It’s summer time, and that means increased risk for overheating, transmission failure, and other headaches. Though catastrophe can strike during any season, the increased travel and rising temperatures of upcoming months bring its potential more into focus. While those of us driving newer cars (all things being relative, let’s say those built in the past twenty years) generally have benefited from a higher standard of reliability than in decades past, more than a few of us have experienced the joy of breaking down on a hot summer day.
In a rather classic nightmare scenario, my father had the unenviable task of driving a rented, full-size U-Haul over 1,800 miles and six states, only to experience overheating and breakdown at some point near the start of my family’s August 1985 relocation from Dallas to far upstate New York. That meant switching trucks–and transferring all our belongings–at some remote point in the middle of northeast Texas. Not fun.
But as dramatic as an engine breakdown can be, there are more spectacular sources of mechanical failure, like brakes catching fire on an overloaded trailer. And while it’s always scary when it happens, it can be fun to share stories after the fact (such as when my father recounted the story of his Nova’s engine dying on a steep downhill incline, quickly exhausting his brakes of power assist).
I know I can count on our readers to out-do the brief stories I’ve shared, of course. Which of you has the scariest and/or zaniest tale of good cars gone bad to regale us with?
The next QOTD should ask about structural failures since I have some good stories. During trips through the Rockies my dad and I have used a temperature gun to determine how hot the Sedona’s brakes and engine are just to be safe. Least you can downshift that Minivan, I would never use the Tranny on my Caravan to keep the speed down, those things are fragile and cost more than brakes.
My Dad’s 93 Legacy lost 3rd gear and he drove it that way for a year to save money and just in case something else failed. Anyway, as we were leaving Wegmans one day Dad could not get the Legacy in gear at a stop sign and ended up spending a few minutes trying. Despite having the Hazards on a lady behind us started blairing her horn so I got out then asked her to be quiet or help push the Legacy out of the road. That shut her up.
We finally got home and the Tranny is smoking and leaking which is when dad puts me on fire watch duty armed with a fire extinguisher and a cordless phone to call the fire department. He was even nice enough to bring lunch out to me.
1986, ’75 Pinto. Driving on Indiana SR 2 between South Bend and La Porte. Suddenly there’s an awful racket and the whole car starts shaking (and is filled with rust particles, bleh). I slow down and hear BRRRRRR-R-R-R-r-r-r–r–r–r—r—-r. I pull over and the noise stops. I get going again and then it’s more clear: whap, whap, whap, whap, whapwhapwhap, whapwhapwhapwhapwhap… I stop and get out.
The rear driver’s side fender is beat all to crap, and there dangling off the tire is a very large piece of tread, which had separated.
Soooooooo I get out the jack and stick it under the frame and crank it up and the rusty frame crumbles. Now I know where all the rust particles came from.
Thank goodness someone had left a bumper jack in that tiny trunk. I changed to the spare and was on my way.
:’-(
I was driving my first new car, a 1971 Plymouth Cricket with high zoot interior, A/C power disc brakes up front. I wanted a Vega hatchback but even at 17 I knew that aluminum cylinders without sleeves was probably not a good idea for the time. Plus several of the cars just off the truck had rust pimples on the C pillar. Salesman said they would sand them down and repaint them. The Pinto just screamed LOOK, I AM A CHEAP CAR! Should have bought a Gremlin. I saw the Cricket while looking at a 71 GTX that was above my budget which was $2,500, car was a gift. Then I saw a firebrand red Cricket and drove it. High back buckets up front, car was slow but drove well and dealer would imstall A/C, mats, etc and for less than my budget. Had the car for 6 weeks and I was pleased, even thinking about getting the two carb set up for a little more power. I am going to work one day on I 95 at 60 mph then there is a terrible clatter from the engine and oil starts to cover the windshield and out the side window I see my alternator go rolling down the road. I get to the shoulder open the hood and where the alternator was is a large hole in the block. Had it towed to the dealer and found out that it will take about a month to get a new engine from Rootes Group. My dad owned a paint & body shop and did all the dealers paint & body work so I was able to get a loaner duster with a slant 6, A/C, radio and not much else. It took almost 2 months before my car was ready and afterwards it was fine. All the students who gave me shit for buying a 4 door car instead of a Vega did not say much as their Vegas were now leaving a blue smoke trail and some had large rust bubbles forming around the C pillar. When the 1973 Camaro Type LT came out I traded the Cricket in on one that was the best car I ever bought except for the 1991 Acura NSX. Never should have sold either one.
I can’t find the pictures of my engine and alternator and bent con rods, but the picture above is very close.
Rust bubbles on a brand-new, just delivered car?!! That’s incredible! And a real shame too, because those early Vega’s were pretty.
“Vorsprung durch Technik”?
Just out of high school in 1989, had an evening job 25 miles from home and my car was a ’66 Mustang coupe. When I headed in to work at 1pm it was 55 degrees or thereabouts and I figured a sweater was good enough. When I walked out of work at 10:30pm, snow and ice was blowing everywhere. I started the car, went back inside to let the anemic heater do its best to warm the interior above freezing before heading home.
About 10 miles from home I hear the tell-tale “dragging a bucket of bolts” sound of a rod letting go and start to look for a place to shut the car down and call for a ride. Not a house in sight, nor could I remember any along the highway between where I was and my hometown. I tried to nurse the now failing 289 but after a couple more miles I felt and heard the clash of a rod that has now freed itself entirely of restraints. At that point, I gave it gas and just hoped to build enough speed to coast closer to home. For 7 miles that little Windsor managed to continue flying in loose formation at 60mph and I parked it at the gas station at the edge of town.
A few days later when the weather turned decent again I went out to assess the damage and pull parts. Both heads had been hit by pistons, two cylinders were sporting bay windows, the camshaft was broken in two places and the crank was broke in half. 5 of the 8 rods had either broken entirely or suffered serious bends. I kept the intake/carb and accessories, threw the shattered remnants of the 289 in the trunk and went looking for a long block.
That little 24 year old C-code had amassed a lot of hard mileage, but when it finally let go it still managed to not fail me when I needed it.
I bet you were a Ford man for life after that!
I certainly doubled-down on my 289 fandom although there were some wretched 70s smallblock Fords that earned my ire, mostly thanks to the idiocy of nylon timing gears.
Did Ford actually do that? I still remember my second car, an old Ford with a flathead 6, which sounded for all the world like it had a rod knocking. I spent a couple of weeks tearing it down, borrowing a micrometer to determine that the bearings were all within spec. Then someone suggested replacing the timing gear that was made of compressed fiber of some sort. I found out later that this problem was well known to the already diminishing (in 1959) number of Ford 6 flathead guys.
Indeed they did. It was a steel core with cast nylon gears. The argument was that they made the engine run quieter, which perhaps was the case until you took a tooth or two off. At that point it either made the engine very very quiet or expensively loud.
Yup; my 240 six ate its fiber timing gear. I replaced them with steel ones, for a HD truck engine, and now it sounds like it has a blower! But they’re never going to break.
This one isn’t mine, but that’s what it looked like.
Yeah, the inline-sixes and the Cologne V6s with nylon gear drive were notorious for that kind of thing, which only annoys you all the more given that the engines were designed to run forever with no timing chain/belt issues and then someone screwed it up in the name of “quiet” by changing from steel to plastic.
2010, driving my brother’s old Saab 900 Turbo in Vancouver… I’d had it out for a couple of hours trying to decide whether it was in good enough condition for a return drive to Calgary. The answer was no: I was coming back into town when the transmission exploded. Huge bang, metallic whirring noises and a trail of transmission oil in the street as I pulled over to the side of the road.
My brother was very cool about it – he’d only paid a few hundred dollars for the car a few months befor, so it was no great financial loss and he sold it for parts. He was just annoyed that he’d missed the drama.
Oh, where to start? Well, I can report from empirical experience that the pinion gears in a stock Vega rear end are not sufficiently strong to survive revving the Buick 3.8L and slamming the THM350 in drive. Did that right in front of a frat house at Ga. Tech, too.
Then there was the time when Eeyore, my ’64 Beetle, had issues in the starting circuit that required me to roll start everywhere I went. No biggie, at least until I made the mistake of parking nose-in at a friends house and tried to roll-start in reverse. It started, all right, at which point I tripped trying to jump in the seat, and it drug me backwards across 50′ of gravel before I got loose. Eeyore ended up against a tree, which required (on top of finally fixing the starter wiring) a new bumper and deck lid.
Driving quietly towards Greenlane when a god-awful metal tearing screech had me stop the BF ute in just a few metres..the engine was sounding like a Harvard up really close!!
The entire exhaust system had dropped down away at the front manifold flange, a complete shearing-off that looked like it had been gas-cut leaving the whole heavy exhaust system digging face forward hard into the tar seal.
Apparently it was a ‘vibration fatigue’ hmm …it makes for a beautiful neat 360 degree shiny clean ‘separation’.. very weird!
I had an exhaust downpipe break off too, on a Mazda but it didn’t fall down far. It sounded like a Tiger Moth (being 4cyl) when taking off from rest, yet surprisingly quiet under certain circumstances – not many circumstances, but some!
The Tiger Moth I flew in from Whitianga to Pauanui a few years ago was ‘popping and farting’ when throttled back after a sluggish sort of take-off run ..it didn’t want to climb beyond 3,000 feet over the ranges for some reason (fuel?)(wtf) ..sounded god-awful on cruise.. we were preparing ourselves for some engine likelihood of a forced landing without power actually as power was so far down and the running was so rough..
..well we got to Pauanui, lined-up, asked other traffic to give us priority, and put the little yellow brute back down onto terra ferma
..the ‘pilot’ (not moi on that flight) checked the engine, lifted the cowling, and there for all to see were the mag switches with one mag switched “OFF”
..the silly bugger had flipped it ‘off’ when re-starting after the Whitianga re-fuel ..he didn’t know why he did that… something mumbled about ‘backfiring’ and ‘safer to start on one mag’ ..
well, that just shows you how much TWO mags and TWO separate and operational ignition systems ACTUALLY DO give the engine MORE power ..at least it certainly did with the old Tiger Moth
it makes one wonder how much difference you would notice by disabling one of the twin spark systems in a car engine, such as the early ’80’s Nissan Bluebird..??
anyone ever tried that?
July 1998.
I’m with my wife-to-be in my father’s ’84 F-150, pulling a 16′ trailer. We are on I-70, going over the Missouri River into St. Charles. I’m in the middle lane of the five lane Blanchette Bridge.
Suddenly the pickup starts pulling hard to the right; a passing driver slows and points to the right front tire as we hear a loud “KABOOM”.
This section of I-70, at that time, at 250,000 vehicles per day. So I wiggle my way to the shoulder. I pull out the spare that is as bald as Telly Savalas. The tire that blew, I later learned, was one of the original, 14 year old tires. This was the fastest tire change of my life as traffic was blasting around me, I was near the ramp to an interchange, and traffic was quite heavy that day.
Yes, I’ve had a tire phobia ever since.
Any tire older than 10 years should be replaced.
I agree. Being exposed to a philosophy of “it still has tread on it” has me replacing tires at about five years.
my dad has 14 year old tires on his Viper GTS…I won’t ever drive it until he replaces the old ass michelin pilot sport wrestling mats that currently wrap the rims…Time for drag radials, amirght?
No flames, explosions or billowing clouds of smoke, but having a brake line let go on my 56 Plymouth with its single chamber master cylinder was um….quite memorable to me.
Luckily it happened while driving in a residential neighborhood with no pedestrians around.
It wasn’t my vehicle. Which just adds to the … joy?
Many years ago I went to a community college as a mature student. Since I was old enough, they asked me to drive the college bus, an ex-school bus. We called it The Green Goose because it was green and there were assorted geese painted on it (school emblem)
One March I took the hockey team out of town for a tournament. The equipment went into a cage in the back that replaced some seats, then team got in, and off we went.
First stop was for mix…. soft drinks. We’re sitting across the street from a corner store while a bunch of guys go in to get whatever mixed with whatever they had. Meanwhile, Sean is sitting behind me and suddenly blurts out “Your dash is on fire!”. Sure enough, the dash/switch panel next to the driver is smoking. Fortunately, it opened up easily and inside we just ripped off the wires that were smoking. “What does that switch do?” “I don’t know”.
The boys come back and off we roll. Maybe 20 km out of town the bus suddenly gets VERY LOUD! The exhaust had become disconnected before the muffler. But it wasn’t dragging. We continued.
Once we were most of the way there, the small-block Chevy in the bus started running rough, but … well, we’re most of the way there, right? We continued.
The tournament was a bust, the only thing I remember is the puck getting lost when shot at our goalie. It kind of vanished into his pads, only to reappear some time later.
After the last game, I have the bus idling, very very roughly, to warm up as the players get cleaned up. The driver of another teams bus tells me it’s running rough, but what can I do?
So, load them all up, and off we go. There are very long stretches of mild uphill leaving town and the bus won’t pull more than 45 MPH (Old bus, MPH speedometer). It’s sounding pretty bad. We continue.
We turn to take the short cut over a back road. “I don’t think it’s going to make it, Sean!” “Oh sure it will!”. We continue.
We get to the top of a hill and suddenly things get very quiet (remember? no muffler?) Then it starts roaring again and steam comes out the sides of the hood, out the grille, through the floorboards. I just shut it off and coast to the bottom of the hill. We didn’t continue.
This is pre-cell phone, far away from much of anything. One of the players says he saw a house a mile back or so, and so a couple of them walk back there to call for help. When they come back, they’re holding shards of cylinder wall and connecting rods “We have the parts! We can fix it!”.
We sit and wait. A police car passes and the team all hide their drinks.
We sit and wait. The police car passes going the other way and the team all hide their drinks.
We sit and wait. The police car passes again, stops and asks if we’re all right. The team has finished all their drinks. The cop leaves, Pete stands up and says “Piss on it! When I get mad I just piss on it!” And he stands on the front bumper and relieves himself into the engine compartment.
It’s starting to get cold, but eventually a couple of rent-a-vans get to us. We load all the equipment into one and it heads the long way back, a couple of players and the two drivers from the rent-a-car company in it. I take the team in the other van. We finally continue.
We’re tooting along this back road and get to a little bridge. The van sidesteps a bit on the bridge because now it’s cold enough for all the snow that’s been melting all day to refreeze in places. I look at Sean. Sean looks at me: “I felt that”.
We get to the main highway, and I stomp it. Lots of traction! Off we go. We’re blasting along, making up time, and then it starts getting slippery again. I’m slowing and slowing, eventually doing about 45 km/h. Level stretch of highway, trees on both sides and the van just turns sideways. LOTS of corrective steering and I get it back under control. Pete: “I just had an orgasm back here!”
The entire team is now ready to get hotel rooms and continue the next day. We get to a little town and find the police station. They tell us that there are NO hotels/motels for another 60 km, but that the road north is fine. We continue.
We get to a truck stop and we NEED coffee. We all sit down, the waitress comes along “What’ll you have dearie”. Me: “Ten coffee and a club house”. “Coffee and club houses all around?” “No, ten coffee for me, and a clubhouse. They can order for themselves.” “Oooohkay”. And she gets my coffee and makes the rounds. Before she’s half way done, I’ve finished my coffee. “Another one, please”. This happens at least once more before she’s finished taking the orders so I just suggest that I get my own coffee and keep track. “Oooohkay”.
Feeling much better, we hit the road again, and things are beautiful, clear night, dry road and we’re making time. Until we hit fog so thick you can only see two stripes down the highway. Pete: “We’re all gonna die!!”.
Eventually we get back home, but it’s icy in town. I drop everybody off. Two of them share an apartment at the end of a dead end and I can feel the van getting sucked into the slush/snow/ice … they get to walk half a block. Elsewhere I’m being followed by a cop (small town, they have to do something) and signal left, touch the brakes and … nothing, so icy it just keeps going. So signal right, pull over, and turn around after the cop passes.
That was our fun trip! On another trip, we ate ALL the all you can eat shrimp at a chain restaurant, the water pump fell off, we snuck across the US border to get cheap beer, found out what the burnt out switch was for and got snowed in when a storm closed the highway… but that was the basketball team.
You win 🙂
+1
Pete sounds like an alright dude.
SHF on steroids. Great story, when it rains it pours.
Now that’s a proper story! Well told and sounds like quite an adventure…
Nothing so dramatic here. The best one was probably after I’d had a guy who did mechanic work out of his garage (former professional who still did it as a sideline) take a look at a coil issue on the Alero. Put it all back together, but leaving his property, I took a shortcut through the grass as his driveway was blocked. Car bottomed out at one point but I didn’t think much of it. So I headed towards the highway to go home, but noticed I was low on gas so I stopped at the gas station just before getting on I-40. When I slowed down to pull into the gas station I noticed smoke drifting out behind the car. Pulled in and shut it down, and immediately noticed the smoke now drifting all around from under the car, and the trail of fluid I’d left behind me. Turns out when I bottomed out I hit a half-buried landscaping timber, which put a hole in the transmission pan. I’d driven about a mile and a half leaking fluid the entire way. Had I not stopped for gas and gotten on the highway, I absolutely would have lost all the fluid and grenaded the transmission–stopping for gas saved me a huge bill.
I called the mechanic up to let him know what happened and see if he could take a look at it. He had me tow it back to his place, where he welded the hole in the pan and replaced the fluid and filter, and only charged me materials since his property caused the damage. All this going on at around 10 PM on a weeknight. Good guy. And the welded pan never gave me any trouble the rest of the time I had the car.
Two stories.
1. Many years ago, 1971 VW Type 2, 1600cc dual port engine, “somewhat” modified for more power. Heard a bang, followed by clattering noises. The crankshaft had broken. The engine still ran. I will never forget seeing the crankshaft pulley wobbling around.
2 Recent (very). 2000 Saturn LS-1 5 Speed. The engine subframe fractured in two places, (rust assisted), resulting in the left driveshaft pulling out of the inner CV joint.
All of a sudden the oil pressure dropped to zero in my Sunbeam Rapier followed by an horrendous racket of knocking,scraping and rattling.I shut it off got towed home and saw bits of shrapnel in the drained oil,I knew this was going to be bad,a twisted rod almost broken through,i rebuilt it with the help of my Dad, brother and boyfriend if I’d known that the rebuilt engine was going to fry the gearbox a little over a year later i would have walked away from it
If only we could see the future…or maybe that wouldn’t be so good after all.
I bought a used engine from a local guy for the Mustang last year (before I rebuilt the original), and made it 300 miles and 30 miles from home when it started hammering like Thor. Needless to say, it came home on the flatbed and I found this after a day of diagnosis.
The engine smoked from the breather pretty badly the whole time I ran it, but I did have a defective carburetor on it, which could have washed the cylinder walls. It only did this on the front two cylinders, however. The piston tops were carbon coated with no signs of damage either. Weird.
Only serious issue I’ve encountered was one of the recalled GM 3800 vehicles years ago that would start on fire “under heavy braking”. I don’t brake hard, and it caught on fire. This was after the recall was “fixed”. Kind of a shady fix if you ask me. Losing more faith in GM every day, every recall!
Just did this the other day. Out of my 1967 1500 Beetle Sedan. 🙁
Probably my VW van going bang was the most memorable it happened 20kms into my annual north QLD trip loud banging and clattering from the motor I stopped left it idling and had a listen It sounded like a lot of metal parts being shaken in a steel drum not good, but it still went so I nursed it to a wrecking yard I knew of that stocked VW parts however he didnt have an engine I could afford so I traded the van for a Holden Torana and set off again, It wasnt a good trip that year the Torana ended its life in a junkyard in Southern QLD, Gympie to be exact it was towed in after catastrophic engine failure yet again, I ended up getting a ride to my destination with friends in a F100 pickup towing a caravan it sucked fuel at a prodigious rate but at least it kept running.
F-100s keep on going, no matter what!
1986 Mazda 323 bought new. It’s 1988 and we have about 25K on the car (2-year, 24K warranty). Just accelerating up to speed leaving a rest area on the I90 in PA. Engine misses a few beats, then dead silence. A quick look under the hood revealed the accessory pulley, complete with center crank bolt sitting at an unnatural angle. Not good. After a tow to the Erie, PA Mazda dealer, a quick look revealed the worst..the nose of the crankshaft had broken off.
The Mazda service manager scratched his head a bit, then, to Mazda’s eternal credit said “Well, we’ve got to fix this for you.”
A couple of weeks later, when I picked up the repaired car, I got a look at the broken parts. The cause of the failure was a center bolt that was too long and bottomed out in the blind hole in the nose of the crank. This put that part of the crank in tension, and cast iron ain’t so hot in tension. I never heard if this was a chronic problem in that engine.
It is – mostly known in Miatas, but also in 323s that shared the same 1.6L block.
In October 2010 I had a wheel almost on fire.
My 1965 Chrysler needed new front tires. Previous alignment issues had seriously worn the outer edges, but figured they would be good enough for the last few weeks of the driving season.
An hour from home I started noticing some vibration, but assumed it was a tire. In the middle of the complicated US-23/I-75/I-69 interchange it got much worse. By the time I could get off the highway, the right front wheel had an extra 15 degrees of camber and the now bearingless spindle was hot enough to melt the plastic center of the wheel cover.
Wow; I always wondered what would happen when the front bearing let go. Nice picture!
The fun part is chiseling enough off that nut to be able to remove the brake drum.
When I was running my Indie VW Shop in a College Town , the damn kids & cheapskates would ignore the howling front wheel bearings until they seized and mostly twisted the end of the spindle clean off……
I had a whole long shelf of shame , mangled parts , broken crank shafts , bent/broken connecting rods , shattered pistons & pistons with inverted valves jammed firmly into them , on and on….
Good times, best job I ever had was that VW Shop ! .
-Nate
Nate, we had a Focus towed into our service department that had the worst bearing failure I’ve ever seen. The ditz that owned it drove it with a bad front bearing until it wore through the knuckle!
The traffic through that interchange can be very heavy and nerve racking!
My 1986 Cavalier station wagon, unbeknownst to me, had a cracked head and developed a backfire. While I was driving it I heard a loud BOOM and then a puff-puff-puff sound. When I lifted the hood I found the airbox blown off and a spark plug wire complete with spark plug laying free in the engine compartment. The threads had stripped completely out. So I put the airbox back on the intake, put in a Heli-Coil, and the problem was solved. That is, until the catalytic converter disintegrated and the head failed completely. When I went to trade it in on something it stalled on the way. When it finally lit off it blew a cloud of smoke that looked like nothing I’d ever seen before. I thought it was going to blow up on the spot.
I seriously doubt it ever ran again after I parked it. As I drove away in my new purchase I couldn’t help but wonder what the guy at the dealership did when he turned the key. I suspect that when it cooled it locked completely up, as it felt like it would do that the whole way there and the only thing that stopped it from doing so was my ever-present foot on the gas.
The top photo says it all. It happened to my dad when he was just going to move my 1961 Bel Air out of the driveway in December, 1969, while I was in California. It blew a rod and a nice hole in the 235 cu. in. block, too. My buddy up the street sent me a few of the pieces!
The other has been chronicled already – our 1992 LeBaron convertible. The engine blew on my way home from work, about two miles from home on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon in September, 2007. Sold the thing two days later. Too bad, for it was a beautiful but troubled car when we bought it in May, 1999.
99 Town & Country. Driving perfectly at 225k mi or so. Nice fall day, going to visit No. 1 Son in Bloomington, about an hour and fifteen away. Mrs JPC takes the van to run a quick errand before we leave. Comes home, says car driving funny.
Go to back out of driveway and the car feels like its going in and out of park. 100 feet down the street doing the same thing forwards, and I decide that there will be no trip in that car today. Broken transmission shaft. And a perfect failure location – my house.
I have always wondered if Mrs JPC did anything unusual. 20+ years of marriage taught me to not even ask.
You learned well 🙂
Ed Stembridge must have borrowed it.
I had a Porsche 944 pinion gear give up (although it did have 175K miles on it). After that it went bang!..pause..bang!..pause bang! very loudly each time that missing tooth came around… Talk about expensive noises….
Good question. In my drag racing days I blew up my share of hardware, including a spectacular engine failure that oiled down the last 500 feet of strip on a busy Saturday, but the most memorable will probably always be a Cummins 400 that broke a crankshaft pulling max gvw on a long hill about 1:00 am on BC’s infamous Roger’s pass. Since I was driving a Freightliner cabover the very loud, very violent failure occurred about 2 feet under my ass. There was so much smoke for a few minutes I thought it was going to burn, and I was a long way from the nearest fire hall.Things came to such a rapid halt I couldn’t even get over to the shoulder, and I didn’t have enough light to try and back it over and off. This was long before cel phones, and all I could do was put out flares and wait for help. Pretty soon another trucker stopped and offered to call for help at the summit. A wrecker was dispatched from Calgary, a mere 2 and a half hours away, I grabbed a westbound Greyhound at the next town and the load presumably made it eventually.
I was making the run to help out a buddy and wasn’t even getting paid. About the only part of the engine that wasn’t damaged beyond repair were the valve covers!
At least the repairs didn’t come out of my pocket.
Knowing how close one sits to one of these, I would not want to have been in your pants that night.
My most memorable fail was probably driving my 84 Jetta from Joplin Missouri to Kansas City and back for our wedding in 1993. On the way up the bearings in the rebuilt alternator I had installed a few months before started to fail which threw the belt, so I stopped an replaced the belt an then tried to press on. It was late at night, punctuated by typical Midwest biblical deluge rainstorms and we needed to catch a flight in the morning. After a while the belt went and while I was OK driving with total loss ignition, I had forgotten that the water pump was on the same belt until the engine reminded me by popping a radiator hose. At that point I called a tow truck and we got to bed at 2:00am. But the fun didn’t end there, after replacing the alternator and radiator hose we headed home and saw a cloud of smoke because the oil pan drain plug had fallen out. I pulled over, hitched a ride to an auto parts store with some seriously sketchy guys and bought a couple of rubber universal fit drain plugs and some oil to make it home.
The alternator replacement had included its own tale since our 85 Ford Ranger decided to kill its engine on the way back from the auto parts store, laying a cloud of oil smoke but still making it home.
Had one in the Navy. We were taking a shipwreck drowning victim to the Canadian Forces Hospital in St. Johns, Newfoundland. I was at the U.S. Navy hospital at Argentia ,Newfoundland.I and another young sailor were dispatched. He was a risk to let along on liberty and I wasn’t much better but hadn’t been caught yet. He had stolen a base bus and put it in the drink and I don’t know why he still had a government license. About 30 miles from base the front right wheel caught an unplowed (or badly plowed) snow bank and he put that old Dodge Power Wagon over on it’s side. That’s the drivers side which put me holding on for dear life with flailing feet inches from his head.
The shipping crate with the body was swinging by two straps behind us.
I thumbed a ride to a phone and got hold of the base which sent folks to set us upright and get us on our way. People stopped to ask my driver (Meade) if he was ok. Then they would ask about the patient. Lots of strange looks when he told them the patient was dead. I would guess that they forgot to check the oil in the transmission when the put us up because it came to a stop a few miles after we got on the TCH to St. Johns. This time the base just called a tow truck to take us to the Canadian Hospital.
While we were lined up with two vehicles one behind the other a guy came over the hill, saw us on the right side of the road (the car behind the ambulance was backed up so he saw the headlights) and thought he was in the left lane. I will never forget how happy and relieved I was when he took off over that snow filled ditch and came to a stop 50 meters away. I was sure that he was going to hit head on and Mrs. Wilcox was going to lose a son. When we got to ST. Johns the hospital administrator sent a vehicle for us. He said that with that sort of luck he wasn’t taking a chance of having us on liberty. I think he was right.
The ambulance made it back on the line before too long but I didn’t feel like I was particularly anxious to make any more trips.
Unless you’ve been there yourself, you just cant appreciate the subtle delights of an Aisin-Warner AX-5 (used in 4 cyl/V6 Cherokees and Comanches and 4 cyl Wranglers up to about ’02) as it dies a horrible death hurtling down the freeway doing 70 mph.
That happened to my ’95 YJ Wrangler back in ’01 not long after Id moved back to TN from Oregon. It was pounding down the road like always and then all of a sudden, a sickening KLAANG!! as it ate 5th gear. From there it was like riding on railroad ties, assuming the path of the O/D gear went eccentric on the mainshaft. I came to a stop and tried to figure out if my whole tranny was toast. 1st-4th and reverse worked fine so I limped it back to my parents place….and limped it back to Memphis from their house, about a 1 hr 45 min romp at full bore. Much longer doing 50. Back in Memphis, I took it to a shop thinking Id be into it a few hundred to get 5th gear repaired but when these things go, they go. The damage was enough that a rebuilt trans was what I had to do, at $1500. They had another dead AX-5 there sitting next to an AX-15 as used on the 4.0L models. The AX-15 was about twice the size…the AX-5 might be adequate for a little 2wd Toyota pickup or maybe a 4 cyl sportscar but just looking at it I knew it was a dead man walking, even behind a 4 banger Jeep. I think part of whats at work here is a Japanese tranny mated to an American powerplant. Japanese engines tend to make their power at higher RPMs. An American motor…even a 4 banger…has a tendency towards low end torque, which will easily break a weak part. That trans was NOT up to par for Jeep duty!
Those AX-5s are apparently notorious for commiting suicide before 100K, even in on-road use. Mine was used but not abused offroad and made it to 90K.
When buying Mopars, upgrade your drivetrain! This wouldn’t be the first time that they only use the ‘good stuff’ on the more powerful engines.
In fairness, the equally-Japanese AW4 automatic used in the 4.0 XJs was pretty much bulletproof if looked after.
That said, agreed on the AX-5 being the weak link in the drivetrain on the Jeeps that used them. I can’t even begin to tell you how many I’ve seen in the junkyard with ‘BAD TRANS’ scrawled in paint pen on the windows.
MY story has a bit of a lucky angle to it. Our Dad was coming home from work one Friday when the 54 Century threw a connectiong rod. He was planning to take us to the beach in New Jersey on vacation from Western Pa. The lucky part is that it happned when it did a few miles from home and not out in the middle of the Pa turnpike or the Ben Franklin Bridge.
I’ve only blown a rod, which pales in comparison to some of these stories.
But when I was in college my friend April had a bustleback Seville. We were in Nashville and she wanted to be a country singer, so that sort of explains the Caddy.
She was originally from Lancaster, PA and most of my family is in Virginia, so at Easter she decided to drive home and I came along to share driving duties until I got dropped off in the northern Shenandoah Valley.
The trip up was fine. The trip back was absolutely shambolic.
Some little gremlin in the Caddy’s wiring went ballistic so the interior lights wouldn’t go out. At night this was a big problem. We found a garage but the mechanic was uneasy about pulling things apart. April ended up just pulling a few fuses and off we went into the dark.
About an hour later, something started to smell like burning electronics. We were, by now, near Johnson City and NOTHING was open. Wisps of smoke were coming out of the dashboard. We stopped and went into a McDonalds to grab something to eat, hoping whatever it was would burn itself out.
About 30 minutes later I was having a rib-cracking bout of food poisoning. The dashboard was still smoking a little and very hot in some places. We had to stop about every 15 minutes to make sure nothing was actually on fire. I was blubbering mess and turning 12 shades of green,
When we finally made it back to school, the car had fried many of its electronics, I had to be hospitalized and April bought a ’92 Camaro with leaky T-tops.
A GM DS experienced first hand 🙂
“The dashboard was still smoking a little and very hot in some places.”
Christine!
It was probably August of 2000, I was a newly licensed 16-year-old with nothing to do in suburban North County San Diego, so I invented a reason to drive to the store to buy something. My parents were very cool about letting me drive their cars, so I took my mom’s ’94 Cadillac Deville (the one year produced before the Northstar was introduced) because although it was a geezermobile, it was “gangsta” and Dre and Snoop always rapped about Caddies on the Chronic 2001 album.
Anyway, the area near my parents’ house is all smooth, beautifully landscaped parkways with speed limits of 55mph. As I drove to the shopping center, there was a brand new 2000 Bonneville driving like an a-hole next to me. He was getting on my nerves, so when we were both stopped at a light next to eachother I figured I’d bait him and FLOORED the Caddy when the light turned green. I took off, and when the tranny went to shift into second – BOOM. It was a loud bang followed by a wheezy grinding sound; I’ll never forget it. The car basically stopped still, and wouldn’t go over 10mph.
I limped into a parking lot and called my dad. We had an extended GM warranty so he wasn’t overly concerned. In fact, he told me to drive it home. “But it won’t shift out of first and go faster than 10!” I said. “It’s fine, just put your flashers on.” It was nighttime and roads were empty, so I did as I was told and drove home at 10mph in the bike lane of a 55mph parkway. Luckily the bike lane was very wide. Cars, and several police cars, whizzed by me. I was going so slow they probably thought I was stationary. It took me more than an hour to do a drive that usually takes less than 10 minutes.
The car was towed to the dealership the next day. I never found out exactly what went wrong, but GM had to ship out an entire new tranny from Detroit. I’ll never forget that night, and think of that incident everytime I see a white ’94-’97 Deville. The ones with the gansta fender skirts, thank you very much.
The guy in the Bonneville probably had a good laugh 🙂
I was moving from Washington to California, and I installed a fifth wheel hitch with bolts, but I took it into a RV shop to beef up the hitch with steel plates and welding. The mechanic did an excellent job and I had the hitch on for about 12 years with no problem. She also installed the brake controller and all wiring for the 29 ft 5th wheel trailer. As I got near the Sisku mountain pass, I noticed when I used the turn signals the 70 C10 would slowdown and speed up in unison with the blinkers. The wiring had been installed in the wheel housing in the back of the truck. No big deal, I’ll just use arm signals. As I began to head downhill after reaching the summit, I downshifted to 3rd and began to use the brakes. Soon they seemed to be fading away, and I began to see smoke come off the trucks wheels. I pulled on the trailer brake controller, and the trailer brakes did not apply at all. I pulled into the left lane as I picked up speed and began to pass slower traffic in the right lane. I downshifted in 2nd, the engine spinning over way too fast, and I had both feet on the rock hard brake pedal. This kept me going the same speed as traffic, and this went on for about 25 minutes. I still had to stay in the left lane as I kept pace with that traffic but could not slow enough for right lane traffic. A lady pulled in front of me, I hit the horn but it was dead. She looked in the mirror and saw me coming up on her and she quickly pulled back into the right lane. When I got to the bottom of the pass smoke was rolling off the brakes and out of the tailpipe. I pulled off into a gas station and shut it off. The engine needed almost 3 quarts of oil. One of the tires on the thankfully double axle fifth wheel trailer was flat. After airing up the tire and adding oil, I asked where a RV repair shop was, one was close by. I went to start the truck, the battery was dead. I bought a battery and slowly drove it to the repair shop. He was closing for the day, but allowed me to hook up the RV to power and spend the night there. It turned out the plug has been mounted too close to the rear tire, and with the weight of the trailer the tire rubbed through the back of the plug and burned up the wiring in both the truck and trailer. He repaired the trailer wiring, I repaired the truck wiring along with replacing the alternator and voltage regulator. I went to a tire shop to replace the tire, turned out the rim was rusted out from the inside, so I used the spare which the trailer had. I noticed the truck brakes pulled badly, So I pulled the drums at the tire shop and the springs had all lost their tension from the heat. I bought 4 brake hardware kits and replaced all the springs. Then It wouldn’t turn over, It had also burned out the starter so I replaced that also. It cost a lot of money, but I was thankful to be alive. The engine still ran fine even after all those rpm’s it was turning down hill. We figure the turn signals were shorting into the brake circuit and the trailer brakes were going on and off with the turnsignals.
Wow! Scary; I know that pass well. When we were moving to OR from CA, I towed a utility trailer with my ’66 F-100, which has pretty modest sized drums. The trailer was unbraked. The truck and trailer stacked high with moving boxes and stuff. I decided to play it safe, and shift into 2nd as I crested the pass. But the shifter kept popping out of second! Repeatedly. I decided I had only one chance to brake to a stop, if that. I stood on the brakes, and pulled into the shoulder. It slowed down, and just barely….finally…stopped; I wondered if it would stop all the way.
After the brakes cooled off, I drove down slowly, keeping my hand firmly against the shifter to keep it in 2nd. The transmission was shot, and it picked exactly that spot to announce that fact.
Are you going to do an article on your move up the coast with your F-100?
Yes. Eventually. It’s a long and complicated story; maybe this winter.
That was the longest 25 minutes of my life. Glad you made it OK with your experience.
Many years back, during a particularly brutal winter cold snap, my Celica refused to start up for me one day. After waiting for above freezing tempratures and a bit of self diagnosis, it was apparent my skills were not up to the task, and off to the Toyota dealer she went. Turns out the timing belt had slipped, but likely due to the extreme cold, it wasn’t able to do any catastrophic damage. Seeing as the car was already there, I went ahead and had Toyota do the work, along with a laundry list of other things like suspension components and so on the car was going to need by spring anyway. Got the car back on Valentine’s day as I recall, and as a token of my appreciation for the ride to pick up my car, I took my lady friend out for a late lunch. The Celi drove great after, and all seemed well on the drive to the restaurant. The ride home was a completely different matter. In the middle of rush hour, on a stretch of highway with no shoulder (of course!) the throttle lost all ability to hold the revs. Applying more gas caused the car to surge off unexpectedly and then stall again. After about two miles of this back and forth no throttle/full throttle insanity we reached an exit. Pulled over as soon as I could, and called the Dealer. After demanding very firmly they figure out a tow for me and get to the bottom of what was wrong with my supposedly fixed car, they agreed. My friend and I rode with the tow driver, who although very friendly, had no verbal filter whatsoever. The driver: “so are you two married”? Us: “no”. Driver: “well that’s good. My wife is leaving me, but we still live together. She hates me”. Us “… ” The driver just kept going, and went into many details about his family life, all the passive aggressive things in his household, and so on. At the end of our journey, he reminded us again if we ever did get married to be “ready for the consequences”. Did I mention this was Valentine’s day? My friend and I laughed and laughed for weeks afterward about that particular adventure 🙂
OT: What’s the engine in the first photo? What does the writing on the top say?
Coventry Climax. A famous little Brit four cylinder that started life as a portable fire pump engine and went on to become a very successful racing engine in F2 and F1. It has quite the story. Wikipedia has a good entry on it.
A friend has one, he plans to install in a vintage Fizz boat thats built from surplus Lancaster aircraft allumunium originally powered by a Ford 10hp I must go back to his place and take some pic he has some interesting stuff laying around.
First my own, then a family story:
I had a 1990 Miata with a Flyin’ Miata turbo kit. Fully tuned, it pulled 217 hp at the wheels. Keep in mind that in stock form it made 116 hp at the crank; maybe 95 hp at the wheels.
Engine wise, it was solid – the B6 was designed for boost – why else would a 116 hp 1.6L have oil squirters on the pistons? But the factory five-speed was the Mazda M-type transmission. In other words, the RWD transmission used in the non-turbo RX-7s, B2000 and B2200, and Miata. Definitely not meant for an engine with any sort of power – Mazda had the R-type or “ribcase” for that. The M-type was marginal for the 146 hp FC RX-7 non-turbo; it didn’t stand a chance in a Miata making close to 250 up at the crank.
One day, merging onto I-95 in Virginia, in third gear, the little beast spooled its turbo to 15 psi, and promptly went BANG! followed by that sickening “bag of bolts” sound others described here.
I was afraid the engine came apart, but I quickly found out that all gears but third would transmit torque; third slipped like someone removed the clutch.
I drove all the way to Reading PA like that, the gearbox sounding like a rock tumbler, to my Miata expert. It turns out that third gear was the weak point of that transmission, and one day, just the stress of full boost was enough to tear the teeth clear off of third gear.
The only solution was a strengthened rebuild of the five speed that would run about $3k, or a six-speed out of a later Miata. I scored a six speed from a 2001 Miata that was wrecked with only 6,000 miles for $900. The five speed shifted better and had better gearing, but the cost differential was too great.
Now, my grandfather’s story. He had a Chevy II that he loved. It had a straight six of unknown displacement, and a three-on-the-tree. My grandmother wanted him to replace it, but he insisted that he’d “drive it til the wheels fell off.”
One day, one of the front wheels fell off the car. He ground to a stop, and everyone assumed the car would be gone in a few days.
Much to their surprise, the same car returned a few days later. My grandmother said “you said you’d drive it til the wheel fell off. It fell off. Why is it still here?”
My grandfather replied “well it’s got three left.” 😀
Great. Loved your grandpa’s story.
It was 1990, I lived in Boca Raton and was in college at Florida Atlantic University. My girlfriend, a buddy and me had plans to go to Gainesville for the weekend. I offered to drive us in my 1963 Plymouth Valiant instead of my buddy’s 1988 Camaro Berlinetta. I had driven the Valiant all over the place and been through many roadside adventures, so it was no big deal to take the 6 hour trip in my car. We were about 20 minutes from the dorm going north on I95 going about 65mph when all the sudden a huge vibration, loud bangs and then screeching tires—the rear diff had gone dry and ate itself and locked up! The car was starting to slide sideways when (thank GOD) it broke loose and the wheels started to turn again just in time for me to regain control and pull off onto the shoulder. The rear had completely grenaded and we went back finding hot, blue metal parts in the road while the wrecker came.
Always more fun when the car belongs to someone else. Once, when home on leave from the Air Force, I borrowed my brother’s car to visit someone about 200 miles away. This was not his primary car (fortunately) but one that someone had “borrowed” and kept for 7-8 months. I never really learned all the details but at one point it was reported as being stolen before eventually finding its way back home. Needless to say it had suffered more than its fair share of abuse along the way. As I remember it was a Chevelle 4 door sedan, it may have been a 1969, I do know it had the 307 V-8 and a Powerglide. Anyway my brother told me that the Chevelle used “some” oil and to keep an eye on it. What he didn’t tell me was that the dipstick was not the correct one for the car and that the oil pressure idiot light didn’t work. I made the trip to see my friend and when I checked the oil before starting home, the stick showed “Full”. I managed to get some 40 miles from home before the engine expired with a bang and copious amounts of white smoke. Sure enough, there was a fist sized hole in the side of the block with a severed connecting rod poking through. I then had to wait some three hours for my brother to arrive so we could flat tow the dead Chevelle back home, at least the weather was pleasant. I offered to pay for fixing the car but my brother just said the hell with it and towed the Chevelle to the boneyard.
Nothing like these (yet and hopefully ever) but coming back from a long weekend to Manhattan in the ’77 Electra I noticed belt squeal near Hartford. Pulled over, had a look in park and then with engine idling. Alternator belt loose. Tightened it up. Started up and headed down the Merritt. Coming on dusk. Make it to about Westchester. My lights aren’t on. Wait, the knob’s pulled out, that’s funny. The alternator light comes on about 2 miles later. I can see my lights are very dim in the car ahead. It’s not dark yet so I turn them off. Alternator light goes off. Preoccupied with this issue. Forget to stay right on Hutch and accidentally end up on Cross County towards the Major Deegan. Evening. Before a Yankees game. The Deegan is a crawling stop and go mess. Getting darker. Put lights back on. Interior lights go. Alternator light comes back on. Crawling down the Deegan. No good place to pull over. Try for Manhattan. Battle traffic on third avenue bridge, turning off lights at all stops. Power windows go. I’m driving down York Avenue towards my apartment. Lights are verry dim. Pedestrians are waving at me. Oncoming vehicles flashing lights. I turn into my street, into the parking garage across from my apartment, and kill the motor. The car won’t start again. Opening the hood reveals a belt stretched into a noodle. I have it towed. The bracket up top wasn’t the problem, a bolt had come loose down below and the belt could no longer hold tension. Cheap fix. But the Buick got me home in one piece.
I was maybe 15 or 16 and daddy had a 62 GMC V6 on the farm and he didn’t fix anything until it BROKE. well, once the brakes went out and i had to drive it to a country repair shop one morning, about 10 miles of gravel road and 4-5 miles of highway, before school and catch the school bus in the area of the shop. another time the clutch, which was hydraulic, master cyl/slave cyl, and again, i had to drive it to the shop. there may have been a time when they were both out together, but hey, as John Denver sang, “there ain’t nothing as a country boy that you can’t hack”
’89 Buick Riviera, driving one day in 1995 on the US151 northbound offramp from 90-94 near Madison, Wis. All of a sudden the battery light went on. Bad, but kept driving. Then the car stalled.
Pulled over, popped the hood not expecting to find much. What I found was a fire in the alternator…… holy crap…….
Stood there with my thumb up my butt for a minute wondering what I was going to do about it, and if the rest of the engine bay was going to burn too. Never seen a fire under the hood before. Then, fortunately, it burned itself out without igniting anything else. Had to hoof it a half mile over hill and dale next to the freeway, until I walked into the closest business to ask to use the phone – it was a friggin’ Lexus dealership. Of course when I walked in they looked at me like I had three heads, but I was able to cancel my appointment for that afternoon, get a tow truck and then call a taxi for myself so I could get home. Had the car towed to my shop in town, the taxi ride cost me every penny I had on me because I had to go back home, all the way across town to the west side.
When the shop called to tell me the car was ready, they solemnly informed me that the alternator was shot and needed replacement. You don’t say……
I assume it seized. Wasn’t cheap to replace either.
The only good news was that the sheriff had already been there to orange-sticker the car while it was waiting for its tow, but luckily my tow got there before the impound truck did…….
Your story reminded me of the end of my brief relationship with a ’91 Ford Crown Vic. Bought the Vic to replace my first car (’79 Malibu that I parked when the timing chain broke), $1800 for a ten year old CV in 2001. Heck of a deal for a solid car–silver over red interior, alloys, half vinyl roof, quite Broughamtastic. I’d had it for about six months, and undertook the 9 hour drive from North Carolina to New Jersey to visit a friend. Ran like a champ on the way up and on the way back. Rolled back into NC around dinner time, so no sooner had I unloaded my suitcase than my roommates and I decided to go for dinner. Ate, came home, parked, and before I even turned the car off I saw smoke pouring from under the hood. Popped the hood, opened it up, observed a flaming alternator. Sent one friend into the house for a bucket of water, called the fire department on my cell as I didn’t want to take chances with cars parked on either side of me. The bucket of water put the fire out just fine, FD seemed a little annoyed when they showed up.
Unfortunately, even though my initial survey of the damage didn’t look too bad, the news from the dealer they towed it to was that the portion of the wiring harness that connected to the alternator melted, and that Ford had stopped making that part. Quite unfortunate as i’d come to rather like the car. (I might feel less charitable had the alternator *not* waited until I was back home in Raleigh to make its exit.)
The silver lining was that the insurance settlement for the car was $2800, so I came out $1000 ahead on my six months of ownership.
GREAT stories ! .
Back in 1973 High School buddy Will had a string of ’57 Chevy Sedans , his Uncle ran a Junkyard and sold them to him for $75 each , we’d swap the old 265 (?) V-8 in and he’d wreck or otherwise kill it in two or three months , buy another and repeat .
The last one I ever rode in was really cherry but the rear suspension trailing arm bushings were beyond shot ~ every time it started from a dead stop it’d go ” Clink , Clank ” as the 1/4″ + of slop took up ~ I told him this was a dead simple fix and important but he ignored the advice and was traveling @ 45 MPH or so a couple weeks later when the rear end moved back so far the drive shaft slipped out of the Powerglide Tranny ~ of course , there just happened to be a pothole *right*there* , and the nose of the drive shaft chucked into it and pole vaulted the read end of the car 8′ or so into the air as it rotated 180° before slamming it back to earth , no brakes and still dragging the dive shaft out behind the car , buncha stoned/drunk Hippies inside all wondering what the hell just happened….
Will , you know I love ya even though you never returned my safety stands but that’s why I never rode in any of your cars again and never will =8-) .
-Nate
And that great story is one of the very best!
Working in the Maintenance Dept of the Vancouver Transit system one weekend we got a call that one of our North Vancouver buses had a generator light on at the downtown Vancouver terminus. There was only two of us on shift so the mechanic said to just leave it in service and we would change it off once it got back to the North Shore. What we didn’t know that the route the bus was on took it across Lions Gate bridge and then up and over the steepest roads to the top of Montroyal and then back down again. It was a mid 60’s GM New Look with a 6V71 and the old 2 speed V-drive trans. The bus died at the bottom of the hill and wouldn’t start so off the 2 of us go to rescue it. He managed to start it by jumping the starter which is behind the back seat which was propped up for access. I would drive it back about 5 miles with the seat propped up and he would follow me in the service truck. I took off and things seemed fine if a lot noisier than normal until the trans shifted and there was a hell of a bang but it was still running so I just kept going…at the next light the bus died. Turned out the generator blew up and all the oil just pumped out the hole and all over the busy road for 2 blocks. Lots of floor dry later the bus was towed back to the shop.
A family vacation with the 64 ford fairlane 2door, about 150 miles into the trip my dad pulled into a garage, the car was loaded with three of my brothers and a sister, my mother and some pets, the rear end was smoking, this had to be around 1967, the verdict was that the rear end was toast, off the lift it came and they didn’t have the parts, my dad found a used pig at a junk yard and replaced it, he had some combination wrenches and that was about it for tools, he straddled the car over a culvert and in the middle of a rainstorm changed the differential, after which he was a muddy mess, my mother followed him into the restaurant bathroom to help him clean up with obvious stares from the other patrons at which point we were back on our way. I can not imagine myself being put into that situation and having to do this repair, my father who is not a mechanic will forever have my respect for just this one experience!
Now that would never have happened with my dad and our Fairlane…my hat’s off to yours.
Thank you, when this happened, I was 7 years old and really didn’t have a clue that this kind of thing wasn’t normal, it was not well into my thirties that I as a mechanic would realize that there were very few people who could pull this off, my dad was a resourceful guy and part of this comes from not having a lot, I think another part of comes from a farmers heritage where you did with what you had and didn’t grumble too much, you only thought about how to do it better the next time, great website!
Your dad was impressive.
+2. From the era when men built their own houses and fixed their own cars, even if they weren’t mechanics or builders.
1992. On the way to Lakeside raceway. Just opposite its old home the 202 six in my Holden Premier shed the of top number five piston.
Got it to the race track, watched the races, got drunk & the designated driver limped it the 15 KM home. Smoking & knocking all the way.
Pulled the head off to find the no piston at all. Just the rod & piston pin. And a 1/4′ grove in the bore.
Dumped the engine block in the wheelie bin too. And got away with it!
Score points for your block disposal! Your garbage truck must be extra-heavy-duty. The most I’ve ever managed to dispose of was an old Victa motor and a broken-up cast iron cutting deck – but a red block? My hat’s off to you, mate!
I did have to dump the rest of the engine ‘in installments’. The head went the next week, crank the week after.
My theory is that I’ve been paying rates here for nearly 30 years- the council can cut me some slack!
The local metal merchant would have paid some beer and chips money for all that ferrous (and non-ferrous) material..?? old batteries too..:)
Leakage of automatic transmission’s oil cooling rubber hose on my 1990 Pontiac Le Mans 4 door sedan when it drew a smokestripe as a pinpointed fighter airplane and then stoped in the middle of nowhere during a freeze winter. The THM-125 survived the loss of the oil. I replaced it as I sourced a Yugo rubber hose in a nearby village, got filled it with new dose of ATF Suffix A (that was available) and continued the trip. Another adventure with my 1980 Pontiac Grand Le Mans Safari 301 cui V8 when the engine lost its compression because of a broken piston rod and a bunch of other complications caused by the same reason. I was only few miles away from home this time. Hundreds of miles away from home on a highway on my trip to Vienna when on my 1996 Lumina 4 door sedan the halfshaft seal gave up causing the leakage of the transmission fluid so the differential went dead. I has been replaced the whole transmission obtained from a dismantled 1998 Chevrolet Trans Sport.
Other story concerns the same car, now with a 60 buck engine fitted. New years Eve, just after 5 PM. Public holiday the next day and a long weekend at that. Water pump fails, fan into the radiator. 100 KM from home. Some naughty words said.
Found some rubber shed from a tyre, wedged that into gaping hole in the radiator top tank. I always carry water in in old car- still do.
Filled it up, left the cap on the first notch so it wasn”t presuired. Limp to a service station
as they were closing. Fill it up with water, fill my bottle & off to Neils for the NYE party.
Fit a Commodore water pump he has lying around. Longer nose, so the pulley is to far forward. No worries ,the Holden has AC. Fit the belt round the AC pulley on the crank,
lines up perfectly with the water pump. A bit of angle on the belt as it goes to & from the ‘
alternator, but what the hell, Corvair belts handle a 90 deg change.
Fit it with water, take 2 20 litre bottles with me. 2 stops to top the water off & we get home.
On the bike at opening time at the auto store for a new pump, a radiator ‘from stock’
at home and the trusty Holden is on the road again.
And no, it does not share a front frame with a 2nd generation Camaro/Firebird.
This wasn’t an actual driving incident, but it certainly qualified as a top 3 “WTF?!” mechanical failure in my life.
Neighbor teen buys a ’77 Mustang II with automatic and Cologne V6. After six months of half-assing repairs and failures, he’s accumulated a grand total of 10 miles on the odometer and declares he’s had enough and just wants to take it to scrapyard. Body and interior are excellent, so I offer $500 and he jumps at the chance.
First thing I notice when starting to debug the car is valvetrain noise. Figure the solid lifters hadn’t been adjusted and pop a valve cover. I notice it’s rather dry and so I fire up the engine with the valve covers off. No oil pumping to the top end. Plenty of pressure in the block, so it’s either plugged passages or cam bearings. Chase passages with wire, feel it hit the cam, still no oil. Time to pull motor and decide if it’s time for a transplant.
When I pull the oil pan, I notice a couple of rods that are dark from heat and lack of oiling. One of them had a spun rod bearing as well, so off come the crank bearing caps. Scoring on the main journal that would feed those two rods, so time to pull the crank. Remove crank and examine. I pull the crank bearing for the scored journal and notice that the oiling passage is closed, looks like someone soldered it. “What kind of shadetree idiocy is this?” I think to myself.
Given that the engine had newly rebuilt heads, I figure doing the bottom end was still money ahead vs trying to find something that would swap easily. So I pull the motor apart and start cleaning/inspecting for additional damage.
Cam and bearings look great, but even with cam out I can’t get a wire to poke through the oiling passages. I can see they haven’t spun, but something looks odd with the oiling holes. Finally jam wire hard on one side and see a glint of metal and the wire now passes fine. Other side refuses to budge so I get out a drill and chase the passage. Cam bearing acts like it doesn’t actually have an oiling hole. Well it does now.
All the while it’s itching the back of my brain with regards to the crank bearing stupidity, and after a long night’s sleep I wake up and realize what I’m seeing.
The kid had a bad radiator and leaking water pump, dumped stop-leak in it, and that crap got into the oil pan and then into the passages. When it found areas of friction, it solidified and stopped up the oiling. I grabbed the oil pan to confirm and sure enough, in the bottom was a bunch of gold powder along with some silver (apparently one dose wasn’t enough before he finally gave up and actually bought a new radiator and pump).
Reason #712 why you never ever use stop leak, of any kind, on any part of a car.
Imagine, if you will, a 1982 AMC Eagle wagon being driven from Seattle to L.A. a couple of days after purchasing it in 2002 or thereabouts. This vehicle had had to be towed out from the mud that it had sunken into up to its sills, and a shed had collapsed on top of it (from which it was also towed out from under).
Its one saving grace was that it had a 4-speed manual transmission. Bear in mind that this was the main reason that drove me to buy it. The instrument lights were completely gone (as I discovered while driving it after dark), but a quick stop at the Tacoma Wal-Mart for a few glowsticks fixed the night visibility problem as far as the gauges were concerned.
Almost exactly midway between Seattle and Los Angeles – a distance of roughly 1200 miles, it overheated. Hard. Did all of the usual things: pull over before the needle got seriously into the red, let it cool down, add more water… Drive five miles and repeat. No matter how many times I did this, I could not spot where the leak was coming from. I could smell it, and feel the oily-humid taste of coolant on my skin and tongue while driving, but damned if I could spot it when pulled over.
After six or eight rounds of this, I finally pulled over in glorious Orland, California. Orland – despite being on a major North-South artery in the form of Interstate 5 – is literally the middle of nowhere. Able to come to a stop at an Autozone (which I thanked every deity known to man for being open on Easter Sunday for), I crawled under and poked, probed, and prodded *everything*.
Eventually, I found the source of the leak: a freeze plug had rotted out. Not a big deal in and of itself, but I had a) no worthwhile tools with me and b) parts availability for approximately another 48 minutes. Headed into the store, found that there were no freeze plugs available in the diameter that I needed, and bought a tube of JB Weld. Using a Pepsi can and popsicle stick that I found in the trash plus yesterday’s T-Shirt, I proceeded to do the best filler job that I could on the hole.
Unfortunately, that job (and the half-dozen that followed it) weren’t good enough to actually stop the leak. I was screwed: no matter what I did, the damn thing just wouldn’t seal. It didn’t matter how clean I managed to get the surface to be, or how long I let the car cool for, or even cooling the area around it – the JB Weld just wouldn’t take. Even cutting slices of the Pepsi can out to use as patch material had zero effect.
On the plus side, the transmission and clutch were decent, so it had that going for it.
Eventually, a very nice lady let me leave the car in her front yard. I camped out at the Greyhound station overnight, catching a bus back to LA (by way of the Bay Area) the next morning. Finally arriving back two days later, a friend of mine volunteered the use of his brand-new truck if I’d cover gas and trailer rental to go collect it. He couldn’t make the drive for a couple of weeks, but the lady who let me park it in her yard was OK with this. We settled on a weekend for collection, and everything seemed at least doable.
Then we collected the Eagle. It got up onto the trailer just fine, but the person who attached the trailer to the hitch evidently forgot to lock the retainer after it was on the ball. End result: leaving Orland, the trailer hopped off of the ball and nailed the dead centre of the tailgate with the hitch. That left a rather nice dent in the shiny new tailgate.
Eventually, we got the car back to LA. I replaced the freeze plug, and found out that the rear axle was from a Ford and didn’t share a bolt pattern with the front axle, the 4WD system’s vacuum engagement was completely disconnected (largely because the rear axle didn’t have the same gear ratio as the front), and that the entire emissions system had been removed, which meant that it could never be registered in California without more effort than would ever be worth it. At least the previous owner’s JB Weld jobs in the various vacuum orifices was holding, even if it wouldn’t on the freeze plug.
It also attracted numerous notes under the wipers from the neighbours asking me to remove it from the area, probably because its overall condition was reducing property values. I ignored these missives, and made a point of parking it wherever it was most likely to garner them or scare off prospective property buyers. Screw ’em; it’s my ugly shitbox and it’s legal to park it here. Live somewhere else if it bothers you that much.
Eventually, I put it in the Recycler and sold it to a guy looking for an engine for his CJ. I hope it worked out for him; the damn thing cost me about a grand over what I paid for it by the time I got rid of it.
I did get the smoke and flames once in a Simca Aronde the fuel line cracked and spewed petrol everywhere eventually igniting, I smothered the fire with my jacket then harvested some taillight wiring and hotwired the ignition and carried on memorable not really I only just recalled it now.
This one’s not mine. It isn’t even a car. It’s the wheel of an Amtrak locomotive….a locomotive that had just been overhauled, including brand new wheels!
My worst was in Dad’s ’67 Falcon, a 200 inch, 3 speed manual. I’d borrowed it for work one day when the public transport was on strike (which happened a lot in the seventies), and was driving home in peak hour traffic, through the busiest intersection in out state capital (St. Kilda Junction, Melbourne), when the gear linkage jammed.
I’d just taken off from a stoplight, revelling in the power of the newly rebuilt six, when suddenly – no second! Just a lot of resistance where second gear ought to be. With no hazard lights in those days, I just put the left indicator on, climbed out carefully as traffic with their full complement of ratios zipped past, lifted the hood, bent over and carefully wriggled the linkage free – as I’d seen dad do many times. Amazingly, nobody horned me. Then I climbed back in and drove gingerly home, using all the back streets I could – just in case it happened again.
The next week I bought my own car – with an automatic!
My disintegrating XY did similar something broke in the linkage and to select reverse or anything else required underbonnet wrestling I installed a Speco floorshift easier than fixing the treeshift which I hated anyway. 70s Holden manuals are notorious for jammed gear linkages easy to fix and make em work again but tricky to keep using you have to only use 2nd and top changing across the gate from 1st locks it up every time.
1988. Cruising around Brisbane, AU, on a Saturday night with my housemate in his beat up 1974 Toyota Corona. The timing chain had been really noisy for a few years, and accelerating through 3000 rpm it let go with a massive bang, straight through the side of the block, leaving a gaping hole.
We hitched a lift to his place of employment, a service station with a taxi company out the back. We grabbed a rope and a taxi, drove to the car, and we towed the car back with the taxi.
Four different people on the way back tried to wave us over for a ride.
Driving to work in 1981 with my 6 month old Honda Civic. The car behaved like it ran out of gas, I pushed in the clutch and coasted into a gas station next to the pumps. When i got out i noticed some kind of vapor coming thru the hood vents so i opened it. When the air hit it the engine burst into flames. The attendant wanted a $20 deposit on the fire extinguisher. Not a total loss but close. A mouse had made a nest in the air cleaner.
My poor little 1982 Renault 5 burning down to the ground in 1990. The Whole Car’s On Fire ! -My Most Memorable Non-Mechanical Failure.
Another one from the past:
1972 Rover P6. A single-carb 2000 Automatic in really nice shape that I was the second owner of. Great car, ran well, but it was 23 years old and the fuel pump was going out. I had picked up a spare pump, tossed it in the boot, and promptly forgot about installing it for a couple of weeks since the original one was still mostly-working.
Late one night on the A52 between Derby and Nottingham, in absolutely pouring rain, the fuel pump let go. I made it over to the hard shoulder and discovered that the one thing I didn’t have with me was any sort of light to work by, but did have my tools. Being a dirt-poor student at the time, calling the AA for a tow wasn’t an option; fixing it there and then was. Besides, it was only two bolts and a couple of fuel line fittings.
Making do, I changed the pump out at the side of the road using a Zippo for periodic illumination while five-star petrol leaked everywhere, including onto me. How on earth either that car, myself, or both weren’t completely immolated during this process is still something of a mystery to me to this day.
My best/only big failure was the killing of an innocent Mercedes 240D (W123)…paid $500 for it, had a noisy engine. The poor thing was so slow it was almost dangerous in traffic. I was leaving Plaza Motors in Creve Coeur MO, and “gunned it”, such as it was…KAPOW, there was a cloud of smoke, and a trail of engine parts on Ballas Rd, along with a huge oil stain on the road.
A con rod had let go, and punched a hole in the block that my fist would fit through. Sold the remains to a guy who wanted the 4 speed manual pieces for his 240D for a couple of hundred bucks.
Just before my 21st birthday I replaced the Powerglide in my ’67 Malibu with a THM 375 – loved the difference. But since I’d acquired a THM 375 and not the correct THM 350 I had to have a custom drive shaft made.
Later doing the math I discovered that the drive shaft’s critical speed would be reached if the car was going about 113 MPH. Prior destructive testing confirmed those numbers.
It was spectacular when it happened late at night on a deserted freeway. Had the car back together and running within the week. Kept the drive shaft as a reminder to not do stupid things in cars.
My mum’s 1970 Morris 1300 (Austin America for transatlantic readers) ended its days by suffering a fracture of some small but crucial part in the gear selector mechanism which meant that as she was turning into our driveway, it changed into first and reverse simultaneously. Took a while to move…
And one of its successors, a 1977 Renault 6TL (sort of larger and plusher Renault 4, now more or less extinct as whatever their virtues they rusted like billy-o – the 1971 model she had before actually had the floor fall out – but I digress) gave me a bit of a surprise as I was driving down the A14 in my early driving days. The cooling system on them was a bit unusual as there was no header tank on the radiator but instead a glass expansion bottle, a bit like a catering size Branston pickle jar, with various rubber hoses, drain cocks etc. running from it, and a pressure relief valve in the lid.
I was cruising along at a steady 70-75 m.p.h. when there was a muffled bang and forward vision disappeared. On coasting to a halt and getting out I found the car apparently covered in oxtail soup. Further investigation under the bonnet showed that the expansion tank had vanished apart from four or five little bits of broken glass.
What had happened was that there was a slight leak in the head gasket, and instead of boiling off all the water as usually happens, there was exhaust leaking into the coolant so that the pressure increased gradually in the system. As the release valve was faulty the pressure kept rising until the expansion bottle exploded. The problem hadn’t raised its head before as the car was usually used just for local runs – it took a sustained high speed run to make it apparent.
It didn’t help matters that the tow rope broke on the way back and it cannoned into the back of my dad’s newish Cortina. We dragged the Renault into a layby beside a traveller encampment, took the tax disc and the battery out, left the windows open and the keys in the ignition and abandoned it it to its fate.
Worst car experience was the 2002 Buick Rendezvous. At the time I was 16 and was just beginning my own endeavors in the automotive world.
Two weeks after my mom drove it off the dealer lot, the valve train grenaded on the I-84/CT 8 Mixmaster outside of Waterbury, CT. The car limped off the highway like a dog that just had its ass kicked in a fight. We waited for 3 hours in a downpour in a less than desirable part of the city while the flatbed came for us- Onstar had given the driver the wrong location… 3 weeks in the shop and she came out with a new short block and rebuilt heads. Bear in mind this is a BRAND NEW CAR. Turns out that there was a metallurgical defect in the valve retainer locks that caused the valves to fail and then cause massive interference in the engine. Apparantly, this defect only affected the first 200 or so models off the assembly line, so we know that mom’s roach was from the short end of the learning curve.
Fast forward about 4 months, and now an official licensed driver, I took the Buick out to McDonalds to get some food as the folks were out to dinner for the evening. No sooner had i pulled out the parking lot when the dashboard lit up like an Epcot fireworks display: HOT ENGINE COOLANT TEMP!! DING DING DING!!
For the second time in the car’s history, it limped off the main road, this time to our driveway. What was a 2 mile journey that should have taken 3 minutes took a half hour because I had to keep pulling over to shut the engine off and cool. After eating a cold Big Mac and my parents return, Dad and I took the car for a test drive to further assess what was happening. What we found after less than a 1/4 mile into our drive, was the entire contents of the cooling system vomiting itself out from the cylinder head. We took the car home where the engine seized in our driveway with the most horrible noise I have ever heard a car make; it was just a complete stop of the internals, like jamming a fork in a garbage disposal. Once again, another 2 weeks in the service department for a full engine rebuild, new heads and new intake manifold. The root cause: the original dealership that performed the first repair reused the old head gaskets. This caused a coolant leak and the plastic intake manifold to warp, which leaked coolant into the combustion chamber and caused the block to hydro lock. Luckily, the heads took the brunt of the force and the block was spared from cracking…we think.
The Rendezvous was promptly turned in off lease and Mom and Dad swore off GM for life.
I was at the high end of the 1/4 mile at the local dragstrip when the engine locked up on me. When I got the car home and pulled the engine I discovered a broke crank and 2 rod bent around it. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.
Coventry Climax would of welded a patch over that hole. It took about 40 hours of machine time to make one of those blocks; that was a lot money to toss away. As long as the rod only ventilated the block, didn’t mangle the bearing saddles or cylinders, weld that puppy!
I saw a brand new Ford Fiesta with a similar hole; connecting rod had karate chopped the starter in half on it’s way out. We figured the owner had shifted into first, intending to get third….and had dropped the clutch after making the shift. Instant 13,000 revs…
I saw a friend’s Imp race car have a clutch pressure plate explode as he shifted into 2nd gear at the start of a race, it completely separated the engine and gearbox. After the race we went down to the marshall’s post (corner workers?) where they had swept up all the pieces left on the track and picked out the pieces of the block that mounted the bellhousing so they could be welded back on. The pieces of bellhousing and the twisted clutch fork went back in the bin.
Another one was at a skidpan, a guy was doing more burnouts and donuts than going around the course. He stopped to do another burnout, and as he rotated a bit we could see that the huge cloud of smoke wasn’t coming from the tyres but underneath the car, and before we could get his attention the clutch plate exploded and a couple of pieces were thrown 200 yards, up a grass bank and through a cyclone mesh fence where they began to set the grass on fire due to the heat. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever seen..
I put a 300 hp engine in front of a stock, 94 subaru drivetrain with 225k miles. Got into boost in 2nd gear and SNAP, no gears. Was convinced I broke one of the noisy bits in the trans. But when I dropped it I found this.
How about a roped up front suspension? My sisters Fiat 128 3P. I was driving it to mates, took a shortcut through a dirt track. On a dark,dark night out in the scrub.
Hit a pothole & tore the (rust weakened) castor strut mounting out of the subframe.
Walked to the nearest house, rang my mate. He picked me up & we towed the Fiat to his place. Come the next morning, I survey the damage.
The CV joint had come apart- I remember chasing the steel balls in the grass. Reassemble the CV, lash the lower control arm to the subfame with rope- in my poor
imitation of a truckies hitch.
I tensioned the rope so it pulled the control arm
far enough forward to the wheel clear of the mudguard. Tried a test drive. Pulled to the
left, hardly suprising considering the castor difference from side to side.
Managed to limp it home at 50 KMH, a trip of 20 odd KM.
Rope to the rescue!
That would have been my first car… a ’74 Pinto with a stick. I used to, er, “powershift” it a lot (like it had any power LOL!) as well as ramp it over several local rr crossings. Little beknownst to me one day I had cracked the transmission housing. Being a Pinto I just looked the other way at the small puddles it left behind, at least until that fateful day that the transmission seized. At 35 mph. That transmission locked up tighter than Ft. Knox and the rear wheels followed suit. Twisted the driveshaft too. That was the end of my poor Pinto.
The most memorable experience was certainly the driveshaft coming loose at 60mph on my ’82 Delta 88. That was fun… I swear that car was possessed, as things broke on it that I had never had happen on any of my other cars in over 30 years of driving. Everything from trunk lid springs (a big “ouch” as the trunk lid fell on my head) to the horn (came loose and beeped on every bump, causing other drivers to give me funny looks) to power windows (shorting out wide open in a major thunderstorm). And, when it chose to overheat, it did so at 5am in Spanish Harlem (a busy local crack dealer and a couple of his customers were shocked when a white guy walked up and inquired as to the location of the nearest payphone (pre-cellphone era), that being the safer alternative than remaining a sitting duck in a disabled car in that neighborhood).That’s just minor annoyances, though. The car also ate up an engine and two transmissions, in less than two years of ownership – in the early 1990s, when it was less than 10 years old with only about 70K miles on it. So the driveshaft episode was the last straw. I got out, walked to the nearest phone and called the nearest junk yard. The guy couldn’t believe his luck, snagging a nice, clean, apparently easily repairable Olds for $50. But I knew better.
I had a 1971 Volvo 142S, an OHV 4-banger with SU side draft carbs. Overall, the car was bulletproof and turned out to be one of the most resilient and reliable cars I have ever owned. So, driving in the GSParkway in NJ from Connecticut tooling along just fine, when I hear a sudden rapid rattling/chattering sound from under the hood. Uh oh. The noise stopped after a few seconds, but I maintained this car and knew this was not good. There were no warnings (lights, gauges, smoke) so I continued to my exit. After stopping, the engine started bucking like a bronco! I nursed it home and after pulling the valve cover I saw the #3 cylinder intake valve was stuck open. I also saw that one of the 1/4″ bolts that held the air filter was MISSING…yes, it jingled loose and made its way into the intake chamber, danced around, and finally came to rest jamming the valve open. I pulled the head, replaced the valve, and all was well for another 80k miles. Lucky the bolt did not make it into the cylinder and the valve did not meet the piston! I kept that bolt with its worn looking threads as a souvenir.