funny but not really

[eljefino]

So I get my bay of "our" 2-car garage occupied with a saturn in-frame engine rebuild and right when everything's torn down to nothing the wife says her car's making noise like a wheel bearing.

Shoot, it's a saturday too.

I take her car to the junkyard on monday when they open and get a whole hub/spindle/knuckle assembly... a better option than taking the old knuckle somewhere to get a new bearing pressed in, etc. We're busy people and it's faster to DIY than wait around.

Anyway I get the old part off and notice my ball joint's loose as a goose. Fantastic. Wife with our only running car brings a new part home on her way home from work.

On saturns the sway bar pushes outward when one is putting in a new lower control arm. So I use a come-along to undo that tension so I can get the frame bolt in.

Get everything tightened down, do my hillbilly laser pointer wheel alignment (very accurate btw) and go for a drive.

The 50 mph noise is gone but now there's a raspy one at 10 mph. I figure it's brake rotor rust but it doesn't go away.

Wife points under her car and says "you're dragging something".

My come-along was still dutifully hitched from the driver's frame rail, to its bungee cord around the passenger ball joint! The bungee was tight enough it kept the come-along off the road, mostly.

I can only imagine what would have happened if I hit a good pothole with that.

If I were a surgeon, and you all are healthier for the fact I'm not, I'd be the bozo who leaves clamps in patients....

 

[-Clayton-]

I once accidentally left a ratchet strap between the cab and the bed of my truck after hauling some stuff. Later that day going through the middle of town it decides to fall and wrap itself around the driveshaft with the ratchet part violently banging the bottom of my truck and the blacktop. I honestly thought something very bad had happened until I pulled over and looked underneath.

 

[Schmoe]

Can't tell you how many gas caps or soda's I've lost.....

 

[javacontour]

I left a coffee on the roof of the Prizm when I took it to the shop last week. I went on a drive with the owner to let him hear the problem.

I was looking for my cup when I got back, thinking I left it inside, only to notice the dirty back window where it slid off and spilled.

 

[javacontour]

My only other major faux pax so far was back in '92 when I forgot to secure my trailer to the ball and got about 10 miles down the road on a 20 mile trip and thought something was wrong.

I pulled over and tightened the screw (this was a rental truck and trailer) mechanism.

Good thing this was the return, as it could have been ugly had my car been on there and it had come free.

 

[severach]

There is a right place for random articles such as coffee, gas caps, and sodas and that's the hood or the windshield. The driver won't miss it there.

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
My only other major faux pax so far was back in '92 when I forgot to secure my trailer to the ball and got about 10 miles down the road on a 20 mile trip and thought something was wrong.


I had just picked up a 2 horse trailer and just didn't think something was right. I pulled over and I hadn't secured the collar/lever that clamped the ball. I had safety chains and all that, but if I had bounced too much I could see it just popping off of it.

Beside a few smaller tools that I've left under the hood, I left a tire iron that I used as a prybar to tighten my FIL's belt with on a Volare. It didn't cause any problem, but someone found it there when he had the oil checked. For me it probably blended in with the black V2 a/c compressor.

A couple of times I dropped a socket and it would never fall out of the obscure recess that it found. You would just hear it roll when you pulled out from a stop ..or put on the brakes ...just about forever. I think that the car eventually sat long enough for some corrosive action to seize it in place.

 

[leftlane]

I saw someone driving with a gallon of orange juice on their car the other day. It fell off and they kept going like they didnt realize a thing. lol

Sometime later they must have gone:

 

[Gary Allan]

Saw a guy driving with his lunch box on the roof of his car. I kept pointing to his and my roof. For a few exchanges he looked at me

..but eventually got the message.

 

[Drew99GT]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGCNpbmxPL0

 

[leftlane]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Saw a guy driving with his lunch box on the roof of his car. I kept pointing to his and my roof. For a few exchanges he looked at me

..but eventually got the message.


This reminds me I had the same situation with a trucker I saw driving with his trailer doors flailing around wide open recently. I was stuck behind him where I couldnt get beside him so I flashed my lights at him several times to no avail, then when I finally got the chance to pull up beside him Im sure he believed I was angry at him for driving stupid a moment before which he was and thought I was going to start a confrontation with him about it so once I pulled up he was ready for me lol, but he read my lips as I slowly said while pointing that his doors were open back there and he finally realized why I was messing with him and got mad at himself which was funny to see and then he stopped suddenly on the highway to shut them. I couldnt believe he didnt notice in his mirrors that those doors were flailing around everywhere back there. Thankfully he was hauling heavy items to where they didnt fall out.

 

[Kestas]

Once, when I was on a two-lane road, a sedan passed me in the opposite direction with his trunk open. Glancing in rearview mirror when he passed me, I saw a fire in his trunk!!

 

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: Kestas
Once, when I was on a two-lane road, a sedan passed me in the opposite direction with his trunk open. Glancing in rearview mirror when he passed me, I saw a fire in his trunk!!


He was trying to outrun it.

 

[TallPaul]

I once (late 1970s) put an empty gallon glass jug on my step of my stepside pickup truck and forgot it. Made a right turn onto a major road (boulevard with 4 or 5 lanes one each side) and that bottle flew off and put glass shards all through the intersection on the northbound side (14 mile and Woodward Avenue for you Detroiters). I ran into the corner gas station and took a few feeble stabs at cleaning it up, but it was rush hour and the traffic was too intense. Watched as dozens of cars drove through the fallout, which included large jagged pieces. Just wonder how many flat tires it generated.

My friend had a junkyard bed in the falling apart bed of his beater pickup. Stopped by my house (mother's house actually, and again late 70s) for some reason. When he left he yelled "Ford Power" and floored it. The bed slid out and went ka-bam onto the middle of the street, which was a half mile street and relatively busy. Then a very proper woman in a large expensive car pulled up and laid on the horn. My buddy's brain damaged cousin (brain damaged from dope and a car accident) looks up at her and yells, "BLANK you you BLANKING WH---". I hurried and helped them lift the bed back in and retreated to the house hoping the neighbors hadn't noticed me in that whole fray.

 

[firemachine69]

Jabbed the brakes last year because some [censored] cut me off within two feet to get his Big Mac, I had forgotten my Starbucks Cappucino on the roof, it somehow catapulted and sprayed the offending vehicle.

 

[XS650]

Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGCNpbmxPL0


That made coffee come out of my nose.

 

[wander2039]

A few years ago, old enough to know better, I goosed the gas on my dad's truck and the jack hiding in the back slid out in the busiest intersection in my home town. Oh yes never live that one down. Besides that but a few loose tools.

 

[TylerL]

Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGCNpbmxPL0

Someone just did this (drive off with the hose) at my parent's 7-Eleven when I was working today. Except the only damage that happened was a broken nozzle because the hose just disconnected. Funny thing is he hadn't even pumped the gas he had prepaid for, so I was nice and let him pump on another pump.

 

[twentynine]

That is funny.

Going fishing some years ago with a guy I worked with, his boat, his trailer, his truck. Got to his house at the specified 0445, put my stuff in his truck and took off.

We had traveled halfway across the parish (county) when we passed under a street light and my buddy noticed the boat and trailer were "GONE". I turned around looked, and sure enough they were truly "GONE".

Got turned around and headed back down the road we had traveled. After a couple miles we come to an intersection, there sitting in the middle of the intersection is the boat and trailer.

Hooked it up and continued our trip.

 

[65cuda]

Friend had a smoker hitched behind his Jeep and was going down the interstate when he noticed it going into the grass median strip. Went back and hooked it back up and went on his merry way.