What's worst thing you've destroyed in your hot rodding history?

Rolled my 1965 fairlane sport coupe... nearly cried...

 

One of my best friends I met 10 years before I met my 1st wife. We worked in the shop every weekend, cruised in his corvette or my T bucket, chopped 50 chevy, etc almost every weekend (and damn near every day) for 12 years. After being married for 7 years my wife leaves me and the kids, and moved in with that son of a bitch. Should have seen it coming but I trusted him and was blind I guess. I was over her within 8-9 months, but still not over losing my best friend. But I did get to see him have to sell both HEMIs, his vette, his '35 Dodge coupe, and all his speed equipment to pay for her wants. lol I even bought his 28' cabin cruiser he had to sell (he had about 5 grand in it, I bought it for $500) and renamed it "Irony" LOL

 

Not really suited for this board but being in Okinawa finding old tin is hard to do. I crashed 1 of 2 1974 Toyota Corona Coupe`s in Japan. Along with the only 1976 Toyota Corona wagon ( I got a thing for Corona`s) on the island. Same road different intersection. When I crashed my coupe I got left with a nice beauty mark that took 10 stiches. It was a sad day when they went to the scrapper

 

About the only thing I've really destroyed was a 301 Pontiac, and those were crap to start with. I got about 1000 miles out of the nice 136,000 original mile car ('77 LeSabre coupe), one cold morning at school it just started knocking and I made it 7 miles before it threw not one but two rods, breaking one in three pieces and bouncing the piston off the valves.

I bought another 301 off a kid who'd junked the '82-ish Gran Prix it had been in with who knows how many miles on it.. put it in the car... started to drive it home.. every 10 miles or if I went too slow it would overheat. Had it towed the last few miles. Put it in the paper, sold the $400 car with the $100 motor for $275 and never saw it again.


I cut up a cherry '79 Electra to put a '51 Chevy body on, with a '50 Pontiac nose, too. Again not Hamb-friendly, but around here you never see those big '70s Buicks anymore. It had the real Buick 350 and TH400 and the way I cut it down you could still drive it even after just about the entire body was gone except the floors. That was kind of fun, it would spin the tires like nothing after that. I traded it to a guy for a '50 fastback when I needed the glass out of it.. and he junked it, saved some pieces and that was it.

 

Oh, DESTROYED! Well, I sold a BBC 396/Powerglide combo in a Bracket Race 56' Chevrolet Business Coupe to a "friend", and on his very first pass he blew the motor all to @#$%&*. From the outside all that looked wrong was the little bit of water dripping from where the oil dipstick tube slips into the oil pan. He also had bent the shift lever on the B & M Series 60 Shifter over to the right about 45 degrees (?). Said all he heard was a "pop-pop". I think he was just scared, way over revved the thing before be slammed the shifter into second. He was way down past the finish line off in the grass of the left lane and the slicks had picked up moss in the grass; green slicks. We pulled the intake and it looked like a hand granade had gone off inside the motor; hole big enough in the valley to reach right through past the "missing" crank throw into the bottom of the pan and pull out parts of piston, rings,rods,lifters,cast iron,pushrods,chunks of rods and crank and none of it came through the pan or windowed the block. That one pass cost him a grand, we salvaged the heads after a lot of work, the intake and carb, distributor, tin, and dampener. He sold what he could, I sold the body ,and the car won the Super Chevy Event in Street Tire running 10's a few years later. Another car I wish I kept.

 

When I was 17, got drunk one night with a buddy and wrapped my 65 Falcon Sprint around a tree. Of the 3 Sprint years, 65 is the rarest, less than 900 made.
In 1985, built my first stock car from a very solid 1970 Chevelle SS body. Found the build sheet in it while we were gutting it, true SS454 car.

 

My BB chevy motor - just driving- ..... yeah honestly. $6200 later I had a new crate motor.
Pissed me off cuz I didnt even have fun destroying it.

As for the destroying friendships- it really sucks. Lost a few 'friends' along the way when I started working on cars for cash because I didnt give them the 'friend' rates... Guess they werent really friends to begin with then huh if they thought a car can come between buddies.

 

A friend of mine took apart 63 vett to make race car never got done ended up in the scrap yard .

 

Tossed a slightly bent 34 Ford Vicky into the salt water pond at the Ventura dump . . . the area is now the Ventura Marina.

Took a cherry 50 Ford sedan to the wrecking yard after swapping parts for my 50 Ford coupe.

Pushed a nice 49 Ford coupe with some quarter panel damage off into a ditch at the Piru dump.

 

a tree, a no parking sign,a telephone pole, a vw jetta and my truck... all in one fell swoop! asleep at the wheel.

 

junked a 3x2 setup for a 312 y block cause I couldn't get it to run very good I was only 17 and it was just an air leak. at 16 junked a 55 chev 2dr hrdtop took it apart to rebuild the engine and didn't mark the rod caps never ran after that. When my mom and dad were out of town we dechromed his 50 ford he was not impressed and sold it.

 

The second most embarassing thing that ever happened to me was out in front of our local high school. My second 57 had a mild built 235 running three carbs and split exhaust. I was going to race a buddy in an old Pontiac. We lined up, I revved it up to about 3500 and dumped the clutch. The car shook a couple times and the tranny case split right in half. We pushed tha car off to the side and took our bows to the standing ovations of the kids waiting for the schoolbuses......
The other screwup was being 15 and shooting the windows out of a buddy's dad's 39 and 46 Chevys. Got may ass kicked royally for that........

 

About the only thing I destroyed was when I was about 14(1996). My dad had a 56 f-100 that he was working on and I took the gauge cluster to repaint the needles. The cluster was not in the truck at the time and I wanted to surprise him. The rest of it was in good shape, just the needles needed painting. Well when I took it apart, I ended up beaking the glass cover and a needle. I paniced so I put it a box and threw it away in a dumpster at a local meet market. He ended up losing interest in the truck and sold it after storing it outside for 7-8 years. I never told him about the cluster. Also in the late 60's or early 70's, my father had bought a 54 ford victoria that was shaved, lowered, had fender skirts, and a t-bird 312. From what he told me, the car was out of Austin. Anyway, he took a torch and cut it in pieces because he did not have papers for the car.

 

Yea I screwed up a bunch of stuff but i met a guy last year at my friends shop who had me beat hands down.My friend owned a speed shop by the name of racemaster in ny from 68 untill mid 90s.He still has a small welding shop he worked out of where i would go and help out at.One day a guy who had a 68 corronet convertable hemi powered brought it to my buddies place to have some work done,the car sat finished for weeks.Mind you it was about 1975,then my buddy finds out the owner went to jail for something big and wont be around to pick up the car.So he towed it to the owners house and dropped it off and left.It sat for about a year and the fellow i met at the shop bought it from the wife.He held on to it for a few months and cut it up.Parted out what he could and scraped the rest.When i asked him why? he shrugged his shoulders and said it was the stupidest thing he has ever done hands down.

 

There was a 58 Buick 2 door hardtop at my buddy,s grandfathers wrecking yard. I won,t admit as to where we got a box of dynamite caps but we proceeded to blow all of the windows out of the Buick.Several parking meters around town also met an early demise....

 

In the early 80's I helped my dad clean out the basement of his place in Wisconsin. He had a hot rod shop in the late 60's and 70's and had been collecting speed equipment his whole life. It came time to fill an area where he was having his new garage built. We spent an entire two days hauling blowers, 4 speeds, flathead parts, intakes, rear end gears, piston sets, and probably about three of every factory hot rod part produced between 53 and 72. I know there are two complete vette 427's, one complete 327/365 and some manner of ford 427. It wasn't worth any more than fill gravel back then. Today,I guess those Ardun head sets and scots blowers are worth quite a bit. I also got to absolutely destroy the virginity of a future Hawian Tropic and Venus swimwear bikini model in the comfy confines of a 68' 396/375 horse SS/RS Camaro, To this day it is a coin flip as to which ended up the better ride......

 

Back in the late 70's we would buy muscle cars to rob drivetrains to build hot rods. Not junk cars, it's just with the gas crunch they were cheap and had all the good stuff. 3 that really sticks in my mind are a low milage 70 SS 396 Chevelle, a 70 1/2 Z/28 Camaro and a 71 Boss 351 Mustang. Buy them for $400 to $500, drive them home, pull motors, trannies and rear ends and send the rest to scrap. When I see what these are worth now......

 

This remind's me of some stories ( confirmed by visual proof besides) of a friends dad's buddy.. Back in the late 60's early 70's he "borrowed" a few, and i use that term loosely, Vette's and an occasional Chevelle for thier drivetrians..well, motor's and transmissions, mostly, except for the Chevelle's..
They would steal them, pull what they wanted, remove the trim and vin tag's and discard the car's somewhere where most people would find them..
The box of tag's still in custody by him......unreal he never spend time with the state...

 

Made a "swamp buggy" out of a '53 Ford Victoria whe I was 14 back in 19sixty somthing.

 

When I was 15 I bought a 64 t-bird with an absolutly gorgeous white leather interior.Well it was about the time that the big stereo systems were the popular thing.So I felt at the time, my car stereo wasn't loud enough, so I cut a huge hole in the passenger side of the dash to put in a 6x9 speaker.Man when I think about how stupid that was,I never want to admit it.

 

20 something years ago, I wrecked 3 '28 tudors in one summer trying to find better parts for a sport coupe I had. One of the tudors still had 90% of its original green paint on it. Then I sold the sport coupe for $300.

Before that, I used a cold chisel to separate a very buildable '32 tudor body from its floor to use in my ex-channeled 3w body. Good news is that portions of that floor just went into another very rough tudor body that I am trying to save now that a slight case of wisdom has been brought on by aging.

 

Buddy had a '56 2-dr Olds that came as part of a deal. Clean body and 2-tone paint, but thrashed interior, and a few missing trim pieces. We had limited storage, so we pulled the engine & trans, and towed the car out to an uninhabited area, turned it on it's roof, and pulled the rearend...

 

Awesome!....This is my favorite thread Ever!!!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...gliaCrunch.gif

 

Jesse...seeing that Anglia get skooshed makes my Pants sad.

Oh well...They say there is a special place in Hell for guys like me. at least I know I won't be alone.

 

Hell Yes!.......Going to Hell!.....That way we can be with all of our friends!

 

Your turn Jesse. Lets see a picture of the dragster before it became a hot dog cart..............seriously. That dragster was a keeper! I imagine you still have the body. Any plans to rebuild it one day?

 

i made a dirt track stock car out of a 57 chevy 2dr around 1970, a couple of years later i sold the chrome i had pulled of it for more than i got for the car when i was done with it.

 

That Digger was Junk.....It had like .045 wall tubing and some scary welds......It would have Never passed tech for anything!.....The fact that I went 150 mph in it was nuts......

 

My 68 B-gas camaro 1971- had mag champ quick change. broke it in two at fremont cal. after a two foot wheel stand.