scariest or worst way you got a car home

[Ron 73]

Used to be standard operating procedure back in the day, upon purchase of our latest "Refugee from a junkyard", to take the tags off one car and put them on the new gem. Dad had given my Uncle our old 63 Chrysler wagon to use on his farm about 70 miles from our house. The old wagon served as their winter car to drive up and down the winding gravel mountain road to the parking area down bottom by the main road, and was used as a storage shed for misc. crap used on the farm the rest of the year. After a few years of this duty word came to us the wagon was no longer needed and was headed to the scrap yard unless we wanted it back. As any 18 year old who was offered a free car would do, I got a ride with a couple buddies and off we went. We got the car running, no one told us the exhaust had rotted off at the y-pipe, and eased down the driveway only to discover a vacuum leak that if more then a feather foot on the gas, the car would loose all power. So down the interstate we go at about 25-30 MPH, 5 MPH up the hills, on the shoulder when there was one, and getting the attention of everyone on the road including what seemed like a couple dozen cops who blew by us shaking their heads. About halfway home the Yellow Jackets, who had made their nest in the rear seat area, decided they had enough of the no exhaust situation and caused us to stop on the shoulder for a while, to allow most of them to clear out. We made it home about 5 hours after leaving the farm.

Reading through these stories makes me glad that we all grew up in the era before traffic/surveillance/ cell phone cameras were everywhere. The stuff we used to pull would surely get us locked up now, or at least a spot on "Dumbest Stuff on Wheels".

X2 goose69!!! SO true!

 

[Propwash]

While stationed in North Carolina, I was about two hours from base when the little ball at the end of the throttle cable near the foot pedal popped off on my Coronet. Pedal went to the floor, engine went to idle. 19, two lane country road in the middle of nowhere, 11 at night, no flashlight, no cell phone...but just a BIC lighter and a half a pack of smokes. After 15 minutes of walking in circles, hoping to see another car and listening to the wind blow through the pines I decided that I wasn't going to spend the night on the said of the road. So what's the next best thing to a factory throttle cable? 8 Feet of speaker wire of course. So a few good tugs to remove, several ugly square knots to the throttle quadrant on the side of the Edelbrock and things were looking up. Closed the hood, yanked on the speaker wire several times and was thrilled to feel it wasn't binding up anywhere too bad. Drove about 100 miles with my left fist out the window, wrapped in speaker wire...Hand was frozen being it was 40's, but no way I was going down without a fight. Finally made it back to base a couple hours later.
A SGT. came out from the guard shack as I was pulling up to base. I could tell that the mere sight of speaker wire running up from under my hood to my hand had his brain at quite a standstill. Pulled up, looked at the guy and said "Cruise Control". Smiled, shook his head and waved me through.

 

[pabster]

A buddy and I decided to attend a huge festival in Nevada. His brother gave him an old Dodge van/RV from the 70's. The day came to drive it from Seattle to NV, and the muffler fell off 3 miles into the trip. So we stopped at Midas and got a new muffler put on. So we're driving south on I-5, suburbs of Seattle, moderate traffic. When the RV went above 40, we heard a BANG and the entire rig wobbled. He yelled "What the hell was that?" I assumed it had something to do with the new muffler- ran back and looked out the rear window. Another BANG and I see a huge fireball shoot out the muffler, a car behind us swerved to keep from being incinerated. We pulled over and surveyed the damage... the rear panel was scorched, and the new muffler was all deformed from the crazy backfires. He limped it back to his house and said the hell with the trip.