Ever had a vehicle that was just cursed?

Guys on the railroad talk about "Hoodoo" engines that are cursed. Had an '85 Buick Century like that. Guy in our church was a body man who bought wrecked cars, fixed them, and sold them, good guy who did nice work. The car had been hit in driver's side, Dub replaced both left side doors and a minor repair on the quarter panel, you couldn't tell the car had ever been hurt. My wife got rear-ended 3 times in that car. First time, a girl in a '70s Olds Cutlass with bad brakes rear-ended her when she was stopped at a red light on Thonton Ave in Dalton GA. Second time she got rear ended, she was going through Canton GA. It was raining, she slowed down for a pickup truck ahead of her that was turning left, car behind her hydroplaned, rear-ended her, and pushed her into the truck in front of her. Dub, the guy we bought it from, fixed it both times. After that, we were living in Cartersville GA, a friend at church backed into it in the church parking lot and took out the same two left side doors that Dub had replaced before we bought it. Fixed it again. Thanksgiving of '90 we were traveling down through VA on I-95. Wife was driving the Buick Century, and I was behind her in my truck. At Stafford VA, the alternator went out, battery was dying, and lights were fading, couldn't make it to next exit. Got the thing all the way off the emergency lane and over in the grass. Wife and two of our daughters stayed with the car while I went on to the next exit (no cell phone back then) to call somebody to tow the car in. While I was gone, a drunk driver in a Hyundai Excel rear-ended the car at about 70 MPH, put the left rear wheel under the front seat. Truck driver who saw it happen told the state trooper that the guy's brake lights never came on. The drunk driver told the trooper that the car was stopped in the lane of traffic, he was too embalmed to know where the road was. Put the Buick Century out of its misery that time. From the cowl back, the right front door was the only salvageable body part. Firemen said that was the hardest they had ever seen a car hit in the rear without rupturing the gas tank. Younger daughter was in the back seat on the passenger side. If she had been sitting on the other side, she would have been crushed to death and they would have had to cut her out of the car. I had just put new tires on it, only had a couple hundred miles on the tires. It was a good driving car, comfortable, and got decent gas mileage, but it was cursed if a car ever was. Wife has had back problems ever since.

 

Try talking to it a lil nicer! Callin it names will just piss it off!

 

......yep

 

Yes,
'68 Camaro building as a drag car fell off the jack stands 3 times...following the last fall I cut up with the torch.
Bill

 

I even left a message for Lee Ioacoka telling him to stick it in his ass. You suppose thats why I didn't hear from them?

 

89 Grand Prix. x4 transmissions, digital dash only worked if you pounded your fist down on it, was running on only 5 cyl's, horn honked when you made left turn.

 

I had a Suzuki Sidekick that wouldn't die. It was my daily and I hated the damn thing. It leaked oil real bad so I would use the used oil from the oil change from my wife's car to fill up the Suzuki. Ole chitrag musta liked it cause it kept purrin away. Now I'm gettin pretty pissed cause I want a new car and this POS won't give it up. So I quit puttin oil in it, period! I swear I ran the car for almost two years with NOTHING but the very bottom of the stick showing anything that remotly looked like oil. And it never did die, I couldn't wait any longer and traded it in when I bought a Audi. The guy didn't want it, I told if he didn't the car the deal was off.

 

had a 65 mustang project that was a 4 wheeled money sucking vortex , was glad to see it go away , and 2 daily drivers both crysler products a 98 jeep wrangler and a 99 dodge dakota 4th gear went south in both of them , wouldnt buy any crysler built after 1969 again

 

yes....'51 ford

 

know where mableton Georgia is? Cobb county? when was in my early twenties i used to hang out with friends all night around there,before they built the new bridge to bypass the old covered bridge on Concord road, used to go through there late at night, like 2:00 3:00 am, for those of you who don't know this was a one lane bridge on two lane road over an old civil war battlefield with a lot of unmarked,unknown graves. creepy area, a number of times the car just quit, went dead in the middle of the road,lights quit and everything, then a few minutes later woudl start back up and be fine. same area where I was T boned in some POS 80's buick, and where the throttle kept sticking on the aspen. I don't reccomend going down there at night. not one to believe in ghosts, but this place was creepy and wierd things happened there. lived in North Georgia for ten years, a lot of wierd stuff happens on those old country backroads.

 

yup

my first vehicle was a chevy truck when i was 18ish. in the six months i owned it it was in 10 accidents, all not my fault. in the 27 years since then i have been in zero accidents in a vehicle i owned. i believe it was cursed.

later jim

 

1967 Galaxie 2 door, 390 2x4. Hood popped up at 120mph. got it fixed, it jumped off the ramps at me when I was reconnecting the battery after replacing u-joints. Would never start if I was late for work but if I called in it started everytime. Ran out of gas twice when the gauge said half tank. I got rid of it after I rear-ended a state trooper at a stop light. Tried to stop and the pedal went clear to the floor, cop got out and asked if I was ok, I said yes my brakes just went to the.......and they worked just fine.

 

62 Caddy.. Its giving the new owner a hell of a time too.

 

In about 1968 in bought a lightly wrecked 1965 Pontiac GTO. It was a nice car, 389ci, 4-speed, red with white interior. There was minor damage to the right fender and grille, it also needed a hood and front bumper; so it was a driver.

I had it about a week, when I went over to a friend’s house one night and parked in front of his house. We were out in his garage for about an hour and then I decided to leave; walking out to my car, I noticed it sitting in the middle of his front yard. After walking around my car, I noticed that the left rear quarter panel was severely damaged as was the bumper and taillight.

Looking around and not seeing anything out of the ordinary, I starting walking toward this gas station about a block and a half away. As I got closer to the gas station, I noticed a car backing up on the shoulder, with only one head-light. Anyway this was the guy that hit it, no license or insurance, in a borrowed car. We talked and he agreed to give me some money the next day for the damage, which he did.

I bought used parts and replaced the damaged rear pieces, put a new hood on it and roughed out the grille and fender. While I was still looking for a new bumper, someone backed into the hood, someone else backed into the other quarter. Every once in a while I would pull it into the shop and do some body work on it hoping to get it nearer to paint.

I honestly thought that there was a target painted on it. Whenever I would fix something, someone would run into it somewhere else.

So after a couple of years of playing this game, I decided to run it in the garage and fix all of the damage; paint it complete as a different color.

Two months after finishing it, my wife and I were out a Sunday cruise and we hit a deer on the way home.

Then I decided to sell it.

I sold it to a friend, he really wanted to buy it and didn’t believe in cursed cars. Three weeks later, his daughter was driving it and someone blew a stop sign and t-boned it; totaled.

 

I think the biggest curse cars suffer from are their owners.

 

Sometimes that can be true, but in the case of my truck, I've worked my tail off to make this truck better. This will be the third engine and third transmission in that truck in the last year. I'm beginning to think that it just wants to retire in peace and live out the rest of its days behind someone's barn or something.

 

That it sooo true, well for me anyway.
Bought an XD Falcon (Aussy 1980 model 4 door) from a mate who had owned it since buying it at the police auctions, it was an ex pursuit car. He had worked he motor but for some reason changed the Top Loader for a Borg Warner single rail?? (WTF? I guess they are cheap, still get one for $30 at the wreckers)
Anyway he had just freshened up the motor and decided to sell it. I bought it mainly for the motor as he sold it to me for less than the 'freshen up' cost him.
The reason was, the gear box is fucked.
No worries, so I pick up the car and drive it home (Had to be shipped interstate) it vibrated its head off all the way home but made the 200km trip.
Put a new cog box in the next day, went for a drive. Still wobbly! It was the diff! Not a sound came from the back, I swore it was the gear box!!That I had to hand over to someone else to re-do in a hurry as my grandfather had died and I needed to get to his funeral in Melbourne. (I was in Sydney).
It went together easily, new guts limited slip diff.
Took off with my sister for an over night trip to Melb. Just short of Albury it seemed to run out of fuel! Its still read half full, cant be empty!
I played around for a while and it just seemed like there was no fuel coming from the tank...... yup it WAS out of fuel!
2am in the middle of nowhere and we find a farm house and knock. Made it into Albury on 2 liters of 2 stroke fuel!
We finally got to the funeral, (RIP Gramps) I had a week off but my sister had to fly back, so planned on spending my time visiting some old mates.
While I'm driving to my first mates place the oil light comes on!
What the? I checked that two days ago! But, it was almost bone dry. There was not an oil mark on the motor, just some fresh looking oil on the bottom of the sump and the plug?
Was it blow by around the sump plug?
Never solved what happened there.......
Filled it up with oil and there were no problems. Latter that day I'm driving when I hear a 'scratching' sound from the motor, it went off song a little. So I pull over to check it out and cant find anything.
I took the car to a good family friend and race car engine builder to look at. After a while he asked me if It had run low on oil.........
Pulled the motor, had scored the bottom end bearings but that didn't explain the noise or off song issue?.............

So while we were there in the machine shop I found some more 'fun parts' in the shop and we buttoned it up eventually to have 496RWHP.
Oddly though we did find an extra hole in the block, a ragged punched out one in the center of the webbing of the lifter valley that no one could explain?? My mates engine builder said it was there when he did the work on it so it must have been there from its Police days! It drained oil down a little quicker.....
As for the 'Scratching'? The harmonic dampener and de-laminated and scrubbed onto the sump pan lip! Easy fix with a new one that.
Ran the motor in, changed all the fluids and went for a drive, the thing started to 'Ping' its head off. WE never solved that! Played with it constantly to fix it, it did almost disappear but never completely went away.

When I bought the car I got the top loader bell housing with it but no top loader, so I locate one and we put that in when we did the motor. I drove back to Sydney a little late (That was fun, ever tried having compassionate leave extended in the Army?), the next day I drive to work and going from second to first it catches. Maybe clutch adjustment? Nope, syncro was on its way out!
So out with that top loader and in with another. Great!
Then one day (About a month latter) I drove to Canberra with a mate for something to do. Taking off from the lights in traffic there is a 'THUD', engine revs and we slow down. Another WTF!, It was pretty obvious though, it had chewed off the rear uni joint!
UGH, had to have it towed to a diff shop, $130 and all of 250 meters away! FUCK! Had I known that I we have pushed it!
They fixed that and all was fine, had an overnight stay in Canberra.
Drove home in the morning nice leisurely drive then.....
Pulling into the Base car park the accelerator pedal drops to the floor, full throttle in a car park, 496hp, and headed at parked cars and a Barracks Block!
FFFFFUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!
Killed the ignition and managed to stop it. WTF NOW!?
It had snapped the plastic end (Shattered it) of the cable and somehow popped one of the return springs off. I learned that the other older spring was useless!!
Fixed that.
Then two weeks latter the original owner is in town, a guy I trust so I lent him the car for a couple of days. Later that same day I get a phone call from him.......
'Dude, I just crashed the car'

Yup. A guy tried to overtake him but didn't have the room. He hit the skids and tried to pull in behind my car........well he did, but real REAL close!
He hit the tow bar and spun the Falcon! It backed through large shrub and beached itself on an embankment!
Lucky he had insurance and as he too hit the embankment was still there when the cops arrived, he paid for the repair.

Then I got a reprieve!! about 6 months all was fine until I went to Melbourne again.
I was in Melb a couple of days when it spat out the tail shaft again! exact same way! This time we took it to my fathers shop with a hoist to fix it our selves.
At some time someone must have stripped out one of the yoke threads on the diff. One of the bolts was a different size, I wondered if it was the last shop that did it so I called them. Couldn't get an answer off them, they also seemed peeved when I mentioned that these ungraded bolts really were not up to the task!
The larger bolt it transpired didn't fit the yoke thread that well, it had loosened, backed off a little and the play sheered all but that bolt off. Out of interest I screwed the bolt up almost hard against the yoke, it still had play in it!!
Well fixed that. Sorted.
That night I was invited to my Aunties for dinner, so off I go but I only get half way there when the steering gets real hard to turn and the power steering pump begins to whine its head off! The high pressure hose had blown!
Tow it back to dads shop.
Next day I put a new hose on, one of the young guys in the shop was helping me put it together..................................
He tightened the belts.
I went to take off for a test drive and....... WTF? Same effect with the steering! I was close enough, ie, just pulled out of the driveway to get it back.
The young bloke had pulled on the power steering pump reservoir when tightening the belts. Its only plastic, it cracked!
I asked him about it and he didn't try to BS me about it, he apologised then gave me a new one! A chrome earlier model all steel one he was going to use on his 'street machine Falcon'.(Nice guy!)
I managed to get back to Sydney and while driving a few weeks latter there is a 'PING' sound from the motor and it suddenly runs REAL rough.
It bent three push rods and collapsed a lifter! ARGHHHHHHHH!
I then did the only thing a true petrol head can do.
I fixed it.....

Then, yes THEN it all went away! Everything was fine for a couple of years peaceful driving.
In that time I left the Army and moved to Melbourne to be nearer my family.
One night while driving down my road a guy pulls out of his driveway without looking. I hit the skids and turn to miss him the only place I could go was up onto the gutter! That tore the tyre, bent the wheel and the spindle!
So once again I fix it when not even a week later on the way to work and.......... bang! Blew a head gasket!

Got it back to my fathers shop, put it on the hoist, as it begins to lift I notice the door/front guard gap change dramatically? Again I was wondering WTF like I had so many other times with this car.
We got it up and had a good look under there. Found some rust, then some more, then a lot more. The fucking car was bending in the middle because of the rust!
Thats when the car got retired, the motor and gear boxes I kept......
When I told my mate about it he suddenly recalled, oh yeah I had an accident in it years ago, slid off the road into a salt water creek and up onto an embankment. Beached the car and tore off some body brackets under the firewall, but we fixed it good enough..........
Well no.
Never covered the bare metal they repaired.
He is an avid fisherman, the car was in and out of salt water for years he tells me.
All the time I knew him he cared for the car like it was his only son, he had a 4 wheel drive for the boat so I didn't know about all the water it was driven in and out off!
Ahhh well, at least I don't have to worry any more!
Doc.

 

I'm familiar with Mableton--not terribly far from where I am. I'm east of Rockmart on 278 almost at the Paulding County line.

 

Nothing like running through the covered bridge at night with a girl, stopping the car in the middle of the bridge and turning off the car. It's creepy. You must have been hanging around the old Witch's Graveyard. Weird stuff goes on around there. I've seen lights down in the woods by the old mill. I used to run through those bridges at night doing beyond stupid speeds. WOT with glasspacks echos nicely in that holler.

 

anything ive ever owned that was a ford was cursed

 

Yep...maybe the car wasn't cursed...but it hated me all the same...



It was an ex-drag racer...but I tried to put it on the street...I don't think it wanted that. Every time I fixed one thing, another broke, usually when I was about ten miles from home...freeze plugs fell out, fuel pump crapped several times, front wheel/tire fell off once, tranny would lock up, I put in four u-joints, new rad would boil for no reason, one time the driver's door jammed shut, could not get it open to take it cruising...let it set for two weeks and it opened just fine, electrical was always blowing fuses. I owned the car for five years and doubt I put 500 miles on it...finally sold it. BTB...the photo above was shot in 1968. The car hated me...

R-

 

I have an OT car - 80' Z28 that just doesn't like me it seems. Anything that can go wrong with the car has. I might be parting it out now since it has pissed me off to no end - see how it likes me now!

 

I have an '85 elky that defies restoration/making streetable.

In the 1300 miles I've put on it in 5 years it has:
Swallowed a lifter
Developed an engine knock
Eaten 2 alternators
Had a car trailer come off the hitch and beat the snot outta the tailgate
Tore up two pair of car door hinges
Had 3 different windshields.

The thing is cursed for certain.

 

my O/T 1970 Monte Carlo.
when I bought her, it had a Viper alarm system in it - it would go off all hours of the night, after I had gone to bed- if I stayed up till 3 am, it would go off at 4.30.
both tie rods were cross threaded on by the previous owners(as is every other screw and nut it seems)
Sheared the U joints and dropped the driveshaft just as I was pulling away from a light in rushhour traffic
blew the headgaskets, twice, with two different sets of heads.
snapped the pitman arm pulling out of a driveway
sheared the bolts on the passenger side A-arm
smoked 3 transmissions
windshield wipers take a pause for 3 seconds, every 20th cycle(seriously, it does - the blades just stop for 3 seconds, then start moving again)
headlight switch shorted and started smoking.
highbeam switch shorted and set fire to the carpet
dome light did the same very thing
she likes to eat wheel bearings, but only on the passenger side - even after replacing everything. twice.
and finally, for some reason, at various random lengths of time(weeks to months) the ignition control module inside the distributor goes bad(I now carry at least one with me at all times)

I'm scared to get rid of her - afraid she's gonna kill someone else and I get blamed for it.

 

I think thats what you are talking about, they have a new bridge you can bypass it now, but back then there was one one way and that was to go over that bridge. very strange place ,seen people walking by the road look away and they were gone. lots of wierd stuff happened to the car there. here's a neat article on it and witches graveyard. like i said not one to believe in ghosts,but i know the wierd stuff that happened there, experienced it myself. http://urbanbaboon.blogspot.com/2007/07/concord-covered-bridge.html

 

when I was 17 I saw a sweet lookin o/t 1979 Ranchero, I hadda soft spot for the nose asI was racing my first car I ever owned a 79 LTD II...

It was Gold with a satin black shaker hood and cragars 351W if memory serves me...

That thing ran GREAT when it wanted too...anytime I had somewhere I wanted to be the engine would start BACKWARDS and puke the exhaust through the carb...after one of those instances it wouldnt start for a few hours, then it would fire right up...

we went through everything short of a complete rebuild....dist, cam, you name it...finally got so frustrated I sold it to a buddy that knew the history, He was gonna gut it and pro-street it and didnt care.

It never did that song and dance for him...he ended up driving it for years before he sold it and I lost track of it.

I firmly believe that car hated me

 

I'll share another one with you. This car was cursed, but it seemed to like me.

I was GIVEN an early 60's big mopar. It was eat up with rust and the brakes were for shit, but the 413 ran like a raped ape. From 30 feet away, it actually looked nice, but it had serious cancer issues.

I slaped a new set of brake shoes on it and started daily driving it. My original plan was to pull the 413, but I guess I got lazy, just kept driving it.

One night, some guy rear ends me pretty hard. It messed his toyota up really bad. The Chrysler suffered a crumpled bumper and a tweak in the 1/4 pannel only. Them old Mopars were tough!

Insurance came out and looked at it, and totaled it. I still wanted the 413, so I bought it back for $100, and got a check for $1100.

This was back before "totaled" titles, so I just kept driving it.

Eventually I got a good bumper for cheap, and went by a friends body shop to cut the ild one off since it had bent over the bolts. While I was there, my friend who owns the shop says "Roll it over here to the frame machine, let's see if we can get that 1/4 to pop back into shape."

An hour later, you couldn't tell it had ever been hit at all.

About a month later, it got rear-ended again. It was a hit and run. By this time, I had kinda lost interest in it, but I really didn't want to send a perfectly good 413 to the bone yard. I started asking around to see if anyone wanted it, but no takers. Eventually it turned into a problem child, so the decision was made to just junk it.

I was driving the car to the junk yard. I kid you not, I wasn't even 100 yards from the junk yard entrance, when traffic came to a stop.... BAM!!!! Got rear-ended AGAIN!

It was a Ford Maverick this time. Hit me HARD. Guy in the maverick hurt himself pretty good. The Mopar was practically the same as before. I couldn't find any new damage.

Insurance came out again, and totaled it,,, again.
This time I got a check for $1400, and I let them have the car.

 

YES, an O/T 1996 Neon (my first new car). I had it four years, had 5 transmissions, two heads, eight sets of brakes, got keyed twice, broken into twice, and hit once(before I ever made my 1st payment). The first trans went out about one week after I got it, then another one about every eight months. I was driving home one night about 2:00AM and the engine decided it didn't need four plugs and shot one out of the head.......As much as I hate to say it, I loved that car though.

 

That would be every car I've owned built by General Motors; or the British.

 

I bought a '61 big window uni-body eight years ago. It was kind of junky but already had a 302 and C-4 in it that ran pretty good and I needed a pick up. And it was priced right. When I first started driving it it would stall out once in a while, something was clogging the fuel line. Soon I was giving it "road head" often, blowing crap out of the line on the side of the road.
I discovered there was a beehive in the tank. So I took it out and cleaned it out. All was good for a while but the problem came back. Now it was rust in the fuel line, and some new problem with tank. So I replaced the tank and the lines.
By the this time the motor was getting pretty pretty weak. Along the way I started customizing the body so I decided it was time for a motor. I had bought a 351w from a buddy for cheap, it was all new stuff but had not ben assembled. It had sat for two years though and most of it ended up being no good. I had it put together with new stuff and what was OK still and it ran good. The tranny started slipping though. And then the new motor spun a bearing.
Found out that the when the guy put it together he didn't fit the bearings to the rods right, it wiped out the bottom end. So this time I have the entire motor redone right, hot cam, high compression pistons, everything new and top of the line. I have it done by a real professional, and I have the trans gone through also with some tricks done to it.
It's a monster of a 351w and hauls the 4000lb beast around like it's a muscle car. Used to love pulling up next to those guys in thier HEMI dodge truck and blowing the doors off them. In the down time of all of this I had done more custom work, dropped the nose a little, added chromies and white walls. Up front it had 14x6 littles, and in the back 15x10 bigs( wheels off the actual HOT ROD Lincoln on WW slicks). The truck had become the AbstractA.
Few weeks after getting it back together I grenaded the 9inch. I find a Dana with a 456 posi to replace it and put that in. And along the way the rest of the thing is falling apart faster than I can fix it. The wiper motor has sheared the gear off at the post, the heater controls have froze up in the cables somewhere, the cab mounts have caved in from rust (thats where the rust is in Un-bodys) and so on. Even the brakes have had to be completely gone through. I remeber the day I touched the brake and a front drum split into two pieces, the contact surface seperated from the face of the drum... just plain worn out.
So anyway, everything drivetrain wise is a good again, new motor, new trans, new rear end, ect... a few weeks later the tail shaft housing busts off the trans, so i replace it. But it has damaged something inside also so i park it and decide what to do.
A few months ago i started it up to pull it out of the garage, I noticed a freeze plug on the ground. No damage done and I don't think it froze, just a plug put in wrong maybe?? I decided I had enough, the trans needs to come out again, the water pump is making noise, it needs new king pins and I assume if I fix all those problems it will be the motor or trans or rear end again and again, forever. It is cursed to eat parts. What we have always called a car that nickles and dimes you to death.
So, sold the motor to my dad for a '37 he is buiding, took the wheels off it and sold the rest to buddy so he can put the big window into another un-body I sold him... The end of a dream, the end of a nightmare, the end of Thee AbstractA.