With the pulsejet powered motorcycle earlier in the day and the multiple nitro Harley wrecks in the last blog item we’re thinking today is danger day. We’ve all nursed a new project home, pulled a quick and dirty roadside fix on a current ride to last just long enough to get into the driveway, and perhaps hit the loud pedal in a car with more horsepower than out talent levels deserved to play with. All of those things carry an element of danger.
This question can really go in multiple directions. It can go the death trap route and trigger a story from your youth of an old car you owned and had all patched together. Also it can go in the direction of a car you have driven that was a racer or just a street car that had way too much horsepower for the chassis or the driver. Finally, there’s the third option of some car you have had to truss up on the roadside to get your somewhere because it was your last and only hope. We actually used a fork to “repair” a car one time just to get us two exits down the highway. We’re not proud of that, but we made it and all was good.
So there you go…What is the most dangerous thing you have ever driven?
Not enough time in the day to list all of the “rolling lawn darts” and automotive “M-80s” that I’ve risked life and limb playing or working with. But a prominent theme would be a lack of effective brakes (often a sudden and/or UNEXPECTED lack of stoppers . . . . )
A Buell XB12STT, after having spent maybe six months of riding a motorcycle. It was a bit of a challenge keeping the front wheel on the ground with its huge amount of torque, short wheelbase, and my general cluelessness.
A T bucket. This was no shit box. It was a show car with pearl white paint with candy metal flake so silver flames. My friend bought it stupid cheap from the who had it built and five minutes after driving it, I knew why he practically gave it away. The transverse leaf spring, dropped axle with hair pins must have been welded together without a tape measurer in sight. It was totally out of whack. To.make.things worse it had a blown 350, the vertical steering column with the upside down wheel, 15 inch wide Mickey Thompsons out back, literally bicycle tires up front that were toed out, and one of those high tops that was like a sail on the freeway. The car was scary at 40 mph and absolutely terrorfying at 60 mph. He ended up redoing both the front and rear suspension.
Why was I driving it? Besides being young and stupid, John woukdnt let anyone touch his 65 Malibu SS after it was stolen four times. So, I was asked to drive it home when he bought it. It looked so cool I jumped at the chance.
1980 Olds 98 Diesel – LOL – I already told the end of the story – I should add a “mishap’ that happened before I was thankfully relieved of it.
So it’s the dead of winter, I have an 8:30 AM sales appointment in Rochester, NY and I want to make sure i have plenty of time to get from Syracuse. So I leave the house at 6:00 AM, get on the NYS Thruway. The sun isn’t quite up yet. About 15 miles after leaving Syracuse, for no apparent reason, the car starts slowing down. I push down on the accelerator – nothing happens. Finally, I coast to a stop in the middle of nowhere because the car will no longer move forward under it’s own power.
After about 30 minutes a State Trooper pulls in behind me. “What’s the problem?” I respond; “I really don’t know – it just slowed down till it quit.” He responds; “I think I know what the problem is – it is bitter cold out – the diesel fuel is congealing. You need to add a few gallons of gas when you fillup to thin out the diesel fuel when it gets this cold.”
He goes to ihs car, gets a 5 gallon gas can, put about 2 gallons of gas in the tank, then tells me me to join him, standing on the rear bumper so we can shake the car real well so the gas will mix with the diesel fuel and thin it enough so it will enter the engine. A half a dozen jumps later, I get in the car and it starts and I am one again on my way with a whole boatload of thanks to to Trooper for is help.
I just made my appointment in time. God how I hated that car.
That would by a Kawasaki 500 two stroke (Aptly nicknamed “The widowmaker).
I was 18 and it was my first time ever riding a motorcycle! No helmet, no riding skill, no nuthin.
I blasted down the street, found that I could barely steer it around the first curve and nearly hit a parked car.
That would have been the end of me.
I think I was issued the car Chad and Brian rented at Bowling Green last year!
A go kart with a 650 4cyl motor cycle engine on it. It had a cage on it but no seat belts or resraints of any kind. It would accelerate like crazy. It was like driving a sprint car without seat belts. Some friends and I was hot lapping it in a large field behind a friends house and I rolled it at high speed. Wound up with a broken arm. Was lucky that is all that was broken.
Back in 1983 I use to drive a 1978 or so ford 3/4 ton 4×4 with a flat deck. It had a huge slop in the steering, permenent brake fade(gearing down slowed you faster), and glass packs behind the 460 which made you want to drive it far faster than you should. But here’s the kicker it was the powder truck for the seismic company I worked for.
My ’01 nitrous Hayabusa.
I need to ammend my answer; I’m too stupid to be scared.
I was a year into recovery from a very serious truck wreck. My dad just bought a Honda CB 900 Custom. The one with shaft drive and a hi/lo trans. It had been sitting for a long time, we got it running, and had the brakes half working. My dad lives in a neighborhood on a lake, about a mile from a dam. This was one of my first motorcycle lessons. Dad was on his Kawasaki Concours. We road all over the neighborhood, never got out of 2nd gear. We went down the road next to the dam, to the bottom. The road was a little curvy, and at the top, was a T intersection. Thinking I got this motorcycle thing licked, aout halfway up, I gassed it. That old bike took off like a rocket. I was nearing the intersection at a good clip, and started to slow down. Let off the throttle, nothing, ease on the front brakes, nothing, back brakes nothing. I crossed the street, went up an embankment, got a little air born and landed. I bent the bars, down almost to the front forks. And never dropped it. The bike had a 4 into 1 mega phone, so dad and a couple other people on bikes, heard me go by. Everyone who heard me go by, didnt expect me to up right, let alone in one piece. I had to ride that thing back with those bent bars. That ended my motorcycle lessons, until dad bought a Yamaha 650 Special.
Man I’m not sure if I should even talk about this one, both stupid and crazy I’m sure. Long ago, two friends of mine invested in a go-kart with a Briggs and a live axle, we practiced alot(about 1year). One night we loaded up(mushrooms for us) the kart in the back of a lifted 4X4 and set off to Old Cabbage Hill Rd, drove all the way to the top. The hill has hairpins(5) a downgrade (5.5%) but hey we wore a good helment. Unload the kart, fired it up and took off down the road with the truck close behind as a light to see, we were maybe going 65 through the pins and 80 in the straights. Got to the bottom, loaded ‘er up, back to the top. Then my friend started to see lights so we waited, kart in back, Oh sure enough, State Cop, we took off in the truck down the hill, cop in tow, but hey we know this road, out on the flat, well over a two mile lead. Ran in to slow traffic, cop caught us two miles later. Comes up to the truck, flashlight checking out the kart, comes and checks us out, then tells us to go home. We went home.
We had an old Chevette as a delivery vehicle, you had to hold the drivers door closed and your feet up off the floor because it leaked, was a death trap!
’65 Mustang with a 302/C4.
First (and last) pony car, lousy brakes (i thought they had to be that way, boy was i wrong), horrible steering (5 fingers of freeplay in the steering wheel) and “death wobble” at 50mph (disappearead at 60mph).
Two times i almost hit other peoples cars because of the lousy brakes and decided i’d just start off into the restoration, found more heaps of the brown stuff and eventually sold the whole project and got myself a ’76 Dodge truck.
my buddies and I always built crazy stuff in high school. Homemade go-kart using a snowblower engine was one fun one. The most dangerous was definitely the GT Sno-Racer with wheels. Using really high quality bearings and the best skateboard wheels, updating the brake so it rubbed on asphalt instead of snow, and that was that. Otherwise stock. All three of us fell off/rolled the thing at least a half dozen times. I still have the scars from the road rash.
I actually have no danger story. bizarre. I have driven my caved in sideways monte home sitting like amailman and crabbing it down the road all the way to its place. My broken frame delta88 was like a boat on the ocean. My subaru blew out both rear brake lines at the same time..busted rear end wiggling like an emo doll at 80. (it got worse if you went slower than that). My f 100 picked up its own cab when you pressed the clutch..(another good one to keep aerodynamically down at speed). the 400 pontiac in a ton truck at the mill with no rubber in the motor mounts. ouch. that was a tough one making deliveries. No dangers at all here. lucky to be alove.
After he burned mine to the ground, my buddy let me drive his 67 VW with NO brakes until I could get another car. Always a treat for the passenger; when the light would change to red, making that hard right turn without notice!
Another two-wheel terror. My buddy Dave talked me into buying a dirt bike, a 1982 Suzuki RM 250. It’s the first bike I ever rode and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The powerband was like an on-off switch and it basically had no brakes to speak of. Apparently Bob Hannah did quite well on these in the mid 80’s. I had guys ride it that had WAY more experience than me and said the thing was a son-of-a-bitch. I eventually used the thing up and ended up selling it to a guy who was building a shifter cart for his kid and just wanted the motor and tranny.
1969 F-100, in the early 80s, probably like b3m’s. The cab shifted in turns (rusted out body mounts) and put the steering in a bind causing you to have to aim it more than steer it. I’m a big guy so I could occasionally “ass it over” to relieve the pressure on the column. I didn’t think about how dangerous it was until my Dad borrowed it one day and brought it back with a story of driving it into a lady’s yard. He was not amused, (neither was the lady). I can’t remember what happened to that truck (never thought about it til now), but I never wrecked it and I’m SURE Dad (rest his loving soul) never drove it again. 74 Shovelhead with a leaky tank and an electrical short (why they don’t call me Sparky, I’ll never know). An Air Force buddy’s wife gave me a kitten one time (insisted, actually, she knew I had mice at home) while visiting them in Newark OH. (there for the Springnats at National Trails) and I tried to get it home to Indy inside my leather jacket riding my 78 XLCH, that lasted about 2 blocks. “Here’s yer cat back, thanks anyway, got any antiseptic?” There’s several more, mostly POS type stuff. Poor man has poor ways. I’m not stupid and certainly not fearless, just willin’ to take a chance every now and then.
Hands down, a Humvee in Iraq, in 2007.