Now THIS is torture

I just was looking at pictures of my dad's first car, before it was scrapped. Problem: he drove it through a water-filled sinkhole. Well, it was at least getting along swimming-ly. What was the worst thing you ever did to a car?

I ate up a torque converter in an 87 cougar. I was 17 and didnt know a slipping auto trans was easily cured by a $2 bottle of mercon fluid. 2 mos of slipping and my $250 cougar needed $1800 worth of new motivation. That poor old steed was set out to pasture too soon

Once at a fundraising clambake, a bunch of us cut the roof off of a '70 Nova, using only axes, splitting mauls, sledgehammers, and brute strength. 5 licks for 3 bucks. It was more exersize than torture.. we raised a bunch of $ though.

I totalled my 86 Chevy C10 with the 4.3 v6 4bbl by hitting a cow. Dark and rainy night + 1200 lb black angus cow + 60 mph = dead cow + dead truck. That was an interesting kind of fun.

Had a girl in my '65 Falcon looking for a place to go parking one night. Drove over a dirt hump which shoved the engine up high enough to break the left motor mount and the clutch equalizer bar came out of its mounts.

That same car: I shot it with a pellet rifle by mistake (D'oh!), then hit a sand patch on asphalt and tried to do a power slide. Said power slide turned into smacking a tree.

I bet that poor car still quivers at the sound of my name.

One Saturday night a few friends went for a bit of dirt tracking at the schools practice football field.

I bumped "R" in his 69 Roadrunner into a berm that tore the bottom off his radiator as I backed my 69 Mustang into the goalpost. "J" had a broken windshield in his 67 Camaro while "Jr" got his 67 Barracuda convertibles rear end kinda smushed by a 56 Buick that suffered nothing.

Fun 15 minutes!

For single car destruction it has to be a 72 Pinto that came to me as a 3 cylinder with a ventelated block. It was a yard car for 2 years before "upgrades" were made using parts from various Ford trucks.

4 inch oil field pipe frame and dually rear end with a 390 4 speed and I-beam front axle. Cherry picker welded in the back was fun, but the favorite was the 3/4 sharpened steel bumper that allowed us to drive through brush and trees backwards. Eventually drove it into a wash that was about 12 foot deep. a few heavy rains later and it was just gone!!!!

Bruce

Bruce

That would have been a Pinto to save, IMO. Best I can claim is a horrible Colin McCrae impersonation in my Corolla, a 30 foot ravine, and a tow truck driver asking "How the f*** did you not total that?"

Many a car has lived a short life with a glorious death under my tenure.

Highlights include jumping '80 Chevette using a wooden ramp (and a fooball helmet for "safety"). The 1st attempt broke the ramp. The next one shoved the shocks thru the hood. A bit later... someone missed 1/2 the ramp and "accidentally" rolled it. Much hilarity ensued. When we couldn't roll it upright again we gave it the honorable death of a racehorse. We shot it about 1000 times and cut it up with a sawzall (just like after the Kentucky Derby). The junkman gave us $21for the tin.

Looking back, my only reget is that we didn't burn it.

I repaired an Impala by driving it into a house once. Does that count?

Oh, and I repaired a suspension with pressure-treated lumber once! Is that bad?

Well, it was pressure treated, so depending on the make of the automobile, it could have been stronger than the factory suspension. I give it a pass.

pinchvalve wrote: Oh, and I repaired a suspension with pressure-treated lumber once! Is that bad?

Seems reasonable. Whenever a car fights a tree - the tree wins so wood > steel.

My sister drove my families' 88 Subaru GL Wagon 4wd down the Railroad tracks! I'm suprised she only drove home once with a flopping axle shaft and granaded CV joint. I drove a '53 CJ-3A with a 3.8 V6 Buick out of oil by bounce the front axle off of the oil filter-the axle won.

My '78 Pontiac Sunbird 4-cyl 3-speed auto lost 2nd shortly after my mom, who helped a bit with the payments, insisted we buy that from her "trusted" mechanic. This was in 1986. He was a real piece of E36M3. I wanted to buy the 1st gen Celica 5-speed I test drove. Damn, still ticks me off. Anyway, the Sunbird would get 2nd if you manually shifted into 1st at a stop and then into 2nd. Drove it like that for a year before that trick stopped working, then rod knock set it. I hated that car, and was intent on killing it, which meant running it at the rev limiter pretty much all the time. After another month of abuse the block was finally ventilated. I bought a 6-cyl with trans out of the GM-twin Chevy Vega from the local junkyard and paid the guy $50 extra to install it. The guy had to half-ass all the mounts, and swore he'd never agree to do something so stupid ever again. When I killed that motor I finally scrapped it for $50.

many many many yrs ago during my drugs and alcohol days I was driving my '76 Civic from NC to Miami and the thermostat hung up in the closed position... needless to say but eventually I was trying to lubricate the thing with water... didn't last very long....

I've come a long way in my rehab since then...

Tried to dispose of my first VW bug by pushing it into a pond on a pig farm.

It floated for 3 days...

When you go to bump the starter to get better access to the bolts on the water pump pulley (and the radiator fan) make sure the coil is disconnected, because the engine is way stronger than the radiator.

My buddy and I were off-roading in his beat up mid 80's Subaru Wagon. We ended up high centering it and not being able to get it off so we took a ride with some other guys back home. The next weekend we went back to get it and someone had stolen the engine out of it. He was so upset he started yelling and cussing. He lit a cigarette to calm down, took a few drags then flipped it into the back seat. It landed on some old fast food wrappers which slowly started to smolder and smoke. That gave us an idea...and...we torched the car.

Well, I drove my old Mustang off a cliff, three times I think.

Got a Ford Falcon stuck up in a tree once. It requires dedication to get a Falcon up a tree.

Painted my Galaxie with luminous yellow paint. With a brush. On the beach. With the wind blowing. Then it rained . That was attractive. Neighborhood got together and asked me to please not park it at home any more.

A little water down the carburetor removes carbon. So a lot of water should remove lots of carbon! Take moms Olds 455, rev it up and stick the garden hose down the throat. Believe it or not, the engine still ran when I was done.

A falcon up a tree... If you can get that up there, you might be able to get a hummer through a steel factory building.

My first car was a 92 Mazda Protege, which I promptly half assed a turbo onto and started racing. So one day after school, I'm racing some douche bag in a Probe GT (he was a senior) down this super windy road. I'm in the lead, and at the end of the road there is a hill that has a tight crest. I've jumped it before, but I've never been going this fast, so of course I go way farther than I thought I would and lost it. The guard rail kept me from flipping, but the car looked like a pop can that I'd stepped on.

Do you ever ask yourself why/how you were so dumb when you were younger?

I got a canoe stuck somewhere after finding a forum spammer in public...piitb

MGB + 19 year old owner - checking oil = "what's that tapping sound?"

i bolted the torque converter to the flex plate, then attached the TH350 trans using blunt force. had i read the book that was sitting on the workbench not three feet from said clusterberkeley, i would've known to put the torque converter on the snout of the trans and spin it to engage it properly, then mate the trans to the engine and use the removable acces cover on the bottom of the trans to install the flexplate-to-converter bolts.

i had to sell my Stratocaster to buy a new transmission.

my brother in law bought the Strat from me, and still plays it 22 years later.

:-(

Jensenman wrote: Had a girl in my '65 Falcon looking for a place to go parking one night. Drove over a dirt hump which shoved the engine up high enough to break the left motor mount and the clutch equalizer bar came out of its mounts.

Sounds like my 67 Mustang!! The 3 speed decided that it wanted second gear while I was in third and locked up at 60 mph. As I slid to a stop I rattled the shifter and discovered that neutral (and all other gears) had become second. It also broke the left motor mount and dropped the Z-bar linkage onto the ground.

A bit of 17 year old ingenuity put the linkage back and I felt I was good with only second gear......Wrong! As I pressd the clutch and turned the starter an odd torque phenomena occurred that again dropped the linkage out......so I was moving. It also tipped the 200-6 powerplant so that the throttle opened...wide open...with no clutch...in a cemetary! took the whole right side speaker wire from the Craig Powerplay (25 watts of Queen and Meatloaf) to hold my jack against the engine so it would no longer tip...most of the time. Drove it like that for 3 months.

I plead the fifth on why my sister in law had to stop driving a 1962 Pontiac Catalina and settle for a 1976 Granada that was red with a white top.

Bruce