Best Breakdown Stories (van, tire, exhaust, pickup truck)

[victimofGM]

Family legend story. Early 1980s. Alcoholic uncle driving a 70s Monte Carlo. He claims the car died out when trying to cross the tracks. It was there that he decided to go to sleep (pass out). He awoke the next morning still in the car but the entire front end (engine and all) was gone and he was now facing away from the tracks off the road. He’s still alive and still drinking himself to death. He’s not driving. Late 90s his car was stolen. Police asked for a description of the vehicle. He pointed to the car in his yard and said that was his parts car and that the car look just like that but it had a 2x4 for a front bumper. Car was found in less than 24 hours abandoned and not working. His parts car also doubled as a dog house. He named his dog “6 pack”. Went to visit one day and his alcoholic wife was missing her dentures. She said she had them when she went to the bar but when she woke up she didn’t have her teeth. Family,...if you don’t laugh you’ll cry.

[getatag]

I once helped blow an Austin Healey 3000 from West Virginia to North Carolina.

Bunch of us went to the Austin Healey Conclave in Pennsylvania 40+ years ago. About 6 or 8 of us caravanned up together and did the same returning home. (Strength in numbers, each of us carried different tools and spare parts... duh, no spare fuel pump)
One of the Healey's developed fuel pump issues. (Yeah, I know you would suspect it had to be something electrical in any of the Prince of Darkness cars.)
We had a piece of fuel/vacuum hose and had some electrical tape. One of the "mechanics" in the group said if we could seal the hose to the gas tank filler we could blow in it and provide enough pressure to force the gas to the engine. Danged if it didn't work. We put the top down, and two of us wedged in the rear jump seat of the Healey and alternated getting dizzy and lightheaded all the way back to NC.

[ukiyo-e]

Not a breakdown, exactly, but it rendered my car undriveable. I was living at home the first two years I was in college, and I was at the local public library working on a paper for one of my classes. When I was finished for the afternoon, I went out to my car, a 2-year-old 1971 Saab (what a fun, funky car, but that's another post entirely). I had had a lot of trouble with the Ford carburetor in that car.

So, I tried to start the car, and nothing, just a little clicking noise. Tried again, nothing. I went in the library and called my mom on a pay phone (now I am doubly-dating myself) and she said she would be there shortly to pick me up.

I walked back to the car and a man standing in front of his house across the street from the parking lot yelled, "I already called the fire department!" Just then I notice a flickering bright orange reflection in the front hubcap. The entire engine compartment was in flames.

Long story a little shorter, it took 6 weeks to have the car completely repaired and I ended up spending much of that time on the floor of a friend's apartment by the university because my insurance refused to pay for a loaner car.

The irony is I sold the car not long afterward, and bought a used VW Beetle which caught fire WHILE I was driving it in a remote area on my way to go backpacking, and by the time the driver behind me got to the next town to alert the fire department and they were able to reach me, the car was a toasted skeleton with 4 exploded tires.

My insurance company was NOT happy.

[doc1]

Back in the late '70s my daily driver was a '69 Pontiac GTO.

While out one night my alternator shot craps so I walked to the nearest pay phone and called my brother to pick me up.

I recalled a late '60s Pontiac sedan that had been abandoned and was losing parts on a daily basis.

When we went to see if we could get lucky, sure enough, the heads, intake and carb were missing and the alternator was just laying there.

We grabbed it and drove to the GTO and installed it. That car ran like a champ for few years then I sold it a bought an '78 Z28 in '80.

[Gatopescado]

I own Jeeps, so I have more stories than have internet to post them. Here's one:

AMC 360 in the '73 Commando would eat distributer gears pretty often. I always carried a few extra when I could find them.

Out off-roading in the middle of nowhere when sure enough, it starts to stumble and skip time. Had to pull the distributer out, and using a nail and a rock, remove and replace the chewed up gear, re-install and time the beast by hand/sound.

I made it home.

Got tired of that nonsense, so hooked up an oil line that pumped directly onto the cam/distributer gears. Never lost another one. Of course, the TurboHydramatic 400 then took a dump...

[Harry Hemi]

I had an 81 Corolla as my first car. At some point I got it to 80k miles where things started to go...the starter was first.
One dopey friend told me to bang on the starter with a rod and it will start. So I started doing that for a while to put off the repair.
One day after a long day of work, in the dead of winter, its dark, the starter wouldnt even run. As if it wasnt getting current. I checked the fuses, looked for bad wiring, checked the battery terminal for corrosion, nuthin.
I thought the battery was dead. I call AAA for a tow, wait an hour, the guy shows up and hooks up to the battery.
I watch the dashboard lights brighten up as he turns up the current. I try to start and nuthin.

He sits in the car and says "Oh!" disgustedly, as he shifts the car from reverse to park.

It starts right up.

[Harry Hemi]

My ex gf did her laundry in Queens. She goes from Astoria Blvd to the highway where theres a GIANT hole in the road that she didnt see (and many other drivers didnt see) and the hole takes out the tire and wheel. Somewhere around 5pm.

Her car didnt come with a spare.
I lived over an hour away at the time and had to run to queens to help get her off the road and wait with her for a tow.
There was no shoulder on this road and it was a blind turn, so I said we HAVE to get off this part of the highway were gonna get slammed. She jumps in my car and follows me as I limp the busted car to the next safe spot.

2 hours later, the tow truck still doesnt show up. She calls, "They'll be there in an hour". Were still on the highway, good thing its summer.

Meanwhile, two more people with busted rims stop in the same spot as us.

1 hour later, no tow truck, she calls, they say "They cant pick you up on the highway, you have to get off the highway".
So we trek the car to the next exit, blocking the hell out of exiting traffic and pull into a strip mall, call for the tow again and give them the location.
In the next 3 hours, my gf is screaming at her insurance company because were still waiting there at 10pm for the tow truck. By the time shes done, she got a free tow. The car gets towed to her street, we get to her apt at 12am.

The next day, I had to get new wheels for her car. I find a used 15" set for $150 with tires.
Start putting them on the car....oh s**t. The wheels are too small for the front calipers. This car came with 16" wheels and the current broken wheel is aftermarket.

So she drove around for a while with one kind of wheels on the front, and a different kind of 15" wheel on the back.

I dont have the great stories like the ones already here, but thought I'd share. Ive been lucky I guess.

[Stagemomma]

On Halloween I had a drs appt 120 miles from home. I didn't get out of there until 5 and got stuck in the city rush hour. It took me an hour to go the first 20 miles, so I ended up driving on the highway in the dark, which I really do not like to do (mostly because I fall asleep)

So I am tooling down the highway at 83 mph and start to pass someone. In the left lane I have about 3 seconds to respond to something in the road, a Playmate cooler. (not the 6 pack size). Because I was passing there was no where to swerve so I ran smack over it. My Prius started making a god awful noise (they are low to the ground). I was two miles from the nearest exit, in the country. I was NOT about to pull over on Halloween with no means of fixing my car and a Dead Cell phone. Made it to the exit, pulled off, no gas station or anything. I went another half mile to some sort of factory that blessedly had cars in the lot so I figured someone there might help. But a truck pulled in right behind me. He had seen sparks under my car and was worried I hadn't known about it. He was afraid it was my gas tank...I yelled like a lunatic "It's a bleeping cooler!". We got out to see that the cooler had gotten wedged in between the tire and the wheel well. We had to turn the wheel quite a bit to yank it out. The top of the cooler had flipped down, but 2.5 miles of asphalt had scraped off the entire bottom of the cooler.

So, not quite a breakdown, but it's still a good story.

[bmwguydc]

I have owned several British cars, so failures to proceed under the vehicle's own power was not an unknown circumstance in which I found myself. Perhaps one of the more interesting occurred with my grandmother's Rolls-Royce Silver Spur. She never liked to drive that Roller, preferring the handling of her Mercedes or Volvo wagon for around town, so I had to exercise it periodically. Once, when I was seventeen, I was driving it making only one stop from the dealership where it had a full service, when the car shuddered and then started to stall. Thankfully, I pulled to the shoulder before getting on a main road, and was only about a mile and a half from the house. The car would not start, so I called for a tow. The tow truck driver said that he could not find me twice, which I said was completely ridiculous because there simply could not have been that many blue Rolls-Royce by the side of the road with the flashers on and the hood opened. It was a 95-degree day with high humidity, and I was stopped in the baking sun, such that when the driver finally got there, after about three hours, I was in desperate need of water. The driver who came told me that the driver who was supposed to pick me up thought that it was a joke, and that there was not a current year Roller broken down by the side of the road, so he went to other jobs and then to lunch.

It was only because a county police officer stopped to see if I needed assistance, because I was on a curve, not totally blind, but one prone to speeders, and she had radioed the dispatcher to check on the tow, once I had said that I was okay. She likely thought I was going to pass out, I think, because I felt like I was melting, and had no water in the car with me. But, when the tow company had a police inquiry for the same tow, in the same location, the owner jumped in a flatbed and came to tow the car back to the dealership. It turned out that the fuel pump had failed, and the car did sputter the couple of times I tried it, but the heat was conspiring against me, I think, since I have had other fuel pumps act funny, but if it was cooled down, the pump would work to start the car again.

I had a Discovery II that had so many issues, electrical gremlins, and other assorted problems, where it would render itself unable to continue the most mundane of journeys one time, and then act as if it could climb Everest another minute. It was a dysfunctional relationship, to be sure, but the worst experience I had with a break down in that vehicle was when all of the lights stopped functioning, at a few minutes after Midnight one cold December night. I was on a dark road, and pulled off to the side, checked fuses, to no avail, so called for a tow truck. The Rover was dark, so there were a couple of near misses, despite the fact that I had set up two safety triangles, and a flashing red flashlight on the roof rack. The tow truck came to rescue me, and it was a driver whom I had known before with that truck. He towed it for service, and it was a wiring harness issue that had caused the lights to go out that night. I was frozen, despite wearing a winter coat, hat, gloves, since I was not about to sit in a dark Rover on a dark road with a couple of senseless drivers already nearly clipping the side/rear.

Perhaps the worst break down I ever had was on the Ortega Highway, at night, with my girlfriend who was an Orange County native. We were traveling from Dana Point, where her sister lived, to Las Vegas, and wanted to avoid the Irvine-Corona traffic on the toll road and 91 Freeway. The Jaguar XJR ran over something in the road, some sort of debris that basically shredded one of the tires. Now, if this were not a twisty two-lane road, I would be inclined to change it, but it's narrow, and people speed in cars and on bikes, so I was not in a position where it was safe to do so. I called for a tow truck and we waited for someone with proper lights to assist with a tire change, or tow to a garage so the tire could be changed.

My girlfriend and her sister began recounting the lore of the highway and its supposed hauntings, alleged missing people, bodies, evil clown who appears, general evil on the highway, etc. As we waited, it became more and more spooky, since there was no traffic, and my girlfriend and her sister so spooked each other that a branch brushing against the passenger window in a slight breeze brought about screams that could have been used in a horror movie from both of them. I called the tow company again, and was told a tow truck was dispatched and would be there in about ten minutes. My girlfriend was pleading with me to drive in the direction of the tow truck, but because of the road, I did not want to risk driving on the bad tire. And, I did not want to destroy the rim if it did not need to be destroyed. Every two seconds, I was met with a "What was that?" and a scream pointing in the distance, shadows not illuminated by the headlights, and her sister would look out the back window and say that she had a bad feeling. I was never so happy to see a tow truck arrive, but my girlfriend and her sister had so freaked each other out that they were reluctant to get out of the car so the tire could be changed. It took a few minutes, but the tire was changed, bad rim/tire put in the trunk, and we set off with the orange-hued temporary spare in search of an open garage/tire shop. Given that it was now late, about 2AM, we opted to go back to her sister's in Dana Point, so I could have new tires fitted in the morning before we set out for Las Vegas. I got the wheel/tire situation sorted early the next morning, and then returned to pick up my girlfriend and her sister, who wanted me to be sure to take the freeway, not the Ortega Highway, since they were both nervous that the car would have another issue. We made it to Las Vegas without a problem, and returned without an issue.

[orca17]

Got off the interstate in Dawes Corner, AL. Car stalled and would not restart. Very friendly guy in the truck behind me had a can of starter fluid, got me going right away (car had a carb).