Something (maybe the soda blasting thread) reminded me of washing my mom's Mustang....with Spic N Span (a HARSH floor cleaner). Everytime she said "Go wash the car" that's what I would grab to put in the bucket. That poor car looked like someone wet sanded it by the time she sold it.
Oh, and I changed it to dual-points too before she sold it. I bet that was a bit of a surprise when the new owner went to change the points...
I can't be the only one who's done something like this. Can I?
i wasnt looking where i was biking and crashed into my moms integra
"Borrowed" my mom's '76 pinto wagon (complete with fake wood grain and auto trans) a year before I had my license - a friend crunches it. Ended up as my car a few years later. My grades were good that year - seems I was mostly grounded. 
When I was young and stupid I rolled my parents 83 SAAB 900s 3 days before I graduated HS in 89 and a few years laterI ran a stop sign and got hit in my dads 89 Olds 98 Touring Sedan. After that crash the County painted STOP on the road, I was told they had quite a few crashes there.
And yes my dad still lets me drive his cars, but I have gotten MUCH better. 
In chronological order, I put my mom's 68 Malibu onto someone's front lawn in the rain. Poor ball joints never stood a chance against that curb. Mom's next car was a 79 Fairmont wagon. It went into a guardrail at about 40 MPH on an icy country road. It was a few weeks old at the time. My dad's 72 GMC truck was pretty fast. I guess that's why I was racing it when I took all the teeth off first gear. At least I learned how to re and re a trans. I'm sure I'll think of more.
my parents wouldn't let me touch any of their cars....
Age 16. barely. Flipped my Dads 195,000mile Grand Am after it got loose on some dirt road wash boards. The man needs to learn how to change shocks.
I wanted to do something nice for my future brother in law, so I surprised him by washing all the windows, inside and out, on his new Charger.
With Pledge.
My parents went away for the weekend when I was 18. Last thing they said as they went out the door was "Don't touch the Vauxhall while we're away. Dad will teach you to drive a manual trans next week." So I gave them a 5 minute head start. Taught myself to drive it that evening. Found a parts car the next day and took it's better interior and did that swap by mid-afternoon. Dad had bought this Vauxhall (a Viva HA) for $175 as a second car to use at the lake. It had been painted with a roller (reasonably well, too) and I didn't think the colour went well with the new interior, so I went a bought a gallon of Tremclad in a nice blue, and proceeded to paint the car!. This was saturday evening. By Sunday afternoon it's dry, so I go for a drive. A couple of miles from home on the return trip, the darned thing dies and I can't get it to fire. Walk home and wait for the parents to return. With no car in the garage the questioning started pretty quick. It turned out to be burned points, which Dad filed by the side of the road, and I drove it home. Mom saw the colour change and interior swap and went a little ballistic at that point. So, 40 years passes and just this year we're reminiscing about stuff we did as kids and this comes up. Turns out my aunt had seen me shortly after my parents left and had reported it to Mom the next day at the event they were all going to, so the only real surprise was the colour change,the ballistics were only for effect. So, to get even, I told her that the time the shed had burned down, I was in there smoking one of Dad's cigars. THAT she hadnt known. I win!!!
My dad's '84 Gran Prix. Goofing around - my friend gets out to toss something in a garbage can and I start to pull away... he is running next to the car with the pass door open... trying to get back in... we go a little faster... and wham! I nail the brakes expecting hilarity to ensue. Instead - he folds the door open all the way to the front fender on his way to 15 stitches in the forehead. Good times... good times.
I flew my dad's Camaro when I was 17.
Police said it was in the air for 30-40 feet.
A radiator and a new tire got it back on the road where it continued to be a daily driver for a couple of years with the right wheelbase 2" shorter than the left.
Since this happened in 1986 I am pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out...
Like Duke.. I was not allowed to drive my parent's cars until I had my own.
Had my father's '59 VW Bug out with my friend Tom. I didn't drive the car that much so didn't know which direction was "reserve" and which was "normal" on the gas tank flip switch, it had no gage.
Parked some place I should have never been, the car acted up and I thought I was out of gas. Being 16 and knowing everything, I popped the hood, opened the gas tank and fired up a match to see if there was anything in there.
Eeeyaaaahhhh. Blue flames danced on the cap lip, I'm blowing on it yelling for Tom, I look around and Tom is three blocks away.
I put the cap back on, fire's out, car starts tight up and I left Tom in a bad neighborhood.
I'm so much smarter now....
mad_machine wrote: Like Duke.. I was not allowed to drive my parent's cars until I had my own.
Oh I had my own, I wasn't stoopid enuf to do stoopid things in my own ;)
When my Dad's Valiant needed a valve job, I talked my folks into letting me do it. I promptly took the head to a local speed shop and had it milled, messed with the jetting on the carb and a few other tricks later it was a very quick 6 cylinder that would rev to 7,200 rpm's! The night I graduated HS I was wheeling around town so fast that at one point I had it up on 2 wheels. My story was that I scraped a curb and that was why the sidewalls were scuffed all the way to the rims. Would you believe an old slant 6 can get you up to 125 MPH? I had to run Sunoco 280 in it to keep it from pinging and when I went in the Marines my Dad said the car just didn't run the same. Could have been the regular gas he put in it!!
This site doesn't have sufficient broadband for me to tell you all I diid.
Just use your imagination. 
I was never allowed to drive my parents' cars. This is probably a good thing. See also: When you work your ass off for something, you take care of it. When it's given/lent to you, it's worth nothing.
I got my mom's 89 Cougar airborne for approximately 40ft across a 25ft deep creek bed. That's right, 40ft of "big air". That is, until it hit the other side of the embankment.
Hospitalization ensued . . .
besides big sloppy snow drifting my moms 740iL and some various fwd olds wagon understeer episodes i dont have any juicy stories.
but a friend of mine had a turbo'd subaru impreza L wagon 2.2L sohc and while his parents were on vacation swapped engines with his fathers legacy 2.5L dohc in a weekend, never told him, and somehow his dad never realized his car was a dog after... funny thing is he blew up the 2.5L not too long after.
after reading you guys stories i'm never letting my future kids near a nice car of mine... unless i'm involved.
You know how water removes carbon? Well a lot of water should remove a lot of carbon, right?
So I took my moms Olds 98, started it, and shoved the garden hose into the carburetor. Revved the engine enough to keep it going with the garden hose going full blast.
Remarkably, it did not kill the engine. Though the results weren't the wonderfullness I expected.
I am eternally grateful that I'm not this guy:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/car-life/cheney/globe-journalists-son-crashes-180000-porsche/article1574334/
In reply to Lesley:
uh... $180,000 is pushin it a bit, id say $120,000, at the most...
I drove around in minivans...
That's about it.
I seriously hate driving other peoples cars.
The worse thing I did was my mom needed to use my truck for a week so traded me the del sol with manual steering. First nice corner I put the thing into a curb. I guess I bent something inside the suspension but it felt fine to me.
I borrowed my Grandmothers crown vic as there was an emergency out of town and surely a ten year old american car with 70k miles on it is much more reliable than a 30 year old german car with 120k miles. Well about 25miles out of town going up a hill I think, "this is just a mustang is sheeps clothing" and I hit gas the car get up to 85mph, well I see a poof of white smoke and smell coolant. Blew up the intake. The car had sat for 3-4months so either that was the problem or I was. The vic ran fine after but spewed coolant. Ford tried to talk me into resurfacing the heads because then coolant showed HC's in it. New intake and the car was fine.
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