Recently, I was having a conversation via e-mail with a BangShifty pal that I’ll name only as Bob J. Bob mentioned that he had a good topic for the BS Question of the Day and I was interested of course so I inquired as to what he thought we should ask. Well, the question you see in the title of this blog item came from him but the story of how it came about is freaking awesome.
Bob wanted a boat. Bob lives in the greater Boston area. Bob bought a sail boat that was located about half way up the coast of Maine. No one would sail the boat home with Bob so Bob got on a bus to Maine. Met the guy selling the boat, closed the deal, had the guy drive him to Wal-Mart for supplies and then this man amongst men got on the boat and SAILED THE MO FO 24 HOURS BY HIMSELF FROM COASTAL MAINE TO CAPE COD. He mentioned that things got “exciting” out on the water a time or two. He also mentioned that it had been a while since he last sailed a boat. How long is a while? 30 FREAKING YEARS.
Here I was thinking I was somebody for driving nearly 600 miles home in an old wrecker that hadn’t turned a tire on the road since the Clinton administration but Bob is conquering the open seas in a small boat! Truth be told, the ride home in Brutus the wrecker wasn’t all that scary although it was always in the back of my mind that if something big failed, I would be in deep dookie with only a couple small paddles to help myself. That and the truck was really wanting to boil over on a few of the big hills we hit on the highway. Like Bob, my journey had a happy ending.
So what’s your best scary story regarding the first ride in a project car or vehicle of some kind?
Scary?
I rode with my buddy Allen from Holton, KS to Great Bend, KS in an hour and 45 minutes in his 1970 Mustang with a 351C. Two of the bolts that held the timing chain cover had broken off and oil leaked out of the front cover, down the passenger side lower control arm and out onto the disc brake rotor. Stopped 3 times on the way to Great Bend: once for gas and twice for oil. Every time Allen stepped on the brakes, the car shot to the left. Scared the beejeezus out of me.
Just an FYI…. Great Bend is 213 miles from Holton.
Ron
Two teenagers towing one beater with another from Pasadena to San Diego with a 40′ chain down the freeway in 1967. Didn’t know better and the cops never bothered us. It was a white knuckle trip keeping the slack out of the chain and braking and lucky for us we made it without a problem.
We did that one, with a much shorter chain…but the drive was only 20 miles home from the dragstrip when the rearend broke.
Read the Mirada’s thread…
Hmmm… when the Chevelle was down for paint, I also upgraded the rear end with a spool, axles, and c-clip eliminators. I didn’t realize at the time that the rear end was crooked from trying to put pre-load in it with the adjustable (factory location) upper trailing arms, so my first pass down the track with brand new paint AND my first ever pass with a spool almost put me in the wall. So did the second pass. I didn’t try a third pass, I put it on the trailer until I could find the problem.
1st car: 1962 VW dunebuggy.
Brakes: bad, and uneven. Probly because I only rebuilt the left front.
Rust holes 18″ long in floor.
Couldn’t rebuild rears, or do ANYTHING because I couldn’t get the ‘jesus’ nut off the dang rear drums., even with an 8′ pipe over the breaker bar.
First drive, scary. 30 min to the other side of town, got out, and the rear wheels were smoking from the dragging brakes, and the smoked wheel bearings.
I spit on my finger, and touched the baby moon hubcap on the rear, and heard sizzle, saw steam, and burned my damn finger.
LOL – not a project car . . . a company car. A 1980 Olds Diesel powered 98. I was driving from Syracuse to New Hampshire for a company meeting – was driving at night because the sales meeting was at 9 AM the following morning. I was about 50 miles east of the NY/Mass border on the Mass Turnpike when all of a sudden I hear a very loud BANG come from the engine compartment.
I was only about 1 mile from the Rest Area/Gas entrance and the engine was still running so I continued on. When I pulled in front of the Gas Station, I looked under the car with a borrowed flashlight and cringed . . . I saw a pool (and getting bigger by the second) of oil under car. At this point I think I had something like 250 miles to drive to get to my destination.
“Gemme a case of oil – 24 quarts please”
I poured 4 qts into the engine which was still running and the red low pressure oil light went out. Got back on the Mass Pike and drove another 20 or so miles when the red warning light went on again. Poured another 2 quarts in and the light went out – back on the Mass Pike.
I did this for the remaining part of the trip (had to stop once more for another case of oil) and finally arrived at my Hotel. I think I had 2 quarts left.
At 8 AM I called my Sales Manager who lived in NH and explained what happened though I had no idea what exactly happened. I asked him to pick me up at the Hotel for the meeting and suggested he send send a wrecker to tow the car to the dealership which was right near by. The car was less than a year old BTW.
He came right over and within a couple of minutes had a wrecker join us. He felt we had enough time to get the car over to the dealership and on a lift to see what the problem was and how long it would take to fix.
So it’s about 8:30 AM, the car goes up on the lift and the mechanic brings his drop light over . . . and there is a hole in the side of the engine block, big enough to stick your fist through. The engine had kicked out a rod through the engine block. The mechanic was absolutely amazed I was able to drive it the 250+ miles that I did even with the fact of stopping and adding oil every 20 miles or so.
As we were leaving the dealership . . . make that me leaving the service bay, I hear my Sales Manager yell at the Service Manager – I want a brand new fucking engine and you aren’t going to say shit about it – do you hear!!! (The company had bought 5 1980 Diesel powered Olds from the dealership at one time)
The scary part . . . not knowing if all of a sudden the engine is going to quit and me being stuck on the Mass Pike after Midnight.
Got 2 for ya – one I bought, one I sold…
The one I bought was a 1970 Toyota something or other – my mum put me onto it – lady at her work only wantd $50 for it because it had a brake problem, other than that it was in very nice condition…driving it home wasn’t the scary bit, I trailered it…I checked it out, saw he leaky rooted cylinder on one wheel at the front, and though ` how hard can it be?’ soo, bought a wheel cylinder and being dumb and 17, just chucked it in, gave it a half assed bleed , got a pedal and thought`good enough!’ next day, running late for work, and thought I’d take the newly fixed toymotor … it was ok for the first 20 kays or so, but when I got nearer the city and into the traffic, using the brakes lots more, when it all of a sudden siezed the front right brake, at about 60 kp/h, on a 4 lane road full of morning commuters…sooo, 3 180 degree spins and a pair of undies later, I was relieved to find I hadn’t hit anythig. I walked to a phone box 10 feet away and rang a wrecking yard who sent a tow truck and gave me $100 on the spot for it…
The other one I maintain was not my fault! Son in law had a 1967 Valiant that was trouble from the day it came home – he bought it sight unseen off Ebay, it then spent the next 2 years of me fixing stuff on it hoping to get to a point he could actually drive it, by which time he was over it and wanted to get rid of it. I live in Adelaide, South Australia, new owner lived in Port Lincoln, around a 10 hour drive away…he got a flight over, piled into a cab, arrived at my place , thrust $3,500 into my hand, chucked his bag and his girlfriend into the car and drove off. He didn’t even test drive it before he bought it…even though I was upfront and told him, via email before he came over, about how I’d done some stuff to it but that he’d ideally be pulling it apart and rebuilding it before he could really rely on it. As he pulled out the drive he said words to the effect of ` next stop Port Lincoln’ which didn’t gel in my head until he was already driving off into the rush hour traffic about 8:30 AM…anyway I went to work, got a call about 1:30 in the afternoon with a number of swear words in it…apparently he’d sat on 110 from leaving my place and, just outside Port Augusta (middle of nowhere) 3 of one front wheel’s studs had sheared clean off, they’d spun out in front of a road train which just missed them (A road train, in case you’re wondering, is an Aussie thing – imagine a semi trailer with like 3 trailers rather than the normal 1…google image it, they’re scary)) so, the whole time we’re talking, his phone is going bababababababa really loudly – THEN I realised it wasn’t his phone, this loony is STILL doing 110 and what I can hear is the wheel flopping around. He txted me a bit later to say he’d made it to Pot Augusta but I’ve never heard anything since from him – last I heard he was scouting about that town looking for somebody to fix the damage to his new car…and I SWEAR to you on a stack of bibles I had not done anything to the wheels, wheelstuds or anything even vaguely related to them….
In 1976 or thereabouts a bud and I went to look at a ’71 Vega that a guy had started to turn into a drag car, it had a narrowed 12-bolt and ladder bars pivoting on 1/2″ spherical joints into the beginnings of a frame section, and no motor. My freind bought it for cheap with the agreement we’d build it together and we set about completing the frame, and dropping in a mild 350/Muncie…this was in high school but we were a couple years out when it finally got running. The first Pro-Street car in the area, anyhow…no one had even invented the stupid word yet. With a vertical-gate shifter, no weight on the rear due in part to no rear interior sheet metal yet (yep, when you drove it there’d be pebbles hitting you on the back of the head), and a posi diff between huge rear Pos-I-Traction tires, the thing was like driving on ice with those ladder bars. My bud had a fine habit of doing long squirrely burnouts up our narrow streets with cars parked on either side, the first time he did that was virtually a few minutes after getting the car running, and is the ride I remember. We were, like, THAT close to eating it, with no seatbelts or nothing.
With someone else as passenger, one of those ladder bar joints popped off it’s bolt but nothing much got damaged. With me as passenger, he did wreck it by crashing into a parked car on a busy street, doing one of his dumb-ass burnout-on-the-avenue things on a wet street. This was perhaps a month after it’s first drive and the car and no part of it ever saw the road again…those things (like the rear end) that were kept around got cleaned out in a burglary a few years later.