near death experience in your hotrod?

this is OT but a few years ago i was going down a steep hill on my BMX bike with a few friends going as fast as i could riding in the street and decided to try and bunny hop up the curb to get on the side walk but i guess i didnt make it because the next thing i remember was waking up on a stretcher getting loaded into a ambulance wondering WTF happened. so i get to the head truama hospital in LA and im just lying on this bed in the open with all these other people around and they were all totally crazy some gangster was flippin out because the nurses misplaced his expensive shirt and got arrested fyi theres holding cells on the second story. some crack head pored his own piss out in the sink. and a guy that tried crossing the border a few beds down from me got hit by a train and got his foot chopped of. i remember my mom saying "lets go walk by this guy he has his stump just taped up and its just bleeding everywere". and then when my friends came to visit they were all like " dude this crazy guy was waking around and said we all looked like a bunch of firemen and peeped his head around the corner and said watch out for the snow bunnies"

but the crash gave me a seizure and i was foming out the mouth and i got blunt head truama because i wasnt wearing a helmet and my friends thought i was dead.

good times,
the end.

 

I remember that post and as soon as I saw the subject of this post I thought about you ....

 

On my bike making a left turn out in the country,I had signaled that i was turning left,guy coming up behind me in an s-10 didnt pay attention and tried passing me while I was making my turn,he rear ended me going about 40 while i was halfway through my turn.Luckily I just started my turn when he hit me otherwise I would have been t-boned on a motorcycle.The rear tire took most of the hit and shot me and the bike forward,i remember tumbling and my left cheek barely scratched the road.I got up and only had some scratches....knock on wood.
It was the dudes fault since its illegal to pass at intersections.

 

Wasn't me, but my son in my truck. Had a 64 Chevy Short Wide Deluxe cab that I had since I was 17. He bugged me to death to drive it to school. I knew better, but wife bugged me about it too. She said, "he's a good driver". Well, the little 283 3 speed with 4:11 rear was too much temptation for burnouts at lights. He nailed it and the floormat bunched up under the brake pedal. He freezes in place and hits driver fender to driver fender with the person across the street waiting in the turn lane. Literally froze with the gas pedal to the floor! Bounces off the Ranger, sideswipes down the entire drivers side and then hits the car behind it head on, before he unfroze and kills the ignition. The cops didn't give him a ticket even though the long black marks through the intersection and 5 or 6 witnesses all said he was smoking the tires through the light. Didn't hurt the truck nearly as bad as it could have. Fixed it up and sold it. My heart was broken over that. Oh, it totalled the Ranger and did 4 grand damage to the car behind it. My son didn't want to drive my truck anymore either. No one hurt, so it was just a good lesson for him.
Bob

 

Not to long ago i was putting front springs back in my 54 olds, and didn't really think anything of the fact that the hood was off, and engine/trans was out(ie no weight to press spings against. She came up off the jackstands Shook like a bull and damn near pinned me underneath it and to the wall. What a dumbass!

 

Nice! Classic dumbass move. We all have days like that. Just today I almost cut my index finger off on the chop saw while making some custom bike headers. Left a pretty good gouge in my finger and blood all over the floor

 

When i first got my roadster on the road . I was rolling about 80 on the highway and grabed my stearing wheel to push my ass back in my seat and my 4 spoke bell wheel hit me right in my cocksucker !!! I was lucky that i just smacked it right back on the hud! I guess thats what you get for having a quick release stearing wheel !!

 

Near enough for me!!!

Last Feburary 08, driving on 210 Fwy on way home from car show- A pickup truck up ahead lost his load of scrap lumber. I was doing about 70- no time to react really- hit a 4x4 piece of lumber w/ driver wheel, another piece went through my grille insert & radiator. Car went airborne when I hit the wood. Tore all the suspension off the frame. Repair costs? Over 25k
Assfuck never stopped.

Thank god for Grundy!!!!

 

Your steering wheel hit your girlfriend? That's weird...

 

I couldn't be accident prone. I haven't had accidents.

Actually I would consider it as being extremely lucky.

Many many times I have been inches or feet away from other peoples' disasters, but I am always unscathed.

About once in every ten years I get hit at a stoplight while sitting still minding my own business, but nothing of a serious nature.

The really serious stuff happens at least inches or feet away from me with me as a spectator.

I think my guardian angel must be a workaholic.

 

my brakes gave out once.. i was doing 80+ plus down atlantic ave in paramount..i hit the brakes and nothing..hit them again and nothing. passed one red light and then another till i came to a stop in the middle on the inersection.what suxs is that i had milk crates for seats. i was rolling all around the inside of the buick while trying to avoid other cars..phew!...that was a close one!

 

Not near death, but two scenario's come to mind.... when I was young and dumb, I had a mid-70's land yacht Chrylser with a 440.. loved to take the air cleaner off to hear the 4 barrel roar; car would peg the speedo just out of passing gear. was flying about 105 or so when the front end started to shake a bit. Luckily, i backed off the throttle... down around 70 and the front drivers side tire BLEW out.. as in off the rim. somehow managed to get the yacht stopped and on the side of the road, but needed several shaky minutes on the side of the road before I could change the damn rim.

Fast forward 15 years... it's 2007, older but still dumb i guess. I had just bought the hot rod I'd wanted for some time. delivery truck drops it off at a local parking lot. take off out of the lot with the car.. taking it easy since i don't know the car yet. about 2 miles down the road, about 60 mph, the front drivers tire EXPLODES.. again get it off the road without too much trouble; a little scary but not terrifying. Perhaps the tire got sliced loading or unloading from the truck, me thinks. I noticed at that time that the car had wheel spacers on the front because someone didn't know how to measure backspacing apparently. A few months later, driving the same car down the road, with now new tires, and the same front tire FALLS OFF THE DAMN car at 60 mph. Brake drum/lower A arm skidding down the road, I again manage to get the car off the road. Had to triple-check for skid marks (inside the car), but considered myself very lucky to get it stopped with almost no damage to the car. I've since elimintated the spacers and will never run another set on a car again, ever. Haven't had a problem since. I also use loc-tite and check the lugs periodically with a torque wrench, just to make sure.

 

A couple of years ago, the family was down in Dallas for the day in the Fairlane. We were going to meet some friends for dinner and one of my sons rode with me to the house to pick something up while my wife and my other son went on to the restaurant with the rest of the group. When we were less than a mile from the house, some douche in a jacked up F350 suddenly swerved toward us (I was in the far right lane). I had to steer hard to the right and we left the road, jumped the curb and passed right in between a light pole and a big tree - coming to rest in the parking lot on the other side. My son and I looked back, and there couldn't have been 2" to spare between the tree and the pole and I somehow made it through at 45 mph without even getting a scratch on the car.

Along with whatever we were going home to get (I forget what it was), we both had to change our shorts, too!

To this day, I'm convinced they ran us off the road on purpose and I have no idea why. I drive really safe on the roads - especially when the kids are with me.

 

I ran out of gas in the '32 once.

 

1984, my first trip to the USA for the NSRA nationals.
Travelling along the highway between Illinois and Indiana in a 1933 tudor at about 10.30pm.
We where hit from behind by a drugged out driver of a GMC 18 wheeler truck.
Hit and run and if it wasnt for a couple of other hotrodders travelling in convey and seeing him piss off, and finally holding him at gun point until the cops arrived.
The only reason he stopped because the remains of our small trailer was jamming his steering mechanism.
My time came and my near death experience happened.
I could see myself from within the car strewn between the front seats.
Anway I am in a glowing chamber of sorts and then a voice, and the question,........Are you ready to come.
No way I said, I have to go back for my girls.
Then suddenly, I wake up to noise and commotion, with others saying we have to get him out of there, because there is fuel all over the place and it could blow any moment.
Would you believe not one drop of blood or scratch, but a broken back in two places, torn medial ligaments in right leg and some spine jarring.

I now appreciate every second I have and enjoy the simplest of things in life.

 

I flipped over in my T-bucket on Rt. 24 In Mass. Head'n to the Cape for 4th of July, went end over end, backwards two and half times. Still don't know where I landed but when I came to, I was running back to the car. My cousin fractured his wrist but, we both wlaked away. Mind you this all happened in bumper to bumper traffic and I didn't hit anyone else. LOL!!!

 

3 for me.
My 49' F-1 was not a very tame truck, one day i was driving with my buddie taking him to his moms house and i had it full tilt at 55 and then the light turned yellow and a car was turning right into the lane at the light, so i had to stop. so a mash down the stock brakes and right away all four lock up. and they were out of adjustment from the left to the right so it hooked HARD. so im sideways in the lane, skipping and smoking twards the light, i crank the wheel back and it bounces right back straight into the lane about 2 feet from the car and my oppisite side running board kissed the pavement from the weight shift.

Then, in my 92' Brougham, i was driving to my other friends house and i was taking I-96, a little ways down some dickweed in a 95'ish Impala SS roars up next to me and is reving his engine to race, i flip him off because im not going to try and race in my 4500+ LBS tank, so he hits it to jump in front of me and he swerves over too hard and cocks it sideways right infront of me, i turn the wheel to the left and then back right literaly sliding my rear end around him with little room to spare.

Then finally, when going to a indoor swap meet in ohio, we have two cars packed with people and the road conditions are Ehhhhh for january. as we are coming to a kink in the highway, the car keeps going foward as we try to turn and then we are seeing red lights cartwheel in front of us, its dark so we cant see exactly what it is untill its right near us, its a blazer rolling over and over and it slams down in the lane next to us and our mirror kissed the cement barrior on the passenger side and chunks of the rolling SUV were bouncing off the drivers side. if we hadent of moved over, my father would of had to been removed from his seat with the jaws of life or something.
Scary stuff out there.

 

4 spoke bell wheel hit you where? You should not tell people this...

 

Door flew open in my 56 effie once when I was turning right. Striker was worn down. Scared the hell out of me as I almost slid out of the truck...

 

I once ate two burrito grandes in my '40 Ford, and they about killed me before I got home

 

Yup. I had a 1930 Model A coupe and on Thanksgiving morning of 07 I took it for a quick spin....literally. The road was a little wet from condensation as they get here in the northeast. I got on the gas and the open headers were blaring! Suddenly I started to lose power. I thought "oh jeez, my tranny is slipping???" Nope...the truth dawned on my as the car got sideways. Spun it right off the road and into a tree. I went flying across to the passenger side and broke the small back side window with my noggin. Lucky I have a hard head. The worst injury I suffered was my pride.

 

Around '84 I swapped a top-loader 4 speed into my A pickup. I wanted to see how it went off the line, since there were drags the next week and I knew it would leave harder than it had with the C4. So leaving my girlfreind's house late one night, I found a stretch of road, wound it up, side-stepped the clutch and the thing went instantly sideways. It was a narrow, two lane road with a bank on one side and a drop-off on the other, and it headed for the drop-off at max rpm's! I felt the driver's rear tire hit dirt about the same time I gathered it in. I got it back on the road safely enough and headed home. The next day, I checked out my marks to see how close I'd come to death, and it honestly looked like a car had run off the cliff. Not only that, but there was a huge tree so close to the mark made by the rear tire, I have no idea how I missed it. Hafta thank God for that one...

 

Same thing happened to me with a second series '55 Chevy pickup I used to have. Youngest daughter, then 5 years old, had her arm on the window ledge and she swung out with the door and managed to hold on, door came back and shut with her still holding on to it. I'm about to have a coronary. She is laughing and said, "That was fun, Daddy, do that again!" I fixed the door latch after that and installed seat belts.

 

I was racing my brother home in my '65 Chevy C10 that had a nasty small block with a broken motor mount, and a posi rear-end. I hit a hard left hand turn under acceleration, and the motor flopped over pinning the throttle. Manual steering, manual brakes, and a posi were a recipe for disaster. After fishtailing back and forth, my right front tire caught, and the rim dug into the asphalt. I flopped head over heels into a telephone pole, and slid on the lid for about 30-40 feet. Thankfully, we were wearing belts, so it was a wild ride, but we weren't hurt. The hardest part was trying to hold ourselves up while releasing the belts. We climbed out, and thought ourselves pretty lucky. We fired up a cig, when we noticed we were standing in a growing pool of gasoline from the truck. I put my cigarette out with my tongue and hightailed it from the truck. Funny thing is, my windshield popped out when the truck flopped and slid on it's face for a good 50 feet, but didn't crack, and wasn't even scratched up hardly.

 

On New years eve, 1966, I'm coming back from Healdsbug Ca. heading for Santa Rosa about 1 in the morning driving my 30 Ford Coupe. Behind me I see headlights coming up FAST.I moved over nearly into the ditch and this 61 ford Convert comes by going 100 plus. He misses me by inches and the backwash from his car blows me into the ditch.I get the car stopped, he's sideways in the road. I'm sitting there checking my drawers and he backs up like a bat out of hell in front of me. I jump out with the crank in hand and he peels out. I have never gone out on New Years Eve again!!!
I still think of this from time to time as I'm drving it along. The both of us are still doing fine.

 

driving down I 40 at 60ish in a chopped and channeled 34 ford pickup. right hand resting on the highest quality 60's mustang shifter when I laid my knee into the button. Intstant reverse. No near death, but scared the bejesus out of me.

and that reminds me as a funny asside I have a cousin who a few years ago yanked the emergency brake going through spagetti junction in columbia SC after dropping her cel phone--you can imagine the results--when we asked her why she said it was an emergency.

 

We bought a '36 Ford five window without engine, and were towing it home with a chain on a (narrow) two lane concrete hwy. There was no shoulder, square concrete, with a 2 inch dropoff. The car had about one-third turn of slack in the steering. It would wander off the concrete and then catch when I tried to steer it back on. Then hop on and veer sharply into the lane of oncoming traffic before the steering could catch it and bring it back the other way. (Hey, I was young and stupid)

My brother in law was riding shotgun, scooted down in the seat and holding his feet against the holes in the firewall, because it was 30 degrees or so. He kept looking up at the ends of the long screws holding the panel in the roof. They looked like Freddy Kruger's fingernails, from Elm Street. Brother in law imagined us rolling and being sliced like a loaf of bread.

Once, when it jumped back onto the concrete and veered into oncoming lane, we were eyeball to eyeball with a greyhound busload of GIs. Some were hanging out near the windshield. When we suddenly appeared as their soon-to-be hood ornament, their eyes were big as saucers, but I'd bet not as big as ours.

The steering caught and propelled us (safely?) off the road again. Did I mention that we were young and stupid? It was 1963. Get ready to cry. We bought the car for $35.00.

 

That's a good one, kinda reminds me of a towing accident many moons ago. I was about 20 and still living at home, and my parents were out of town. I was working nights and just as I was leaving, my brother (18, also living at home) got a phone call from a buddy telling him about a free 1967 Barracuda. Seems that this old lady had it, it had belonged to a relative and she got tired of storing it for many years and just wanted it out of there and it had to be tonite. We had no truck, no trailer and no use for a '67 Barracuda, but free cars are still worth getting and he was a freind, so I called in sick, we borrowed my Dad's 1962 Econoline van and off we went. We stopped by another buddies house (his Dad was out of town as well) to borrow his Dad's homemade car trailer (used to be something else, could've been used to haul a dump truck it was so big) and him and another buddy and we were off to the free Barracuda. When we got there, we found that (A) the Barracuda wasn't a fastback, but a notch (B) it was in very poor shape with the entire passenger side built out of bondo and (C) it sat on four flat tires that had locking lugs and no key. We had brought an air tank, but it ran out of air on tire number one, and it was getting late, so rather than run to the station to refill it, we simply drug the carcass on the trailer with a come along and five slack-asses. There were more problems with this picture than you can imagine including no lights on the trailer (plug in didn't match), no trailer brakes, undersized and underpowered tow vehicle with puny drum brakes and and a total lack of towing experience between any of us. But the biggest problems were that the car was on the trailer backwards, plus to beat the sunset we only used one (!) tie down to secure the car, plus the trailer had no fenders. This became our undoing on the trip home. The trip was about 25 miles, and we could manage 30 mph but with the Barracuda on backwards, the whole ensemble swerved badly. But with four out of the 5 guys sitting right at the rear doors the weight balanced out (not really) enough to allow the 30 mph top speed. We almost made it home, too. As we went down and extremely slight slope, the Econoline swerved violently from one lane to the other while my brother (the driver) fought for control at 20 mph with his foot jammed all the way on the floor trying to slow this thing down. On about the third weave, the Barracuda had enough and pivoted on it's one tie-down, which levered it onto the trailers uncovered tires. Once on top of the tires, the Barracuda followed the laws of physics and was driven into the back doors of the van, right where we were all sitting. It was total slow-motion, we saw the car coming, saw it slowly but surely make contact the vans' rear doors, bending them into a severe "vee" before we came to a stop, blocking both lanes of highway 101. Not one person stopped to help. Mind you it's a small town, and everyone knew us (probably not a good thing) but people were actually driving through the divider and on the shoulder to avoid us. Eventually one person did stop to help, but he was driving a CHP car. He called a tow truck, which we put on Dad's AAA card, and actually laughed about the whole thing with us. My Dad sure wasn't laughing when he found out...

 

Nothing near death, but some scary moments in 2 different race cars of mine.

First one, the hood latch broke and laid the hood back as soon as I hit the traps. This was at night and my car only had parking lights. There was an oil pressure gauge on the cowl that saved my ass. The track was old and run down and had no lights past the ET stripe. The hood laid off enough to the side so I could see just a little of the guard rail. I followed it until it stopped and pulled into the dirt. I actually blew a wheel cylinder in the burn out box with the same car, later date. I thanked god a hundred times that night.

I was racing my stocker at the OLD vegas strip. Burn out..check. Pre staged..staged...check. Line lock, pump the brakes, line lock pump the brakes...check. 2 step on...check. Hit the traps and lift...check. Hit the brakes to slow down...no brakes, and I mean NOTHING! I went all the way to the end of the shut down before I was slowed enough to make the turn. I hit the turn kind of fast, and the spool reminded me it was still back there too. I later found out the master cylinder had developed a leak, and it was running down the inside of the firewall. That sure was a helluva time for it to take a shit.

Nothing near death, but some butt puckering stuff.

 

Isn't it amazing how experiences of this type stay with you for the rest of your life. Mine came in the form of a broken steel brakeline on the rearend housing. I would like to say it was a factory flaw but cannot. It was actually caused due to my stupidity.

In 1968 I installed a 427 with a 4-speed in my '58 Ford. Knowing traction would be a problem I decided to build Thunderbolt type traction bars welded to the rearend housing. The factory brakeline tee was located where the left traction bar was to be welded. Simple solution was to slightly bend the lines and move the tee. All went well for several months of racing at the track and on the street. Then came the Sunday afternoon on the way home from the track while approaching a toll plaza on the turnpike, the brake pedal went to the floor. Several cars were stopped in each lane except for the left lane. Gearing down with the engine shut off, I still went through the empty lane at about 30 MPH. Only heaven knows why that lane was empty.

So what was the lesson learned? The brakeline had snapped off at the left rear wheel cylinder because some dummy had failed to fasten the tee back down after it had been moved. Steel brakelines that can vibrate without restriction will eventually snap off at the most inconvenient time.