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?
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!
😎