I’m honestly amazed that I survived the year 2000 at all. It was bad enough that I was at peak “mouthy teenager”, but I was left to my own devices 99% of the time, had a car, had a job that paid well, had a girlfriend with a dad who I think really didn’t like me at all, and had more free time than any seventeen year old should have had. Specifically, there is one story involving the girlfriend, her first car, and yours truly that I’m still amazed I walked away from without injury. She had gotten $1,400 to spend on her first car so she could give her mother back her early 1990s Toyota Camry and had asked me what to get. I should’ve started looking for used Hondas, Toyotas, even a nice used Dodge Dynasty would’ve been better than the absolute shit-pile of a 1977 Dodge Diplomat coupe I talked her into getting.
Ok, it ran, drove and was actually pretty clean, but it had been sitting behind a house unused for a couple of years and the day we bought it, it was not pretty at all. She was happy that she owned a car and that we’d be working together to make it nice, but she wanted to drive to her house to prepare her father for what he was about to see. So, once we got the Diplomat to my house, she took my Monte Carlo and headed out into the prairies towards her house. That left myself and my friend Adam to get the Diplomat running well enough to make the trip. We washed it, scrubbed the interior, filled a garbage can with the random crap that was left behind, put the dash back together, made sure all of the lights worked, and filled the tank full of fuel before making the 22-mile haul ourselves. To be fair, it looked like we got away with murder…the Diplomat actually cleaned up pretty well. It was still a beater, but it looked like a useable beater. Right up until we were about four miles past Falcon, Colorado.
We had no warning. While rolling at about seventy miles an hour, the hood latch failed completely and before we knew what had happened, I was staring at faded blue hood that was blocking every possible thing forward. I locked my arms and drove out of the side glass, making sure I was in my lane on U.S 24. Adam, meanwhile, was having a canary in the passenger seat. Not moving from my position, I asked Adam to make sure nobody was behind me. He confirmed that the coast was clear and I booted the brake pedal nearly through the firewall, locking the brakes up and bringing the Diplomat to a blunt halt. The 318 didn’t even have time to react and just stalled out. Once my heart fell out of my throat and returned to it’s proper place, I fired the car off, pulled to the side of the road, shut it back down, thanked several deities for their intervention, and got out to assess the damage. By sheer grace, the windshield didn’t get hurt. The hood, on the other hand, had a beauty of a crease that I was going to have to explain. We tied the hood down with our shoelaces and drove thirty miles an hour to her house. Yes, her dad was pissed off…badly enough that it was probably a smart thing when I hauled tail back into the city after I got the keys to my car back. She actually held onto the Dodge for a few years, but ultimately it succumbed to an electrical fire that roasted a good section of the car.
Having the hood do it’s best impression of a Bugatti’s spoiler under braking is enough to make you fill your shorts with fresh masonry supplies, but that’s only one way a car can scare the fertilizer out of you. Anybody out there got any better stories?
Going by that photo it would be the moment when the jack slipped just after removing the disc brake and the whole weight of the car was on the spindle – which then fell directly on your parts…….
LOL, I had a friend whose cheap jackstands broke while he was underneath his car and it fell to about 1/2″ from his face
I had raced my ’57 for a few years with full frame and ladder bars and and had decided to go to a tube chassis with struts, but on the way out to the shop to start the transformation I gave it one last wheelstand and as I was slowing down it got squirrelly as hell so I drove it very slowly and carefully the rest of the way.
When I got out there I looked at the ladder bar mounts and they had completely broken off except for about 1/2″. Scared the hell out of me…
I think the scariest we ever had was my brother’s 68 Falcon – 302W auto car. We were in a traffic light drag, nothing particularly serious, when at about 45 mph a vibration went through the car that blurred our vision for a second or two then – bang- then car skidded to a stop…WTF was that? we said… turns out front uni joint shit itself , tailshaft dropped, hit the road, bounced back up and tangled itself in the handbrake cables, which tightened with the rotation and pulled the car to a stop. The really scary bit was realising that the car could have just as easily buried the tailshaft in the road and polevaulted us or alternatively come through the floor and kill us that way…
young and dumb,i had a 61 ford that wasn’t exactly factory fresh,and to be fair i was pretty much a zero maintenance kinda guy back then—coming down a rather steep hill that t’d into a fairly well travelled road and a lake,the scrunchy noises that had been warning me for some time decided to show me just what pretty much total brake failure was. i got it stopped,but it was a total butt-pucker moment– a brake job soon followed,and life was good—until i fragged the motor doing silly teenage stuff
Back in the late ’70’s I had a ’66 Chevy II with a pretty hot small block (377ci) & a 4 spd with 4:56 gears. That thing would smoke tires like no tomorrow. One Sunday I went to a local drag strip with some other guys & their cars. Of course my Chevy just spun the tires off the line and down the track. My friend Eddie let me borrow his 9′ slicks. I revved it to around 6500rpm and dumped the clutch – BOOOM!! No blow proof bell and the clutch came into the car with me! It took out the windshield, my new Kraco stereo, under dash wiring, the heater & other damage. That was fun until I noticed the heel of my sneaker had been cut off when the clutch blew! That was scary……
sorry – 9 inch slicks were used
‘Hard to compare with Blu. ‘Had a clutch cover go at only 3,000 RPM and no shield. ‘Got the floor and a Wonder Bar radio in my ’56 Chevy, along with dents from the inside of a fender, severed exhaust pipe, and creases in a brake line and a fuel line. ‘Covered myself and a coupla passengers with clutch soot.
\’Hard to compare with Blu. \’Had a clutch cover go at only 3,000 RPM and no shield. \’Got the floor and a Wonder Bar radio in my \’56 Chevy, along with dents from the inside of a fender, severed exhaust pipe, and creases in a brake line and a fuel line. \’Covered myself and a coupla passengers with clutch soot.
At the age of 18 i had the pleasure of running my first car trough a guardrail at 70 miles an hour. My left front tire blew out on me on the highway, it was at Night and there was no light on the Road. I almost Got clipped by a pasning semi after the crash when i was standing at the side of the Road looking at the wreck. The trucker dident stop but just blew past us with out slowing Down. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. Never again will i buy used tires.
I was making a pass at the local drag strip in my 64 Valiant. Just as I was was going through the trap I blew a slick at 130 mph. I bounced off the guard rails on both sides about 4 times each and came to a stop heading the wrong way. They told me that I missed setting the record of tagging the rails by just one tag. A record I wasn\’t in any hurry to break.
Driving a 1959 Austin Princess for a limo job I had. One of the wheel cylinders that were rebuilt for the 20th time blew out. The pedal hit the floor like it wasn’t attached to anything. I was doing about 40 miles an hour with an old lady in a Lexus in front of me and clients in the back. I made a left turn up the curb, onto the state capital grounds, mowed down some rare south American shrud (found its little sign stuffed into grille) and plowed into a palm tree. The wedding couple in the back banged heads, but went on to the capital building for pictures while I dealt with angry state grounds keepers and the state police.
Total brake failure in my 70 Chevelle SS on the way to a car show. Rusted brake line ruptured headed into a busy intersection when a moron in front of me changed lanes abruptly. After I checked my shorts, I limped it home about 8 miles on the e-brake. Two weeks later same thing happened on my daily driver F-150. Accused my wife of trying to collect on my life insurance policy.
Had a hood flop once -60’s Peugeot on a two lane granite walled bridge .
Stuck my head out the window and continued until the end of the bridge (not that far) and pulled over .
Down shifting a 64 Galaxy w/ a 3 speed auto going into a rotary -‘ blipped ‘ the throttle as I dropped it into 2nd – return spring on the carb broke leaving it at full throttle.. OH MY switched it off and put in neutral .Thank god you
could still drive a car w/ the key off back then
Mid 70’s Olds 98 I was a passenger in that spit a drive shaft – front CV joint fail . All at the same time as it was wailing the crap out of the bottom of the car
took out the exhaust pipe and cracked the trans –as we slowed the the
trans fluid flashed on the hot cat and the flames came up past the windows
Several cocktails were consumed shortly after
Seized a two stroke MC @ about 80 …grabbed the clutch before really bad things happened
Shearing the valve stem off a drag slick tube, or breaking all the drive axles studs. Pretty embarrassing to lose a wheel on the starting line.
First let me say I want a cool ass name like the guy in post 11. Second I’ll tell you a little story about a 70 Cougar I had way back. I had just bought the car and I wanted to see what that 351 Cleveland would do. I had it topped out on a dead end street and I shattered a rotor and lost my brakes. At the end of the road there was a playground and children were there playing. I went airborn when the road ended and landed in the middle of it. The only thing I could do to stop the car was throw it into a spin and hope I did kill anyone. Got lucky that time, fired it back up and limped the car out of there before the cops showed up.
On a whim, a friend and I drove to Colorado in a snowstorm to go skiing (illegal substances may have contributed to our decision!). We got there fine but on the way back, in yet another snow storm, the windshield wipers went out. So we are on a high country hiway with no wipers in traffic! we managed to get pulled over safely without going through a guardrail. We thought about it and then pulled our shoe laces out and each tied one wiper. We rolled the windows down a bit (thank god for a good heater) and each pulled their shoestring so we could pull the wipers back and forth! Worked all the way back to Kansas!