Event Coverage Funniest, sorriest, worst thing ever happen while going and picking up a car?

My wife was showing me how to copy and paste. Blame her for the General Lee picture. She says she could photo shop Jug ears to look like me. but she wouldn't be that mean to him. Picture of us when first married

 

Old Wolf, that is a great story! I understood everything you said, but I’m afraid most guys wouldn’t get most of what you said. I loved it though, you and I could sit down, drink some sodas and chew the fat for a good long while.


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Dig those groovy bell bottom jeans and mini-skirts!

 

well it was1973

 

Yes the old ***mins must had a head that had a crack or number 5 sleeve possibly pinholed from electrolysis. it was getting a very small amount of compression in the cooling system to make it heat up. The truck died a colossal death. After I put the pump on manual you had to put it in gear and hold the brakes release the clutch to stall the engine to kill it. They left it on a small flat area on top of a mountain for the winter. did not unhook the batterys. when the batterys got low enough the solenoid kicked in and it fired up and drove itself off a cliff. landed a couple hundred feet down and flew into a lot of pieces. You and I know about low batterys causing equiptment to start itself up. Weird thing but not that uncommon.

 

In my younger years, I bought a pair of 65 Barracudas. One was a CA body with a 318 4 speed, and the other was a slant 6 3 speed stick. I think I paid $500 for both, quite expansive for me at that time. Both cars were sitting at the sellers sisters house out in the country, about 4 or 5 miles from where I lived. I had a 3/4 ton pickup, and a trailer, and I figured I would be hauling both cars home on the trailer. That probably would have been the smart thing to do, since both cars had been sitting for nearly a year.
Never said I was smart... I had a 17 year old brother-in-law that had been on several car retrieval operations, and he knew the drill quite well. I'd not ever seen them before, I knew the guy selling them and knew there wouldn't be a problem if something was wrong with the CA V8 4 speed car which was what I was after. When we got there to see the cars, we were both pretty impressed with both cars, and especially happy with the V8 4 speed car. We decided to see if we could get the V8 car started. We swapped in the battery for the winch with the dead battery that was on the battery tray, dumped a little gas into the carb and cranked it over. It started right up! Purred like a kitten. The car had brakes, and letting out the clutch moved the car forward and backwards. While it was running, we swapped the dead battery back into the car and put the winch battery back in its place. We let the car run a few minutes then shut it off, and made the decision to drive the V8 car home. We winched the slant 6 car onto the trailer, and tied it down. Just for kicks I hit the key, and the car started with the original battery in place. Just for good measure, we did swap the winch battery back into the car. I checked all the fluid levels. My BIL jumped into my truck, and I jumped into the 4 speed car. We pulled out of the yard and went down the road. I had a stop sign, a right turn, then in about a mile, there was another stop sign and a left turn. From there there was 2 more right turns a couple miles apart, the last one being on the road to my house. All back country hard surface roads until I turned onto my road, which was gravel. The 2 pair of "S" curves and a left turn into my driveway, about 3/4 mile total on the gravel road.
The 1st stop sign was uneventful. The second stop sign I had almost enough brakes to stop, I was able to roll through it and make that left turn. After that, there were no brakes on the car. A smart guy probably would have stopped, and come back to get the V8 car, but who is that smart? I drove on wards, but at a lot slower pace then before. Fortunately, I was able to make it home without running into anything. I idled into my driveway and killed the ignition with the car in 1st gear.

On another one of those car buying adventures, same brother in law. same truck and trailer. We were on an adventure to look and buy a 1977 Dodge Daytona Charger on sale for $100. It was suppose to be a low mileage 440, and we were in need of another motor for our dirt track car. This car is in a garage about 30 miles from home. The guy says it ran, but can't get it started. Yea, been there, done that, wasn't expecting much, but you just have to go look.
We get there, sure enough, the Daytona Charger is in the garage, a very small garage. the hood it up. It has a brand new battery. Hit the key, and it cranks over like a mad man, but doesn't start. Its only a 400, not a 440, and I tell the guy I'm not very happy. He drops his price, "Give me $50? Battery included! I have the ***le right here." The gas gauge says the gas tank is full! "Here is your money." My BIL is looking at me kind of funny, its not like me to buy a car I haven't heard run. The guy goes in the house to get the ***le. The odometer shows just over 50,000 miles on this 10 year old car, and it has pretty new tires on it.
The guy comes out, hands me the signed ***le, and tells me to close the garage door when I leave, and goes back in the house.
We can't winch the car out of this garage, we would have to push it out. Lets see if we can get it started and maybe back it our of the garage. I get in the car, and notice I can't move the gas pedal, doesn't matter how hard I stomp on it, its not moving, at all!
I pull the air cleaner off, it has a 4 bbl carb, and the accelerator plunger is stuck in the top of the carb. I get a hammer, and smack the top of the plunger and hear it snap inside, but at least the gas pedal moves now. We dump a little gas into the carb, and hit the key, and it fires right up, but everytime you move the gas pedal it dies. We restarted it, and backed it out of the garage. We let it sit and run while we picked up all our stuff. At this point, I'm telling my BIL I'd really like to see how the trans works, and check out other parts, because this one will be a parts car. He suggests maybe I could take some back roads home, and if it dies, we could winch it on the trailer then. What a great idea. We map out our route home, and I jump in that car and take off. Man, that car drove and rode nice! Once you got past the no accelerator pump dead spot, that 400 pulled strong. I found out later it had a 2:93 Limited slip rear end. I drove it (well, OK , I beat the carp out of it for) about 1/2 way home, where I stopped along side of the road and waited for my brother in law to catch up with me. When he got there he wanted to know if something broke and if we needed to winch it onto the trailer. I told him I thought maybe he would like to "have some fun with this car". I explained its quarks, telling him any tickets he got were his problem. We would continue on the same route home, and if something broke, we'd winch it on the trailer. I didn't see him until I turned into my driveway, he had a huge smile on his face. I made a lot of money off of that car, and yea, we killed the 400 on the dirt track. Gene

 

Bought a 1950 F-1 with a 6 cyl. engine that had sat in a field for 4 or 5 years.... myself and a buddy got it running and decided to drive it home, about 5 or 6 miles.... It was sluggish and I had to keep feathering the gas to keep it going, not surprised after sitting that long... About half way home it made a big cough and blew out a big cloud of dust and smoke and instantly started running much better....
My buddy had been following and when we got home he got out of his truck laughing his **** off...
He said when it coughed it blew a big mouse nest out the exhaust....

LynnW

 

Well, Bones, I have experienced three of the four kings of pain, the fourth being childbirth, and the doctor told me, after he did emergency surgery to remove my stones, that the pain was equivalent of the pain a woman experiences during childbirth.
Just try and tell them that.
Nice wagon,
Bob

 

Old Wolf reminds me of the time I found a D-9 Cat for sale about sixty miles north of the ranch. I though I needed it and bought it. I hired Tommy Little to transport it to the ranch. Well we go up there and a friend of mine loades the blade on his winch truck, we load the push arms on my one ton, and we start loading the dozer on the four axle trailer. I don’t realize that we are loading on a slope, but the owner/ operator of the dozer is the coolest guy I ever knew! As soon as the D-9 tracks leave the ground, the dozer, trailer, and truck start heading down hill !!! Starting to jackknife! I’m a basket case! The driver/ owner of the dozer, cooler than ****, just put the D-9 in reverse and grabs a little dirt with the tracks and stops everything! To put that into perspective, that’s about 100, 000 lbs of steel out of control! Outstanding! We get our **** together and get the dozer hauled to the ranch!








Bones

 

No, but I did get a 54 Ford that had all four wheels stuck and they would not turn. My brother was with me and we had two comealongs. We sweated something fierce. Never again!

 

Do you have any other wreckers?

 

Sadly, the old truck committed suicide.


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Hey Old Wolf
Love the before and after pics....you've hardly changed at all

 

Stones...unbelievable pain. My doctor also told me the pain was equivalent of the pain a woman experiences during childbirth. Then he added the only way I could experience THAT was to p*** a g****fruit, a g****fruit and a couple of strong friends could make me feel closer to my wife.[emoji38]

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I have s OT 3/4 ton 81 chev. with a electric winch and a sling. A 3/4 ton 454 engine 72 flatbed that I can put the sling from the 64 on. Im trailer poor. ive got miller tilt top with a 20 ft deck. a gooseneck dovetail trailer with a 24 ft deck. three bumper pull tandem axle trailers and one bumper pull three axle trailer and a bumper pull stock trailer. I haveseveral one ton & larger trucks. Cant use them because once you get to a I ton its a commercisl vehicle. different insurance lightbar , health card. load manifest. Weight limits and if you cross the state line DOT authority other red tape required. I had for a short time a set of 538 rear gears, the hubs drums backing plates and dual 19.5 wheels from a 1 ton on the 64. kept getting stopped by the DOT. I would show them it had coil rear springs and the vin on the frame matched the cab. That got old really fast. So I went back to 389 rear gears and single 16 in rear tires.

 

So I guess they would get on me real fast! This winch truck never leaves the ranch! So no problem!






Bones

 

Here in Washington and most of the Western states you don't need a commercial license for under 26,000 single vehicle weight or combined weight. Some of the cowgirls with their big diesel dualie crew cabs and 4 horse fifth wheels with fancy living quarters have been getting nailed at the scales though.
I had to buy more tonnage for the dualie flatbed as the flatbed and hoist caused it to weigh more than it was licensed for.
On the driving to buy one and having it sold before you get there thing one of my buddies was notorious for making deals on cars and not paying for them until he finally decided to go pick them up. We were riding down the road one day and he is telling me about this car he had bought that was sitting on a place just up the road when we met a pickup pulling a trailer with that car on the trailer. Told him 'I guess you didn't buy it after all".

 

I took my idiot brother with me.

 

Don't blow your load.
- Secure your load.
- Insure your load.

 

When I put anything up for sale it’s first with the money! With that being said, if a guy says he will take it, and gives me a time, a short time, that he is going to pay and pickup , I will hold it. But a minute after that established time occurs, it’s back for sale! Just sold a OT vehicle like that last week. Worked out fine. I sold a tractor some five years ago, got the cash, but the guy has never come and picked up the tractor! I figure after five years, it’s mine again! A lot of odd stuff can happen selling things. And there are some really slick con men out there! I was contacted by two of them last week! Talked about the car, had knowledge of the rare things on the car, sounded real! But when trying to send payment via PayPal, said theirs was down and wanted to do a bank transfer and needed my bank number! This was a discussion over three days! So beware folks!








Bones

 

My old 66 F600 has a big winch and gin poles. I don't move it very much. No brakes nothing but the emergency brake. Ive got a tow bar on it. just hook it to a tractor and drag it to the other place when I need it there.

 

weight don't matter here . hook a trailer to a Ton truck here. you gotta buy C tags. have a CDL ,logbook , load manifest, health card, and a million dollars of liability insurance. You can drive a dually with a pickup bed on a regular licence if you put a car & light truck tag on it. but you cant haul anything heavy or deemed commercial and cant pull anything other than a recreational trailer.

 

You are correct but even with good equipment sometimes lack of careful planning will bite you.

About 20 years ago, I went with my friend and his newish Chevy 1/2 ton and a purpose build steel car hauler. It snowed in the previous two days and all of the streets in Rockport, MO, had packed snow on them. We arrived at the seller's house and my friend parked the truck/trailer in the street with the truck parked a little over the crest heading down slope with the trailer on mostly level ground.

I put the ramps down and had tie downs in the proper positions. My friend came driving down the driveway and turned to load the car on the trailer. At about the same time as the cars front tires got onto the trailer bed, the back truck wheels got a little light on the skids and the whole mess started down the hill. I jogged along side to try to get to the cab but I tripped and fell. I briefly thought about getting run over by the trailer wheels but was more concerned with the trailer ramps grinding over my body. I rolled out of the way go up and started chasing the truck again which was moving a little faster now. I caught up with the truck, opened the door and jumped in. The truck,trailer, and my friend were still along for the ride. I then tried to steer the truck but the steering was locked. Next move was to turn the ignition on to release the steering but the keys were still in my friends pocket.

At this point both he and I were p***engers. The little caravan continued down the hill and, strangely enough did not jack knife. I'm guessing that the trailer ramps with 1/2 the weight of the car digging into the snow pack kept it straight. It all ground to a stop at the bottom of the hill at a T intersection. As I was getting out I looked up the hill where the now previous owner was standing. He was just standing there just shaking his head.

 

Yes sometimes **** Happens. That's why they build things like runaway truck ramps on the downgrades of steep mountians. A guy had his hired help pull a small block chevy engine and strip it to the long block. Tells hin to take it to the jobber and pick up a new long block straps the old engine down to a pallet sets it in back of the old shop truck closed the tail gate. On the way back the helper had just set the new engine standing up in the truck bed bell housing side to the bed. hits a bump when accelerating and the engine falls over the tailgate opens and that new engine slides into oncoming traffic and hits a almost new little import car and totals it out. Insurance wouldn't cover it. So the guy just had to buy the woman a brand new car. Same guy has a dump truck had it loaded with B stone rock. Its a pretty new truck. Has a air valve inside the cab that releases the tail gate, Driving thru Portia Ar. That same hired help. sees that ****on states what does this do and pressed the release. dumped a couple yards of rock on Hwy 412. Yep you guessed another almost new car hits the rock and severly damages it. He has to buy another new car. He kicked the helpers *** and fired him made him walk away. He did manage to fix the second car and drove it for a few years.

 

Yeah, Arkansas DOT has always been ***es. I won't even go through there anymore in a truck.

 

No story needed

 

Go to the Antique page, and I'll write about a similar incident.
Bob

 

I just thought of a good one that happened in 1986, because I had a new GMC Safari mini van and flatbed trailer.
A friend said where he worked they had a Clark propane forklift for sale $600! So I went straight over to get it. I tried forklift out, it worked great...paid...what a deal!
Now...how to load it! Everyone had different ideas, then one worker said just back my rig up to their loading dock, which I did.
Problem was from trailer up to warehouse floor was about 2 to 3 feet.
We studied on different ways when the worker said "no problem... I can load it.
Now someone at this point I wished had videotaped what happened next! I hear my forklift start up, then guy goes down other end of warehouse. He builds up speed, shoots out of loading dock wide open full blast. Although I had trailer wheels chocked, van brakes on, none of that mattered. As soon as that heavy forklift hit, the end of trailer squatted, the hitch held tight but the whole works shot forward about 10-15 feet and now the back end of van was like 4 feet in the air! The tail end of that forklift was now in a small crater it made in the asphalt parking lot. That worker's eyes big as saucers...luckily he was unhurt but staggered off white as a sheet. What a mess!
Lucky for me there was construction going on next door. I walked over asking a fellow if he could help me. He was operating a large rubber tire loader, a Caterpillar about a 988 series.
He wraps this huge chain around forklift roll cage, then loader bucket. Picks it up, asks where do you want it? He sets it down perfectly on my trailer, I chained it down to trailer driving it home carefully.

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One time I was helping out another dirt track racer, it was between racing seasons and he was getting a new ch***is for his racer. Someone local wanted to buy his old, bare ch***is, which my friend told him. He wanted me to help him with the delivery because he wasn't sure if he and the other guy could get the bare ch***is off the trailer without help.
This guy had been racing for many more years then I had been, he was the guy that built my car trailer for me. So we loaded the ch***is onto the trailer with the cherry picker, and he climbed into the truck. Somewhat dumbstruck, I asked him if he was going to tie the ch***is onto the trailer? His reply was "Na, I haul em this way all the time, never had a problem." "Um OK!" so off we go. I kept watching that ch***is riding on the trailer and it didn't appear to be moving. We were about 3 miles from his shop as we came into town. The 1st traffic light wasn't a problem, but at the 2nd traffic light, the street had an uphill grade. As he stepped on the gas pedal to leave the traffic light, the ch***is slid right off the back of the trailer and onto the ground! We both jumped out of the stopped truck, grabbed the ch***is and pretty much threw it back up on the trailer. He grabbed a couple ratchet straps and tied the ch***is onto the trailer. His only comment was "Guess I'd better tie them down from now on." The rest of the trip was uneventful.

A different time, I sold a hot rod truck on ebay. The guy paid for it, and we made arrangements for him to come and pick it up. We was from Washington state, I live in IL We started getting a bad snow storm the day he was to come. He called about noon and told me he thought he would be there by about 6pm. About 9pm he finally arrived. We had about 6" of snow on my driveway, and it was still coming down. The guy showed up with a dualie pickup, but no trailer! I showed him the truck (it was parked in my heated garage), started it up, and everything was good. Then I asked him how he was planning on getting it home? He brought a tow dolly, it was loaded in the box of his truck. I helped him get it unfrozen and out of his snow filled box and onto the ground, and hooked to his truck. I drove his newly purchased truck out of the warm garage and onto his dolly. He tied it on, then pulled the driveshaft. It was really snowing by then, I asked how far he had to go. He had hotel reservations at a hotel on the other side of Rockford, about 40 miles away. Off he drove into the snowy night. I never heard from him again, so I'm ***uming he must have made it OK. But his end of that story probably really belongs here. Gene

 

I have hauled a lot of cars and trucks. Not as much as some of you, but probably more than most. Luckily I really don't have any horror stories (knock on wood). But one comes to mind. Couple years ago I see an add on Marketplace for a 58 F100 long bed pickup about 100 miles away for 500.00. Talk to the guy, has a ***le, has some parts I need, I say I'll be there tomorrow morning with cash. He said he had to work but his dad would meet me there with the ***le. I get there, truck looks good for what it is, bed has a bunch of junk in it and a spare hood. Dad don't know anything about it except hes supposed to get 500 and hand me a ***le. I didn't even look in the back of the truck as I wasn't worried about it. I load the truck and strap it down. Throw a couple straps over the spare hood to help keep the junk in the bed. I hit I90 and make it a couple miles East bound. Cruise is set, I crest a small hill. Trailer starts to slowly fish tail. getting worse and worse rapidly. I have never had that happen. It didn't get out of control but would have. I somehow calmly reached up to the brake controller and hit the trailer brakes, straitened right out. Coasted to an off ramp. Got out, untied the hood, lifted it and some junk and spotted a complete, COMPLETE SBF laying right up against the tailgate. Way too much rear weight. So I loosen the tie downs on the truck and pulled it forward on the trailer about another foot, that took care of that. Scary how fast it happened