What's the Dumbest Thing You’ve Done to Your B Body?

[AR67GTX]

Just remembered another one of my high school projects with the 64 SF. I admired the 442 ram air system so I fabricated my own with snips, sheet metal, dyer hose and wait for it - duct tape. I cut a couple holes in my air cleaner (ruining an unsilenced air cleaner), made up a couple sheet metal nipples and duct taped the whole mess together, attached the drier hoses (with duct tape), fabricated a couple oblong under bumper scoops from tin, attached the hoses again with duct tape, and somehow fastened the scoops under bumper. What I would have given if my Dad would have had a pop rivet gun.

Surprisingly this whole mess held together for a year or so and the dryer hose didn’t melt and the duct tape held up. I think I finally got embarrassed by the whole mess at college and when it came time to open up the air cleaner to replace the filter, I ripped it all off and threw it away.

 

[chtampa]

I was dating this girl that had never driven a stick shift before. Chivalry forced me to put her in the drivers seat of my Road Runner and teach her. No traffic in an industrial center on a Saturday, perfect spot! She learns the clutch pretty easy, so now it is time to do a u-turn. She is turning and doesn't do the complete "u", more of a "J" and heads down a not yet a road straight towards a barb wire fence, while I am yelling for her to push in the clutch. I should have been more specific and said to hit the brake also. Through the fence we go and as the wire stopped us it punctures the front tire. We swap places inside the car because the barbs are stretched down the side of the car and holding the doors shut. I back it out onto the asphalt and get out to see that my front fenders look like a prop from Jurassic Park. I am dressed for a date and open the trunk for the jack and spare and a four way lug wrench. Four lug nuts come right off, but the fifth decides it wants to spin the stud. Now I am removing the spindle nut and wheel and tire to get the stud to hold still. Ruined a nice shirt and my paint job.

A funnier story involves my first trip to a bottle club with tequila and another girl friend driving us home in the Road Runner. I was petting the seat and telling the car to get us home OK when I yelled for her to pull over so I could hang over the rocker and puke on the shoulder. Looking back as a car pulled up behind us I saw a light bar that was curiously not flashing and then I leaned back in and the girlfriend continued home without incident. Of course as we pulled into the drive I was petting the seat and complimenting my car for getting us home safely.

 

[Darter6]

duct tape.

I resemble that statement ! Red duct tape makes it go faster !

 

[Cojohnso1]

I resemble that statement ! Red duct tape makes it go faster !
View attachment 1257685

The old saying. "If you can't fix it? Duct it!"

Another tale from the track is with my A-body. I went to tech. And they began enforcement of a steel fuel line all long firewall. There was no parts store. But there was a Hardware store. So I made a steel line from natural gas piping. It was heavy and looked like one would imagine. But I was racing that weekend. (I still have a portion of that piping lower firewall. Everything above that's visible steel braided.

 

[dual fours]

A five month old post, I guess I'll bring it to the top.
Probably back in '78 I drilled the top of the radiator support, installed the hood pins and shut the hood then marked the hood and commenced drilling the hood. At least I put the four mounting screws for the chrome hood plate in the correct pattern. Oh, is that what those pre stamped out holes in the underside of the hood are for.

Then there was the night of 'let's see how fast this car can go'.

 

[kiwigtx]

As much as it pains me to admit it.....before I restored my GTX, I went drag racing for a couple of years. To fit my fat Hoosiers under the rear end, I needed to 'clearance the wheel openings' .....yup......with a small club hammer.

It took a bit to get them straight again. I will never do that again.

 

[BB BELLA]

I swapped engines/4 speeds in my 66Bii,69RR!383,hemi! shoulda left them alone!Both are gone now and I think I left some money on the table!

 

[HawkRod]

In around 1984, give or take, I bought a "junker" 73 Road Runner with a 340 and 727 (I think I paid $300 for it?). The car drove great, and the body was in primer with very little rust. But my buddy wanted the drive train, and I wanted the hood and some random parts for my other 340 Road Runner. So we stripped the parts we wanted off the car and had the junk yard come pick up the rest and crush it.

That would have been a super nice car today, butt that's the stuff we did back then...

 

[chargervert]

I was 16 when I bought my first Charger. It was a 69 318 car. I picked up a set of those cast aluminum Thrush side pipes and wanted to install them on the car. I just put a new set of Hedman headers on it. So I drilled the pinch weld on the drivers side under the rocker panel in two places with a corded electric drill and mounted the L brackets for the pipe and hung the pipe and connected it to the header with flex pipe. I went to do the same thing on the passengers side and I drilled the front hole with no problem and mounted the bracket, when I drilled the rear hole I saw a clear liquid pouring onto the ground right below where I had just drilled the hole! That's right, I drilled right through the steel fuel line with a corded electric drill with a pretty dull bit which required a lot of heat and friction to drill the hole and lived to talk about it! A piece of rubber hose and two clamps it was running again with those bad *** side pipes on it! I learned to check behind what you are drilling before you drill from that near death experience! Lol

 

[440 PHIXX]

I’ve let mine sit for three decades. The ones I bought back then anyway.

Time to ****!

 

[Nxcoupe]

Dumbest thing I did was sell it.

 

[Darter6]

Dumbest thing I did was sell it.

I have to agree. Every car I had except one.I have seller's remorse thinking,what the hell was I thinking !!!

 

[padam]

Ok, I'll start it off.

I bought my 73 Charger back in 1981, and used it for my daily driver until I started modifications in about 1985.
It was originally had a 318 automatic, so keep that in mind in the following adventure.

I am from Ohio, and for you those that don't know, one of the main reasons its called the rust belt is what it does to cars. My charger was originally from North Carolina and after 4 years of use in Ohio, most of the body panels had rusted through along the bottoms.

One of the things we did back in the day was to bring up cars from down south and flip them for a profit.
Well, sometime around 83 or 84, two friends and I did just that. Joe, Rob, and I traveled to North Carolina, went to a few auctions, and ended up with an early 70's Ford XL GT (Joe is a Ford guy, more stories for another time.)

Being in our early twenties, we could get by on very little, and as a matter of fact all 3 of us spent 3 days in my Charger, including sleeping in it. (We may have had more sleeping room once we got the Ford, but I can't really remember.)

Now for dumb thing number one. We had to get the Ford home. Why we didn't want to just drive it, I don't know. We probably didn't want to spend extra money on gas. What to do? Put a trailer hitch on my Charger of course. At least we had the foresight to bring a trailer hitch and tow bar with us, plus tools. Tells you how much room we had in the car for personal stuff.

So there we were, in the parking lot of a gas station in the Carolina summer heat, drilling holes in my car frame with a corded 1/2" drill motor. That thing would get so hot you couldn't hold onto it. We got the hitch mounted and everything hooked up, we were ready to go, but man were we hot! Luckily for us there was a hotel next door with a swimming pool. My buddy Joe was a real out of the box thinker. It's not that we weren’t guests of the hotel we just weren't paying guests. I can still remember how good it felt to cool off in that pool. I also remember being surprised to see all the dirt from the gas station parking lot laying in the bottom when we got out.

On to dumb thing number two. We towed that POS Ford all the way home with my 318 powered Charger. I guess about 400 miles, up through the Blue Ridge mountains. I don't really remember the Charger having much trouble pulling it. We did a lot of the driving at night through heavy rain, so a few thrills there.

But I guess that’s how we did things back in those days. The cars were just cars, tools to us, and were young and didn't know any better.

Found a pic of the tank I pulled up through Appalachia.
This was a year or so later, my buddy moved to Florida and I went to visit him.

 

[Budnicks]

I painted my GG1 dark green 68 Charger R/T,
77' Corvette bright yellow, it still had the perfect black top & interior
in 1980-ish, Bright Oranges & Bright yellows were really the craze
(in the east bay Concord area anyway)
I'm not really a fad/s type guy,
I rock to a beat of my own drum 'usually'
&
I regretted it, right after I started to put it back together
but I still drove it with pride, had a lot of compliments & asked what color etc.
but I eventually sold it to an older cousin almost 10 years later
(Joe like 7 years older, he gave me stuff all the time when I was a kid, so I relented)
he totaled it in like 2 weeks, showing off...
I'd give 'someone elses' left nut,
to get back or have that car still, I still have sellers remorse for that car...

 

[Cranky]

Most of my dumb things I did was with my first car....a 66 Belvedere II. Pulled a 56 Chevy with bad steering using a chain. A buddy was in the 56 and he about lost it and yanked part of the trailer hitch loose. Another dumb thing was jumping the 66....and many times. The K frame looked like hell from hitting the pavement so often. Other dumb things was selling most of them including a 70 440 Challenger convertible that was fully loaded. Sold a 68 road runner race car wearing full exterior GTX trim after getting a divorce and getting remarried....which was more dumb things.

 

[chargervert]

I painted my GG1 dark green 68 Charger R/T,
77' Corvette bright yellow, it still had the perfect black top & interior
in 1980-ish, Bright Oranges & Bright yellows were really the craze
(in the east bay Concord area anyway)
I'm not really a fad/s type guy,
I rock to a beat of my own drum 'usually'
&
I regretted it, right after I started to put it back together
but I still drove it with pride, had a lot of compliments & asked what color etc.
but I eventually sold it to an older cousin almost 10 years later
(Joe like 7 years older, he gave me stuff all the time when I was a kid, so I relented)
he totaled it in like 2 weeks, showing off...
I'd give 'someone elses' left nut,
to get back or have that car still, I still have sellers remorse for that car...

Mine came bright yellow from the factory!

 

[Ron H]

First car I bought was a 67 GTO vert all optioned, sold to a dipshit in town who wrecked it. Next was a 70 Cuda vert 440/4-speed I traded in for a demo 73 Challenger/340. Yep, wish I still had the first two rides; but any car guys of age has similar regrets, I've chatted with many.

 

[Boru101911]

Sold my 1968 Charger 383HP console auto...du-oh!

 

[khryslerkid]

Not a B body but back when we were kids my younger brother and I were arguing over a knocking sound coming from our '68 Formula S 383 4sp Barracuda. He said it was a main bearing, I said it was a connecting rod bearing. So we decided to hold the pedal on the floor and wait for it to blow. It did. Big hole in the side of the block with the connecting rod sticking through it. I said to my brother "See!"

 

[1STMP]

Hesitating to get started, and moving forward, with my '65 project. Age can be a Real enemy...

One step at a time.
I'm 67. Paralyzed left arm and shoulder,
sciatica, psoriatic arthritis, and a hint of
dementia, recovering from a broken left foot
after tripping over the floor jack.
I started bedding the glass in a windshield
frame today. Sitting down at the kitchen
table.
You can do this!