You may be wondering just what is going on in this photo. Well, I was perplexed as you are.
The photo is of the right taillight lens of the Holden VE Calais I used to own. I always loved the clear taillight lenses of these VE Calais, which managed to avoid looking like gauche Altezza lights; interestingly, Holden offered four different taillight designs for the VE Commodore sedan range alone. Now, somehow, a fully-grown bug – bigger than your average housefly or mosquito – found its way into the lens sometime around December 2015, possibly earlier, where it went unnoticed before presumably dying of asphyxiation. It may have produced offspring – those little remains to the left of it – but I’m not sure.
January 2015: no bug present
Sounds like it would be a problem, right? I mean, if a fairly large bug could get into the lens, surely there would be a problem with rainwater seeping in there, too? Nope! I never saw so much as a drop of moisture in there. Now, I don’t know much about bug biology, but even operating under the assumption that an insect egg somehow rolled its way into the lens, how could the bug grow to such a size without being able to cater to its basic physiological needs? The lack of exposure to the elements actually allowed for the insect to fossilize: no decomposition was present during the 6+ month period the bug body lied in repose. Indeed, when I sold the car, the bug was still there. I think I even pointed it out to the new owner. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a deal-breaker.
So, what’s the weirdest issue you’ve ever had with one of your cars?
My first car, a ’92 Grand Marquis had a cigarette lighter that would heat itself up and fly out of the dashboard at a million miles per hour.
If you’ve ever seen Jacques Tati’s film, “Mon Oncle,” he had a solution for that….
I’ve got a solution for that too. Leave the cigarette lighter out!
I have seen Mon Oncle and I love that you referenced it!
My dad’s ’68 Chrysler Imperial was famous for two things, the A/C being stuck on max whenever we would go swimming, and the cigarette lighter popping itself out of the hole about a foot or so with no warning, or any press required! My dad eventually took it out and put it in the glovebox and just used his always carried Zippo lighter to light his never ending stinky El Producto, and when he bought them, his even stinkier Antonio and Cleopatra cigars. Between his cigars, the sewing machine oil like Vitalis on his hair, and the Noxzema he put on his face, it’s no wonder my mother was repelled by him and his “smell” after only a few years together. His pillow always looked like someone or the dog had pissed on them from the Vitalis leaching from his head. Strangely, dogs seemed to be attracted to him.
My truck does not like going g to California. Period. Snapped an axle in Weed heading south. Flaw in the axle. Next trip, idler pulley broke in Medford. Next trip, new belt shredded itself in Grants Pass. All in three months. Truck has been all over the country but doesn’t like Cali lol.
Maybe it’s more a thing of it not wanting to leave Oregon. What happens when you go to Seattle from Portland?
Not quite as weird, and maybe even typical for a car built in the U.K., but my 72 Spitfire all of a sudden decided to burn a fuse and light up the seatbelt warning light on the dashboard every now and then. Luckily, it wouldn’t prevent the car from starting, but LBSCs being what they are….I had visions of underdash fires if I just ignored the warning signs/lights. (A co-worker did have a nice XKE roadster that caught fire right around that time.)
My cars hate to leave Maine. They keep making u-turns when I get close to the border. That might be a driver issue, though.
My 64 D100 with 3 on the column broke a cotter pin and one shifting arm fell into the steering column and locked it up.
My 240 wagon? It was all inexplicable issues, one chapter after another. Still a wonderful car, nothing else like it.
Those bugs might have come in via drain holes, if there are some. Might have been smaller then.
I’m experiencing one currently with the 911 – Replaced the window regulator and the door latch for separate but related reasons.
Once replaced if left unlocked the door opens at the first pull of the exterior latch EVERY single time as you’d expect.
But if locked and then unlocked with the keyfob you have to pull the exterior handle up between 3 and 12 times before if decides to unlatch and grant entry. Number of pulls is arbitraty, no pattern. (perhaps related but don’t see how – the key no longer works to unlock and just spins in lock cylinder, I obviously didn’t reconnect something inside). People at the grocery store must assume I am either an idiot or trying to break in when I pull the handle up to a dozen times…
HOWEVER, as my 9year old figured out by accident last month, if you pull the exterior handle up and let it fall back down before completing the action as if your hand slipped off it, then it opens on the next pull without fail. You can’t just pull it halfway, you have to pull it and then let go so it kind of slams back down. My kid has perfected his technique, I am at about 90%.
Very strange, obviously I need to take the door apart again which I’m just a bit too lazy to do right now. I’ll probably wait until winter comes and it’s 20 degrees in my garage before it becomes a priority…
Jim, not sure what year 911 it is or what system Porsche uses, but I’ve done a few interior and exterior door handles. In mass market cars, the little rods connecting the latch, handles, and lock need to slide pretty freely. Perhaps the replacement has the rod connecting the lock in a bind and it isn’t releasing all the way when unlocked. Perhaps some jostling and/or lubricant in the plastic guides on the rod might do the trick.
It’s an ’02 and thanks for the info! When I dive in if it’s not something obviously disconnected I will fiddle with everything to see if it’s operating smoothly. The “feel” of the mechanism is completely normal, i.e. it doesn’t feel like anything is binding from the handle at least.
I was upgrading the upper (cold side) intercooler pipes on my ’03 PT Cruiser GT to aluminum hardpipes. At the time, I also had my ’00 Jeep TJ, so I took my time. Across 2 weekends, I had the battery out and it was cold so it apparently took the charge down a peg. I buttoned everything up and went for a test ride. Well it cranked right up and the boost came on STRONG since I was no longer leaking thru the factory clamps, and rubber tends to swell under pressure, numbing the turbo ‘kick’. Within a mile of my house, the electricals went completely haywire…like I had some kind of demonic possession going on! It died at an intersection, some guy in a Volvo gave me a jump and I limped it home. I assumed that I somehow damaged the PCM by the way it was acting, even tho it was nowhere near where I was working. A quick jump onto my PT Cruiser forum and as it turns out if your battery is dying, the way those cars are wired, youll think you’ll need a priest to fix it instead of a toolbox, but its just the battery. $75 at Schucks, and it was like it never happened. Scared the crap out of me at the time though!
Mopars from about the mid-90’s on have an idiosyncratic electrical system, where the ignition coils and instrument cluster are at the far end of the harness. You can have enough cranking power in the battery to turn the motor over, but not enough to both turn the motor over AND generate spark. It’s weird. I found out the hard way with our 96 Voyager. Couldn’t figure out why it would crank and crank, but not fire. Had good fuel pressure, had good noid (injector trigger), but it just wouldn’t start. Buddy of mine suggested battery, so I tested it. It wasn’t completely used up, but it was only testing at about 70% of rated CCA. Dropped in a new battery, and away she went.
If I was passing, I could never get the turn signals on my Eagle Premier to shut off. I would hit the paddle they operated them, and the opposite one would go on. You literally had to make a turn to get them to shut off.
While dating my wife, she purchased a ’77 MGB with an internal defect in the wiring harness- The fuel gauge sender connected to the windshield washer switch, while the washer pump connected to the fuel gauge.
Not surprisingly, each circuit used the same wire color code, and ran in parallel through the wire harness. I found a spot where they ran side by side, cut both wires, swapped each wire end, and butt-spliced the pieces back together. Problem solved!
2001 PT Cruiser – Power door locks went crazy, up and down like a machine gun, then up and down once in a while when it felt like it, then up in the morning when I left it down, or down while the engine was idling and I exited to see if I locked the back door of the condo. Then machine gunning up and down to let me know it was still acting crazy. I took to always carrying a spare key with me (a habit I still follow). I removed the door lock fuse and drove it like all the old cars I had owned years ago that had no power locks. Curiosity got the better of me a month or so later, and I put the fuse back in. It was fine and never did that again. Like the car was saying “I’m sorry”,
Same car, a few years later, something would mysteriously kill the battery even when the battery was new. This happened more than once. Checked charging system; it was fine. I feared a dreaded wiring harness issue and kept a JNC660 battery booster, 110 volt battery charger, a long 110 volt power cord, and jumper cables in the back to feel safe. Then one day as I turning a corner at night I saw the fog light warning light flicker, once, twice, three times. I replaced the multi-function switch and that was the fix. In a switch autopsy, there a small white piece of soft plastic the size of a fingernail that holds the pin for the fog lights in (meaning off). With enough time the pin scoured a gouge in the soft white plastic so the pin wasn’t all the way in and it turned on the fog lights even if the ignition was off.
1957 Chrysler Windsor – Driver’s power window would go down and then unplug it self. I removed the door panel, reconnected the wires, and used fishing line and black electrical tape to secure the wires so they would not be in the way of the window again (this is before the days of tie wraps). Front passenger window did the same thing. Same solution. Same with the left rear window. The right rear window never had that problem. This always happened in the winter, usually when it was snowing.
1961 Corvan Greenbrier – Coming home from NYC with my father on the Long Island Expressway throttle pedal went limp and engine went to idle. Removed engine hatch (which was never screwed down because the fan belts kept breaking) and improvised a string tied to the slight rise in the throttle bar that connected the two widely separated carburetors and I sat in the second row seat (the third row was not in the vehicle) holding the end of the string. When Doc said go, I pulled the string and the engine reved up; when Doc said stop, I let the string go and the engine went back to idle. “Little more” and “a bit less” commands also helped maintain the proper speeds all the way home.
The throttle rod rise of the Corvan:
The fix, I recall was a 30¢ washer, and $36 dollars labor — in 1970.
I had a similar situation in an old vw van (1974). The throttle cable broke so I took the engine hatch off and had a buddy with a screwdriver work the carb linkage. I was Captain Kirk and he was Scotty. I would tell full impulse speed when we were accelerating and no for stopping. It worked well on the highway for about 50 miles but got really interesting in town rowing through the gears. I later bought a AAA tow card and always carried a spare throttle cable…
Man, those Corvans are cool! I say, whatever the problem-o is with those….just deal with it! Character goes a LONG way.
I did something similar to what you did with your Corvair, when the throttle cable broke at the end by the gas pedal in an old air cooled VW, In this case I slid the cable out of the tube in the floor pan, ran it under the car and up to the drivers door, rolled down the window and used my left arm to hang on to and pull for the throttle. It worked great, but I sure got some strange looks from people on the road.
I wrote a whole article back in 2011 about a bee and a ’65 VW bug. Got me out of a speeding ticket. Here’s the article.
Great query, William. Computerization has made all new cars act like Dave’s wife’s MGB. I bought a 3-year old Grand Cherokee in ’01 that was totally optioned out. Since my needs are few and I didn’t share the truck with anyone, it was many months before I tried the personalized driver memory seat settings. When I did, nothing happened with the seat, but the station changed on the radio.
Flies of any kind can squeeze through pretty small holes. Ever watched a mosquito slip through a window screen? Like a little Houdini.
No, but I watched a snail crawl across a straight razor.
I had a weird one on my 86 vw vanagon. It would start chugging from time to time. I replaced all the usual suspects, plugs wires cap and rotor. Still kept doing it. I thought it was maybe something with the fuel system. Changed the pump, idle airflow controller, fuel filter. Still was doing it. Took it into my old mechanic. He cleaned the contacts on the starter where the alternator and a bunch of other important wires live. Took it for a spin and it would do it every time I went up a hill or turned a corner. We thought about it and both came to the conclusion it might be the ECU. Luckily he had a spare, one Phillips screw and a plug and it ran perfect. I settled on the used one he had for $300 instead of the new one for $1000. There had been some really hot days before the symptoms started so I wonder if that cooked it or maybe it was the 20+ years and 240 000 kms that did it in. I saved all the parts and passed them along to the new owner when I sold it a few years later…
From my COAL on my 1983 Renault Alliance MT:
“The cassette deck also died that year, but I couldn’t afford to replace it. As an engineering student, I had plenty of budding electrical engineers as friends. One of them thought he could fix it, so I removed it from the dash and handed it over. Weeks went by. When I asked about his progress, he just said he was working on it. More weeks went by, and finally I went to his room to check on it. I found that he’d un-soldered every last diode and capacitor from the circuit boards, with each bit, carefully arranged and labeled, placed on newspapers spread throughout his room. I thought my poor tape deck was a goner, but he found a single tiny electronic component that had failed, replaced it, soldered the whole thing back together and installed it in the dash. The cassette deck worked again, but from that day forward turning on the radio also turned on the parking lights.”
I know this answer. Helped a buddy with the same issue on a Toyota truck.
So you’re wiring in a new deck and you need a ground. Pick a wire at random and meter for continuity to ground! Hey, this wire seems to be a ground, I’ll use it.
Except it isn’t. It’s the wire from the factory dash light dimmer. When the lights are turned off, it looks like a ground, because the circuit is grounding through the lights’ filaments.
When you turn on the deck, it sends positive through the filaments to ground, lighting ’em up.
Find a better ground.
So you’re wiring in a new deck and you need a ground. Pick a wire at random and meter for continuity to ground! Hey, this wire seems to be a ground, I’ll use it.
A guy bought an under dash cassette deck from me when I was working at RS eons ago. Came back a week later, complaining the desk was playing slow. I plugged it in to the display in the store and it played fine. He put it back in his car, and, again, it played slow.
Back he came, so I took a look at his installation. RS decks at that time used a 5 pin connector for power and hot and ground for the two speakers, and a separate ground wire from the chassis of the deck. He had the ground wire neatly folded and taped to the back of the deck, not connected, so the only ground the deck had was through the mounting bracket, which he had clamped to a brace under the instrument panel, instead of screwing it in place, so the paint on the bracket was impeding current flow. Told him to attach the ground wire to a screw on any of the multitude of steel brackets under that instrument panel and his bad ground problem would be solved.
I put a shift improver kit into my 68 Thunderbird. I took the C6 valvebody out, disassembled it and replaced all relevant springs and valves exactly as per the directions. Included was drilling one small hole in the separator plate.
I putbit all together and test drove it. I found I had lost second gear. First and third were there but second felt like neutral. I was horrified because I did not fully understand the specific function of some of the valves and was not sure which of the dozen or so changes I made could have done this. It might not even be a change, but could be some debis somewhere. Trial and error was daunting since each change required a new pan gasket and refill.
After some review of the diagrams I vaguely recalled reinstalling a tiny spring and ball bearing. Had i mixed them up, I would lose 2nd gear pressure. I disassembled the trans and swapped the 2 tiny parts around.It worked and the trans worked properly. I was surprised thar 2 parts that look as if they came from a Bic pen could cause so much trouble.
Not long after I bought my ’64 Beetle (around 1994 or so), I was leaving work and the engine died abruptly before I made it out of the parking lot. I checked all the obvious things (coil wire, plug wires, plenty of gas, etc.), and tried numerous times to restart, but… nothing. I may have slammed the deck lid down at this point (confession being good for the soul), and disgustedly tried the ignition one last time.
It fired right up.
In six years of ownership, it never did that particular thing again. No idea what caused, or fixed, it.
rlplaut’s comment above reminded me of when the clutch cable broke, and I had a pleasurable drive home (part of which was on I-285 around Atlanta, GA) using the approved Idiot Manual procedure for same said issue.
In 2010 a fuel tank strap broke in my 2007 Toyota Corolla with no rust or impact. The car made a horrendous noise in the back when I started one morning. I stupidly drove it to the dealer, instead of having it towed, thinking it just lost an exhaust hanger. Nope, the exhaust was holding up the gas tank. The service adviser tried telling me that the extended warranty “didn’t cover trim items” and that I could pay out of pocket and submit the receipt for reimbursement. I bought the biggest bumper-bumper extended warranty offered when I bought the car new. I told him that while the car gets great gas mileage, it still needs the tank to run. At the time, I also had a 1992 Saab 900, so I also told him that I have a spare car and the Corolla can sit in his shop until he figures out how to get payment from the warranty company, because I’m not paying.
The car was covered, repaired, and ready for pick up the next afternoon.
Lucky you got satisfaction. The oil pan gasket on my ’97 Ranger 3.0 failed in spectacular fashion- this was not a drip drip leak or something that started small and gradually worsened; this was an actual sudden-onset tsunami of oil and I could peer into the crankcase from the gap in the funky, spongy rubber thing with spacers Ford called a “gasket”. I brought it to the local dealer for warranty repair and it sat there untouched for months. Sumbitch wasn’t going to do it, so I retrieved it with my flatbed and changed it out myself. What a job! I was resisting the notion of pulling the engine out but the suspension was interfering with dropping the pan enough to service the gasket so I had Twin I-Beam suspension bits scattered all over the driveway- it looked like a model car kit before you put it together. And STILL the engine needed to be released from it’s mounts and raised just as high as possible before wrecking stuff.
Now, imagine an oil pan gasket setting on a bench- see the bolt holes? Imagine it is split between each and every hole, from end to end, effectively looking like two gaskets, an inner an outer, but that leak like a sieve. What the hey?
That lead taillight pic reminds me of having to disassemble and spend some quality time cleaning out substantial moss growth inside an ’84 Tempo taillight lens- it blocked out the backup light on one side. It’s supposedly a sealed unit- gaskets on the bulbs, no drain holes, and all welded together. How did that get in there?
’08 F350: At completely random intervals it would fail to start. Everything would light up, but it wouldn’t crank at all. I’d go back a few hours later or the next day and it would crank right up.
Out of desperation, I wired 12V through a horn button (hidden behind the dash to keep the grandchild’s finger off it) direct to the starter solenoid. Works like a charm whenever the key start fails.
I never figured out the original problem, though, which is troublesome.
I had an engine literally fall out once. 1982 Dodge Charger 2.2. After a scrape or two, and some subsequent body repairs I came home from my freshman year at college and resumed driving the car. One day on my way to my Summer job I came to the bottom of our 1/2 mile driveway and downshifted into to start the ascent up a fairly steep hill. Upon letting up on the clutch the car just ground to a halt. Had to call a buddy who worked for a wrecker service to flatbed the car into the shop. Apparently nobody who’d worked on the car ever noticed that there was only one motor mount still hanging on by a thread. Well, that one let go upon downshift and acceleration, and yes, the engine literally dropped right out of the car and came to rest teetering on the front suspension. Ironically, the repair was quick and relatively inexpensive. I don’t recall that there were any casualties to be repaired other than the broken motor mounts. I got 2 more years out of that car, finally retiring it in ’88.
Only six years of of the car. Ouch!
Something similar happened to my Moms ’72 Montego around 1979 or 80 but without as good a result…apparently one motor mount was already broken and when she hit a pothole, it finished breaking the other one. When the engine broke free, it bounced around, broke the steering arm and my Mom lost control of the car and totaled it. We were OK but the otherwise nice Montego, which as a kid, I didn’t mind being seen in, gave way to an embarrassingly awful orange ’74 Volvo 145 wagon that was a stop-gap car until we got a new ’82 Delta 88.
I had a similar problem on a ’80 Rabbit I bought that was originally a diesel but had a gas engine installed. The car was not running as it still needed wiring for the fuel injection and needed a fuel pump and wiring installation as well. I installed a junkyard pump and wiring and got it running, a few weeks later I noticed the oil pan hanging a little too low. The motor mount bolt had slipped out partway and jammed a couple of threads before the end of the bolt, ready to fall out. Turned out none of the mounting bolts had been tightened. I jacked the engine up with a floor jack, slipped the bolt back in and got a new nut, then tightened all the mounts. The engine was just a thread or two away from dropping to the ground. It also got rid of the bad vibration it had when idling!
On an unrelated note In the late ’80’s I came across a caravan of old VW Buses, on their way to a Grateful Dead concert. One had a rear wood bumper and the hot tailpipe was burning through the bottom of it and pieces of burning wood were falling off in chunks onto the road!
GREAT stories ! .
Subscribed to read them all .
-Nate
Had a 96 Taurus that had a right rear strut (or shock absorber…can’t remember), that would squeak non stop when the temperature got warm. In the winter, nothin’. I tried everything short of disassembling the entire rear suspension to find/stop it. Drove me bananas! Never did stop it in 2 years ownership. I traded it in cause the trans acted up. Crazy!
Maybe it’s a mid 90’s Ford thing. The left rear suspension on my ’97 Crown Vic makes an odd creaking/groaning noise going over bumps whenever there is more than one person in the car. With just me, no noise. One passenger or a lot in the trunk, noise sometimes. Three or more people in the car, very noticeable groan over every bump. I usually have to mention it to my passengers so they don’t think the rear suspension is self-destructing…
The car has made this noise since my parents first bought it in ’03, and they had it looked at early on and were told it was nothing. I suppose if it hasn’t required repair in 13 years, the diagnosis of “nothing” must be right.
A few variations on the themes by the other guys. Driving a buddy’s 1970 VW Transporter (slowly) down a 6-lane highway. This thing was a total POS and completely graffiti-painted. Well people in surrounding cars are doing their usual gaping, pointing and smiling, but some started gesturing wildly at me and yelling. Just about that time I realized that they were trying to tell me something the engine just cut out completely and I coasted to the side. Turned out that the wooden boards holding up the battery where the metal tray had rusted away had slipped and the battery had dropped out the bottom of the engine bay and dragged on the road until the corner wore thru and the acid leaked out, killing the engine. This was the one and only time that I drove this van over the many years that he owned it.
Same friend and he is driving my 1963 Valiant for the one and only time that he did in my 7 years of ownership and friendship with him. What happens, but the key switch, which I had been meddling with and not reinstalled had a hot lead on the back and when he was driving it swung over and grounded itself on the metal dashboard. The wiring harness promptly heated up and started burning the insulation on the wires, smoking PROFUSELY. He bailed out and pulled the ground cable off of the battery, but not before getting the crap scared out of him and burning up the entire main wiring harness.
We NEVER again swapped cars, no matter how desperate.
Footnote on the Valiant: I had a very strange conclusion to the wiring story. I was in the outer banks of nc when this happened so I went to a rural nc junkyard that had a lot of old cars. In the mopar area they had the ’63 that I was seeking, but the entire harness was gone! So I started making my way back to the front and paused near another car to think through my options. I look over and on the seat of the car next to me is a wiring harness. I pick it up and it has a TAG on it “1963 valiant”–someone had painstakingly unplugged it at every junction, LABELED it, and then left it there. I bought it and took it home, plugged it all in and EVERYTHING on the car worked right straight away. That was 25 years ago and I still am blown away by that…
I’ve had so many “strangest issues” over the years I can’t decide on only one.
I’ve had the under-dash wiring burn up on an old VW too. For the life of me, I don’t remember the exact cause but I think mice had something to do with it.
Oh, and just so ALL my stories aren’t about Fords, one time I picked up a scabby old ’61 Microbus shell- no engine but I was able to air up the tires so I decided that was good enough to pull it home on an all-rural route (NO brakes). Half way there the rear end starts VIOLENTLY swinging side-to-side, such that the tow chain fell off. I’m not sure how but I was able to keep it on the shoulder until it coasted to a halt. There was one lugbolt holding the left rear wheel on at that point! I knew I didn’t do anything stupid like leave with one lugbolt so I walked the road back from where I came and I found two more lugbolts. Great- three is enough for now. But there was no jack in the tow vehicle or the van. I was young then and tough as nails (and it helped that there was no engine in the van) so with my back to the van I picked it up long enough for my friend to get the lugbolts in. The rest of the trip was uneventful, thankfully.
Another: I’d just gotten home and parked the ’94 F150 out in the driveway. When I got in the house for some random reason I glanced outside through the window and saw thick black smoke POURING out from underhood. I ran back out there and gingerly popped the hood, to find a sizzling master cylinder at the heart of the blaze. Yes, there is an electrical switch on it and by golly brake fluid is flammable. I keep a crescent wrench in the door pocket so I grabbed that and undid the battery cable with the speed of a NASCAR pit crew. Relieved of current, the flame settled down and then a pail of water ended it.
I contacted NHTSA after finding out about other Ford infernos. They were VERY interested in my story because most of the time the only evidence was a completely burned up vehicle AND garage. I sent them professional quality pics of the burned switch and then the whole part. I believe it was instrumental in getting that recall going.
Yikes. I recently bought a 93 Marquis and was surprised to read of all the trouble with the wiring for the master cylinder. I think the wire is for the cruise control. Makes me wonder why Ford did that. They made a conventional reliable cruise feature for many years without trouble.
That cruise control switch was well known. For some reason, Ford determined that the cruise control switch needed to have power independent of the ignition switch. The cutoff came from a diaphragm actuated via brake fluid pressure. A ruptured diaphragm created a short which started a fire. It was a problem when the short happened at 3 am with the car in the garage.
It was just getting to be known in ’03 when it happened to me. In fact I still have my emails to NHTSA and one said that initially they were only investigating ’95-on F150s and Expeditions until I came along.
Ford must have had a pretty poor track record with fires in early 90’s vehicles. An underhood fire caused by a short in the alternator was what killed my ’91 Crown Vic, and evidently that problem wasn’t uncommon either.
And then there were the ignition switch shorts that would cause fires too. My 85 CV would get a really hot ignition key after a long trip, and I always wondered why that was. After I had traded it off, I got a case in where an insurance company had paid off on a house fire caused by one of them going up one night. Fords and Fires were not uncommon companions in the 80s.
And then there were the ignition switch shorts that would cause fires too. My 85 CV would get a really hot ignition key after a long trip,
Excessively hot key can be caused by poor electrical contact in the switch too. The poor contact puts resistance in the circuit and pushing current through the resistance produces heat. This is what happened with aluminum house wiring and the wrong type of sockets and switches in the early 70s: the clamp holding the wire would work loose, causing resistance, which produced heat, until it was hot enough to start a fire.
The ignition key in my beater Focus would get hot once in a while, and in a matter of 3-4 miles, not a long trip.
After replacing the switch, I dissected the old one. Look at all the crud on the contacts.
And here’s the other half of the switch.
Every so often, my ’02 Durango would refuse to shift out of park. Brake was pressed, steering wheel straight, but the lever would move only a bit, stuck in park, as though something was caught inside. Would work it a bit and then it’d free up. Happened only occasionally, could never figure what caused it. One guy I worked with also had an ’02 Durango, and his would do the same.
Better than the 2014/15 Jeep Grand Cherokees (now built on the same line) that will flip into any gear they wanted on a whim.
In 1970 or so, I became enamored with a 1964 Pontiac Catalina Ventura 2-door hardtop. I bought it, for the pricely sum of $700 I think, all because……it had POWER WINDOWS. I was 18. And I now owned two cars. I quickly saw to the re-homing of my 1963 Olds Cutlass, then went about my business of making this machine, with its tremendous 389 V8 and (ahem Roto (cough, cough) Hydramatic transmission, mine. First up: an old-school (for 2016) tune-up. Bought the oil. Bought the filters. Bought the plugs, points, and condenser. Took care of the oil and filter change in the driveway, then set about to replace the points and condenser. I had ALL the proper specs. I pop the distributor cap off, and………….where’s the POINTS? THIS CAR HAS NO POINTS!!!!!! All I see is a shiny metal plate, with some small springs attached. Well, it was kind of hard to replace points and condenser on a car that……didn’t have them. A visit to my local Pontiac dealer provided me with the information, that in 1964, Pontiac offered a transistorized ignition system. From what I found out later, it was quite rare.
Marshall: Your comment rang a bell with me, my first car back in 1965 when I turned 18 was a 1964 Pontiac LeMans, it, too, had a transistorized ignition. I had no idea it was such a rare option. It was very troublesome, too, constant stalling problems and then unable to restart. My mechanic back then finally replaced it with a standard ignition, and it ran like a top for the next seven years that I owned the car all through college and grad school. Never did figure out what benefit a transistor ignition performed, it was a dud as far as I was concerned.
Holden Commodores are reknown for leaks around the tail lights, nice to see they finally got them water tight but not bug proof,
Electrical glitches plague my Citroen, its had several over the years Ive owned it, the engine imobiliser refused to recognise the chip in the key which meant removing the injector pump to remove the imobiliser hardware, the heater fan has gone on strike years ago I can get around that using airflow methods, so nothing unfixable has happened difficult to diagnose yes, but theres always a way to fix it without resorting to the dealer and their expensive tech staff.
A lot of ’60s Chrysler products had this strange ground fault: With the ignition OFF, you could turn on directional signals and hold the brake pedal, then turn on the radio. The radio would pulse on and off with the flasher.
My 69 Charger does that! Theres a logical reason why they do it but I forget what it was, maybe something about the electrical system being externally regulated?
A friend’s ’64 Tempest would do the same, using the 4-way flasher.
Bang!
“What was that?’ it sounded kind of tinny but alarmingly loud. It happened more often when the temperatures changed and less when they were about constant.
Bang!
Finally I figured it out: In the Ford Windstar the roof panel was welded in with a slight distortion and when the sheet metal expanded it popped.
Don’t some newer GM suv’s have a somewhat similar problem? Within the last year or so maybe?
Big full size vans, I believe. Express and Savanna.
88 Acura Integra – still under warranty. One morning I came out and stuck the key in the ignition; the car started instantly….and died. Again and again. Then on the 6th or 8th try it started and ran. I drove it to the office, parked it turned it off, and the problem was back. So -towed it to the dealer. It took two weeks for them to figure it out. Starts perfectly – and dies. They replaced computer, the injectors, the igniter, and, well, everything. Finally the Service Manager had a brain storm: the ignition switch had cracked. When you turned the key, it moved to ‘start’ position and engaged the starter – everything’s fine. However when you let go of the key, the cracked housing wouldn’t let the key move the ignition back to the ‘run’ position, and so -caught in no-man’s-land between ‘Start’ and ‘Run’- the engine would die. The Service Manager was very, very proud of himself…. And I had the best tuned Honda engine in the United States.
Honest- I’m not trying to take this over! But your story reminds me of an old girlfriend’s Mom’s Dodge: It was carbureted but had computerized ignition and it was really running poorly. She’d start that V8 pig and let it run for over 15 minutes before setting out so it wouldn’t stall; there’d be a huge gassy/oily spot on the ground under the tailpipe by that time. The local garage worked on it many times and if I recall correctly they’d done nearly $1000 of work on the heap- and this was over 25 years ago- replacing the entire ignition system including computer to no effect.
She passed on and when girlfriend got the car and needed it for a daily driver it was time- well, past time- for me to take a look. One of the first things I did was pop the lid off the carb and toss the floats into a pail of water. One floated and one sunk like a rock. About $6 and one parts store float later and that thing ran like a Swiss watch.
I still can’t decide if that shop was grossly incompetent (it still does a good business) or if they were taking advantage of a woman.
Still under warranty, right? Then I guess the dealer paid for all those unnecessary parts? Disappointing they had to “throw parts at it” & pray for the best! But, that was pre- OBD-II (’96 on).
I had an ’89 Ford Bronco II that ran like crap. I “threw $500 worth of parts at it”. Everything on the engine I could remove & change was replaced, including the ECU.under the dash.
I then put out a Craigslist Ad for a good Ford Mechanic & found a guy local. After 2 weeks & another $400, it ran a little better, but not quite perfect. I still have the truck as a Winter beater & after the $900 I put into it, it’s still not right. I won’t sell it, because it’s only worth about $400 yet I have $1000 worth of new parts in it! New gas tank last week.
2000 Saturn LS – Turn signal, headlight switch would get too hot to touch. Intermittent problem. Must have been a wiring issue but dealer could not/would not repair it. So much for Saturn service!
71 Scamp with a trailer hitch. The first time I hooked up a trailer, it turned out that the wiring harness was wired wrong. Hit the brakes and the ammeter would dive hard to Discharge. Until the third time and it didn’t move. OK, blown fuse?
No. The short travelled through the world’s stoutest fuse and travelled up the steering column where it burned up the emergency flasher switch.
The ’93 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham I inherited from a relative was possessed by some voodoo. Honestly, it was probably just a short somewhere but it sure was odd. Every few weeks, an electrical component would start behaving oddly. One week, you’d be driving along and the door locks would start chattering as if they were locking and unlocking themselves at super speed. Remove and reinstall fuse. Goes away. The next week the digital odometer reading wildly fluctuates from its actual 185K to 654K! Pull fuse, reinstall, goes away. The next week, the fan stays on when you turn the car off. Pull fuse, reinstall, goes away. Then the security system would lock out the chip key. Pull fuse, insert a few times, problem gone. Interestingly (and in retrospect, thank God) this never affected the driveability of the car. Throughout my 11 months of ownership it never broke down on a road trip, pulled 24-26 mpg highway, and never averaged under 19 mpg.
Super weird.
2004 Jeep Liberty first generation. The back hatch was a door so window popped open thru some kind of interlock. One day quit working, under warranty so brought back to dealer. They changed everything possible, solenoid wiring harness, door latch and God knows what else. Never worked again had to use trunk release on fob to open back door. If factory can’t fix it who do you go to. Traded in on Sante Fe 2008. It was better but not by much..
Most light housings do actually have breathers to equalize the air, on my Cougar they’re simple triangular cutouts on the very bottom where the lens meets the housing for the rear lights, while the fronts have these U shaped rubber hoses. Still though, that’s a big bug for those holes, and they’re located in inaccessible places so splashing water can’t enter, let alone insects.
One of the more out there ones – My Cougar does not like musical instruments or equipment. I’ve played guitar since freshman year of high school and has remained a side hobby to date, but ever since I got my car, if I’m going out to buy guitars, amps, effects pedals or even just leaving to go somewhere with this equipment, I’ll get a CEL, something will break, or a noise will show up. Coincidence? Maybe, the car is 22 years old, but I keep it maintained and lavish it with attention, and not being a musician by trade it’s not at all frequent I have gear in it, yet 90% of the issues I’ve ever had in the 11 years I’ve had it happen with a guitar in the trunk.
Other one was on my Mom’s Nissan Quest, she came by and told me someone waved her down at an intersection to tell her none of the brake lights were lighting up and wanted to see if I could fix it. Taillights work, and were integrated into the same bulbs so I assumed brake light switch, or fuse. Investigated both, both checked out, hmm. So I decided to test continuity of the circuit from the switch all the way to the bulb sockets to see if there was a break – no break. So I’m stumped. Then as I looked at the bulb from the socket I tested I noticed the second filament was burnt out, went to the other side, same, went to the two CHMSL bulbs(different type of bulb), same! 4 bulbs failed all at the exact same time! Spent nearly an hour over diagnosing it because that scenario seemed so unlikely!
Four blown bulbs… I’d just gotten a 41 year old 28,000 mile ’59 Chev and was out visiting friends with it. This car was so original (still is) it had whatever it had on it in 1968; whether all of it was OEM or not I can’t say. Anyway it’s the middle of the night and time to go home. I fire it up, flip on the lights and poof- just like old camera flashbulbs, all four T3 head lamps go up in smoke.
Great.
Luckily I’d just installed a vintage hand-held spotlight so I held that out the window the whole way home.
Must have been a voltage spike from the regulator? All the other bulbs in the car survived but now it doesn’t have T3s out front. IIRC I pulled the cover off the regulator and cleaned up the points after that happened. Can you imagine doing that with modern equipment?
Erm… maybe I should write my own dang article?
2006 Freightliner M2. Just passed a State Police commercial inspection. I climbed up into the engine bay to add oil. Standing on the drag link, I felt it move under my weight. I climbed down and grabbed it. There was a ton of play in it. I moved the truck out of the way and told my boss and took out a different truck that day. The next day the boss informs me that the drag link is nice and tight. what? So I go look at it and sure enough it’s tight. Drove it for a week and every morning check that drag link and it’s always tight. Next time I add oil, standing on the drag link it moves. All kinds of slop in it again so I go get the boss to show him. He is amazed as I am. Rocking the wheel back and forth would tighten the drag link nice and tight, but when I had my weight on it it would pop into a position that had a ton of play in it. The boss changed it out that day.
Oh lord just thought of another one. 1984 Celebrity sedan wife’s car. Fuel line rotted thru so brought in to garage. It had a 4 cyl FI so they changed line with high pressure hose and away we go! Every time she stopped car and then started it would stall, everytime. Brought it back numerous times changed filters checked pump pressure, anything to do with fuel system. Finally the shop manager aka the Boss and owner said enough up on the hoist one more time. He found fuel line had twisted and when you stepped on the gas torque moved engine just enough to cut fuel off and stall. Argggh I hate old Chevy 4 cylinder FI anything..
’95 Firebird that wouldn’t start unless the driver’s door was open.
Could have been a built in theft deterrent kill-switch from a previous owner.
I’ve relayed here issues with my wife’s ’86 Olds Cutlass Cruiser and all of the things that repeatedly quit working, which was pretty much everything. It was the Miley Cyrus of cars, quite pretty actually, so I stuck with it hoping that with patience and care it would eventually straighten out and become less annoying. One issue that always vexed me was the engine cooling system. It repeatedly quit one part at a time. First the fan burned out, then the manifold switch, then the relay, then the wiring harness. I actually looked at replacing the harness as I had all the other parts. At the time it was still available from GM for about $125. After looking at a diagram of the harness I realized it wrapped all the way around the pathetic carbureted V6 and the original was hidden in a cake of oil and goo from all of the inaccessible gaskets and seals that were leaking so I decided to replace only the burned portion that plugged into the relay. At the time salvage yards were full of these things so there should have been no problem finding a decent donor car, right? Wrong! Every pre 1988 front drive A-body I could find had some portion of the cooling system harness that was heat damaged. Many had been redneck engineered by wiring the fan directly to the ignition, a toggle switch or some more direct connection to the alternator or battery. At this point I realized that it was probably futile for a lay person with my level (or lack) of skill to try to fix this engineering debacle so I simply replaced the wires leading to the relay with wires the next gauge heavier than the originals. This actually worked for a couple more years until the convergence of exasperations finally became intolerable.
My Fiat 124 Spyder’s charging system light whould glow dimly whenever I used the headlights.
New alternator, battery, voltage regulator made no difference. A diagnostic check showed it putting out 14.5 volts and the rated alternator wattage.
The battery never ran down, started always cranked over at the same speed.
Finally, after hundreds of dollars of parts and months of shoulder shrugging; I pulled the bulb out of the dashboard, applied a thin coat of red nail polish and the dim glow went away; but the light still illuminated (as it should) when turning the key on and before cranking the engine.
Problem solved.
(effin’ Fiats…….)
Every now and then the float on my 1953 Studebaker Champion Regal Starlight Hardtop’s carburetor would stick. The car would start shaking, bork out black smoke, flood out and die.
Gradually I became quite attuned to the early symptoms and could pull off on the shoulder. raised the hood, and gently tap the side of the carb with a toy pink plastic hammer from my best friend’s baby toy crib. The float would unstick, I’d grind away on the starter and pull away from the shoulder.
I did receive some curious stares from motorist as I did this procedure.
The person I sold the car to laughed and laughed when I gave him the hammer and explained how to use it.
I kept a rubber mallet in the trunk of my ’74 Dart.
If it stalled at idle, it was a stuck float, and a couple taps on the carb took care of it.
If it stalled at highway speeds it was crud blocking the fuel pickup, and a couple taps on the bottom of the gas tank would take care of it.
One time it was something electrical and that got weird, nothing to hit with the mallet!!
The rear door seals on my mom’s 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee kept coming loose at the top rear corner (as if there wasn’t enough slack to fill in the corner) letting in a substantial amount of wind noise and even a tiny bit of water when going through a car wash. I always thought it was very bizarre and quite frankly, embarrassing for a car.
My folks, acting on Consumer Reports’ glowing recommendation, bought a new 1990 VW Jetta. CR cooed that the car “exuded quality”—must’ve been a typo; evidently they’d meant to say excluded. The weird thing: occasionally, completely at random and with no warning, the car would sometimes get us there and back without drama or failure.
You win!
My first generation Eddie Bauer Explorer was making this gawdawful grinding/clicking noise in the rear end. Figured it had to be something with the axle or u-joints or something back there. When I decided to drive it down the street to the shop, the person following saw something fly out from underneath and I heard a loud clang-it was a very chewed up beer or pop can. It got inside somewhere and was getting chewed up by something, hence the noise, but I have no idea where it was. A number is us looked around under the vehicle and never saw it.
Second was my 1st generation Taurus that would vapor lock (or something like that) with gas with a slightly higher ethanol content-but still within the manufacturers specs. I would always fill it up at the same place so I would just put in the gas that would do that.
That said, the weirdest thing about that car was how many people wanted that hoopdie when we put it in the local classifieds for $500 (which was a little above scrap price at the time) and we were clear in the add that it had issues, could hardly beat them off with a stick. There were people from out of state who would call, excitedly even, and ask us to hold it because they would drive down and drive it back. I had to adamantly assure them that this car was just a POS with a bad tranny, power steering going out, windshield badly cracked, significant rust and tires that were on their last plus the alignment was gone and the dash would shake badly at highway speeds-among various assorted bad noises and rattles that you couldn’t tune out with the radio and that it would NOT make it-and they all acted deflated to boot! Finally I sold it to a couple guys with a flatbed and cash in hand who planned on driving it into the ground then parting it out and scrapping the rest-which is about all you could do with it.
Still got calls on that thing a couple months after it was gone. It was a pretty nice car for what it was and in better days but nothing great. Why people were so excited about an old clapped out Taurus is beyond me.
England, summer of 1998. I’m a student in London and, with one of my flatmates, we manage to get a ride to Somerset for the Glastonbury festival. The driver: an old hippie with a strong West Country accent. The ride: a very rusty Vauxhall Astra Mk 1 estate with automatic transmission.
All goes well until, somewhere on the highway near Basingstoke, the car just loses momentum. Engine still works, but no traction. The driver and my friend push the car to a right shoulder while I steer (still to this day the only time I “drove” a car in the UK!).
I’m the only one with a credit card, so I fork out about 100 pounds over the phone so the RAC can come to our rescue. They promptly show up, but seem clueless. The hippie seems to have a better idea than they do what the issue is and takes control. Turns out the plug for the transmission had come unscrewed and all the fluid had leaked out on the highway. He just plugged the hole and put new fluid in, and off we went, in under 10 minutes!
I remember he paid me back with rolling tobacco pouches. At least I think it was tobacco.
When I was a senior in high school, I had an ’80 Firebird that I swapped a 455 into. Sometime after the engine swap, all of a sudden the dome light would come on when I stepped on the brake pedal and the brake lights would come on when I turned on the dome light. So not only did I not have brake lights but when driving at night, the dome light lit the inside of the car up. And it didn’t do it all the time, it was just intermittent. The 2 are not on the same circuit so I never figured it out but it made for some surprised riders in the car.
My car in high school, an ’86 Mercury Cougar, would occasionally emit a small but steady stream of smoke out of the steering wheel from behind the horn button.
81 Mazda GLC, in 96. Had been my mom’s car, ran fine in Arizona. As soon as it hit Michigan winter weather, it started acting like the choke was stuck shut, loading up, blowing buckets of carbon and sometimes stalling but a visual check confirmed the choke was opening fine. Pulled the flex hose from the shroud around the exhaust manifold to the air cleaner intake. The inner lining had pulled away from the outer jacket of the hose and shrunk, leaving only about a 1/2″ airway, inside the 2″ diameter hose. I attacked the inner lining with a long screwdriver, chipping it away until I had a 2″ ID hose again. Put the hose back in place and went for a ride….engine still loaded up.
Took off the air cleaner housing and looked in the snorkel. The damper in the snorkel was jammed in the cold position, where it pulled heated air from the manifold shroud, instead of cool outside air. Held the snorkel in the steam from a boiling tea kettle and the damper moved as it should have. Thinking I had unjammed the damper, put the air cleaner back on the car and went for a ride….engine still loaded up.
Tried to adjust the damper as the bimetallic spring must have gotten out of adjustment after 15 years, but only succeeded in breaking the damper’s shaft and the plastic damper fell out of the snorkel.
Put the now damperless air cleaner housing back on the car and went for a ride….that old 1.5 ran perfectly.
This was the offending car. A broken link in the timing chain finally spelled it’s doom in 99.
Where do I start. All the good ones seem to start with a call from my wife. ’91 Buick Century 3.3 – running rough. I drive to a “mechanic” for testing. Phone call “you need a new engine”. I thank him and drive it home. We pulled the valve cover off the 2-4-6 side. While I am cleaning the gunk off the cover said wife points to the valve train and says “is that supposed to be like that?” No. One of the rocker arm studs had broken off. A real mechanic replaced it for $600 and we put another 100,000 km on it. 2000 Saturn LS1 – funny noises then no drive. I met her at the side of the road. The engine cradle had cracked in 3 places and the half shaft had pulled out of the tripot joint. That was lucky, as she was going dead slow. Still have this car, with another frame and now with an extra cross brace. Regarding the tail lights I have found there is a way for water to get in, but not back out. Drilling a small drain hole can solve this. The spider was probably just an egg when he got in there. Maybe there is enough nutrition in the egg to make him big.
The strangest issue I ever had was late in the summer of last year, before I got my driver’s license and was still learning. The passenger side door to my Cadillac ETC had started acting up, not in terms of closing the door or opening or what have you. But, for some reason, and to this day I still can’t figure out why, plastic bits that formed the interior door molding started falling out of the bottom of the door, sometimes in small chunks, sometimes in whole sections that looked like Tetris blocks, but it would fall out. I just attributed to typical 90s GM build quality and moved on, but to this day, I’ve never ever heard of interior lining from the door just falling out in pieces, on any car. Guess I was a lucky one.
1993 Sundance Duster & 1996 Neon Expresso that shared the same AM/FM tape deck design and the exact same problem: The volume knob (and off switch) broke, meaning you could turn the radio off, and it might not turn back on again. ? Solved that by never turning off the radio in either car. The Neon introduced a new trick: Hit a big enough pothole or bump in the road and the radio changed stations. ? I’d be listening to 97.9 FM and BUMP the radio would change to 98.1.
Everyone’s “gremlin” stories remind me of the Popular Science “Gus Wilson’s Model Garage” tales of a mechanic’s problem solving that appeared for decades. And–lo and behold–someone’s scanned them all (1925-to-1970, it says) for our convenience: http://www.gus-stories.org/index1.htm
The most embarrassing problem I had with a car was with my 1981 Eldorado. I was stuck behind a slowpoke and honked my horn to get him moving. Of course, the horn stuck and would not stop honking. ? I pull into a parking lot and disconnect the battery. The horn stops, so I reconnect the battery. The horn starts honking again, so I get the owners manual and find the horn circuit breaker and pop it out. Horn stops honking. I drive home and now I’m curious. I pull the steering wheel cover off and solve the problem. The steering wheel had the horn activated by pressing the center of the wheel, right on top of the Cadillac wreath and crest. In the center of the wheel opposite the center pad was a thin metal contact. The Cadillac emblem had two steel screws that made contact with the metal contact completing the circuit. All well and good unless you REALLY pressed the center pad. Then the two screws pierced the metal contact and remained stuck. ? Good going GM. Needless to say I was very careful if I honked the horn the rest of the time I owned the car.
Fast forward to 2002. My Cadillac DTS horn wouldn’t blow unless you banged on it. Supposedly there wasn’t a recall for it either.
Whats with Cadillacs and stuck horns? My ’97 DeVille did this, the horn stuck-on all on its own. Tapping the button and removing the fuse did nothing. Turns out the horn relay under the hood corroded inside and shorted-out.
The horns blew so much they damaged the coils inside. Now the horns emit a wheezy croak instead of a strong blast.
I owned an early Camry coupe that would blow its own windows out when you shut the doors. Apparently – according to the dealer – Toyota made the sealing too good; air pressure had nowhere to go and simply popped out the rear windows instead. Still loved that car, though.
Does mushrooms growing on the back carpet of an `81 Olds Delta 4 door sedan count?
soooo many to choose from! :[
1st car at 16. 68 ford custom 500 sedan with bench seat. developed the most annoying squeak in the world but would only do it when I was alone in the car. people were starting to question my sanity and after a while I was starting to agree! finally my dad borrowed it (by himself) and heard it. glory be! long story (and search) short, there was a broken spring in the passenger side of the front bench. of course, anyone sat there..no squeak!
latest one. 2006 caravan. after driving it for 4 years and about 100,000 miles, every so often the battery would die for no reason. no warning, long or short trip, give it a boost and it would fire up fine til the next time. battery was less than a year old, alternator was fairly new and system always showed good charge. after finally replacing pretty much EVERYTHING it just decided to work. I drove it another year then sold it to a friend who drove it for a couple more and never a problem. to this day my garage still doesn’t know what fixed it!
Your battery story reminds me of my 94 Club Wagon. At about 10-11 years old, the battery would be dead if you didn’t drive it for 2 days. Every time. This went on for months. My mechanic checked and checked, and finally asked me how long ago the radio had stopped working. As a last resort, he took out the dead radio. Fixed.
I’ve disconnected the battery in my car because something in the radio draws it down after a few days of non-use. I suspect the amplifier circuit because everything else in the radio is off but when hooked up it works perfectly.
Re: old batteries: I finally replaced the OEM battery in the ’94 F150 THIS YEAR. Yup, 22 years old and I know it for a fact because it’s the only vehicle I’ve ever bought new my entire life. Anyway, it had been getting weaker for many years- go figure- but still the truck would start, albeit with ever slower cranking speed, which I never noticed because it deteriorated so gradually (the boil the frog slowly thing). The fast cranking speed with the new battery sure took me by surprise! Another insidious side effect that gradually crept up on it was ever lower fuel economy. I had attributed that to maybe a bad O2 sensor or something related to many miles and years but when it got the new battery economy immediately jumped about by about 4mpg! My theory is that the alternator had to constantly work extra hard to keep that old battery topped off, and hard-working alternators draw horsepower right from the crank.
Electrical gremlins can be like that, especially if electrics aren’t your strongest area of expertise. One day the entire electric gauge panel on the F150 spazzed out, and the cruise control didn’t work either. I spent an entire day checking fuses, relays, components, and connections but found nothing. However, at the end of the day, it was fixed and the issue never returned. My theory is there was a bad connection somewhere and disturbing it re-established continuity.
Actually had something like this happen with my father’s truck recently. So he has an extended cab S-10 with four wheel drive. Recently something was going wrong and he had to get it towed to my house (where he was headed) to get it fixed. Next day he comes back after leaving it at my house, and we begin diagnosing issues. Dead battery? Nope. Alternator? Nope. Spark plugs? Nope. As we’re going through the list, he asks me to turn it over. We find out by listening to it that the fuel pump’s not turning on. Cue us having to lift the bed off to get to the fuel pump. We replace the pump. Still won’t turn on. So next we replace the plug in the wiring harness the pump’s attached to. Still won’t turn on. Resolder the wires. Success! For about five minutes. It worked once and then quit. So we messed with the wiring harness and plug some more. Finally we had the fuel pump working and the truck running. But when we lowered the bed back onto the truck the fuel pump stopped working again. I crawled under there, and nothing had moved or come undone. So dad goes out and gets a new battery. Not the problem. Checks the fuses again. Not the problem. And then after sixteen hours of messing with the stupid thing I slam my foot down in the bed where I was sitting and said “I give up.” Lo and behold, at that exact moment he was turning the key and the truck started up. He hasn’t had an issue since. We still don’t know what in the world was causing the issue with the wiring harness and the bed to make the fuel pump do that.
Some electric fuel pumps have regular issues and simple cures, I had many many years ago a disintegrating Morris Isis they have a SU electric fuel pump mounted in the boot/trunk, the variety that sucks at a low vacuum and pumps at high pressure mine began giving trouble the points inside it that activate the diaphragm were burned out several cleans later it was obvious a replacement must be sought not easily, back then it was the same pump fitted to Jaguars so not easy to get or cheap, to continue driving one had to stop when the car spluttered and tap the pump the points would start clicking and off I would go on rural sections of road pulling over onto the rough surface beside the pavement was often enough to shake the SU electrics back into action this continued for a couple of weeks until the recond pump arrived and normal travel could be resumed.
This one is my fault, but pretty weird at the time.
My future wife and I were driving home from a neighbouring city one summer when I saw an ambulance approaching from behind. This was on a 2-lane highway. I pulled to the side, along with the cars in front and behind me to let it pass. Once the ambulance passed, the idiot driver behind me hit the gas and passed a couple of us before we had a chance to get back on the road. Being young at the time, I pounded hard on my horn (1992 Saturn, no airbags) out of frustration.
Everything seemed fine for about a week, but then the weather turned a little colder. In the middle of the night I could hear a horn blaring from somewhere. Turns out I had bent the horn plate and the temperature change caused it to go off. At this point I had no idea what was going on and pulled the fuse. I plugged it in the next day and it was fine, until night time, when it went off again.
Since then I’ve taken it easy on the horn.
My first car was a 1986 Chrysler LeBaron GTS. Toward the end of its life, it started to flake out. When mom still drove it, we’d hit a bump and the door dinger would start dinging for a few seconds. Later, the Fasten Seat Belts light would come on randomly and the door dinger would ding for miles at a time. Then one day the tachometer started wildly bouncing across the entire sweep of the gauge.
By the end, the tachometer spent most of its time pegged at the 6,400 rpm at the end of the sweep, the Check Gauges light would blink on and off sometimes like a strobe light, and the door ding was dinging more often than not.
The other one? There’s a black smudge on the orange speedometer needle in our ’78 Continental. I have no idea how it got there, and I’m not ambitious enough to pull the cluster to attempt to remove it.
The door dinger issue sounds like the phantom click in my wife’s Alero. The clicker for the turn signals/hazard flashers acquired a life of its own, and would start clicking for no reason at various times. Slow clicks, fast clicks, intermittent clicks, clicking for entire trips. At times the clicks were so fast they sounded like a buzzer. Then, for weeks, it wouldn’t do it. Then it would start again. Until you used the turn signal, which would click at the proper rate, then once released, the wild clicks would start again. It was unrelated to the turn signals themselves, which worked properly, just that damn click click click…
Did that intermittently for probably 4 years. It wasn’t worth tearing into the dash to get to the module itself which was buried back there, but I regretted not taking care of it when I had the dash apart to replace the ignition cylinder and switch.
Our old 1992 Chrysler LeBaron convertible had an oddity known as the “Chrysler Wobble” in the front end from 41-45 mph. Never did figure out what it was, even after replacing the front shafts.
A beautiful car, but somewhat of a money pit, but buying it with 102K on the clock in 1999 probably had something to do with that.
One more thing: It had a habit of running very hot – the temperature needle would go up to the top then drop back down – over and over. I figured the engine was allowed to overheat and a crack developed somewhere.
Anyway, I said good-bye to it after the engine gave up the ghost in September, 2007. Sold it to our mechanic for $500.
A love/hate relationship all the way, but was it sharp looking!
One of the many little issues that have caused me to temporarily stop driving the Volvo falls into this category. Drove it on an errand one day and when I came back out, the car would not start. Turn the key, nothing. No click, no crank, not a sound. Fiddled with the key for a little bit and it started fine. Started happening more often until one day it just flat refused to start. On the off chance I took in the battery and charged it up as it wasn’t at full capacity; didn’t help. So I did some research and figured it could either be the ignition switch or park/neutral switch. Replaced the ignition switch (*not* an easy job in that car, getting to the bolts holding it in was damn near impossible), no joy.
At that time I had moved and the car had been parked on the street in my old neighborhood for almost a month, and had acquired one of those stickers warning you that the city is going to tow the car to impound if you don’t move the damn thing. So to bypass whatever was causing the problem, I wired a test lead directly to the starter. Touching the other end of that to the battery terminal, cranked the car and off I went. Back home I continued intermittently troubleshooting and managed to run the battery down in an unrelated incident. Took it in and this time, it needed to be replaced. Installed the new battery and, lo and behold, the car starts with the key. Reliably. First try.
For about a month. Then the problem reappeared and the test lead had to be pressed back into service. WTF?? I discovered on a Volvo forum that, sometimes, the wire from the ignition switch to the starter will sometimes not transmit enough juice to the starter to kick it over, and that putting a relay on that wire will solve the problem (mostly) permanently. Not sure why that should do anything, but I’ll try that next, because getting to that park/neutral switch looks like a pretty nasty job due to–surprise!–inaccessible bolts.
This was a common problem on air cooled VW’s as they aged. We used to carry old style ford starter relays and wire them to the starter solenoid, cured the problem. Must be a Bosch thing.
A few weeks ago, my sister’s brake lights were on all the time, turned out to be a small button on the brake pedal arm broke off (got crispy and fell down to carpet)…got that fixed and not 2 weeks later getting my car ready for inspection (different make/model) I found that BOTH my rear brake lights were out (my CHMSL worked OK though)…I found one side had burned out bulb (not unusual) but the other side had the bulb completely missing. I had my car serviced a few weeks before (nothing at all to do with brake lights, or even the rear of the car) but I wonder if someone might have been messing with my lights, though admittedly I don’t check my brake lights regularly, I can’t understand how the bulb would be “missing” (couldn’t find any remaining bulb in the enclosure, if it fell out, etc). Don’t know how long I was driving with no brake lights, but thank goodness for the CHMSL, if not for that, I might have been rearended, especially bad as I live in an urban environment with lots of traffic. Replaced both bulbs, and brake lights all work OK now, but I couldn’t figure out how both sides were gone initially.
The ’71 Vega I once had engaged the starter while I was driving, I pulled over and shut the engine off which did stop the ignition, but the starter was still running and spinning the engine along, and it was beginning to smoke as it kept spinning away. I finally was able to pull off the battery cable while burning my fingers at the same time. After things cooled down I reattached the cable, everything worked perfectly and it never acted up again.
At work in the VW dealership one day a mechanic called me over to a VW 412 he was working on, and told me to step on the brake pedal. I did, and the started engaged and cranked the engine, and kept spinning until I lifted my foot. Whenever the brake lights came on, the starter cranked. The reason? Someone had fitted an incorrect bulb in the brake light socket. He installed a correct bulb, problem solved!
About a year ago my ’86 Jetta began to get hard to start after the engine was warmed up, but always started perfectly when cooled down. Finally got to the point where it had to sit an hour or so to cool down, then it would start right up. Tried a new pump relay, same result. After some internet research, I learned the fuel injection actually requires less pressure for the cold starting cycle than the warm starting cycle. A new fuel pump fixed the problem.
On a trip from California to Washington in my old ’70 C10 pickup, towing my 23 ft travel trailer. I noticed a strange “gurgling” sound when stopping for gas coming up through the bottom of the bed of the truck. Every time I stopped, the same sound would happen. Finally when I got to Oregon I heard a howling start to occur from the rear, and when I pulled into a rest stop the front of the trailer was covered in oil. I got under the truck, and it turned out the tailpipe had broken at the weld to the glass pack muffler that had been installed years ago, and the hot exhaust was blasting the pumpkin on the rear end and all the oil boiled out. I pulled the muffler away from the rear end and filled it back up with 140 wt oil. It got me to my destination, but kept howling and started clunking as well. I finally found a junkyard replacement rear end for $100 a few months later.
Just remembered the time I on my way to work in my 1964 VW Squareback. I had been on the freeway for a while when what sounded like a gunshot went off inside the car. I pulled over and bailed out, it was idling perfectly and I found no flat tire or bullet hole. After a few minutes I started looking around inside the car and found a can of silicone spray on the floor with the top blown off. The can was still hot from the rear heater vent it was laying next to. I was glad it wasn’t spray paint or WD 40, the contents completely evaporated, though the car had a strange smell inside for a while.
One time I pulled out of a gas station in my ’70 C10 and heard a couple of clunks as I pulled out onto the street as a police car was approaching. He turned on his lights, pulled me over pissed off like hell, and showed me his broken windshield on his brand new patrol car. I had removed the tailgate on the truck and he said something must have rolled out of the bed and was going to write me a ticket for unsecured load. I told him I never put anything in the bed when the tailgate was removed, and he could see the bed was clean and empty. He gave me a dirty look, got back in the car and took off doing a big burn out.
The next time I got gas I lifted the hood to check the oil and the cap was missing. I then realized I had added oil at the gas station and left the cap on the valve cover, it had fallen off and bounced down the road and hit the cops windshield.
After driving my ’68 Nova I would noticed drips of some oily substance on my right shoe that looked, smelled and felt like transmission fluid. Inspection under the dash revealed transmission fluid splashed everywhere. WTF?
Turned out that a seal connecting the speedometer cable to the transmission was bad. This allowed the spinning cable to transport transmission fluid up to the speedometer where it would drip out, falling all over the wiring – and my shoe!
Squirrels had a thing for the vents in my 66 Plymouth Valiant and would constantly fill them with hickory nuts, despite the fact it was a daily driver. (actually I was in college so it only got driven when I needed to go off campus, so it would sit for up to 3 to 5 days at a times). It never failed, every time I opened the vents there were at least a half a dozen nuts in there. ONLY issue I ever had with the car.
Bought a brand-new 1974 Mercury Capri…without AC. A few months later decided to have the Ford AC system installed by the dealer. Picked up the car after the install, started it and oil began shooting out of the dash panel. They’d neglected to re-attach the oil line to the oil pressure gauge. Service did what they could to clean up the oil but the interior smelled of engine oil ever after.
To add insult, the AC never, ever would blow cold air.
’74 Duster that stalled every time you turned left. ’75 Pinto manual who’s gearshift pulled right out while shifting. ’87 Olds Cutlass custom ordered brand new with a power sunroof switch that was installed backwards. I dealt with it as I didn’t want them pulling that all apart.
’90 Olds I bought used in perfect condition other than a slightly loose passenger armrest. This was the Touring Edition with more seat controls in the center console that quit working. I discovered accidentally while cleaning the car and hitting the regular power seat buttons on that console that if you held one of the buttons down, the other controls would work. Took it to dealer, service advisor was obviously drunk and started banging on it. I told him to stop and drove off. It worked fine ever since.
A friend had a 2010 VW Jetta that was recalled because they’d stall when you blew the horn (built with pride in Mexico).
As long as we are ripping on Ford electrics: my 70 Cougar developed a starter oddity. Sometimes, I would turn the key, the starter solenoid would click, but the starter would not spin. Learned that it was the stud on the starter that the cable from the solenoid attached to working loose. Seems the stud was screwed into a hole that only had a couple threads tapped in it and, after years of being under tension from the stud, the threads would strip enough to loosen the connection enough so not enough current could get through to spin the starter. Reaching under the car and turning the stud by hand would tighten it enough to run the starter once or twice, but the solution was welding the stud in place…one wonders why Ford didn’t do that in the first place.
I’m sure there are others I’ve forgotten, but these stick out for me.
My first car was a ’68 VW Squareback. My dad and I (mostly Dad) rebuilt the engine. It ran like a champ.. for a while. Then it started losing power, to the point where it would barely drive. I was worried sick that I had ruined it somehow. Eventually found that the rocker shaft bolts (or nuts?) had loosened up, so I was only running on two cylinders! Added a bit of blue Loctite, re-torqued, and good to go – whew!
Same car, years later, developed a terrible noise that varied with RPM. It was a 2nd car at that point, so it sat for quite a while. Eventually looked into it, found that the big bolt that attaches the big fan to the end of the crank had loosened up. Maybe 16 year-old me did a 1/2ass job tightening bolts after that rebuild…
Another one from the early driving years was on a friend’s ’68 bug. It started, idled, and drove well, but died as soon as he tried to back up. That brought on some head scratching. Finally tracked it down to a shorted backup light wire – backup light switch was powered from the coil +12v wire, apparently with no fuse.
The last one was several years ago, in my 2000 Silverado with the 5.3. Was driving to work and developed a bit of a tick, which grew to quite a clatter over a couple miles. Shut it off & coasted into a parking lot. Got a ride to work, and a tow home that evening. Experienced a bit of deva-ju when I pulled the rocker cover and found a rocker shaft with a bolt about 1/2 way backed out! Engine had never been worked on, so it was a factory feature, which stayed dormant for about 70k miles! Blue Loctite saves the day again.
My Dad owned a 1965 Chevy Impala 4 door hardtop back in the day….The car had power windows that were not wired through the ignition switch…therefore they worked with the car off as well as,on.
I was only a few years old at the time and sometimes would sit in the car in the driveway and play with the window switch…rolling the windows up and down while the car was off.
When my Dad would go to start the car after this, it would not crank…..What he had to do is take a jumper wire from the battery to the starter selenoid and momentarily make contact….He would then go to start the car and it would start right up…..Something happened when playing around with the power windows with the key off caused the selenoid to stick until my Dad jumped the switch.
The first Ford Sierra I bought (as 20 year old in 1994) had an odd habit of strange electrical gremlins and stalling when the brakes were applied. It was an automatic too, so no clutch to pop to restart it compounded matters. No one had any idea what was causing it, and I bought it cheap as a result. My Dad’s a mechanic, but neither he nor I could work it out either. Until after a few weeks I was doing something under the bonnet and noticed the burnt hole above the battery. Turned out the battery was taller than factory spec and although the bonnet closed without it touching, every when the brakes were applied it would tip forwards enough to make contact with the underside of the bonnet and short out, causing the electrical gremlins and stalling… Sure learnt a lesson that day! And yes, my current Sierra has the proper battery in it!
Hey, what is the current status of that Sierra of yours? I don’t recall a follow-up post after that one that ended with the engine out sitting on your mechanic’s floor. We need closure, man!
Hey Charlie, structurally and mechanically it’s (finally) alive, in great health and fully road legal again. I’m using it weekly (it goes and sounds great!) but it’s not quite finished yet. It needs a replacement upper dashboard (the current one’s badly warped) and some other minor bits, and then it’ll be ready for its CC reveal!
So many bizarre gremlins in the Pontiacs I’ve owned. Windows lowering themselves, even with no one sitting in the car, in my first ride, a 1990 Bonneville. On one summer day, she emitted a screaming, grinding-the-starter sound twice for a few seconds each while sitting in the driveway, not having been driven in a couple days. I took this as a sign and went for a long drive… I never did figure out what caused that. It never did it again that I’m aware of. My 1995 and 2004 Grand Am four doors would lock and unlock themselves randomly. I learned to always leave a window down when clearing snow or doing anything else with the keys inside the car. The dome light on the Bonnie and the 04 would occasionally come on weakly for no obvious reason. The firewall must have deteriorated in the Bonneville – my legs felt singed from engine heat coming into the cabin after it hit 300,000 miles. At that point, I was surprised it still ran.
My uncle’s Toronado had a digital dash that would glitch out and show his speedometer rapidly climbing. It would get to 100+ mph, drop to zero, then get weird. My uncle would violently punch the dashboard until it worked again. Three dealers and a family mechanic could never figure out how to fix it.
My grandmother’s 2000 Taurus went through a phase where it simply wouldn’t try to start for days at a time, as if it had no battery. Ford’s dealer couldn’t diagnose it and insisted that only a new car would help, while mechanics in town had no idea what it was. This went on for months, with repair after expensive repair. One day I happened to see something hanging a little low under the front bumper. Turns out it was a loose starter wire that fifteen year old me spotted and fixed after six shops missed it (and took advantage of my mechanically disinclined grandmother).
My 560SEL goes to full heat no matter what the weather if I do a long, two lane road foot to the floor pass. I’m assuming it’s a vacuum leak in the HVAC system, It also shoots bearing end caps out like a gunshot when I over tighten the wheel bearings.
Got another one. A friend and I were driving his ’67 Ford F350 through the wilderness of northern Ontario. In the middle of the night on a deserted road the engine just died and would not restart. After sitting for 5 minites the engine restarted and we drove a quarter mile, then it died again.
We got out of the truck. This truck had the gas tank in the cab behind the seat. Just by chance, I noticed the gas cap shining in the moonlight and noticed it looked……. wrong. It looked like an old style engine oil fill cap. I realized these caps are non-vented and, if used with an old gas tank, would cause a partial vacuum to form in the tank. I removed the cap and sure enough, there was a big sucking sound as air rushed into the tank. The fuel pump could not suck fuel against the vacuum, causing a fuel starvation problem.
I left the cap loose and had no more problems. But I counted myself lucky that old tank was so visible. I never would have thought to go looking for a bad gas cap.
Current 2012 Ford Escape will not engage starter on first turn of ignition switch. However, on second attempt, no issues. Only applies to my primary key with door lock buttons that I keep on me.
The spare key with door lock button works with no issues. Also, an additional spare key bought from the dealership (sans door lock buttons) works with no issues.
Had a similar set up (3 keys) for my 2005 Escape and never had an issue like above.
I have found that if you have the Satellite Radio on in 2016 Mustang Convertibles and you unlock or lock the handle for the top the radio will cut out for a second or two.
Oh, the stories I could tell …
1. A 1966 Falcon that had a problem in the wiring in the steering column that would cause the horn to start blowing when you turned the steering wheel more than a couple of degrees to the right, and it wouldn’t stop until you turned it to the left. Made for some interesting looks from other drivers after going through a cloverleaf.
2. Same car that had the driveshaft from an automatic transmission, but was equipped with three on the tree. The driveshaft was about 4 inches shorter than the manual version, and the manual transmission was about 3 1/2 inches shorter than the automatic. I had to be careful when cresting a hill; if the car rode up on its suspension too far the driveshaft would fall out. Fortunately I only had to life the car a little bit to get it back in, something I became pretty adroit at doing.
3. A 1962 Dodge panel van with the six-way power seat from 1973 New Yorker. Very plush, but the rigged wiring meant that, every once in a while, things under the dash would spontaneously catch fire. I did manage to get things hooked back up and working while driving home, solely by fumbling around under the dash by feel whilst traveling down the road. Sold it that weekend.
And finally …
Not really an issue with the car, but a funny story from high school. Wicked early New Year’s morning 1981. I’m sixteen years old and driving a 1969 Lincoln with a questionable amount of tread left on the tires home from a New Year’s Eve party (and no, I was not intoxicated … just a dumbass). There had been a little bit of an ice storm, but I was convinced of my invulnerability. As I made a turn to go through a neighborhood on my home home, I noticed a guy in an early 70s Mustang lose it on the ice and run over a street sign … then he backed up and took a few more whacks at it. Fortunately, he stopped long enough for me to make my turn.
So I’m distracted, watching in the rear view mirror as he takes another run at the sign. As a result, I didn’t really see that the road had CURVED, while I had continued STRAIGHT. So when I turned my attention back to the road I saw that I was about to run off the road.
Cut the wheel sharply to the left, but only a little — it was a gentle curve, after all. However, I forgot about the ice …
I went up on the curb, the passenger wheel rode up the guardrail, it then dropped off and I nailed a fire hydrant, tearing it off at the base (for some reason it was not hooked up, as there was no water coming out, for which I was eminently grateful — it was about 15 degrees out). I came to a stop next to the curb, looking for all the world like I had planned to just park there.
With the exception, of course, of the right front tire that had been sliced open, the mangled front end, and the fire hydrant jammed under my front bumper.
So I get the jack out and go about the business of replacing the nearly bald right front tire with the only slightly more bald spare tire. While I’m doing this, Mustang Guy — remember him? — pulls up, gets out of his car, studies my tracks carefully, assesses the damage, shakes his head sorrowfully, then says “hey, can you help me put the hydrant in my front seat? I want to make a lamp.”
No kidding. It’s 15 degrees out, dark as the inside of a coal bin, and I’m struggling to get the car jacked up enough to change the tire, not even knowing if it will be at all driveable afterward, and he just stands there watching me then wants me to help him put the fershlugginer fire hydrant in his car to make a lamp.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that those things weight about 100 pounds I would have thrown it at his head. As it was I simply went about my business, and once the car was up high enough I told him he could help himself.
And yes, the car did drive. However, the shift linkage had gotten mangled so it was permanently stuck in “Drive,” the exhaust system had been battered to the point that it sounded like the Queen Mary, and when I got home I had to park about a quarter mile away because that was the closest flat spot near my house where I didn’t have to worry about it suddenly rolling into someone’s living room (the parking brake was just effective enough to keep it stationary on nearly flat ground).
I drove it for two months like that, then I spotted another one of the same vintage in a cornfield. Bought it for $350, thinking I would use it for parts, but it ran better than the first one and had a leather interior to boot, so the first one went to a junkyard. And thus began my lifelong love affair with suicide door Lincolns. 🙂
Back in ’99 I bought a super low mileage ’89 Sedan DeVille cheap that needed some repairs from a deer hit. Fixed the pretty minor body damage and took it for a road test. It was a quite cool day that day so I fired up the heat and had an immediate urge do vomit… an incredibly bad stench soon filled the car. Got it back to shop and started searching for the source, turned out it sat a while after the deer accident and m ice decided to use the heater box for a com mode… hoo boy, that was no fun to clean out, let me tell you!!!
ONE Intermittent/random windshield wiper sweep every other day, for no reason whatsoever!
Pretty sure it was a ’91 GMC Jimmy S-15,(or a 2000 GMC Envoy)?
Every now and then, the windshield wipers would make ONE sweep across the windshield.
Never figured it out…. never even bothered to try. lol
Our ’88 S-10 Blazer would do a random sweep of the windshield wipers about once an hour or so. The dealer tried and tried to fix it, but it did it for the 5 years I had it until it a friend sent to the junkyard at the end of 2010. The only times it really annoyed me was when it was “bug season” and it would smear the splattered bugs across the windshield at night. It caused me to use a lot of washer fluid. I always carried a jug of it in a box in the back. It was about the only problem it ever had that wasn’t fixed under warranty. It was a great vehicle, the only issues I had with it was a hunk of interior trim fell off, the starter died, it was under a “secret warranty”, and a headlight died on it. Other than those things, that all happened in the first 2000 miles, it was a rock for me, and until it was stolen the first time, my friend too. After that, it was still very good, until it rusted to the point where it leaked water so badly it couldn’t be driven any longer in the rain. It had almost 500,000 miles on it, and 2 of my friend’s 3 sons had learned to drive in it.
500K mi.? Wow. This one was pushing 200k. This was a rare 2wd one for the NorthEast. Finally, the entire front end needed replacing.. all steering, & suspension components. I had lifted the body 3″ just so I could stop the rust on the frame, which was successful, however the body was rotting too fast keep up with. Considering the front end needed $1800 in parts alone, I could not sell it… even for $500 as a parts truck. I drove it to the scrap metal yard in 2013, where they paid me $200. Then, it never got crushed. I believe an employee of the scrapyard was going to fix the front end & drive it. Or it would become a “yard vehicle”? The 4.3L TBI V-6 ran smooth & perfect! The TBI was so easy to work on compared to the FI’d ones. I loved that truck.. .the interior/exterior styling/design, the engine & how it rode.
My sister had a hideously colored, and ugly besides ’73 Cutlass S(?). It was new penny bronze with a tan vinyl top. It had problems from day one, and was a sad alternate univer version of my mom’s ’73 Cutlass Supreme. It had A/C, a power seat, and power door locks that seemed to be demon possessed. They would work normally, then suddenly began locking and unlocking randomly for several minutes at a time. We took it to the dealer, and the service writer said, “Well it’s got to be a short, it shouldn’t be hard to find!”. Well, it only took FOUR trips there to resolve it. The first time, it refused to do it at all, but started on the way home, so we drove it right back and showed the service manager before it resolved itself for a while. We got a loaner (Nice that the owner of the dealership was a lifelong friend of my dad’s) and they had the car almost a week before claiming it was done. They dropped it off at the house, and took the loaner back to the dealer. About 7pm that night, my sister was taking me to a friend’s house and the locks went nuts again. It was far worse than before. I was at my friend’s house about 11pm when my sister called to say that she was stuck on the other side of town with a dead battery as the locks were still trying to go up and down after she got out of the car. Back to the dealer it went, and it stayed a long time. We had a different, and IMHO, the second best loaner ever, a ’70 442, red with no vinyl top. Even my sister admitted it looked a lot better than her car. I tried to get my dad to keep it, as it seemed better than the ’73 in every way, but no, he just laughed at my suggestion. When my sister’s car came back, they hadn’t fixed the locks at all, they just disconnected the power to them. My dad called the owner who actually came to the house to drop off another loaner, a brand new ElDorado, fully pimped. He said he would keep the car until it and it’s other soon to be chronic issue that had made it’s first of many appearances, a stumble off of idle. It was gone almost 2 weeks, but when it came back, the lock issue was resolved, once and for all. The stumble was an annual, end of winter issue until my sister got rid of it. Her next car, a ’79 Cutlass in an awful shit brown over shittier brown, was an even bigger turd than the ’73 was. The ’79 had all kinds of lemon law level issues. Even the steering wheel fell apart. She finally had enough of it by ’86 or so, and she bought her first car that actually was, at first, trouble free, an ’86 Maxima. The honeymoon was short lived, as it turned into a parts sucking POS by the end of the second year. It broke stuff continually until it was traded for the first of her two Mazda crapmobiles. Back to Nissan after that, her latest being an Altima stripper that she got a great deal on last year. Of course, it’s another bad color, some sort of beige with a beige interior. She drives it like she’s being chased by a serial killer, a total change from her early drive it like she’s 100 year old style she started with. And she still is a “close driver”. At least her 6’4″ husband doesn’t have to suffer with a bench seat like he’s had to in some of the past cars.
’90 Mazda 323. I come home, park in the driveway, step out and shut the door, as I have done a zillion times. The door glass shatters. For absolutely no reason – I still don’t know why.
’82 Olds Delta 88. The horn button comes loose and beeps on every bump. I spend the next half hour puzzling and annoying every other driver as I drive across Brooklyn to my mechanic.
’79 Chevy Monte Carlo. Car won’t start half the time until I pop the hood and pull the stuck throttle manually. I leave it alone as a built-in anti-theft feature.
’00 Hyundai Elantra. The car intermittently makes a strange low grumbling noise for several minutes after being shut off. Two different mechanics could not find the culprit. Since the issue didn’t affect anything, I too left it alone, though over the years the noise did startle quite a few pedestrians walking past the car when parked.
’70 Pontiac Catalina. Car grinds to a halt. I pop the hood and notice that the engine is about a foot lower than it should be. My mechanic arrives with a jack and a 2×4, jacks up the engine, puts the wood under it. The car starts and runs just fine. I drive it to the nearest junkyard under its own power.
’72 BMW 2002:
I pull up to the Hardware Store…. “park in the driveway, step out and shut the door, as I have done a zillion times. The door glass shatters. For absolutely no reason – I still don’t know why.”
No one was sorry for the glass breaking on my classic car…. only wanting to know how I was going to clean up all the glass in the parking lot!
Therefore, I SOLD it 2 months ago!
😎