Projects Funny stuff that happens with old cars....

wow!!!

 

A friend of mine in high school went out with this girl, and they got real friendly. Well he was in love and wanted to buy her a ring! He told me was thinking about selling his coupe. I had just got my license and looking for a car. So I ask him how much? He says $300.
I bought it. Didn't have the harte to tell him that she was friendly with everyone. I still have the car and friends with the girl.

 

Ouch, - I think that is what is termed “a near miss”…….

 

Bought a baby-shit yeller '66 Ford Galaxie hardtop, had it delivered to my house (smart enough to do THAT)...
Didn't think much about whether anything important had been robbed off of it, spent an afternoon getting it running................. Thinking I'd made a good score, I slipped it into gear and proceeded to scoot across the backyard directly towards the fence between my neighbor's yard and mine..........
Stomped the brake and it shot right to the floor. Managed to shut that 390 down before I took the fence across the neighbor's yard, started it back up and idled backward...Took the drums off and every last one of the brake shoes were gone...... I'd forgotten the first thing Pops taught me: make it stop before you make it go...........

 

15 years ago I built a tribute to the Little Red Wagon and had it street registered here in Australia. It has an off topic engine facing backwards in the tray and all the electricals were at the front of the engine.
One day I leaned over the tailgate and shorted the start relay out to start it. The car was in reverse and it promptly started backing up on me. The only problem was a Range Rover parked right behind it. It pinned me between the two cars and I was fortunate the Rover bumped back a little and I got out from between them.
I went and turned off the engine and then realised I was in a bit of pain.
Eventually got to Hospital and I had broken my pelvis in 3 places and tailbone.
The next day the Doctor told I was supposed to be dead!
3 months in bed cured me of trying to start the car the wrong way. I still have the car and won't ever sell it.

 

Welp; we can lock this thread; Zuffen got us all beat.

 

Was that maybe a '61 Chevy? I borrowed my mom's new '61 Chevy station wagon, 6 banger and 3 on the tree. Out on a back road with my buddy who was ragging on me because the wagon didn't have enough power to make the back tires chirp. I got the brilliant idea that if I could get it going fast enough in reverse and then shift it into low, I could get a little rubber on the road. Worked good until something broke and the tranny was locked in two gears. John caught a ride home and came back with his old man's pickup and enough tools to get the driveshaft out, then we towed it home. Next morning, my mom came out expecting to go somewhere and John and I are under the car fighting that "top center trans to block bolt" that @KenC referred to. She caught us just before I was going to open up the floor pan with a hammer and chisel. I heard my normally soft-spoken mother cut loose with a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush. I stayed at John's house for the next couple of weeks.

 

Oh My^^^^ When My pal and I were out touring the County one, school day.
( He had taught me that you won't get struck by lightning if you skip school )
I wanted to show him a stretch of road that would make the car leap at the rise, come down in the dip. There were several spots on this road that would 'Toss' the car.( 65 Chevelle SW )
Well the result in showing off with more speed and go pedal kept it in air too long. The return to earth sounded pretty loud the front end bottomed the the tail end rocked also.
Someone told my dad that the back tire was wobbly. He complained to the dealer, the car being new.
They replaced the axle shaft. Later on, one day, it was up on the lift at my Uncle's Gulf station.
Outside tending the pumps I heard a commotion. The guys noticed that the sway bar bolts were unattached. Somehow the washers had failed in keeping the bushings in place. They went to the dealer ( different one ) got the new pieces to put it together.
I was very distracted by my work, that day, and never engaged in any conversation.
As the years rolled by the Ten Bolt twice dropped a 'C' clip from a rear shaft.
( repaired by me ) Then much later the frame needed to be welded just back of the engine mounts.
I wish I still had that Puppy

 

In high school, drove the old family 1969 Oldsmobile Delta 88, 2-door hardtop. It had the way over-boosted power brakes and steering of the day. I’d just finished doing a brake job in auto shop and old Mr. Zimmer, the teacher, was about to check my work as was his habit. I told him, “be careful, those brakes are really touchy.” And they were, I used to use just a toe on that huge pedal! Mind you, old Zimmer was a big, stern man. I was 6’ in high school and he towered over me. Being of that generation, he always wore a shop coat and huge black leather shoes, likely the only pair he owned. I imagined he’d be that old guy you see at the beach wearing his swim trunks with a white v-neck undershirt and those same shoes with black dress socks. Anyway, big Mr. Zimmer swings that 4’ long door wide and climbs into the boat. Seat belts were optional back then so he doesn’t bother to buckle up. He starts the car, backs out from where I’d parked it and heads down the small on-campus road behind the shop only going maybe 15 mph. He firmly applies his big foot to that large pedal, which drops the car on its nose and launches him face first into the windshield. Of course all his students are watching this unfold so we all see his face pressed up against the glass like the pictures you’ve seen of folks walking into glass doors they didn’t know were there. All the young whipper snappers are buckled over with laughter. So after I straighten up and wipe the tears away, I approach the door as old Zimmer is climbing out, having bruised nothing but his ego and say, “I told you they were touchy!” To which he responds sharply and gruffly, “there’s something wrong with this car!”as he steps aside and lets me hop in and drive away.

 

Friend blew a head gasket on his off topic late 70s import and we did a head gasket on the street where he parked the car...Straight forward head gasket ..Started the car and it blew white smoke for what seemed forever...Culprit was when the gasket originally blew it dumped coolant into the muffler . .That was a hell of a curse and a turned out to be a blessing .It cleared up and he drove the balls out of the car afterwards ..

 

When I was an apprentice we would car-pool to go to trade school in the big smoke. My friend's turn to drive ('64 Holden) which was parked with 2 wheels up on the footpath to make a bit more room for passing traffic on a very narrow street. We all jumped in , he starts the car, puts it in gear, lets out the clutch- no movement. Looking under the car, we noticed a big empty gap where the tailshaft once lived. Someone had swiped it during the night!!
Same kinda thing happened to me after installing NOS tail light lenses given to me by a friend doing a shed clean -out. I replaced the cracked and faded ones, and parked the car outside on the street. They were on there less than 24 hours when someone stole them, but they left the 8 mounting screws on the ground, in the exact same pattern as they would be installed. I dug the old lenses out of the trash, and they went back on.

 

When I turned 18, in 74, my dad found me a really nice looking 69 Buick, 2 door hard top. The car only had 49,000 miles on it and it looked great, but the drive train sucked. The 350 2 bbl carb coupled with the 2 speed auto trans, and a posi was not very fast off the line, and it didn't hold up very well. That could have been caused by the fool driving the car though.

So my one buddy and I were both dates girls from a small town about 30 miles away. I had a real job, so most of the time, he rode with me when we went to visit our lady friends every weekend night. I still lived at home, and at mom & dads house, I was expected to be home by midnight on the weekends, if I was there by 12:30, I was usually OK.
It wasn't unusual if it was about quarter to midnight by the time we left that small town. i had to drop him off at his house before i went home. I knew the roads pretty well, so the Buick was usually making that 30 mile run, with the throttle wide open. The speedometer told me it could do about 110 mph before it was maxed out.
We were out in the middle of no place, about 1/2 way home, cruising along between 105 and 110, according to the speedometer. As usual, my buddy was sleeping on the passenger seat, as we were cruising home. At that location, there was a bump in the road that always made the car bounce, at that speed. I was pretty used to it, so I seldom slowed down for the bump.
That one night, when I hit the bump, my eyes caught a glimpse of something ahead of us on the dark road. Just a flash of something unusual, but I had no idea what it was. My mind told me I needed to slow down very fast, so I locked up the brakes (the car had great brakes)! My buddy slid off the seat and onto the front floorboard, needless to say, he was no longer sleeping. his only question was "What are we stopping for?"
I told him I had no idea, but at that point we could both see something straight ahead of us, and we were approaching it very fast, even with the brakes locked up! With the lights on high beam, we soon discovered what we were seeing was one of those reflective triangle things they put on the back of farm equipment! Of course, there was a car coming from the other way, so we couldn't simply go around what ever it was. The old Buick brakes finally got us down to the speed the farm tractor that was pulling the old hay rack was traveling at, about 20' behind him. this was about the same time the car passed us from the other direction.
The farmer was moving his hay rack, at midnight on a Friday (or Saturday) evening, with out a single light on the tractor! after we passed the tractor and hay rack, the rest of the drive home was much slower! For the record, we both broke up with those girls from the small town a few weeks later.
The reality is, at the speed I was traveling at, I probably could have easily passed the tractor with the hay rack (if I had known that was what it was) before the car from the other direction got there, but would you really want to zoom past a farm tractor pulling a hay rack at 105 mph on a fairly narrow hard surface road? The fact that I really had no idea what I saw, pretty much demanded I hit the brakes. Once I hit the brakes, that option of just going around it before the other car got too close was probably gone. I suspect the farmer probably didn't move his hay rack at midnight, without any lights, again either. I can't imagine hearing the tires screaming as they tried to slow down a car, that was coming at you pretty fast from behind, must have felt like!

I have no idea why I had to put 3 motors in that Buick in a year's time....must have been the junk Buick motors...
If this was on the off topic board, I'd post a picture of the Buick.

 

I was in high school when the GTO first came out. My girlfriend said that her Dad said that stood for “gas tires and oil”, but being a clever chic, she said that it stood for “good for teenagers only!”

 

1978 went to look at a Hurst SC/Rambler ..390 automatic . took it for a quick spin . seller forgot to mention no brakes .The panic was intense ..Got lucky avoided crashing that car.

 

"How to Win Friends and Influence People"

 

Back in the early 1980's I went to a junkyard somewhere in rural Maine. The owner was in his late 70's and a character in his own right, and had been in business for years hauling cars. Come to find out he never had a drivers license. His explanation was that he'd been driving long before some of the @*&%$! in Augusta were even an idea and he didn't need them to tell him how to drive. You can't get away with that anymore!

 

You can as long as you never get pulled over. Look how many people are driving around without a drivers license these days.
Once you got pulled over, it may (or may not) become an entirely different matter.

 

Yeah, no license and a good many of them with no insurance!!!

 

I was selling a sedan delivery fitted with an automatic transmission, and a "buyer" turned up and wanted to go for a test drive. We jumped in, and I could tell by his confusion (column shift auto) he was in trouble. I said "off you go", and he didn't know how to put it into drive. I showed him, we got mobile, and he jammed the brakes on , then floored the gas, then tried started fiddling with the shift lever. He had no idea how to drive it. I leaned over, turned off the ignition, and kicked him out of the car, and told him to scram. I did'nt bother looking back at him walking to his "car", (it was probably a skateboard).

 

This sounds like it could only happen very recently or an extremely long time ago.

 

If I drive my wife's new car more than 85mph she gets a text on her phone. Damn