Share your vehicle troubles here.

[Cigar]

So, I've come to decide that cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc. exist simply for human torture in some way, shape, or form. I'm sure we've all had some sort of auto trouble, so I've made this topic for all you fine people (and myself) to share stories.

1. I had had my license for four days, and the clutch on my Honda burnt out. At five miles an hour (and burning most of a tank of gas) my friends and I managed to drive the ten miles out of town back to my house, praising the sweet sweet nipples of the Lord for every down hill we got.

2. My battery refused to hold a charge, and when it died four miles out of town, my friends and I pushed it on down the highway back to my house.

3. Changed a flat tire in negative-degree weather. My lips turned purple, as did my toes.

4. Today, the transmission on my Honda burnt out after I dropped a friend off at work. Wasn't far from my house, so I pushed it home by myself. (Not looking forward to paying for this one). Without a decent vehicle, I rode my motorcycle to work. (Its 27 degrees outside). When I left work, my bike started dying on me, but I managed to get it home. (Work is a good LONG ways from my house). There's a crack in the gas tank that I'm going to have to attempt to weld, with the help of a friend of mine.

So, yeah. Me and Mr. Southern Comfort are going to have one hell of a night.

[Sareth]

When I was 18, a buddy of mine and I decided, purely for the hell of it, to drive to Phoenix Arizona pretty much on a whim. We lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Basically we were planning to travel much of the length of the country north to south. On a whim. We got 50 miles, and the car died. Turned out my buddy hadn't ever changed the fuel filter. It was black. We replaced it and strove on. In some small town in Nevada (I can't remember which) in the middle of the night we lost the alternator. Fortunately it was a diesel, so in spite of having no electronics (including headlights) we were able to get it into town and into a auto parts store parking lot, where we slept. In the morning we asked for the proper alternator for the car. It didn't fit. Turned out his car had a pontiac body, a cadillac engine, and god only knows what alternator. We jury rigged the thing in. Amazingly, we went ahead and continued on to Phoenix. Three days later we headed back, this time crossing Utah. An hour north of Green River, Utah, the rear universal joint starts to fall apart. The housing was supposed to have 7 bolts holding it together... we had two. We limped home at 15 MPH with it.

Then there's my current car. How I despise it. I think it's trying to kill me. My beloved Nissan Maxima had finally become to expensive to keep running after 350,000 miles of faithful service. Well, I had just left the service, and didn't have a new job yet, so I needed to go cheap. Picked up an old Buick for 3 grand. This was about a year ago. In that time I have: replaced the transmition, replaced the clutch, blown a tire, wound up going through a fence, spun out through an intersection in rush hour traffic, and just two weeks ago I hit and killed a dear while doing 60 MPH. I'm scared of what it's going to try next.

[Vavrek]

I am the person you people hate. Aside from not actually having a license, and thus not being the person driving when my notable events happened, they all have an aura of luck intermixed with the misfortune.

Example: Family trip, my mother, brother, and I going to Redding, California. I don't remember why were headed there in this example, but it's some place we went occasionally. (We lived in Eureka, out on the coast.)

Now, no matter how far north Redding may or may not be, it's still pretty central in California, and this afternoon it was hot as hell. Standard for Redding, really. We're driving down the road in my mother's '66 Mustang (painted red, for extra "hot" in this scene) when the radiator explodes. It didn't go off like a grenade, just snapped the cap off (I don't think we ever found it) and sprayed some gunk on the windshield.

This happened less than a quarter mile from a service station.

Another example, different parent. My dad was driving me back down to California after a visit (The observant will realize why he wasn't in the prior example). Does anybody here know what Highway 101 looks like, in the hundred miles south of the Oregon border? It's this long series of beautiful, downright stunning vistas, one after another, until you get into the towns. It's also really twisty and bendy, tracing along the coast line.

The timing belt broke. (I think. That might have been another breakdown.) The power steering went out and we just sort of coasted along to a stop. Right in front of an emergency callbox. Had this happened moments earlier, we may have coasted right off the road. Then, as my dad was marveling at our good fortune, a group of about a half dozen bicyclists showed up and asked if he wanted them to call us a tow truck when they got into town.


Well, that's my piece. I will now prepare for my second lynching on this board.

[Sareth]

Vavrek, my friend, as I missed out on the first lynching, and as all of my breakdowns have happened in the middle of nowhere, allow me to be the first to get out the pitchforks and torches...

[Imp-Chan]

The 101 sounds like it might be one of the various roads I learned to really drive on during my family's big trip west, the summer I turned sixteen. My parents had saved up and flown the whole family to Portland, Oregon, where they bought a used Subaru Outback. Then we drove down through Oregon and California, over to Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, then back home via a hellish little chunk of Texas and Oklahoma over the course of the next month or so, being sure to take our time and see the various sites along the way. I adored Yosemite, and learning to drive on the roads out of it was scary as hell, but by god I did learn to go around corners at speed. The car was an automatic, though, and I suspect I'll have to relearn everything if I ever want to learn to drive a manual.

There were a FEW little car-related problems on this trip. One of them was my dad's GPS. At various points along the drive it informed us that we were in Australia, and occasionally liked to tell us the road was really about a mile away hovering midair over some valley or other, and at one point it wanted us to drive into the San Francisco Bay. We nicknamed it Clueless.

Thanks in no small part to my Dad's continued insistence on believing this infernal device, we at one point wound our way UP a logging road, only to encounter a truck coming down, with no place to turn around easily. My dad did manage to back us down to a moderately safer turn around point, but THAT was scary. There was a cliff face to one side, and a long drop on the other the whole way down.

As I remember it, though, we were mercifully spared any breakdowns of the vehicular sort on that trip, and substituted breakdowns of the mental sort. Thanks to an abysmal driving lesson with my dad somewhere in Arizona, I suffered a manic break at 90 miles an hour and went completely batshit in the back of the car. It sortof ruined the trip for everyone, as might be expected. I was taken to the hospital, and diagnosed with bipolar disorder pretty much as soon as we got home. In retrospect, this was really a blessing despite being horrifically unpleasant at the time, because despite two years of truly disastrous treatments (including a drug that pretty much turned me into a zombie), I did eventually find a good doctor and some decent meds. More importantly, I learned what the underlying problem really had been all along, and how to recognize it and start to cope with it, and I'd never have learned there was a REASON for the offshoot problems if I hadn't been taken to that hospital in Arizona. So all things considered, it was for the best.

I have other, more amusing, car stories that I intended to tell... but having sidetracked myself with memories of that trip and the subsequent experiences, I'm no longer in the mood to share them just now. I'll do that in another post.

^-^'

[davester65]

I've been pretty lucky as far as safety issues and accidents goes. As my 2nd car currently is an ambulance (I'm an EMT), that's probably just as well. From a repair standpoint, well that's another story. I got a new for me 2002 Dodge Dakota in January with only 50k miles on it that hasn't given me any trouble yet. My previous truck was a '96 Chevy pickup that I think I must have spent as much on repairs as I did to buy it in the first place. The fuel pump had a habit of dying every two years and at $700 a pop to replace, it was a real pain. I had to buy new rims for it 1 month before I finally got rid of it (it just wouldn't start, so I gave up on it). The car I had before was burning a quart of oil a day before I got rid of it (I drove it to a junkyard, handed the guy there the title and keys, then walked home. It was worth nothing at that point). In the car before that (a 1971 Chrysler Newport that I still miss sometimes) the heating system melted on me and wouldn't work anymore. I've determined that if you think you're saving money buying a junker, your not. You'll end up spending as much on constant repairs as you would on a new car payment.

[Stick & String]

Lets see, I have had many autos, and troubles. Some of my own making, some from a makers fault.
Worse ones, first, was some time back, after getting knee surgery, at West Point (NY). On the down side of the mountain, in Newburg, the front brake calipers decided to lock. Luckily, it was only a few yards to the right brand car dealer. Bad thing was sitting in the waiting lounge for 5 hours, fresh from a hospital release, in need of rest and elevation and ice packs. After the fix, we stil had a 7 hour drive to get home. Thnk god for pain killers!

Next in line involved having a drive shaft break on a mountain trail and having to walk for 2 days (no, not kidding) to get to a road where I could hitch a ride. Always check the universal joints before trips into the back country (as well as every part of the vehicle that can break!!!), and carry spare parts.

[BloodHenge]

I've never had a flat tire that could be changed on the side of the road. At least some of the lugnuts are always rusted on, and it's usually at night (since that's when I work), so it takes a while to tell if I'm actually turning it or just stripping it.. Once I even had a police officer stop to help me, and he had an electric "impact" lugwrench that couldn't get them loose.

My most recent car was restored after a collision, and it's had lots of problems with the electrical system. At first, the headlights and running lights would come on randomly, whether I'm in the car or not, and drain the battery. After we got that fixed, something in the ignition system got screwed up, and the car would just randomly cut off while I was decelerating, and not crank again for a couple of hours. Now, those (and a lot of minor electrical problems) are fixed. It'll still cut off every once in a while, but at least it'll crank right back up. I'm afraid to get it fixed, since that might create another new and interesting problem...

[zanntos]

I picked up a nice new story this past Friday.

I'm finished work around 7PM and go out to my car in the parking garage at my work, no problems tires are good off i go.
In the process of exiting the parking garage i manage to somehow pick up a random bit of metal and puncture my rear tire.
So i'm racing sunset to to get my tire changed, and then i have to drive the hour drive on the beltway to get home on a baby spare and the spare is a little under-inflated. Yeah... driving the beltway with a baby spare that i'm worried could give out at any time, not fun.

Thankfully i got home fine and it was an easy/cheap patch job.

[Joe Milino]

My car occasionally makes squeaky noises. . .
Not too bad for a '93 Pontiac Sunbird that I bought for $600, if that's the extent of my problems.
For now.
*shudders*