truck owner to break a window….
Having done dumb things like that myself, i felt really bad for the driver. Had to strain some friendships.
Wow, that sucks, those darn Chevys, nothing but problems 🙂 ! There’s no reason that extinguisher couldn’t be mounted though, if nowhere else the inside of the loading lip (so right by the latch, perhaps to the side a bit) is virtually always metal with perhaps a plastic or carpeted cover flush up against it. For the fleet manager to leave them to roll around in the trunk seems foolish and ready for what happened to you.
The mounting has always been a little quibble I’ve had. It seems there was a kind-hearted soul who wanted to make sure I had one available and placed it there. He just didn’t think it through all the way.
That said, I knew it was there but hadn’t done anything about it. So I cannot blame him. I did find the safety pin right under the extinguisher. How it fell out I do not know.
Wow, Jason. At least it wasn’t your own personal vehicle.
Without a doubt our most aggravating road trip was our motorcycle trip across Canada. This happened in the first year of our marriage, and in the subsequent 22 years my vacation ideas have been subjected to a high degree of spousal review. I will never live this one down:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/born-to-be-wild-at-least-once-our-cross-canadian-motorcycle-trip/
Jason: I have one fire extinguisher but several cars. My practice has been to put the device in a slightly larger, zippered canvas bag and secure that through the bag straps to the rear seat shoulder harness system. So it sits on the right rear seat, belted down, as I am driving. On a roadster, I secure it into the passenger seat belt system.
As for aggravation on a road trip I guess it would be driving Cheyenne to Las Vegas in the winter and the trip taking much more time than it should have due to multiple blizzards. Nothing spectacular, just slow and requiring compensatory navigation.
I use one of these brackets:
https://www.amazon.com/Bracketeer-Extinguisher-Bracket-Universal-Vehicles/dp/B015G3QXMY
In the cab of my truck (fingers crossed).
Most memorable (for the wrong reasons) road trip? Driving across the country with my sister in 1974, in her 1969 Ford Cortina. I was driving on I-80, near Reno, on the first day. A slight metallic ting, and power went away. No 4th gear. Downshifted to 3rd, ding, no 3rd. I start pulling over to the shoulder, ding, no second. I crawl along the shoulder in 1st to the next offramp, and drive to a gas station in 1st. Use a pay phone to call a few local junkyards; no Cortina transmissions closer than back home the Bay Area (200 miles) so I call a friend there, who offers to find a tranny and drive up with some tools the next day. My sister and I get permission from the gas station owner to leave the car there and find a hotel room.
The next afternoon my friend shows up. The gas station owner is reluctant to let us swap the tranny in his lot and then it starts raining, and getting dark, so we drive over to an empty self-serve car wash and start pulling the trans. The police show up, with the car wash owner, just as I’ve dropped the driveshaft and started working on the bell housing bolts. Our pleas are ignored but he lets us push the car out of the bay and work on it outside. I think at that point we decide to get a room and finish in daylight. The hotel won’t allow pets so my friend leaves his dog in his Peugeot. In the morning, the Peugeot won’t start – the dog turned on the stalk-mounted light switch and the battery is dead. Luckily the parking lot has a slight slope and we bump start the 504. We’re not so lucky with the replacement transmission, which also is a one speed, and drive back to the Bay Area in the Peugeot.
The next day, we borrow another friend’s ‘69 Satellite wagon, 318 TorqueFlite and a trailer and drove back to Reno to haul the Cortina home. To cut to the chase, it took two more tries before we found a good junkyard transmission, which not only made it across the country but lasted several years before East Coast rust and an icy freeway encounter spelled the end of my sister’s Cortina. Thirty years later my sister moved back to the West Coast in another Ford, a first-gen Taurus in a fairly uneventful trip, though I think she did need one minor repair. Fortunately Taurus parts and expertise were not a problem to find.
Mine is definitely a “first world problem” but a few years ago when I was traveling a lot for work I flew to Seattle to do a job in Wenatchee, and I had the luck of renting a Cadillac ATS! Shucks, I never dun drove a Cadillac before! I felt so cool in that thing until I tried to use the CUE Infotainment system, which was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. I had to pull over in Seattle traffic to spend a very long time re-figuring out the nav and getting my music back after accidentally pushing the wrong button on the touchscreen (was probably my fault in the first place).
After I recovered from a very immature tantrum I was back on the road, and the ATS was an absolute blast over Snoqualmie pass and up Hwy 97, passing logging trucks like it was nothing. The ATS was so much fun to drive I might have considered buying one, but damn that CUE system was a turn-off.
Most definitely not your fault. You should not have been able to get into a mess, and it should have been obvious how to back out f the mess. Car infotainment systems often have users who are not fully paying attention (they’re trying to drive a car at the same time) and a user interface should reflect that. I’ve never seen the system you’re talking about but I’ve seen some bad ones, and I feel your frustration.
It’s very often the case with a bad UI that users blame themselves for not being able to find what they want, or messing things up. It’s always the fault of the UI, not the user.
I’ll second what Chaz said. There’s no excuse for a bad user interface on anything, especially in a car. Some people do feel like it’s somehow their fault for not being “computer literate”. Well I have a graduate degree in computer science, and I get just as flummoxed and frustrated by these things as anyone else. A bad user interface is always the fault of the manufacturer. (A good one is likewise to the manufacturer’s credit.)
A few years ago I was looking at my state’s surplus vehicles, as I’m known to do. For the pool vehicles and others that are maintained directly by the Dept of Enterprise Services have access to the vehicle maintenance records, which I always check out on any vehicle that catches my eye. While the state shop does most things, like oil changes, tires, brakes, ect they do send somethings out. I still remember the sent to X detail shop, fire extinguisher accidentally discharged. It was in an Escape Hybrid, so no trunk to contain it in. It was a steep bill if I remember correctly.
I’ve looked at other states and MO just happens to have some of the more detailed records on their listings, so I wonder if this will show up once it is retired.
It’s doubtful. The clean-up (I had already got the majority cleaned up) was finished by the service attendant. It never went anywhere, thus no cash cost and no record.
One to keep in mind with these vehicles….does that agency have its own body shop? Several years ago I hit a large doe in a 2016 Impala. There was quite a bit of body damage but it was repaired in-house. Whether it was recorded as such or simply a miscellaneous repair I do not know.
In Missouri the state agencies fall under different headings….the Patrol, DOT, and Conservation each have a Commission, have a high degree of autonomy, and have their own repair facilities. The other 8 or so state agencies all have their vehicles maintained by the Office of Administration.
In 40 years of driving and trailering I’v had a few aggravations, so, I’ll stick with the work theme.
The first third of my work career was with a large regional bank. As the big guy, we provided various back room services to many smaller banks, a practice known as correspondent banking.
One of my clients was growing quickly, but still maintained its home office in a very small town, about 3 hours from my home.
One of my employees and I were to make a visit, and I drove my new personal 1995 Chrysler Concorde. My first ever new car, first Mopar, and I was quite proud of it, and rather happy to be showing it off.
The trip out was uneventful on what turned out to be a blistering hot, humid July day. Our meetings went well, and the only aggravation so far was a trip to the restroom. My client hosted at the new town library as their facility was tiny. The restroom featured my first encounter with motion detector lighting with a timer designed to save energy. As I was doing business in one of the stalls, the damn lights went off. No windows, in the center of the building, it was pitch dark, and there was no cellphone flashlight in my pocket in 1995.
As bankers, we were wearing full suit and tie regalia, and heading out to the car to go home, it was HOT outside in that special Nebraska July way. I started the car, and the fully automated climate control instantly kicked up the AC fan. I rolled down the windows as we were loading the car and threw our suit jackets in the back seat. Finally sitting down in the car, there was a strong hint we might be without AC. Nothing but hot air from the registers after a few minutes of operation.
The AC had totally crapped out. For our three hour trip, we reorganized the car so that anything that would blow around with the windows open was in the trunk and we both stripped down to our T-shirts. I-80 felt longer and flatter than usual on that drive home.
My employee was and is a car guy, was quite understanding, still liked the car, and is still a friend to this day. Another bright side was both Chrysler and my dealer were champs about the AC system, a known weak spot in the LH cars. Over two repair sessions over two years, the entire AC system was eventually replaced, and Chrysler even sent me an extended warranty certificate for it that I never had to use in the 10 years I owned the car.
Chrysler was on a roll in those years, and by ’99 I was an all Mopar house. While my fleet is virtually all Ford now, the Dart my daughter drives represents 25 contiguous years of having my name on a Mopar title.
Maybe the Concorde should have had removable doors, like a Wrangler!
A flat tire from all the nails? If only the people who maintain the roads in Missouri knew what they were doing. Oh, wait . . . . 🙂
Wow, that sounds exciting! Had you been in a minivan or SUV, the scene would have undoubtedly belonged in a John Candy movie.
Mine was the day I planned to drive my new-to-me 1929 Ford Model A on a 100 mile trip from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis. Mistake no. 1 – taking the interstate highway. The cooling system lost control of things after about 25 or 30 miles and soaked the ignition. My future Mrs. was following me. We eventually made it to a parts store in a small town. Before they closed at noon on saturday, I replaced the upper radiator hose (which I mistakenly thought had burst because it was soaked) but it still would not restart.
We drove to Indianapolis and I borrowed a neighbor’s F-250 and car trailer. We loaded the Model A up, got our picture taken for the local paper, drove home and at about 10 pm I decided to give it one chance to start before I was going to give up for the night. It fired right up and I drove it off the trailer. The effort was an ultimate success, but it was a long and complicated day.
On the Model A theme… A few years back I sold a friends’ 28 A pickup for him in New Jersey to a gentleman in northern New Hampshire. It was restored by his FIL and a AACA winner some 20 plus years before but sat neglected for many years. It ran on 25 year old rubber, had a bad gen and lacked brake lights. Anyhow, after a full disclosure of all it’s woes and the check cleared, I called the new owner to see when he was bringing his trailer down to fetch it. Trailer? “What trailer, I’m driving it back 300 + miles home.” He drive down in a stock 32 Ford sedan on Friday and was back home on Monday…. no issues what so ever!
“no issues what so ever”
If I had known the cars more, I probably would have been fine. Taking a seldom-used 2 land highway and keeping the speed down to 45-50 would probably not have overtaxed the cooling system as I did on the interstate trying to maintain 55-60. I also would not have relied on the Moto-Meter temp thermometer in the hood ornament, which I quickly learned did not work at all.
Once I figured everything out, the problem was simply that it boiled all the coolant out and thoroughly soaked the ignition system.
I mentioned this story in my COAL entry on my 1977 Dodge Aspen wagon in an abbreviated form, but I will retell it here in all it’s glory.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1977-dodge-aspen-wagon-the-party-wagon-for-the-whole-family/
This was during the summer of 1998. I was 21 years old and drove a 1977 Dodge Aspen station wagon with 300K+ miles on it. In mid-June, I had purchased a set of new BFGoodrich Radial T/A tires for the car. I loved the “muscle-car” look that the white letter tires gave the car. Two weeks later for the 4th of July holiday, I drove from Las Cruces NM to Albuquerque NM with my boyfriend and my brother’s girlfriend to visit my family. The trip up was fine, but it was the return trip that was the ordeal.
The distance between Albuquerque and Las Cruces is about 210 miles due south on I-25. If you are from New Mexico, it’s “about 3 hours”. (Everyone in New Mexico measures distance by time.). The trip is actually broken up pretty evenly into 3 segments by the largest towns (2 or more exits off the freeway) along the route. Albuquerque to Socorro is about an hour, with several small towns in between. Socorro to Truth or Consequences is another hour, with NOTHING in between. TorC to Las Cruces is also another hour, with some small towns the closer you to get to Las Cruces.
We left Albuquerque around noon. It was hot, DAMN HOT, that day, temps hovering in the high 90s. We were about 30 minutes outside of Albuquerque, rollin around 75-80 mph, when there is a shimmy in the steering wheel, a loud pop and the car practically drags itself off the freeway onto the shoulder. This all happened in a matter of seconds. The right rear tire had a catastrophic blowout in the sidewall area. OK, no big deal… get the spare out and swap it out.
I jacked the car up by the bumper jack point. However, I failed to close the open tailgate of the car. A semi truck came barreling by and the wind rush was captured by the open cargo area of the wagon, and pushed the car forward on the bumper jack. The top of the jack was rammed into the taillight, the bumper jack point was ripped thru the bumper about 1″, and the car was stuck on the jack leaning forward at about a 30 degree angle. I managed to kick the jack out and the car fell. I looked around the side of the road for something to block the front wheel, and repeated the process (with the tailgate closed).
When the new tire was removed from the car, the entire tread was completely separated from the rest of the tire. Put the spare on, and lowered the car to the ground and watched the spare tire deflate. When I got the tires, I had them keep the best looking tire as my spare because I was getting rid of as my old spare. They mounted it on the spare wheel, but didn’t air up the tire. GRRRRR. So now I’m sitting here on the side of the road with a flat spare tire. I’m 1 mile from the exit for Belen. The three of us start walking in the heat down the shoulder towards the exit. A few minutes later, a nice woman picks me up (only room for one) to drive me into town. My travel companions go back and wait with the car.
I’m dropped at a gas station, and use their phone to try and call a tow truck. Most are closed (Sunday), and one won’t take a check for the cost of the tow. The lady working the register hears my predicament. She calls her husband, who has an air compressor in the bed of his truck. He comes and picks me up, takes me out, and we air up the tire. The tire has a very slow leak, but it’s enough to get us back into town to Wal-Mart. I buy a can of fix-a-flat, fill up the tire and drive around for a few minutes. Seems to be holding, so we decide to press on.
We hit the road very slowly, moving around 55 when I typically take this trip at 80. We make it to Socorro, exit and have a meal to see how the tires are holding up. Everything seems to be fine, so we head off towards Truth or Consequences. Again, moving comparatively slowly. As the miles pass on, I start to get more and more comfortable with adding more speed. But I still keep it to no more than 65.
We make it to TorC, and again pull off for a rest and some food. Top off with fuel, and call my folks to give them an update. At this point, the sun has set and the temperatures are starting to cool down. I’m pretty confident we can make it all the way home to Las Cruces, and we set off. Now that the temperatures are down and with 80+ miles with no issues, my confidence is raised enough to push up to 75 mph.
About 30 miles from home, my travel companions are passed out asleep. I’m still plugging along, radio blasting some tunes. I feel a slight shimmy in the steering wheel, and I slow as rapidly as I can without locking the brakes and pull to the shoulder. As soon as I put the car in park, I hear the pop and a rush of air escaping.
Get out, and this time the right front brand new tire has a 3″ hole blown out of the sidewall of the tire. We have no spare, it’s already on the car. It is very dark out, middle of nowhere desert. Ahead, we can see the lights from the Border Patrol Check Station on the northbound side of the freeway. it’s about 1-2 miles down the road. Time to start walking.
About 10 minutes into the walk, a pickup truck pulls over in front of us. The kind gentleman offers us a ride. He is driving a standard cab Toyota pickup, and has a passenger. Which means all three of us climb into the back of the bed for the next 30 miles all the way into Las Cruces. He drops us off at our place, we call a tow truck, hop into my boyfriend’s car and head back out to meet the tow truck.
The car is towed and dropped off at Discount Tire. We drop off my brother’s girlfriend at her place and finally make it home. It is now almost 2 in the morning by the time we put our heads on pillows. What should have been a smooth 3 hour trip turned into a 14 hour trip that involved two blowouts of brand new tires, a flat spare, three rides from strangers, one of which was in the bed of a pickup truck, to just get home.
Epic!
Gosh, what a trip! Wonder what was wrong with the new tires?
Not sure really, some sort of manufacturing defect. The two tires that were on the driver’s side, as well as the two replacements, lasted a good long while with no other issues.
I’ve had numerous aggravating road trips (though far outnumbered by pleasant ones), but the prize winner for me dates back to 1990 when I was in college.
I attended a college in North Carolina, which was about 500 mi. from my parents’ home in Pennsylvania. College students often tried to arrange rides with each other home for breaks, and for Thanksgiving Break I offered a ride to a girl named Melanie I that I really liked. Amazingly she agreed; probably because her folks lived only about an hour from mine, but regardless of her reason, I looked forward to an 8-hour drive with her.
The ride started well enough – just me, Melanie, and my 1981 Audi Coupe. I loved the Audi, but it was well used, the way most college-student cars were at the time; I’d bought it cheaply from its 3rd owner and it had about 90,000 mi. on it.
About two hours into the trip, I started hearing a loud noise, which got louder. When I stopped at a rest area on I-85 to investigate, I found that the exhaust pipe was falling off… it was badly rusted and just fell apart. The break occurred pretty far up in the car, like approximately under the seats.
I got the exhaust off, but then the car was loud. Really loud. So much for talking to Melanie for 8 hours; now we had to shout. She was displeased. Then it started to rain… and from Southern Virginia up to Pennsylvania in rained heavily, adding to the noise and stress. Then we encountered the type of heavy traffic one gets on the day before Thanksgiving in a pouring rain storm in the crowded Northeast Corridor of the US. Traffic was stop-and-go for hours… and to make matters worse, I was worried about carbon monoxide coming into the cabin, so I cranked open the windows. In the rain.
What should have been an 8-hr. trip to closer to 12 hours, adding in time for dealing with the muffler, and with traffic delays. By the end of this trip I think Melanie hated me. I got a new muffler, but then I still had to drive Melanie back to college after the holiday weekend. I remember that return trip was conducted mostly in silence.
As a former Fleet Manager with both light trucks and cars in my fleet this is one of the main reasons why I didn’t have fire extinguishers in them. Sure my apportioned units had them installed as required by law. When one discharged by accident in the cab and forced the driver off the road it became an issue of responsibility for me to confirm that every last one was properly secured and up to date. Also a handheld extinguisher is useless in a car or truck fire and puts the untrained user in more danger. Firefighters have told me the time wasted on trying to put out your own fire delays the call to them, making it harder and more dangerous to contain safety.
I don’t disagree about level of training and ability.
In my career, I’ve only encountered one car fire. It was about twenty years ago on a Toyota that had a wiring issue and the handheld did fine as it hadn’t got going good yet. The majority of fires I’ve encountered were alongside the roadway. The last two I had put out well before the fire department arrived.
My most aggravating road trip took place back in 1975. My buddy Rick and I were riding our motorcycles from our homes in the Bay Area up to Alaska, at least that was the idea. I was riding my recently rebuilt ’70 Sportster chopper. Rick was riding his Yoshimura equipped bored out Honda CB750. I didn’t know about Loctite and had various parts vibrate off on the way up. The gas tank only gave me a range of 60-70 miles. Rick got a flat tire on our second day in BC. There was an 125 mile stretch of road without a gas station, just before we reached Prince Rupert BC. I found two anti freeze containers, cleaned them out and filled them with gas. That 125 mile stretch was the most beautiful and memorable ride of my life. That was only matched by the trip on the ferry down the Inland Passage. Everyone was checking out my chopper as we prepared to exit the ferry on Vancouver Island. I assumed my most awesome kick start pose and promptly flooded the engine. Kick, kick, kick for several minutes with no joy. I was forced to push the bike out of the way until the cars had exited. We rode down the island and took a second ferry to Port Angeles. All went well until we were headed down the freeway. A loud BOOM! and instant speed wobble! Luckily I was able to bring the bike to a safe stop. The rear tire had blown out. I had been sloppy packing my bags and it had been hitting the spinning wheel breaking the valve stem. Rick had mentioned that the load looked kinda sloppy, but of course I decided to check it later. Another bad call was to replace the tube with a VW tube. I figured that it was close enough. It might have worked but the H.D. tube has a side valve stem and the V.W is in the center. It held through Washington State but in Oregon another BOOM! Another speed wobble and again I was lucky to get it stopped safely. This time we had a two night lay over as I waited to get a proper tube. After this no more tire troubles. Even with all the problems and delays, we were running out of money, so we called it quits in BC, this was the most awesome trip of my life!
Best friend, Norm and I, college years, decided to ride to Alaska, he, with his Triumph Bonneville, Me with a 1958 Electra-Glide. No real problems until near Whitehorse, weather turning real bad and road wash out, we retreated home to California, but had experienced the endless open skies of the Alcan. Did lots of car travel, but my son was born before any more long distance m/c trips, and confined m/c’s to local short rides, Jose’s bike reminds me of that last Harley
Something over two decades ago I was on the University of Michigan Solar Car Team, and just now as I type that, I make a mental note to add that car to my slowly-steeping COAL rolls. The race we entered with the car we built amounted to a considerably more aggravating road trip than this what I’m about to describe, but I’ll save that one for later; this one’ll do for now.
We needed a big roll of carbon fibre in a big hurry. The Project Manager decided we should go fetch the roll we needed from the maker in Oklahoma, rather than having them quick-send it up to us—because reasons. I cannot remember and certainly cannot imagine what these reasons might have been. It couldn’t have been a balk at the expense of fast shipping for a heavy, bulky item; the U of M was the automakers’ primary main garden where they grew engineers, and they rained nonstop money on us. We were well funded and equipped, and we could’ve just whipped out one of the team credit cards and had the carbon fibre at our shop in a day or two, but instead three of us would go fetch it in a 30-hour round trip drive.
The motor pool issued us an almost new ’98 Plymouth Voyager. I showed up at the shop at 0720h on Tuesday, ready to go; we were meant to leave at 0730. The first thing the Project Manager said to me when I stepped out of the car: “Daniel! You’re here! Great! What’s a 12 and a 31 mean?”. Eh? He gestured towards the Voyager and said “12 and 31! What’s a 12 and a 31?” Oh, that. I had taught him how to pull the trouble codes on his ’90 Spirit and I guess he’d done it on the van, now, because when he’d started it that morning the Check Engine light came on and wouldn’t go off. And guess who was sorta the resident Chryco tech? The same guy who hadn’t got enough sleep or had any coffee, back when I was severely addicted to the stuff.
12: Start of codes, disregard. 31: open or short circuit to the canister purge solenoid. I reseated the purge solenoid plug and figured I’d reboot the computer; I disconnected the battery and used the 15 minutes to remove the el-strippo van’s FM-AM radio and replace it with the Infinity CD/Cassette deck from my Spirit R/T. Reconnected the battery: no more CEL, and after some gasping and skipping from the 3.0 as the computer relearned its purpose in life, everything was fine and we had selectable tunes, too. Ducky.
We finally left town at 1030h. Heather and/or Michelle had the idea to stop for lunch in Chicago so we could get actual, real Chicago pizza; resentment at the PM and teammates who’d sent us on this dumb errand made it seem like a good idea despite the urgent time pressure. Our maps and printed directions were equally but differently rotten (remember life before nav?), so we went much farther out of our way than we should have, but we did eventually make it to Uno’s. And then, gorked out of our gourds on gutbomb pizza, we decided it would be prudent not to tempt fate by getting back on the interstate until our food comas would lift. At least that’s how we rationalised heading over to American Science and Surplus. Am Sci & Surp (it’s not nice to abbreviate further than that) is always worth it; we spent nearly two hours and many dollars there.
So all in all we lost many hours
eating pizza and buying schwaggetting stuck in Chicagoland traffic, which ate up the time we ought to have used sleeping at a motel that night. So we drove in shifts all through the night, and finally pulled off the road around 4 in the morning for a failed attempt at some sleep. Couple hours later, back on the road we went, on a diet of C-rations (“C” for Convenience store, “C” for Crap, “C” for listening to every CD for the second or third time).We made it to Tulsa at around 0800 on Wednesday, but weren’t due to pick up our roll of thermal-curing carbon fibre until 0900, so we stopped (see pic) for breakfast. After a meal somewhat resembling eggs, grits, toast and Minute-Maid, down the road we went to Advanced Composites Group to pick up our very perishable carbon fibre, which they’d triple-packed: “We used regular ice packs instead of dry ice ’cause you’re carrying it in a passenger vehicle and we didn’t think you’d want it to fill up with CO2 while you’re trying to drive, so you’re going to have to scoot because regular ice isn’t as cold and the clock’s tickin’ on this stuff”. Nice of them to consider our oxygen requirements, but the triple-packed box was too big to fit crosswise in the cargo area of the Voyager. We had to remove the middle Easy Out Roller Seat (Stow-n-Go was still in the future) and put it sideways along the left side of the van, facing the box of carbon fibre along the right side.
So three occupants in a van with two anchored seats with seat belts. The unsafety and illegality didn’t really faze us much, consistent with the nature of being in our early 20s, but while I had some experience driving precariously-loaded vehicles, Michelle did not. Inertia and centripetal force and suchlike really matter in a situation like that, so you have to do things like slow the eff down when going around tight curves and cresting little hillocks and otherwise like that. In the unanchored back seat, without any seat belt, I was mentally listing all the marvelous physics classes Michelle could maybe take if we made it back alive, the odds of which were worsening out loud as our nonexistent-and-trending-negative allotted time to complete the mission meant driving at 85-95 mph wherever it was even a little bit possible. The human brain does not finish wiring itself up until one’s mid-20s, and one of the last things to come online is the kind of long-term thinking that processes risks and consequences. Fortunately we didn’t lose that gamble that time, but.
Needles to say, I was pretty surly by about mid-Wednesday. Good thing Heather and Michelle were able to carry on intelligent and interesting conversation, otherwise I’d’ve gone insane. To make the best of a suboptimal situation I stripped off my shirt and kicked off my shoes, leaned back in the sideways bench seat, donned my big black cowboy hat to keep the sun out my eyes, and put my feet up on the carbon fibre box. To an outside observer it probably looked like I was naked; I got some surprised looks from inside other vehicles: shock from Gladys Kravitz types, curiosity from kids, smiles and waves from the occasional bearish type, and a full-on Warner Bros cartoon-spec “aWHOOga!” double-take from a dude on a Harley.
We stopped in Indiana for gasoline and fireworks (early 20s…), and I drove the final 350-mile leg of the trip. It got dark, and that van’s notoriously useless headlamps sure as hell didn’t help. Driving far beyond bedtime got very uncomfortable—eyes unable to focus, hands unsteady on the wheel. Then it got surreal, and then psychedelic as my mind started playing open-eyed dreams. I saw phantom cars pulling out in front of me, trees became trucks, road signs started saying things other than they said, lane markers became meaningless. I started seeing bridges and other cop hangouts that weren’t there, I lost depth perception, and I got this creepy feeling that the van was stationary while the road was moving underneath. The only thing that kept me behind the wheel was knowing that Heather and Michelle were in worse shape.
We finally pulled in at the shop around 0200 on Thursday. The whole team were there waiting to start laying up the composites upon unloading the carbon fibre. We got no “thanks” from the PM, which prompted me to edit what I wanted to say to him down to “Y’know, if we simply report to the team right now what we’ll be doing tomorrow, we can go sleep instead of having the morning meeting at 0700. The PM’s insufferably cheery response was thoughtless and tonedeaf: “Oh-ho! But part of the point of that meeting is to get you awake so you can do what you’re doing!”. He was big on programs with names like “LeaderShape”.
Well, goshdangit, y’know, in my early 20s whenever I was really tired and peeved off, I was sometimes sort of extra likely to accidentally do clumsy things like kick the phone off the hook and turn off my pager and forget to set my alarm clock. So wouldn’t you just know it, I missed the dang ol’ 0700 meeting! When I woke at 0930, it was definitely the morning after the night before; my eyes looked like boiled lobsters and my throat felt like 40-grit.
Meanwhile, the teammates—future mechanical engineers, all—who’d bollocksed up cooking the first chassis so the shock mount pushed through and destroyed the entire chassis, necessitating a complete refabrication (oh yeah, that was what necessitated all this monkey motion), and who’d had such very important top urgent immediate need for this replacement carbon fibre? Turns out they hadn’t finished bollocksing up: while we were on the road between Ann Arbor and Ann Arbor via Tulsa, they were out watching Star Wars instead of fixing the cracked chassis moulds, so now they still had to do that before they could use them to lay up the composites, which made them miss the curing oven time slot a corporation had donated; they had the nerve to show up seven hours late, whereupon Bizcorp Companyco Amalgamated Industries said something to the effect of “LOLnope”. So now the laid up chassis was room-temperature curing (VERY VERY BAD) and so there was frantic phonecalling to try to find right-now availability of a suitably large curing oven. Ford came through on that one.
I don’t recall when in all of this I reinstalled the van’s radio and took back my Infinity deck, but I did.
The PM, I guess he got suitably LeaderShaped; eventually he wound up conning nuclear submarines for the US Navy.
Wow, that’s one road trip for the ages, I’m impressed. You got quite an education in the real world of people and projects. Sounds like after an initial hiccup the Plymouth came through for you.
In ’76, I bought a beautiful 1974 Jaguar XJL, Actually my ex-wife sort of pushed me on this, I realized that a Jag was asking for trouble, but I wanted to maintain piece in the relationship as it was falling apart. A real looker and I was extremely pleased with the low miles used machine. It is a magnificent looking automobile. I figured that any problems would be solved with my ‘vast’ knowledge of automobile maintenance. Little did I realize what I had wrought. First mistake was deciding to travel from the suburbs of Detroit to Disney World for vacation. An hour out on I-75 and we lost a wheel cover. Another 5 hours and clang and a wild shimmy which turned out to be bent steering arm and trying to find parts in Lexington Kentucky. A BAP/GEON had the part and local shop did the work. The next day, as wife is driving, she noticed that one of the dual gas tanks are approaching empty so she hits the button to switch to another tank. It reads zero on the gauge. Turns out the electric fuel pump for that tank ain’t working. Call road service in the middle of Georgia for gas. Then after stop for gas, the attendant who never saw a Jag before wants to look under the hood, so I let him examine the power plant and he decides to check what he thinks is the oil dipstick and pulls out the tranny stick. I jump at him like a wild man and remove the stick from his hand and warn him not to touch anything, I fill up the good tank and start on our way. Two miles down the interstate, flames and smoke and a loss of power as I cost off the interstate and into the service Shell station at the intersection. The tranny dipstick was not seated properly, so fluid sprayed on to the manifold and set the carburetor linkage aflame. Luckily, the smoke put out the fire so that was the only casualty. The linkage is a cable with a plastic cover and the cover melted and the cable was useless. No ‘furrin’ parts shop in Valdosta, so I tried to rig up a replacement. I used a choke cable as a replacement and completed the trip to Orlando with a hand throttle. Once there, the local Jag dealer supplied me with a cable and we finished the vacation without further incident. The Jag turned out to be a money pit. Six months later, Wife split and filed for divorce taking the Jaguar with her, I warned her, but she took it anyway, and it lasted another 6 months as she never checked the oil.
I once worked for a hotel that had a Ford E250 shuttle for airport runs, converted to a center-aisle passenger capacity with 5 rows of small, divided double seats instead of the factory passenger 4 row benches. It was about a month old when we had a record cold snap in eastern PA. The driver was on a run when the conversion factory-installed extinguisher back by the barn doors went off. Filled the entire cabin with dust. The nooks and crannies still had visible dust for years. He didn’t have any passengers and was on a surface street, going rather slowly, and able to pull over quickly. I wasn’t there but I’ve seen the mess this creates in a single-space bodystyle.
I was a property and casualty underwriter for 30 plus years. I always advised to throw the extinguisher though a window and jump after it.
My most aggravating road trip is basically two parts, from Toledo to Panama City, Fl and back. It’s 1987, and I was driving my soon to be gone and not missed ’85 Caravan, which had the weak as it gets 2.6 Mitsubish engine. My mom’s marriage was rapidly falling apart, mostly due to the extreme stingyness of her husband, who made just wanting to buy a $5 item, in one of the times that set her off, a steak at the supermarket, a huge deal. Her husband was a retired USAF Colonel, who had some bucks, and my mom wasn’t broke, but she foolishly tried to “go along” with his nonsense, which would involve waiting days to drive to the nearby, but not close, BX to get meat, or whatever, instead of paying an extra half a buck and buying it at the supermarket down the road from them. Towards the end, I was sending her USPS money orders, so she could buy what she wanted to without any drama.Using that cash caused almost as much drama as arguing about the price of meat at the BX vs the supermarket did.
I knew the end was coming, and packed a bag to toss in the Caravan at a moment’s notice, another one for my dogs to go with them to the boarding place, and I told work I would have to leave at a moment’s notice. My boss wouldn’t cooperate, so when it happened, I just quit. So one Sat night, I get the call, “I’m done, come and get me. I’m packing up all my stuff, and John is going over to his son’s house to stay until I leave!”. I called my boss at home, told him I was done, and left at 4am Sunday, since I couldn’t sleep. The first 500 miles were uneventful, and I arrived into the Atlanta area in a good mood. That would soon end. The first thing was when I arrived and got stuck in some little town that was having a parade. How a town that small had a parade that went on forever is still a mystery. By the time I got back on the road, I was not my usual pleasant self and the aggravations kept coming, most of them concerning the Caravan’s lack of power. Passing had to be planned out way way ahead of time, and by the time I got to my sister’s place in Greenville, SC, I was a little more than tense. We went out to Red Lobster for dinner, and I stuffed myself in a failed effort to sleep until morning. A storm came through, and I finally gave up trying to sleep and left.
I finally got to PC, and when I arrived to the condo, I was hungry, stinky, and a mess from not sleeping. We went to a place where you make your own stir fry, and I stuffed myself, and this time, it worked, I went to bed and mom decided to let me sleep until I woke up on my own, 14 hours! By the time I woke up, mom had packed the Caravan with about 2 dozen garbage bags full of stuff. As usual, she brought about half the refrigerator with her in two foam coolers. As we were getting ready to leave, John’s son calls and gets into it with mom, and then his wife does too. Then John calls up and yells at me for no sane reason, and we just left when I hung up the phone on him. We stopped to see John’s daughter in Birmingham, she was the only one of his kids that understood why she was leaving. We had a great meal, and mom wanted to stop for the night, and we did, in an awful Holiday Inn, complete with screaming kids and drunk college kids.
I slept only a little and about 5am, mom couldn’t take my sighing any more, and we got up and left. Between my 250 pounds, mom’s 150, and all the garbage bags, the Caravan was struggling once we went up any real grades. About dusk, we came around a corner and there was an old guy wearing a hat coming at us, driving on the wrong side of the road in a basket case of a late ’70’s Chevy Caprice! About a minute later, about 6 police cars and a fire truck pass us on the other side, heading to the fatal crash of the old guy and a man and woman and two kids. The old guy was the only one seriously hurt. We decided to stop in Dayton, and spend the night, and the night went peacefully. I slept OK, mom did too, and I checked out and then discovered someone had parked a 5th wheel pickup and trailer behind the Caravan blocking me in. Over an hour later, another old guy wearing a hat and his wife appeared, and I yelled at them for blocking me. I got the old lady crying, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to get home. As we headed up I75, we stopped for lunch and I thought the ordeal was over, but being I75 and it raining, a semi jackknifed, causing a giant wreck that we were almost involved in. We were stuck behind one of the semis that hit the one that caused it all, and some guy just managed to slam his brakes on in time to not hit us. Two hours later, we departed the wreck site (I ended up testifying in the lawsuit by one of the trucks hit by the jackknifer about 1 year later) after making statements to the OSP. As we got about a mile from home, the A/C in the Caravan died for the 3rd time. It was less than a month after it was fixed the last time (always covered by warranty). I decided that day, it would soon be time for the Caravan to be gone. about 2 months later it was. And a day after I got back, my boss called and asked me if I would come back. I did.
Jason:
I recall that last year that you mentioned purchasing a new Speed Queen washer, the basic model. I have a washer that the very fine people of Newton, Iowa built nearly 37 years ago, that cannot, I believe, last forever, much as I would like it to. Can you advise as to how well the Speed Queen has met your expectations?
Wow, it has indeed been a year since we purchased that machine. Time flies.
The Speed Queen has been flawless. It is quiet, it is smooth, and, unlike with the last machine, I truly believe the clothes are clean. It has also saved the dryer. It seems most washing machines have a 1/3 horsepower motor whereas the SQ has a 1/2 horsepower motor (perhaps these ratings are off, but the SQ exceeds the other, that being the prime point) which does a better job of removing water from the material during the spin cycle so the dryer runs less.
The only quibble, although it’s more a reflection of the sturdiness of the machine, is it weighs about twice what my old one weighed.
I would buy another SQ but am hoping it to be 37 years or so before the need arises.
Thank you, sir. I do hope you get 37 years out of your Speed Queen. That will probably make you about as old as I am. Incidentally, as indicated by the responses, this was a highly successful piece. Your efforts as well as others, who contribute to this site, will help people through this crisis.
Thank you.
There is a silver lining to this entire cloud. I have not left my house for nine days. It has been great to not be going anywhere. The flip-side is I’m working more hours per day than I did at work.
Throughout it all I’m trying to keep some amount of humor in things. Toilet paper worries? Nope, my wife has clothes I’m not fond of. Food concerns? Not yet, as I still have a quarter of beef in the freezer and we are thawing a turkey now. But I know I’m lucky in the big scheme of things.
On a side note, we have a Maytag dryer my late mom bought new in ’81. Only repairs? a new fan, as a pop rivet which was in my pants pocket lodged into it and spun the center out, and a new belt. That’s it. Work performed by me. Good machine. Side note on a side note: This dryer weighs more than our late (9yrs old) Maytag top load HE washer! Another good machine so far.
Jason, you make misery sound hilarious. I am glad to learn that your bad experience on this road trip wasn’t necessarily the fault of the Impala itself, as I do like those cars and lament that they are going away.
My aggravating road trip was a mixed bag. I was a teenage high school student and licensed for just over a year when I was charged with driving my older brother’s beige ’85 Renault Encore three-door hatchback from Cambridge, MA back to Flint, loaded to the gills with all of his possessions and the cat, since he was going to be living abroad for a while.
This was around spring break, and I brought my best bud along. He and I were friends since the first grade, and my older brother and his older brothers were all also tight. My friend was a skateboarder who demonstrated a genuine dislike with authority or external enforcement of discipline, and he seemingly questioned everything. I, on the other hand, was mostly an introvert who, while also intelligent, tended to be a rule follower and well-mannered, and while I also questioned a lot of things at that time, I was more afraid, I think, of getting in trouble.
Long story short(er), my brother, my bud and I all had a great time around the Boston area. I had decided when it was time for that long drive that since I was the “responsible” one, I would exclusively be doing all the driving unless there were circumstances.
This was in the early ’90s: before navigation, cell phones, even Mapquest printouts. We had a Triple-A map and a dome light. It was a sign when it took us over an hour and a half to actually get out of metro Boston (after circling some of the same sights up to three time, IIRC).
We were barely out of the city when the family cat, Chester, started howling loudly from his cage in the hatchback in disapproval. I don’t think we were even out of Massachusetts before he unleashed the most vile-smelling male-cat-stink to punish Fred and me. I mean, it was seriously the nastiest thing I had probably ever smelled by that point, and I could almost vomit a little bit in my mouth right now just thinking about it. The car would smell like this the whole time, and the only way to get any relief was to crack a window… and now, here comes the road noise.
Did I mention that the ’85 Encore didn’t have even an AM radio? Fred held the boombox and we had an assortment of cassettes. We took turns choosing the music. He suffered through my Pet Shop Boys and Steely Dan, and I suffered through his Mettalica and Nine Inch Nails. But it was actually alright.
Once we got to Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) to cut through Canada to get to Michigan, it was pretty smooth sailing… until we got to the U.S. border at Sarnia. I honestly don’t remember, but I don’t think we had our passports, as I don’t think they were required then.
The guard asked me (still the driver) what my country of residence was. My eyes probably wide as saucers from a steady stream of No-Doz pills and Mountain Dew, I answered, “United States”. When Fred was asked the same question, he responded, “Flint”. He was asked again, “COUNTRY of residence?” “Flint, MICHIGAN,” was Fred’s response, this time with tone. I wanted to punch him. If he didn’t answer correctly again, and the guard then made us unload this packed-to-the-windows Encore hatchback out of spite, there were going to be problems.
He finally answered, “United States of America… My country ’tis of thee…” (blah, blah, blah). I think my heart stopped with the sarcasm I detected in his voice. The guard stood there looking at us through the open driver’s side window for a few seconds. Maybe she saw me pleading with my eyes to please let us pass… but she did.
That drive was probably close to maybe 18 hours (? I’m guessing?) with only breaks for coffee, food or the bathroom. Now being close to three times the age I was back then, I can’t imagine driving for even eight hours straight.
And yes, Fred and I are still friends, close to forty years after meeting in first grade.
Moons and moons ago, I went with friends to the snow, all of us squished into a stylish late ’80’s Honda Civic. Fun times.
However, getting in for the 7 hour return journey, it quickly became apparent that someone had stood in a pavement decoration that had been ejected from a dog after what, by the smell, must have been years of residence inside it.
Much gagging and faffing and demands for an instant halt ensued. It was the driver and owner who had brought the unwanted guest aboard, The Turd, obvious from the brown-on-beige carpeting that was exclusively in and around the driver’s floorpan. More gagging and choking ensued as he valiantly strove to remove all traces of it from that fairly confined space. After several tries at re-entry by the rest of us, all terminating in variations of “No! Still there! Lemme out!”, we agreed that the mild-ish pong remaining would have to be sufficient.
It wasn’t, though.
After 20 or so miles of driving with all windows down through the snow, there was a general cacophony that rose to an insistence that the job had not been completed, The Turd was still abiding within somewhere, and finally a noise that could not be ignored of retching forced the second halt of many.
This time, we all offered to join in the clean. Water was poured, a shirt was sacrificed, sweat rose on the brows from the vigor of cleaning. The car was now cleaner than Honda had made it. The driver’s footwell could have won a concours, if such a category existed – and the judges had no noses whatsoever.
Because The Turd smelled no less omnipresent than whence it first came aboard. It gassed and exhaled and spoke closely in the billowing, freezing air, until an exit was sought, screaming, by even the hardiest of us.
I’ve no idea how many times we stopped, except that it was frequent. None could last long, even with all the freezing air one could cram into a Civic.
Arriving at last, benumbed and nauseous, in a more sizeable town, we sought the first carwash we saw, and all-but offered to buy their steam cleaner. We cleaned and steamed until it’d have been easy to believe there was no floorpan left, and remounted, confident at last that an unknown dog’s dirty habit were not going to defeat us.
Success! A slight doggy carpet smell, a very faint waft of The Turd, but do-able enough. Heater up, away we go.
But alas and a lack. A lack of good air, that is.
The heater, you see, did things to The Turd, by which I mean it revived it. It was not feasible, as it clearly wasn’t even there any more, but as the toasty heat rose, so did The Turd, or its ghost, as did our breakfasts within. Soon, it was back to a fug of unspeakableness. The heater had to go, as did the windows. Blustering misery re-ensued.
Many, many, many hours on top of the 7 it had been supposed to be, in the dark, we dismounted, and left our friend to his Civic. Many suggestions of good places to trade it in, though little confidence was expected in his meeting success.
As a postscript,do you know that the pedals on a car are often pressings, with a flanges facing away from you to give strength to the pedal? And did you know, you can fit 85% of the output of dog’s arse in there, packed invisibly more tightly down each time the clutch pedal is pushed down against the floormat, eventually so tightly that it practically has to be jackhammered out?
You do now.
Best.
Story.
Ever.
🏃💨 💩
I have had an assortment of road trip adventures, but one that sticks in my mind was a trip from San Diego to Sunland Ca. Only around 100 miles, but the next day we were to head to Washington State to say goodbye to my sister who was about to die from advanced HIV.
It was 1996 when my parents, who were taking care of her, called me, I took some time off work, and drove to San Diego to pick up my sisters 15 year old daughter for the trip. There was a huge rainstorm, floods everywhere, the freeway was like a river. No problem getting to her house, after discovering her directions were useless that is. Several stops and phone calls later (from booths, no cell phone for me back then) I finally arrived about 10:00 pm, and we were finally on our way.
It was more like a giant waterfall then a rain storm, was in the left lane going about 50 MPH when I heard a loud pop, the ’86 Jetta (still have it) went up on 2 left side wheels swinging violently across the freeway. Cars were spinning all over the road avoiding my car, it finally rammed into the dirt berm, which was pure mud by this time, we hit hard, slamming into the seatbelts like crash test dummies. The front end was buried in mud and grass, the grill popped out and its VW badge was never to be seen again. The tire had a huge hole in the sidewall, the rim bent badly. I got out, threw the grill in the trunk, we were at an exit so I drove off on the flat in the pouring rain to a gas station, where I put on the mini spare. The front motor mount was broken, still driveable but had to be gentle with the clutch to take off without shuddering.
Got back on the freeway, there were big rocks all over the road from runoff, drove a few miles and hit a submerged rock, blowing the mini spare and bending its rim. No loss of control this time. Pulled off the freeway to another gas station, the guy had a room full of mini spares, told me to pick one out. Out of 20 tires, not one had the proper bolt pattern.
By this time it was 1:30 AM, in a really nasty area of downtown LA, people were driving by and eyeing us, we were not feeling too safe. I put my back tire on the front, then put the original blown tire on the rear, and got back on the freeway, drove at 40 MPH to Sunland on the flat, the flooded road at least kept the tire cool enough while riding on the lightly loaded rear of the car to make it home. The next morning I removed the wheel to get a new tire, the sidewall on the inside was nothing but steel threads. Got a new tire, found a used rim and tire for a spare, and we left Sunland for Washington.
Had no other problems for the 2000 mile trip, it drove OK with the broken mount as long as I was careful shifting, I did zip tie the grill back on. Amazingly there was no body damage at all. Said our good byes to my sister, a sad time, but no more incidents on the road.
In my Mum’s Peugeot 104S, crossing the Pennines, and having the head gasket go. Cue a lot of steam, a longtime sitting watching a cricket match and slow drive home. The car went tot the garage and never came back