stupid stuff we have done, and survived...

Well I was thinkin' (not that I should as it usually gets me trouble) about what happened this weekend after billetproof. On my drive home, some guy drives up along side and says that there is gas leaking from my car. So i pull off of the freeway to check it out (actually to the side w/ cars only feet away, whizzing by...) any way there appears to be gasoline leaking out the gas cap. "wierd says I" so I open the gas cap, at this point gas starts shooting out of the fill hole about 4' in every direction, exploding would be more like it, "shit says I" and I put the cap back on. Whereby I slowly release the cap again and try to control the venting. Now the whole time (i forgot) the engine is running. It turns out that the down turn on the exhaust had fallen off and the exhaust was venting directly into the front of the gas tank apprx 6" away, causing it to "heat" a half empty tank of gas. It just made me reflect on all the stupid things that I had committed in the duration of that day, hummmmm...of course the following day has been well documented on the HAMB (I am going to visit w/ a potential suspect Friday...)

 

I had a turbocharged Mustang, and I had the bright idea to run a transmission cooler (rubber) line from the turbo's oil drain back to the block. I figured that trans fluid gets pretty hot, so what the heck. A couple weeks later, I was driving home when I smelled smoke. I pulled over, and there was smoke coming out of the edges of the hood. So I lifted the hood, and of course HUGE flames came out. So I reached in my car, turned on the pump for my liquid-to-air intercooler, and then went back around to the front and cut one of the intercooler lines with a pocketknife, and proceeded to put out the fire like I was a fireman.

It burned up a pretty good portion of the wiring. Come to find out, that rubber hose had some very small cracks in it, and a fine oil mist had been spraying on my exhaust. I'm lucky the car didn't burn to the ground.

Keep a fire extinguisher on board fellas, you NEVER know when you'll need one or why.

 

Years ago, poverty, desperation, children...
I was driving a wretched '78 Lemans with an utterly worn out SBC, Zillions of miles, several cam lobes gone, barely able to drag itself up hills...and I had to pass an emissions test. Better engine or car absolutely beyond possibility financially, and being garageless in February limited my repair options as much as finance did.
At the junkyard, I spied a similar hulk (while noticing that most of the cars heading into the crusher were better than my driver, and some of them were still better AFTER the crusher...) that had what looked like a brand-new catalytic converter...a PLAN!!!
The junkyard guys informed me that it was illegal for them to sell a used converter, but happily accepted my rationalization that I only wanted the bolts and clamps...onward.
The new converter, with gallons of unburned oil and gas fumes blowing through it, did its job like a champ--I passed emissions, and drove home with all sorts of interesting sounds and smells coming from down under. I think there were so many petroleum byproducts cooking off down there my exhaust was producing useable thrust...
Later that night, as I took my daughter someplace, the rug and insulation at her feet, directly over the fierce converter, burst into flames. My daughter, always calm, resourceful and used to the junker lifestyle, simply grabbed the spray bottle that served as a backup for the defective windshield washer, sprayed down the rug until it fizzled into an angry cloud of steam, and we drove happily on without even a break in conversation, two happy idiots with a car certified for another year...

 

ah shit, im already enjoying the read on this one. and its only begun!

trey

 

Oh man where to start, anyone who knows Me very well knows I've done lots of crazy stuff, and when I was young I stole cars, stole parts,busted heads, and broke hearts, but lemme see. one time at Gene Winfeilds Pat was welding the gas tank of what became My 50 Chevy and Ka-bbooooommm, I had just walked by Him and then said carry on, I knew He was dead so My worry was for Myself and Hip, I was checking the back of My head and neck to see where I was hit,I turned and looked over at Hip He was o-kay and much to My suprise Pat was alive, Pat fell and Hip caught Him, I went in the paint booth and with wide eyes Gene said " what was that!" I said " Pat" We then grabed a blanket and put out the fire that was stilling burning in the tank and it was right next to an oxy torch setup, that was close. Another time I was driving down the freeway in My 36 Dodge coupe and a guy yells " Your dragging something" turns out the object being drug is My gas tank the straps broke and the only thing keeping it to the car was the fuel line, flaming ball of hot rod Bat Man that was interesting. Then there is the time Me and Primemover nearly burned down the town of Mojave, but that is a story for another time.And the car stealing We will omit. Von Doc

 

"turns out the object being drug is My gas tank the straps broke and the only thing keeping it to the car was the fuel line, flaming ball of hot rod Bat Man that was interesting. "

Just to set the picture, my service area at work(I work at a car dealer) has about 6 desks in my area and a hallway going through to the showroom, people at the far end of the showroom heard me laughing at that one.

 

I trusted my neighbor to help me, we both have 57 Chevies, both 4 speeds at the time. I just got done installing a new high torque starter and told my neighber to crank the engine over so I could see if the starter gear was staying in the flexplate. He has emergency brakes, I dont, hes not use to leaving his car in gear, I am,,,,,,,, he turned the key and the car learched forward 3 feet with me under it, both jack stands tiped over. Thank god I was too lazy to remove the floor jack, the car rode the jack.

 

in the late 60's i had a '64 sport fury with a GTX 440 in it. i wanted to put some really big tires/wheels on the back that i had lucked into. this was the days before tubs, and i wouldn't have had the ca$h for them anyway. so i go down to the local western auto store and buy these overload coil springs that have a saddle that bolts to the rear axle housing with U-bolts. i'm gonna put them between the axle and the frame. the car had parallel leafs on the back. well, even by jacking up the rear by the bumper there wasn't enough room to fit these overloads in. so i pull the rear shackle bolts and keep jacking 'til they will fit. then i had to put a floor jack under the leaf spring end to jack it up to where i could get the shackle bolt back in 'cause the overloads were that big. i get both springs bolted back in place and now the wheels/tires fit by sticking half outside the fenders, but i notice that the rubber brake line between the frame and axle wasn't long enough for this new setup and had broken. what to do??? you guessed it; i put a big sheet metal screw in the end of the now broken rubber brake line and drove away. drove that sucker for about 6 months with front brakes only. and i didn't take it particularly easy, either. that mutha would run and i let it several times. waaaay too fast for the brakes (or lack thereof).

and, of course, as most of you prolly did, too, i was runnin bald tires that you could just about see through. tires cost money, of which i had either none at all or not enough.

i was lucky. i survived. i knew some who didn't. you probably knew some too.

 

Not actually related to cars..but it's stupid..

When i was younger, maybe around 14 years old or so, my two cousins and i (both around the same age) used to tie one of those cheep ass plastic sled's to the back of a snowmobile with about 25 ft or rope, then one of us assholes would lay in the sled while another asshole would drive it wrecklessly to get the one on the sled to fly off..
We'd do this for hours or atleast until one of us got hurt..

The feeling of doing about 40-50 mph in one of those shitty sled's, then getting whiped around like a teather ball when they locked the brake and slid around, only to loose your grip and go bouncing across a snow covered corn field was really something..

We used to plate the area on the sled because we'd rip hole's in the plastic.

At least we wore helmets
yeah, those were good time's...painfull, but good time's..
This is only but one of the stupid thing's we used to do..

what dumbasses.

Tony

 

Back in the late 60s I had long hair (now I have none), and I was porting a flathead block with a flexible drive and grindstone. I think you can see where this is going.......

 

Set carpet on fire by intentionally misfiring a rich engine to overheat the cat. At 100 mph on an oval track.

Stood beside a guy pouring race gas into an ungrounded 55 gallon drum through a plastic funnel, and SEEING the spark jump onto the surface of the gasoline descending into the drum. We nearly blew up the whole pits with that one.

Stupidest, funniest accidental thing I've ever done to a friend: Started the car while my friend had his face right over it with a timing light. No problem, except I had forgotten to take the 1/2" ratchet off the crank damper bolt, and it bounced off the frame, the hood, and flew into the next set of pits. I've never heard such a noise in my life- the ratchet banging around, and my buddy screaming like a little girl when it went by his ear at 198 mph, and then me laughing my ass off.

 

When I was about 15 I had a '35 Dodge coupe. At that time it was kool to have a taildragger.....sooooo I ordered some lowering blocks from Honest Charley's an proceeded to install them. I got the best bumper jack I could find and the best cinder block in my neighbors yard and started the job. After jacking it up and placing the cinder block under the rear end I removed the left rear wheel and sat under the rear fender. Next step, remove the old 'u' bolts.....as I pulled on the breaker bar, the car started to move, yep, it fell to the ground. All I could do was close my eyes, when I opened them I saw the brake drum sitting on the ground AND the inseam of my Levis.........(I have fathered 3 kids since then, so no real damage resulted)..I quickly unzipped my pants and squirmed out, in my BVD's, and reinstalled the "good" jack lifting the car enough to retrieve my Levis and roll over on the grass and do some heavy breathing...................

 

I saw a friend of mine grab the magneto on his 540" Chevelle to set the timing. It knocked him six feet away from the car on his ass, and he's 6'8" and about 300lbs. He was unconscious for a minute or so...

I still haven't stopped razzing him for that one, lol.

 

Funniest Fuckin' thread I have EVER READ......

How did we survive?

 

My neighbor had given me a train sized 12 volt battery, about 3 times the size of a normal Group 24. I was working on a starter off my SBC and needed to test it. So being lazy I laid the starter up against the negative pole and used a jumper cable to power it, jumping the selanoid with a screwdriver. Just as my back got tired leaning over the whole affair, I bent down on one knee beside the operation and tried it one more time. The battery gassed and when I arced the selanoid it blew the top off the battery right passed my pumpkin sounding like a shotgun. I leaked red stuff all over the floor from where it tried to ripe a fingernail off, then had to put the starter back on the car as it as my ride home.

 

My baby brother and I did the same shit on a skateboard and my 67 Mustang. We gave each other LOTS of roadrash. Can't tell you how many sets of bearings, trucks and wheels we went thru.........not to mention the stories we had to come up with when Ma found out.
xxx
Brandy

 

had a friend check to see how tight his fanbelt was with his fingers..WITH ENGINE RUNNING....OUCH..Nothing the emergancy room cant take care of.

 

Telling a Cop I was ripe he's #$^&% head off ...... Ouch .....

 

here is one that sets in my head and always will for safty sake. even though it doesn't start with "there i was surrounded by them there indians" like every good Texas story goes.

Well anyways me and my wife were driving to a car show in my 55 2dr wagon and all of the sudden my wife tells me she smells somthing funny. i had been smelling it too but didn't think anything of it. So i said yes i do but it must be some kind of factory or someone cooking somthing. then i thought about it and told her man that sure smells like marshallows on a camp fire. I told her to look under the dash and make sure there wasn't a fire or smoke from wires burning and she just looked a me funny and said WHAT!! I said look just in case it might not be anything but just look. So she looked, and of course nothing was there. I didn't think any more about it for a few seconds untill looked in my rear view mirror and saw smoke and sparks coming out from under the back of the car. So at that moment i knew it was the car and not a marshmellow factory. SO i pull off of I-35 in waco with heavy traffic and start to see more smoke under the hood. So i get out of the car and pop the hood and what do i see not inches from the fuel pump a burning grease rag with 2 feet of flame. then i look at my wife sitting in the passenger seat and yell at her to get the fuck out of the car. i then reach under the car and grab for the burning rag and then finally get it out. SO there i was on the side of I-35 traffic stomping out a grease rag looking like a total idiot and my wife then descides to get out of the car and ask what i am doing. well you can figure out the rest of the story there.

moral of the story do not leave grease rags under the hood of the car when driving down the road. their a little flamable

 

Building a scaffold. I was holding a 16 penny nail and my friend wanted it to be perfectly straight up and down. He said: Nod your head and I'll hit it.

Ouch! I chased his ass all over the job site after he hit my HEAD!

 

When I was a kid I liked to take things apart to see what's inside, most notably, a D battery. If you're curious, when you take one apart, lots of grey shit comes flying out and I bet if I got it in the eyes I'd be typing braille right now.

I was welding floorpans in my boss's '67 Chevy plowtruck and I undercoated the shit out of them to keep them from rusting. There was a quarter sized hole left that I was going to fill with tar, but my boss said I'd better weld it up. I touched that welder to the floor and the whole thing burst into flames. Scary shit, not smart.

 

Originally Posted by Tony
Not actually related to cars..but it's stupid..

When i was younger, maybe around 14 years old or so, my two cousins and i (both around the same age) used to tie one of those cheep ass plastic sled's to the back of a snowmobile with about 25 ft or rope, then one of us assholes would lay in the sled while another asshole would drive it wrecklessly to get the one on the sled to fly off..

Tony


me and my brother would do that here in texas but no snowmobile (what is that) but a truck and a hood off of a 69 impala. my dad would get in the truck on an icy day (no snow in texas) and we would tie a rope to the the trailer ball and we would hold on to the other end . we would get on the impala hood and he would tow us

 

My grandfather once had the foresight to let me do a little bit of work on his old Caterpillar tracklayer, well he suggested that I should reach under hood and shut off the auxillery fuel tank (which is above the engine), well that "little ol' Cat" was just a sittin there at tick over, and mindin its own business, w/ that great big bosch mag generating all that bright blue spark (i worked on that mag many years later and it is a bright blue spark) and wouldn't you know about that time he mentioned something about not bumpin' my arm into one of those spark plugs?! according to my grandfather, he had never seen me move faster in his life. But all he would say other than that was "now why did you go and do that, right after I told you not too?"

 

A yes... all the great stories, how'd everyone ( include'n me) get through those days in one piece is beond belief!

Well.. couple of winters ago I got up late for work, twas still dark out side, windshield on the truck was covered with a thick frost. Shit I can't wait for the defroster to kick in! So... I was sure I had a can in de-ice in the truck so I scrambles and under the seat was a can..(still dark out and no inside lite on the truck)> Grabs the can and sprays the entire can on the winshield with the wipers on.. That ought to do it!
As I got back in the truck I couldn't see through the windshield as was a blackish slime..... The can was undercoating... What a mess..

Never told this story before so don't spread it around...


Not going to mention change'n the oil in my 55 Chevy,( waz 17) fill'n it and take'n off hammer down.. yep, didn't replace drain plug.. Got to about 85 then the 301 went to heaven

Pontiac Slim

PS If this topic continues I have the a great one about a fellow hot rodder, sort of off beat but car related

 

...All the usual stuff here too, 100 m.p.h. in a '63 Imapla SS convertable, with cords showing on the ol' bias plys; toboggans behind a guys '66 GTO till you got flung off into a ditch, and the ol' aircraft landing lights on a friends '67 Chevelle. The lights were in the highbeam light holes, when he clicked them on we had about 10 seconds till they popped the lighting breaker. One night while enjoying a few cocktails and doing a continious fishtail on a snowy backroad he clicked on the aircraft lights and when the breaker popped we were in the middle of a real nice slide. We went from bright daylight to pitch black in a split second. Luckily I suggested that we all tilt our drinks into the slide...no one spilled a drop when we finally hit the ditch.

 

A long time ago in a land far far away I worked at this muffler shop, we got to talking about one of the oxy/acet. tanks falling over and about how much pressure would be in a oxygen tank with either 50lbs or 1000lbs and if the thrust would propel anything ? So we got this old time tank part full & by listening to the woosh that comes out we decided that sounded pretty powerful, but not too bad and talked about if you could ride the thing or something. So we went in and got a creeper & welded the wheels straight and put these giant-ass zip ties around the tank and the center board and used about 4 rolls of duct tape. Then we made a 90 degree elbow so the "exhaust" would shoot straight out the back. We had a private/unused road behind the shop so we took it out there I got on it and one guy turned the valve on a little, didn't move....so I tried turning it on myself until it moved, after turning it most of the way on it moved a little faster, but still barely.....so we decided it needed to open all at once & he came back out with a sledge, so he hauled back and gave it a mighty golf swing and busted the valve clean off.......I'll never forget that sound. At that point it was a whole different ballgame, I've never seen a creeper do the things that one did....I stayed on about 10 feet until it went sideways at an alarming rate, we never did find all the creeper........like they say, don't try this at home.

 

I have some cousins who did this same thing only with a longer rope and the shell for a refigerator door

 

one time my cousin and his friend got drunk and decided to get the big canoe and put it in the pool and float around with it, of course i gladly helped them out. not really dangerous....but stupid. heres a pic for proof (i'm on far left, i was 11-12 years old)

 

I had an old jeep cj with the gas tank under the drivers seat , and since it had an sbc in it there was no room under the hood for the battery. I built a steel box and mounted it between the front seats with a vent and all. Anyway one winter while driving around town my wife and I smell and then see smoke coming up from under the middle of the floor. We got out and I looked under the jeep to see grease burning on top of the trany right next to the floor. Luckily there was enough snow and a little loose dirt to throw on the trany and put the fire out. Proceeded to drive it home with no problem. After checking it out I determined that the hot battery cable was rubbing between the trany and floorboard where it came thru to get to the battery. Not a good thing when you are sitting on a full tank of gas.

 

These stories are flat out funny, i'm young but i'm sure i've got plenty of stories yet to come. I worked at a welding shop this summer and did alot of stupid beginner stuff like touching freshly welded metal and gettiing fingers too close to grinding discs ( yea i wasn't wearing gloves ). The boss would just laugh and say " you'll learn some day"