I just remembered when I was a kid some of the older guys pulling pranks on people like when they came out to start their car smoke and a loud whistle would scare the hell outta everybody.What was that thing made of and what the hell was it ? Do you remember any other good pranks
I don't know what it was made of but they were called car bombs. It had two wires. One went to the spark plug and the other one was grounded anywhere on the engine. First it would whistle, then it would make a loud explosion and then large clouds of smoke would come from under the hood. Never saw one cause any damage.
Tossing a charged condenser on a guys seat just as he's sitting down in his car,.... they all got up pretty quick,... A bunch of guys standing around watching a engine run,..... and when nobody notices, you drop your cigarette butt on the fan,..... little "ping" and a shower of sparks,.... nobody left standing but you, ..... Switching two spark plug wires at the cap,........... And a number of ones I think it's better if I never mention,...... including the greatest one of all time ! ,....... I better quit now.
My dad spoke of hooking a model T mag to his chassis and touching bumpers with the car in front of him. When the owner of the other car touched the door handle to get in they would get shocked.
Here's another prank we used to do in the 50's. Pull the distributor cap off of a car (usually one of your friends or enemy depending) and take a soft lead pencil and draw a line between the contacts inside the cap. When the (victim) tried to start the car the cap would short out to all the plugs at once as the spark would follow the pencil line (graphite) and usually never start or backfire seriously. They would spend all day changing points, plugs, condenser, coil, etc.
At a Datsun dealer I worked at in the 70's one of the mechanics took some fine cooper stand wire and ran it through the firewall to the coil wire in another mechanics car. He wrapped the other end around the ignition switch bezel. When the victim put in the key and truned it he got zapped. Later he did the same thing but wrapped it around the front edge of the seat. The guy always wore shorts so when he hit the key he was bouncing up and down so much he could't let go of the key and just kept getting zapped.
Well the old mischievous part of me has been sparked,..... so here is the best prank I pulled on a buddy in my life,...... My old buddy Jerry had his folks old Oldsmobile, and use to drive it to school, Jerry wasn't much of a car guy, so one day I sneak down to his house really early, and run a jumper wire from his brake light switch to his horn,..... He had to drive right past my house to go to school,... Jerry was a really good, respectful, quiet kid,..... a real goody two shoes,..... anyway he gets to the end of my street and pulls up behind someone at the intersection and the horn is just blearing !,...... I pull out of my driveway and try to follow him and watch the fun,.... every time he stepped on the brakes that horn would blear, he was getting flipped off, cussed at,.... you name it. When we pulled into the school parking lot, he was red faced and more embarrassed than I had ever seen him before, He asked me to look at his car after school "theres something wrong with my horn",.... so I follow him home and am busting a gut every time I see the brake lights go on and the horn go off, I am laughing so hard tears are blurring my vision (especially at long lights with cars in front of him)..... when we get to his house I take the wire off when I sent him to his garage to get me a screwdriver,.... a week later I do it again ,........ this went on for a long time,. I never did tell him it was a prank,..... For years I carried a couple different lengths of wire with a alligator clip on either end,..... and repeated this prank many times, on many unsuspecting victim,.....
When I was in High school, one of the coaches parked his little 500cc Italian car outside the boy's locker room so before he got out to start class, 5 of us picked it up and put it on top of a 4' tall hedge. He was pissed and took it like a child and made the whole class do jumping jacks for the whole 50 minute class. The whole class watched us do it but no one squeeled! We originally had every intention of getting it back down but since he was such a prick about it we just left it there and he had to call two tow trucks out to get it down. Today they'd probably have the whole class in jail for "questioning" over something like that. We usta hook VW bumpers on top of fire plugs too.
Yeah, we did the horn to the brake light too! We also would put their cars up on blocks just high enough to get the wheels off the ground, making sure to leave the body at ride height..... they would get in, start up, put it in gear and VVRRROOMMM!! Nothing. In high school, the spray foam had just come out in the cans so we would jack up a few cars, pop the schrader out and fill the tires with the stuff. The put the schrader back in, put air in it....The wheel hop was hilarious. I even cut the exhaust of of the principal's car, right up at the manifold.... god was he mad. We also took all the glass out of a teachers car, he was an ass too! Mott
Never saw it done, but I once heard of a hot-water-bottle [the old fashioned kind] being hose clamped over a tailpipe. The victom starts the car up, and after about 4-5 seconds it starts running like crap, so they rev it up... The explosion is supposed to be so loud and powerfull that it can knock the fillings out of your teeth and send everyone diving for cover!
Here's one, wet down your driveway under the car, let a spark plug wire dangle in the water with the engine running, complain to your Buddy's that you can't find the miss in your engine. they will only be too happy to lean over your fender and get zapped, it helps to kick a little water on their shoes. Loads of fun you can get the easy ones twice.
Don't know if this quite qualifies as a prank, but back in the Sixties, 'round 1967, a neighbor down the street was moving. Parked in front of the house, was a large cab-over with trailer moving van. All day we watched the movers work, loading the trailer in the sweltering summer heat and humidity. Throughout the day they were drinking sodas and tossing the empty cans on the lawn. Around nine PM, after probably working 12 hours, they finally finished. A bunch of us guys gabbed the empty soda cans and when the workers weren't looking placed them in front of each tire at about a 45 degree angle. When the big diesel rig was fired up, we swirled around it on our Stingrays (I had a Murray cruiser at the time), watching in glee to see what would happen. The drive put the rig into gear, let the clutch out, and nothing; the rig wouldn't move forward! We all started laughing while circling around on our bikes surprised that the empty soda cans actually kept the truck from moving! By this time the driver and the other movers realized what was happening, jump out or the cab with raised voices and fists, kicked the cans out from under the tires, and left!
I have heard of the model T coil trick at sports events where veryone is hanging on a chain link fence, They say you can hook it to one end and watch as it travels down the fence with people letting go. Best personally was when a buddy of mine and I crawled under a teachers Fairlane with a brake spoon and locked his front brakes. Teach him to keep us after school!
We had a guy in our club years ago that wasn't much of a mechanic but a great guy. He had a neat '34 3window with great big cone things as exhaust tips. At a car show we got an oil can and shot a few squirts of oil as far up the pipes as we could and let it run down and out. Someone got nominated to ask him what was wrong with his car. The guy just flipped out when he saw all this oil running out of his exhaust. Some brat kid told him we did it. Coulda smacked the kid!
a couple of small rocks inside a buddies hubcap works pretty good for me....(as long as theres no painted rims etc..)
My dad loved to prank the guys that worked for him and hung out at the shop. One kid that use to hang at the shop had a stock car and my dad would weld it together every week becouse the kid couldent weld or drive so every tue nite was welding nite well harry got a new tow car and asked my dad to weld on a hitch so dad starts welding and harry asked if he could try dad said sure shows him how and tells him be carfull the gas tank is right next to were he's welding. Well harry puts on the helmet and starts welding well the old man cant pass this up he gets a cherry bomb and sets it off at his feet boom harry drops the stick and starts running but the helmets still down bang right into the wall of the shop knocked him out cold . Still the funnyest thing i ever saw man i miss dad way to much fun. I did just get one of the guys that work for me part time kids right out of auto school got a 97 gta 5.7 trans am he just put in a auto meter tack with a rev lim i pulled the knob off set it at 1300 rpm and put the knob at 6000 dident see him for two days he told me his car wouldent run right so much for UTI
We had a basket ball coach/drivers ed instructor who was a real prick, back in the days of bias ply tire. we switced his front tires and rear snow tires during a home basket ball game. Had a pretty deep snowfall that day. I had a drivers license at the time, I passed with a D- according to him only because the state had alreay issued me a license.
I think I wet myself!!! You guys are cracking me up. Keep this going! My dad tells a story about driving cars (30's & 40's) to the salvage yard. He would stop at a light and shut the engine off. Leaving the key off, he would set and grind the starter over and over, until a few cars were sitting behind them. Then get out, get a tire iron out of the trunk, beat the hell out of the car with it, get back in and turn the key on and drive off. Thats funny stuff right there.
when i worked at a car dealership years ago i bought a nice old chevy p/u and one of the other tecs put a bottle of atf on top of my trans and plumed it in to my vac. line to the vac. modulater. it smoked like heck!
Here is a couple from the shop I used to work in as a "Young Man". I was always doing new window rubber, radios etc. I always had a couple cans of Silicone spray on hand for those pesky window's. While the other guys car was on the rack I would spray the rear tires all the ways around on the tread. It was a lot of fun watching the next guy try to maneuver the car out of the shop on those smooth cement floors. Lucky they never hit anything on the way out. The other one was the old Potato up the tailpipe. You could get it started but in about one minute it would stall. Kinda fun watching the other guy wondering what the H--- happened. Did I mention that I found a hand grenade under the seat of one of the cars I was working on one day? You guessed it was a DUD but the parts guys didn't know it. So I pulled the pin while standing at the Parts counter and pretended I couldn't get it back in, dropped it and ran. The parts department was empth for about ten minutes. Boy were those guys mad. Roger in Cali
This is a neat thread hell it brings back the goodtimes so i sent my son out to check all the antfreeze in the old cars out back he did good till he got to my corvair 45 min and still cant find the rad im still lafin my ass off ROCKY
Worked at an Auto Parts store with an older guy who really should've retired already. We'd watch him check his oil every day before leaving. Then he'd get in his Malibu Wagon and knock back some liquor for the drive home! The boss' son had a dipstick we'd special ordered for someone who never came back. He cut it off real short and put it in the old guy's tube the next day.-He took a look at it and came back in the store.He was MAD AS HELL when he saw all us smart asses laughin at him. Threathened to shoot us if I remember right... Another guy, same store, got an S-10 when they came out. One of the guys pulled the add gas, drain gas on him for a few weeks. Baffeled the shit out of him, and he was an ace mechanic. That was funny as hell, too.
When I was a kid my 5th grade teacher lived in my neighborhood. She drove a little yellow VW and was mean as hell. A few times we took off one of her hubcaps and filled it with gravel. We would hide and watch her try to figure out where the noise was coming from. She'd drive about 20 ft and get out and look all over trying to figure out what was wrong. Not seeing anything, she'd get back in, go another 20ft or so and repeat step one... It was harmless fun. We never really hurt/damged anything or put her into harms way but it sure was fun picking at the old gal! Sorry Mrs. Cann.
I did this to a guy at work the other day. I took one of those big industrial size zip ties and put it around his drive shaft. It makes all sorts of noise and sounds like a bad u joint. You should have seen the look on his face when he came back from picking up lunch. He thought he had a $500 repair bill ahead of him.
In my small engines class my teacher always drove his Honda motorcycle to work and into the shop. He left it parked there overnight once when he went on vacation over the weekend. So when he came back he was surprised to see his bike completely disassembled on the floor in a neat orderly fashion. We put it back together during class and he couldn't help but laugh.
when I had the car audio store we hada installer that was sure the cops were ALWAYS followin him.so we took a siren and wired it to the brake lites,everytime he hit the brakes the siren under the rear bumper went off ...poor guy made it across town and to the bar before he figured out what was up
When I was in high school I was the teachers aide at the welding shop. I made sure the students were working on their projects daily. When I found a few not working on their projects I would make truck chimes. Truck chimes are a piece of angle iron with bailing wire welded to it good enough to hold it for awhile. I would then climb under their cars and attach the "chime" to the center of their transmission crossmembers with the angle touching the ground. They would go hauling ass off sparking and clanking all the way home. I generally got more participation from them the next day. I never got messed with back either, they were scared of some of the other things I came up with.
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