Did you ever have an OOH **** moment?

[Da Game]

Just sitting here getting more education from you guys & (gals), brings to mind the above topic. As a young man I purchased my second car from a private seller, a 340 Dodge Challenger. I didn't know the first 2 golden rules of life...
1) Everybody wants your money.
2) Everybody lies for their agenda.

Well it was a hot Friday night in July and my cousin was with me. I was own the I90/95 expressway here in Chicago going northbound when the car hit what I thought was a hole, no matter the car still ran good. But, on the way back at the same location it happens again. This time the rpm gauge was going up and the speedo was going down. As I pulled over and threw the shifter in park the d** car kept rolling. It's was a good thing the exit ramp was down hill.

After sleeping in the car for the night we pushed it into a station where the machanic said "he'll look at it for no charge". He actually meant it! Well he pulled the rearend cover off and... Behold not one drop of oil came out. I forgot how much for junkyard rear, but it could have been worst.

That was my "OOH ****" moment, and my first practical experience with oil other than engine and tranny.

 

[gtx510]

lie for their agenda?
did the previous owner say that the diff was full and that the car was good-to-go with zero maintenance?
or were you assuming that everything was fine and that it was a magic car that didn't need the fluids checked?

 

[Da Game]

A combination of both, he did say he never had a problem and the car was in good shape. And in my late teens I would have taken anybody's word, heck I was looking at life thru rose colored lens.

 

[Thermactor]

Great story. Had too many "oh ****" moments to list.

 

[BigAl]

In 1978 my wife was riding along on I-55 in Illinois with a friend who was driving a nearly-new Dodge Aspen with 1500 miles on the odometer. The rear end started making a rumble and eventually an entire wheel, tire, brake drum, and axle shaft assembly launched across 4 lanes and wound up on the other side of the expressway. The hole in the end of the axle tube was smoking. The rear-end or at least the axle bearing was apparently dry from the factory, overheated, siezed, and actually caught fire.

Oh shift!

 

[mossad]

I was changing my oil this summer and I used a different oil filter, one that did not fit my cup wrench. I was forced to attempt taking it off with a metal loop wrench. I was able to get the wrench around the filter, but the location of it did not permit enough room to spin it. I kept trying to nudge it off about one centemeter at a time, and just as I was getting ready to give up and go buy the right cup wrench, the metal handle hit the wires to my starter and I singed all the hair off my hand and part way up my arm. The snap was so loud and bright, I though lightning struck...well, close enough

That was definately one of those "ohhh ****" moments.

 

[CBDFrontier06]

I had just performed a full tune-up on my 74 Beetle and took it for a drive through my neighborhood. Suddenly, (in the middle of a busy intersection, OF COURSE) I lost power, rpms dropped to 0, I coasted to a stop and smoke came pouring from behind the dash (where the junction box is). Right then was the "Oh SH*T" moment, then I jumped out, popped the trunk and yanked the wire out of the box that was melting and smoking, and the smoking ceased.

As it turns out, as careful as I thought I was being during the tuneup, during the drive the hot lead from the coil crossed over another wire leading to the distributor and shorted power to the coil, causing the power lead from the junction box to start burning. I'm felt pretty lucky the car didn't burn to the ground right there.

 

[crw]

While we're on shorts, I once replaced the starter in a '79 Celica. In the process of doing this, I must have disturbed the cable from the battery to the starter such that it was touching the exhaust manifold. So one morning I came out to find that the insulation had burned off and caused the short. And in fact the cable became so hot that the insulation was completely burned off, the entire length of the cable down to the manifold.

In the end I was lucky, all I had to do was get a new cable!

 

[wantin150]

I was sitting in my patrol car one day (1991 Vic) running radar when all of a sudden I heard this loud "POP" and smoke started coming out from the vents. I commenced to trying to turn everything off and get the heck out of the car.

We had been smelling a foul odor all around town that day which turned out to be the battery in my car being overcharged by the alternator which eventually shorted pretty much the whole electrical system.

I'm sure the folks were happy to see my car on the back of a wrecker.

 

[CBDFrontier06]

This happened to a friend of mine with a Porsche 911. He was on his way back to Wyoming from Vegas at night and the regulator on the alternator never shut off....the car suddenly died and while looking for reasons, he found the battery in a semi-melted, smoldering pile. Coulda been a lot worse.

 

[BigAl]

Another short story:

A friend in high school had an old MGB. He was too broke to replace BOTH 6 volt batteries located behind the seats, so we rigged up a surplus 12 volt fork truck battery from his dad's machine shop and located it in the trunk. We were out cruising one night, hit a bump, and the car died and filled with smoke. We got out and popped the trunk lid. His ice skates had bounced around and shorted the positive battery terminal to ground. One skate blade turned permanently blue and the ground wire (made from a sizable welding cable) had burned off at the battery . . . the insulation was still on fire. Oh Ship! We got out a Crescent wrench, shortened the cable, and went on with our evening of senseless circling. No need for insulation on a ground wire, right?

 

[Matt89]

Not my story but a good one...

My mother had one of those 1984 special 50th anniversary edition Nissan 300ZX turbos. Seemed like a nice car, but I was a kid at the time what did I know.

Well, my stepfather was driving down the highway when all of a sudden he got passed ZOOM by my mother in this car doing, well, really fast. He said she had a look of concern on her face. Up ahead he saw her finally pull over with brakes smoking. Onto a flatbed it went.

Turns out she had a so-called 'sudden acceleration' incident. Nissan dealer said they thought she got the floor mat caught up on the gas pedal. Either way she was off to the races.

 

[BigAl]

One more short story:

About the time my friend's MGB shorted out, I owned a '66 VW Beetle. The previous owner was also a high school student, and a real hack. One hot day it filled with smoke. The previous owner had attempted to attach the fuse block to the back of the metal dashboard with electrical tape. (He must have been out of duct tape that day.) In the heat, it had slid until the unfused side came to rest on metal. At that point, the headlight wiring harness went up in smoke.

I re-attached the fuse block with real screws and went about repairing the headlight harness with lamp cord I found at home. The headlight relay was shot, so I bypassed it to a household wall switch installed in the dash. At least MY hack work was built to last!

Poverty is the father of invention.

[ September 14, 2006, 04:05 PM: Message edited by: BigAl ]

 

[Laminar Lou]

quote:

---

Originally posted by BigAl:


I re-attached the fuse block with real screws and went about repairing the headlight harness with lamp cord I found at home. At least MY hack work was built to last!

---

Not so sure about that. I had done some handywork with some lamp cord when I was in high school and for whatever reason the insulation got pinched and caused a short. Basically turned the wire into a heating element, slicing and smoldering away everything in its path. For reasons that I can't remember, I had a halon fire extinguisher and a pair of wire cutters in the car. Without those that thing would have burned to the ground.

Freaked the heck out of my passenger! Nothing like a dashboard smoldering and falling into your lap. Luckily he didn't get hurt, but he shrieked like a little girl and we had a good laugh afterwards.

I quickly replaced all of my radio shack lamp cord after that with some good automotive wiring. I definately learned my lesson that day.

 

[Drew99GT]

I accidentally touched jumper cables together once. I tell ya, I never thought I could get an object out of my hands and away from me that fast. Just the loud ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAP and the bright flash of sparks and those cables were out of my hands and on the ground in about .000001 seconds

Not car related, but I got shocked on a 220 outlet. OUCH

 

[TheTanSedan]

Cheap re-tread tires on the

Maverick in college:

Loud, not-so-rainworthy (of course, as it was a Ferd, neither was the car with it's four-wheel drums, sloppy steering and loose-by-design front end), and a warning about "sustained high speeds" with these re-caps.

Ran up to Waco from San Antonio for a football game on US-281 (55 mph limit in '78, of course), but them little cold Coors kept a'sayin', "Hey man, 67 ain't gonna hurt ya".

Yeah, right. 3 blowouts in 30 yards after about 50 miles of "high speed driving".

 

[thunderchild]

Here's one.

My friend had an old beetle he had bought from a friend. We are all high school students then. We got four of us together to go cruising. One friend in the back seat thought the seat was getting warm. We initially ignored it until he yeled D**N, this seat is HOT! The seat started smoking and we pulled over. We all jumped out the car and pulled the back seat out. The battery was under the back seat. The coils on the underside of the seat had touched the battery terminals. The coils were red hot and the seat was burning. We put it out and since we were close to home we rode with the doors open hanging on the sides of the car riding on the running boards. Fate. It favors fools, little children and ships named Enterprise.

 

[BadBob]

I once needed to go find a part for a carter AFB, but it was also on the only car I had running at the time. So, with a buddy, I took off for the parts store. Once there, I quickly jumped out and unbolted it, still full of gas. I managed to drop the wingnut to the air cleaner down into the manifold (I could still see it). I handed the carb to my buddy with a "Hold this for a sec" and went to retrieve it. He was watching what I was doing, and set the carb (STILL full of gas) down...directly on the top post battery, shorting it. After the minor fireball and yanking the now well lead coated AFB off the battery, we dumped our shorts and went in for the part I needed.

 

[JavaMan]

I decided to buy a fuel pump and put in the front end of my car (I had a VW Bug at the time and still have it). I had no problems with the fuel pump before, but, I just decided to buy one because I saw it. About 6 hours later I was in a very desolate place, near dark and the fuel pump went out. Within 15 minutes it was changed and I was on my way.