Share your best automotive humor and stupid stories

late 80's I was a Mech's Assistant(gopher) at a Ford dealership - the Mech I was assisting(fetching for) was installing a custom made rear glass on a Saleen Mustang - it had the Ford oval done in Dichroic glass(fumed/fused glass that changes colors) laminated into the center - it was Friday, and he was running late to leave for vacation - finishing up, he forgot to remove his carry box out of the hatch area, and slammed the hatch down...glass shatters on contact with the box, and with the Service Manager approaching, he looks at me an screams "DON'T JUST STAND THERE, GET SOME GLUE!!!!"

 

While hanging out at my buddies gas station late one evening many years ago, 2 very intoxicated young hotties walk over from the diner next door and want to know if we can unlock their car door as they've left the keys in the car. After a couple unsuccessful attempts the driver says "don't worry about it, I'll just break the window". So the gals both walk over to the area next to the shop to get a brick to smash the window with. You guessed it, the driver smashes the drivers window and the passenger smashes the passenger window. Then they get in and drive away like nuthin'.

 

SENIOR CITIZEN DRIVER

As a senior citizen was driving down the freeway, his car phone rang.
Answering, he heard his wife's voice urgently warning him, "Herman, I
just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on 280.
Please be careful!"

"Shucks," said Herman, "It's not just one car. It's hundreds of them!"

 

AutoBodyEd said a customer said: and i quote, " i wish it would rain soon so my windshield washers will fill back up." i shit you not.

No, oh, no. PLEASE tell me they did NOT say that.<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

 

Bought a 5 year old MGA twincam from a MG dealer for 400$. Mechanic had worked on the carbs and then it would only run on two cylinders. After many hours of work, The dealers insurance bought it from the owner and told the dealer to sell it. After the deal was made and the paper work done, I had it running and was gone in seconds. The mechanic had made new base gaskets and didn't put a hole in the center of one. A quick poke with a screwdriver an I was outta there. Drove it for a couple years and sold it for many times what I paid for it. Mechanical stupid is nothing new.

 

A friend of mine was going to teach his 15 year old daughter how to drive. First he told her to go out to the '85 Buick four door and study the dash and the inside of the car. She was out in the car for about a half hour and when she came back in the house he asked her if she could identify all the gauges, and such in the car. She said she understood what the fuel guage, temp. guage, speedo etc. was but she could not find anythin about the " prindle" in the manuel. When he took her out to the car and asked her to show him what she couldn't understand she grabbed the gear shift in the console and said, " this thing, it says PRNDL, (prindle).

 

A couple of years ago I sold a 71 Torino Squire wagon on Ebay to a guy in upstate NY. He insists on coming down when we're having one of the worst snow storms in Northern Ga. I lived on a STEEP hill of which at the bottom is a 40 ft drop off into the trees, you have to turn left or right, straight ahead is not an option. Guy shows up, decides we'll load the car on his trailer in the snow covered road facing down hill. The Torino isn't a running vehicle at the time so we have to push the car onto the trailer with my 10 year old son steering it. Halfway onto the trailer, his truck, the trailer and wagon start sliding down the hill, it slides about 100 ft, and just before coming to the end of the road the truck and trailer (fortunately) jack-knife, rocketing the wagon into the ditch on its passenger side, we're standing at the top of the hill for several minutes before any of us remember that my son is in the wagon that's now in the ditch, the drivers door flys open, he's got the biggest grin on his face, to this day he says that's the most fun he's ever had in the snow.

 

While stationed in GITMO in the late 80' I get a call from my wife, the truck won't start. I get her to do some basic troubleshooting but still won't start and I am just about ready to fly out of GITMO to Key West so I tell her to clean the battery with baking soda and will call her when I get to Key West. Upon arrival I give her a call, well she says it still won't start, then proceedes to tell me how the battery really foamed up when she poured the baking soda down the holes in the top of the battery.

 

I was working at a large shop with a partial dividing wall running through the middle of it. I couldn't see the front of the building where the customers came into the business. We were listening to a radio station that every hour would announce, "What would you do for a Crazy Neil's Pizza?"

You were supposed to call the radio station to tell them what you would do for a pizza. Instead I thought I could yell my answer loud enough for the DJ to hear me from several miles away. So I screamed, I'd eat the crotch out of a menstruating skunk!"

I didn't realize a middle aged lady had entered the building to pick her car up.

 

A young man comes into the place I work and asks about the price of a 350 for his Camaro. I ask him if he wants a long block or short block. He replies : "I need a short block sir, a long block won`t fit in a Camaro."

 

There was a story on the news a few months ago. Apparently a woman called 911 because she was locked inside of her car. Her power door locks were not working,and they would not unlock the car. The 911 operator asked her if she tried to open the door,she said no...then pulled on the handle and the door opened. True story,it`s on YouTube somewhere.


And a good friend,up until recently for obvious reasons,was a Dodge Technician. Last year a guy brought a Dodge B2500 Van in because it started to leak oil,was way down on power,and would not turn all the way to the right any longer. Apparently he drove it like this for about a week,and even tried to do a tune-up on it. My buddy got it up on the rack and found a hole through the driver side of the block and oil pan,and a connecting rod and piston wedged between the control arm and spindle!!!!!!!!!!

 

When I was about 10 - 12 years old and just learning some of this "car stuff", I decided to help my dad out by checking the fliuds in his pickup. All were good except for the battery level, which I filled up to the top with tap water. When I told him about my good deed he said, "I hope to hell you put distilled water in". I said, "of course I put distilled water in, I'm not stupid ya know!" We had some distilled water so now I've got to fix this problem before he finds out!! Gotta get the wrong water out before I can put the right water in. Looked around the barn and found an old piece of 1/4 inch copper tubing, and used it like a drinking straw to suck the wrong water out!!! Remember the "I'm not stupid" part? Lotsa pain, lotsa blisters, great learning experience.

 

When I was a teenager and working at a lube shop on my last day this dude was being a total dick so I took it upon my self to have a little fun. I ran a jumper wire from his horn button down to his brake light switch on his his old junky dodge truck. The best part was him setting in the parking lot with his foot on the brake and the horn blaring waiting for an open spot in traffic so he could pull out into the street and the idiot didnt even figure out what was going on. I wish I could have followed him around for a while just for the hell of it.

 

Well...this particular incident was probably when I felt the stupidest concerning cars............Winter, mid-1980's, I was about 30 yrs. old. Worked as a machine-tool designer (draftsman) with my dad, who not too long previously had recovered from a heart-attack, and my brother-in-law, Tim. One afternoon at work, my dad asked me if I might be able to give them both a ride to work the next morning. Of course I said, "No problem". Now you have to understand that Tim and my dad were "suit and tie" kind of guys, and pretty-much had their act together. I on the other hand, was a little more casual...about everything...including my cars. At the time, I was driving a 1972? AMC Javelin with a 304 V-8, 3-speed stick and a posi. I had painted it black, spaced-up the rear springs, and added some slotted mags with 60-series rear tires. The 60's were damn-near bald. One more important custom feature...the windshield wiper-motor didn't work, so I disconnected it from the wipers. With the wipers in straight-up position, I had connected them together with a length of fairly thick, bright-red insulated wire...one end tied to a wiper, then through the vent window, through the interior, out the other vent-window, and then tied to the other wiper. Now, by moving the wire back and forth, I had manual wipers! Genious! I didn't care...it worked for the time-being. (I'll give you a second while you laugh your asses off. I actually thought it was pretty funny too.) Anyway, early morning...I'm off to pick up Dad and Tim, and the roads are covered in ice. With the stick trans, the posi, and the bald 12" wide tires, I'm slippin' and slidin'...but I'm makin' it. Pick up Dad...then Tim...so far, so good. Dad does make a good-humored remark about the wiper-wire...mumbles something about a wing and a prayer, and offers to help "accuate" the wipers. Tim's in the back seat chuckling. About this time, in traffic, at a light, in the left turn lane...I run out of gas...Oh shit. I sprung into action...I explained to them that I'm gonna run back to the gas station a half mile behind us, and I'll be right back. Off I go, runnin' through some deep-assed snow.......Get back with the gas, all out of breath, pour in the gas, jump into the car, turn the key.........nothin'. I had left the ignition on. My head dropped to my chest and I exclaimed, "I don't believe it!" My Dad said, "I do." Then he said to me, "Tim and I are gonna push-start you...leave it in second when you pop the clutch."...wouldn't let me argue. So there we were, in the middle of the fugging winter, with the brief-case guys in their dress-shoes, push-starting Rick's POS Javelin, and my dad, trying to give himself another heart-attack! Luckily, the car started easily. During the remainder of the ride, my Dad explained that while I was off getting gas, a State-trooper had stopped to ask if they were OK. My dad told him that I would soon be back with fuel, and that they were fine. According to my father, the cop, while eyeing the big red wire asked, "Are you sure?" Tim just chuckled. Rick

 

That is from when battery cases were made from wood

 

1) My oldest son&#8217;s girlfriend used to work at a &#8220;Postman Plus&#8221; store. One day a woman enters the store looking for batteries for her car&#8217;s remote. She checks the stock and Nope Sorry but we don&#8217;t carry that type. With this the woman starts to whine and panic. She states that the remote is dead and she can&#8217;t unlock her car. So Kate says to the woman, &#8220;Did you try to use your key to open the door&#8221;? The woman looks at her with a startled expression and says&#8221; I thought this was for the trunk&#8221;. So Kate goes out and unlocks the car with the key. She said the woman was flabbergasted.
2) We know a girl who for Father&#8217;s Dad washed her Dad&#8217;s new black car. When he went out to look at her surprise, he almost fainted. Seems she had never washed a car before and used a scrub brush and comet cleanser on the car.
3) When I was in my early 20&#8217;s I was changing my oil in the driveway while my new girlfriend (Later Ex Wife) waited. Just as I was finishing up changing the oil filter, up rides my old girlfriend on her bike. Now my new girlfriend hates my old girlfriend with a passion, so I&#8217;m sweating bullets while trying to be friendly. After a few minutes my old girlfriend rides off and I start putting new oil into the Maverick. After putting 5 quarts in, I check the oil and NOTHING is on the dipstick. So I look under the car and low and behold, I have a 5 quart puddle of oil under the car. It seems that I got so flustered by the unexpected visit and the remarks and glares by my new girlfriend, that I forgot to put the drain plug back in. Well, this just cemented things with my new girlfriend because now she had to wait for me to run out and buy 5 more quarts and finish the job. I heard about that one for the next 5 years whenever she got mad at me. Funny part is after we divorced; I turned around and married the girl on the bike. We&#8217;ve been married now 25 years and she knows the story too. But we only laugh about how pissed my Ex looked.

 

Knew this master engine builder, in his own mind, who built a 383 for his 69 Road Runner convertable on a card table in his garage. He gets the motor all in and just slides some mufflers on the exaust pipes. Starts it up and drives about 5 miles to a country road and drops it into second gear and at about 75 mph one of the mufflers comes off. He turns around and picks it up with his bare hands and throws it on the back seat, which is vineil

 

About a year ago I was working with one of the Technicians at at work on a prototype machine, when one of the other engineers comes down carring a tilt steering asssembly. He wants to take it apart, and asks the Technician if he has a 24 mm wrench in the tool box. The Technician responds "No, just use the metric adjustable wrench". After letting the poor guy dig through the tool box for a good 15 minutes, the technician opens the middle drawer and hands the engineer a cresent wrench.

 

In 1970 all 3 auto shop instructors at the local trade school were still teaching us that this was true!did believe it then but was way to naive to question a teacher ,same thing when I asked about building an individual runner intake for a project "nope must MUST have a shared plenum chamber to work"

 

On a front wheel drive car with an automatic transaxle, the transmission pan looks like the oil pan. My friend hasnt asked me to change the oil in his moms toyota again.....

 

i can relate to your kids ride i was probably around 8 or 9 and we were moving and my dad has a 48 ford pickup that needed a battery but he didnt have one layin around so him and all his buddies stick me inside the truck to stear and they are goin to push it on the trailer. well they get it pushed on to the trailer and get thr front end broke over and decide they need to take a break and told me to hold the brake for a second they needed to rest well the old orignal brakes give out and i take off at high speeds over hill towards the woods i managed to dodge all the trees and only took out an old empty gym locker and cam to rest on top of a old stump when they all ran down the hill to see if the truck was hurt the first question i heard was why the hell did you not throw it in park?!?!? and they never once asked me if i was ok

 

I worked at a filling station while in high school, in the mid 70s. A guy driving a VW bug pulled in and asked if he could use our water hose. I said "sure"...he pulled over to the hose, opens up the hood/trunk/ass and starts putting water in the oil fill tube. I walked over and asked "uh...do you know what you're doing?". He said "yes, it's just running hot". after a couple more minutes of filling the crankcase with water he drove away. I never heard how far he got.

 

I was working with some newbies and asked one to get the "Metric" cresent wrench from the tool box.
In the drawer there were several, but all but the largest one were older and were labeled 7 inch or 9 Inch on the handles referring to their length. The biggest one was new and had a Metric length.
The guy thoght I was joking and boy was he pissed when I explained this.

 

Back around 75 I went to work for the local Pontiac dealer I didn't know it but the head mechanic was a constant practical joker being new he asked me if I had a metric adjustable he could borrow for the Opal he was working on ,well I just walked over to my tool box and pulled out the 3 adjustables i had and asked him which metric one he needed! this was right around the time we were supposed to be converting to the metric system and like you say they all were marked as 200 mm etc rather than 7 or 9 inch.The guy was great to work with and a very fine teacher learned a bunch from him and work days were always fun !

 

well, i had to get out of the rental i was at and finally had enough money for a down payment on a house. well the roommate i had at the rental left me high and dry by grabbing all of his stuff and moving out with about a month left. well he had all the cool stuff, and all of the good tye-straps...so i asked a buddy at work (we are motorcycle mechanics) if i could use his tow bar so we could get my 1952 Studebaker 8 miles down the road. so he came over and we hooked up the tow bar with these cheap ass little straps that come on the new motorcycles coming into the shop...didnt even give it a second thought...we joked on how i should get into the drivers seat and steer the thing there but there are no brakes so we decided against it....well three miles down the road (and two adjustment stops) there was a big POP as we were making a left at an intersection...well i turned around to look out of the window and my studebaker was crusing through the intersection, driverless, and heading towards a telephone pole, gaining speed...lets just end right there with a now damaged drivers fender, headlight, broken bumper bracket, and front grill...i should have seen the made in china stamp on those straps that were laying in the middle of the road...only if.....

 

my boss, the service manager, at a motorcycle shop did that to the GM's rear brake on his hopped up motorcycle. it was funny as hell because he couldnt figure it out...we all watched and laughed for about twenty minutes before he was told...

 

Back in mid 70's my best mate Terry had a little MG midget. Jacked it it up with a flimsey little scissor jack to do a brake job and sits with his legs comfortably either side of the hub. Using cheapo spanners it slips an he busts a knuckle, evryone laffs and he gets really pissed and headbutts the car.....remeber the jack.. yeah, car falls off onto his legs. No one could talk or stand for 5 min pissing ourselves. Lift the car off and his mum calls for an amulance to fix his broken leg. We finished the brake job before he came back from A&E, but left the dent in the fender ( head butt )to remind him. He still has a limp and a short temper.

 

I was working for a Chrysler-Plymouth-FIAT dealership (something prophetic there!) back in 1978. I worked in Parts with my bro-in-law, but did detailing, parts running, dropping off customers and all that shit, too.

A few months earlier, one of my best friends was killed when a '76 Plymouth Fury crossed the center line, and used my friend's new FIAT X-1/9 as a ramp. Killed my friend instantly. Well, a few months later, guess what car shows up at the dealership to be used as parts for several customers' cars...yup, the X-1/9. I saw that come off the wrecker into the service bay and about pissed myself! I told the service manager and my bro-in-law, who was the Parts manager, that I was not going within 20 feet of that car, for any reason!

Later on that week, on of the line guys was under the car to remove the transaxle and the engine, which were both going into two customers' cars. He was sitting on his butt on the shop floor with his legs extended under the car, getting ready to pull the eng/trans as a unit. Since the lifts were busy, time is money, you know...The car slips off the stands and traps his legs under the car, breaking his feet and fracturing a knee joint! That's Incident Number One with this car...

Now, the engineless car is in the body shop, getting the back-half removed (it was nearly perfect) to get put on another X-1/9 in for rear end damage. The body shop guy was injured as he sliced the crap out of himself, falling back onto the the cut on the car with his torch. Incident Number Two...

Now, at least three cars have parts from my friends' cursed FIAT. The car that received the engine from it, caught fire in the customer's garage two days later, burning the house to the ground. No one hurt, though! Incident Number Three...

The car that received the transaxle and a couple of minor parts was in an accident as the customer drove off the lot. He got hit by a new Chevy C-30 pickup, basically crushing the FIAT. Incident Number Four...

The car that got back-halved in the repair, got rear-ended again after it was completed. Totalled it. Incident Number Five...

Last of all, the remains of my friends X-1/9 were on a truck, going to the scrap, because nothing else salvageable was left of it. The scrap truck wrecked on the way to the scrap yard.

All true.

 

Holy shit that is eerie. It reminds me of the jetliner that crashed in the everglades back in the 70's where any salvaged parts that went on other aircraft were considered haunted. They even made a movie about it starring Ernest Borgnine. Damn if I can remember the name of it though.
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Remembered: It's actually "The Ghost of Flight 401" about an L1011

 

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I've got a very similar story relating to a slightly different model of the same kind of car. Years ago, a friend of mine, a recent Chinese immigrant, was proudly telling me about the new car she'd just bought. I asked her what kind of it was . She replied that it was a "Pontiac Goose". Thinking that maybe, not understanding certain English words perfectly, that something had gotten lost in translation so to speak, and she'd gotten her birds mixed up, I replied "You mean a Pontiac 'Firebird'?" "No", she replied firmly, "It's a Pontiac 'Goose'" "No such thing" I replied. Then we went outside to look at it. There in my driveway sat her brand new Pontiac 6000se!

I've got a buddy who runs a shop who has a very dry sense of humor and little tolerance for fools. A customer who was a known general pain in the ass and one that my buddy didn't particularly care for anyway, had dropped off a used car he'd just purchased to get a safety certificate so he could get the car plated and on the road. The car was a worn out piece of junk and and when my buddy started looking at it, he quickly determined that the repairs needed to put it back into any sort of road-legal condition would be far more than it was worth. When the customer showed up in the afternoon to see how his car was coming, my buddy just shook his head and said "I've got some bad news for you. That car's a complete piece of junk and it's not worth fixing" The customer looked at him and asked earnestly "Well what do you think I should do?" My buddy looked at him and without batting an eye replied dryly, "Jack the radiator cap up .....and drive a new car underneath it."

Another time, my buddy was jammed up with work when a customer came in to see how the repairs on his car were proceeding and asked "Hows my car coming?" My buddy who was so busy that day that hadn't even had time to look at the car yet replied "It's not coming" The customer suddenly looked quite perturbed and asked "What do you mean it's not coming?" My buddy replied "Like I said....it's not coming....in fact.... it's not even breathing hard!"

Years ago, I drove a tow truck for a few months and I was dispatched to pick-up a '57 Chev from a driveway at a very upscale house out in the suburbs and drop it off at a shop about 15 miles away. I was told by my dispatch that it was a 'rush job'.....that the owner had been quoted $100 for the tow and that he was waiting and he'd meet me at the shop in about half an hour where I was to drop the car and he'd pay the bill. I found the car easily enough - a rather ratty, unplated, gray primered '57 Chev sedan that was obviously in the midst of major rebuild- and hooked onto it. The quickest way to the shop required a 15 minute drive on the freeway and couple of minutes later I was tooling down the 'big road', dodging traffic at 70 mph with the '57 in tow. After only a couple of minutes on the freeway though , something didn't feel right. The car felt loose and I could feel it starting to sway back and forth behind me. I slowed down and moved over from the middle lane into the right lane. But the swaying continued and was getting worse. I slowed some more and then some more again and finally eased over on to the shoulder and stopped and got out to see what the problem was. I couldn't believe what I found. The two back wheels were nearly completely off. They had each shed four of their five lugnuts and the remaining single lugnut still holding each of them on were both at the very end of their studs, almost off and hanging on by only a couple of threads. In addition three of the five studs on each wheel were either stripped or broken from the wheels wobbling back and forth over them. When I checked further, I found the lugnuts on the front wheels were all loose too, literally just finger-tight and only because they were lifted off the ground during the tow, they hadn't come off too. I dropped the front down, got my wheel wrench out and after jacking the back of the car up up to center the wheels on the axles again, was able to take one lugnut off of each front wheel, put them on the back on the one exrea remaining good stud and then tighten everything up. There was now only two lugnuts per wheel on the back, but at least they were tight. I considered dropping the car and hooking it from the back and towing it that way but with the freeway traffic blasting by me I decided that was too dangerous to even try. So I decided tp continue the tow with the back wheels on the ground and just two lugnuts holding the wheels on. For rest of the trip down the freeway though, I had the rotating emergency lights and 4-way flashers on as I didn't dare go much over 35 mph. I arrived at the shop a good hour past the original 'half-hour eta' that the customer had been quoted. When I finally pulled into the shop parking lot and stopped, an 18-or-so-year-old kid came running out, yelling, waving and cursing loudly that I was a f****ing idiot", that I was f****ing late" and "where the "f*** had I been with his car??? - Blah-blah-blah. I was already mad enough about what had happened out on the freeway that I sure wasn't going to take any crap or abuse from some foul-mouthed idiot kid! In fact, as it was, even before I got there, I had been fantasizing about novel and fun ways to kill the moron, whomever he was, that had caused me all this grief! I told the kid if he wanted his goddamn car he'd better shut his big mouth right now and that he was lucky I'd even gotten there at all ....and even luckier that nobody had gotten killed! I showed him the lugnuts and told him that they all had been loose and that the wheels had almost fallen off on the freeway. When I asked him why the hell the lugnuts had all been loose, he said that he didn't have the right size socket to fit them and that he'd put them on finger tight, because - get this - he "thought it would be alright because the car was just going to be towed to the shop and not driven there"!!!! When I made the bill up I wrote it out for $225 instead of the $100 he'd been quoted for the tow and handed it to him. At first he wasn't going to pay, until I told I wouldn't drop the car until until he did and "no pay - no car". Then he wanted to know why I was charging him more double the original quote and I calmly explained my clearly and I thought, quite self-explanatory itemized bill to him - 1) "$100 for towing", 2) "$25 for cursing and swearing at me when I arrived", 3) "$50 for aggravation" and 4) "$50 for gross stupidity and almost getting people killed out on the freeway"! I reminded him once again - "No pay, no car" and told him either way was fine with me. He paid. When I got back to the yard and told my boss about what had happened, he let me keep the extra 125 bucks for my trouble and then had the bill framed and put up on the office wall!

Mart
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