In the last Great Pumpkin Mustang update, one of my future quick fixes for the 1980 Mustang was to flush the coolant system of the nasty-ass pond water that the car was utilizing as coolant. It was visible all over the engine bay that the cooling system was not happy in the least, with rust spackling in the pattern of radiator overflow spray coating everything in the forward-left area of the engine bay. So, yesterday, I flushed out the coolant system: I drained out the rank crap, poured in a flush kit and some fresh water, drove the car for two hours solid with the heater on “kill”, let cool, drained that mess (which was just as bad as the first batch), refilled with fresh water, ran the car for ten minutes with the heater on again, drained out a still dirty but much clearer mess, then ran the car with the hose in the filler neck until I got clean, clear tap water coming out of the drain. Once the radiator drained dry, I poured in fresh stuff and to my utter joy, it filled up and stayed green instead of instantly turning into a rust color. Nice – I love it when maintenance works as intended.
But as I was filling up the radiator, something caught my eye, something I had never given a moment’s thought to on the car: the combination radiator overflow tank/windshield washer reservoir. It was zip-tied shut. What the…? Curiosity got the best of me, so I snipped the zip-tie off and opened up Pandora’s box.
Yummy. The bottom section is the actual overflow tank, and it’s got about a quarter-inch of sludgy, rust-specked material that suggests that seems to match the pond water I rinsed out of the radiator. Not nice, but not unexpected, either. The top part is the windshield washer reservoir, and this is where I started to get grossed out. What is in there is olive-green as you see it, but a dipped-in paper towel showed that it was actually tangerine in color. It’s oily…it feels like olive oil to the touch. And worst of all was the “sponge” thing that is in the lead photo. Most of this object is the tangerine color, but the base and about half of the overall shape is covered in this mottled purple sludge. I genuinely have no freaking clue what that is….this could be some ancient windshield wash solution that has had a chemical breakdown, this could be liquified Play-Doh for all I know. Either way, this tank is getting ripped out of the car and scrubbed as best as I can manage before it ever makes it’s way back onto the fenderwell.
That’s my find, now what’s yours?
I was pulling the engine from my 1965 Mustang to rebuild it after a bit of smoke started coming from the exhaust ( a lot actually). As I lifted the engine, I was greeted with the sight of a mummified head of a rabbit that had been hit sometime in the past that was “preserved” in the grease between the engine and the cross member. Poor bastard had been decapitated!
My Buick had originally been equipped with Dex-Cool (fortunately, the previous owner flushed the system and put normal stuff in there), and there’s some pretty nasty residue in the coolant overflow tank and radiator neck. But it’s not in the same league as the two grossest things I’ve run into working on a car:
1. Used differential oil
2. Dead rat
It’s hard for me to tell which one smelled nastier.
Since I work for the local municipality I have to work on trucks that spend all their time at the landfill/dump. Too much disgusting stuff to list here.
I cut up a 77 nova that had been sitting besides my cousins barn for two years in that time a colony of mice made every square in of that thing its home, but the coup de gras was about 10 dead mice in the barf bag still filled with coolant some bloated to the point of not being able to come out the smell of putrid decaying mice and old antifreeze soup was something I will never forget
While going thru a car in a junkyard I opened the glove box to find a very used and still full hair brush sitting in a pile of rat poop and a puddle of mystery goo. The smell that came out of there I still can’t put into words.
About 3 foot long old snake skin in the front seat of 61 Lincoln .Must have been in there when it shed its skin.And it was gone when we took the car
anybody who has worked on cars for a living can attest to the nastiest cars coming into be worked on. The people who have never learned that a car can be cleaned or vacuumed out. Spill lunch? Leave it. milkshake spill? ignore it. Some of the nastiest things I have seen are the interiors of vehicles and they are daily drivers and not barn finds!
That’s no s#!t. back in the ’80s I worked at an import dealer. One gal was a true hippie that may have lived in her car. The interior was full of everything imaginable and she smelled like she showered once a week. It is Kentucky…. Another car came in with, um, how do I put this,…. a container of lube for self-pleasure. My job was under the hood but the clean-up guys were particularly grossed out.
Well, there was that time I encountered my sister-in-law while I was wrenching…does she count? She’s really gross…..
Used AC Delco supercharger oil is by far the most disgusting smell I’ve ever encountered, at least outside of the cabin. ’99 Riviera L67
Years ago a customer brought in her Contour with inop a/c on a very hot day. Tech hops in it to out it into his bay and immediately hops right back out of it and runs up to the service desk complaining about the stench inside it. Believing he was exaggerating I stuck my head in the car and about vomited. Turns out underneath a pile of old newspapers on the back floor there was a shoebox… containing a dead cat.
One time I saw a Mustang at a race and it had a CHEVY in it. Disgusting!
One of my fellow mechs at Mountain States Ford was servicing the hydraulic system on a trash truck when about a 3 pound blob of maggots dropped off the compactor on the floor next to his head on his creeper.
‘Nuff said.
Worked at a Chevrolet dealership years ago, lady brought in an Astro van, filled with rotten food, spilled, soured milk and dirty diapers. I told the service writer to tell the lady not to bring it back until it was cleaned.
agreed, working on other peeps cars for a living, see some nasty stuff.
door handle full of used klenex? yep
that horrible sour smell of the large person that sat in that seat for hours at a time and forgot she had a shower? yep
food? yep
dead cat under the hood? yep
rat/mouse carcass under that hubcap there? yep
snake skins, and the actual snake(no sir, I AM NOT WORKING ON YOUR TRUCK NO MO) yep.
the mechanical fluids are yucky, but the biological stuff is the nightmare in the making.
I have a couple unpleasant experiences from when I worked in an autobody shop . The first was when I was went out to the lot to bring in a truck for a new windsheild , when I got in I never noticed the plastic cup hanging off the side window ( this was before cup holders ) , when I closed the door I found out the old guy who owned the truck spit his used snuff into the cup , and it splashed out on the side of my face – yes , I barfed . The second was when my foreman asked me to go to the shop’s storage compound and get the registration out of a van that came in over the weekend . What I didn’t know was that said van was brought into our storage yard by the police , because the owner of the van drove it into the bush and committed suicide in it . The van and it’s contents were not found for about a month- in the middle of a very hot summer . Although the expired dude , or what was left of him was removed , what remained was the smell ,and I will never forget that putrid stench as long as I live . When I got back to the shop I found out I didn’t really have to get anything from the van – my co-workers were just having a fun game of “screw around the apprentice” and thought they were being really clever .
Cigarette butts. Not just a full ashtray, but a full in-dash ashtray, two full bean bag ashtrays on the trans hump and a passenger footwell filled level with the threshold with spent Marlboros. It was a ’90’s Buick I had to tow. Even I smoked at the time but couldn’t get over that stale ashtray stench.
Towed a VW Golf who’s driver had recently been awarded a DUI. Apparently his response to the officer when asked for license and registration was to bark on the closed driver’s window. His passenger, upon seeing and smelling his buddy’s puke, proceeded to outdo him on the windshield and passenger footwell. I still remember the cop chuckling when I arrived. “I hope you’ve got a strong stomach.” I don’t. It was all I could do to keep from making it a hat trick.
How about dead field critters in seat cushions. Those are just like Christmas presents.
Rendering truck, impact, maggots. Plus got a knot on my head trying to get out from under it as fast as possible.
I worked for a Pontiac dealer. Our tow truck went to pick up a 68 Firebird. Two people had been huffing something and died in it – not found for several days. Another detail guy and I had to rip the seats and interior out of the car and replace with new so it could be resold. We were not successful in getting the stink out of the car and it finally got crushed. Nightmares!
25 year old gasoline
The fluid out of a smoked viscous coupling from an old Jeep Wagoneer transfer case. So bad it made me blow chunks.