Worst/Weirdest/Funniest accident or calamity in your car?

35 years ago....... dropped a Volvo 1800 trans, with O/D on my hand

can still see the scar to this day

When I was 18, I was on my way to work. Hopped in, started the car, and then realized that I forgot my lunch. I turn the car off, and run inside. When I return to the garage, my car was gone! I looked 50 feet over, and it was in the neighbor's yard. Our garage faced the neighbor's house, and apparently there was enough of a grade that my car, which I neglected to put back in gear (and pull the parking brake), was able to gently roll on top of of their small tree. Thankfully, the tree acted as a brake that prevented my car from hitting their screened in porch. After apologizing, I actually became good friends with the elderly couple that lived next door.

Zomby Woof wrote: I guess this one fits. 86 S10. I was leaving for work, and with a cool morning, and dying battery, the truck wouldn't quite turn over enough to start. My driveway had a slight grade, and it was usually enough to bump start the truck if i did it right. I was also experiencing stomach discomfort of a rather explosive nature. Anyway, I get the truck rolling, hop in, let the clutch out, and it's not enough. The truck is now sitting in the middle of a country road at 6am. It was light enough that I was able to push it back up, but it wasn't easy. I put my back against the tailgate and started pushing, hard. On about the third grunt, the previously mentioned stomach discomfort began to erupt. Because I knew there was no stopping it, I had to make a split second decision. Do I run for the house, just grin and bear it, or do I leave the evidence right there on the road? In an instant, I hoped nobody was watching from their living room window, whipped my drawers down and let it rip. Based on the volume of evidence, I totally made the right decision.

I just about soiled myself laughing at that one!!!

Spoolpigeon wrote: I got my old 240sx stuck in the snow once. I tried rocking it between 1st and reverse with no luck. I ended up just slowly letting the clutch out at idle and the rear wheels started spinning ever so slowly. I got out and left the door open with the engine idling in first gear and pushed the car put of the rut, then ran and hopped in the drivers seat and took off. I wish I had a camera then, it had to be a funny sight.

I did that a couple of times in my younger days.

Oil change and rear brake job on the TDi. Had the front of the car on ramps and back on jack stands. Everything went normally until I lowered the back of the car onto the ground... forgetting that after turning the rear caliper pistons in, you need to pull the handle a couple of times before the parking brake works again... so the car rolled off the ramps... And into the closed 9'w x 8'h garage door. With the rear hatch open. Breaking the door, three of four windows, both lift struts and denting the hatch a bit.

$3200 for new garage doors later, that was an expensive oil change and brake job...

Weirdest car calamity was definitely in my 1998 jetta GLS. I was driving from my parent's house to my university in a very cold February night. My girlfriend (now wife) was in the car, the heater was blasting, and we were listening to the radio. Suddenly, it starts getting very drafty. I then noticed the passenger side rear window was rolled down a few inches. I hit the button to roll it up. Nothing. I try the other way, it rolls all the way down. I hit up again, it doesn't budge. Now, i'm on the interstate going 75mph, in February, in Wisconsin, with the window rolled down. Not fun. I pulled off at a gas station, and discovered the motor was detached. I had to slide the window up with my hand. Every time I hit a big bump, I had to slide it back up those couple inches, or my girlfriend would freeze to death.

I have another one, but it isn't mine. my dad and uncle were changing the oil in my mom's supra a number of years ago. They had it up, oil catch can underneath, and my dad took out the drain plug. The oil came shooting onto the catch can too fast, bounced off, and shot directly into my uncle's face. From the kitchen, I heard my uncle screaming and my dad laughing his ass off. My uncle came walking into the kitchen shouting at my mom "YOUR CAR SHOT OIL ALL OVER ME!!! IT WENT IN MY EAR!!!!" It probably took my dad 5 minutes of laughing before he could talk again.

About the strangest thing happened to me in the Benz greasecar. I filled my veggie oil tank and left for work. As I was driving I smelled veggie oil every now and again. That's not terribly unusual though. I dismissed it as the normal smell from the tank vent (not vented outside). I got to work and as I walked away from the car I smelled it again. Now, at this point you'd expect me to have a look-see but noooooo.
On the way home I smell it more, but it really wasn't very bad. Now, I get home and park. After a while I look out the window and see a puddle under the car, in the back. Too far to one side to be a diff seal or something. I pop the trunk to find that I forgot to put the cap on my veggie fuel tank! As I drove around fuel sloshed out of the tank and eventually ran out of the trunk through drain hoses. Good lord what a mess! I cleaned up what I could, but that veggie oil had made it into nooks and crannies that I could never get to. So, I went in the house and put two tea kettles and a pot of water on. Once they got to a boil I went out and....poured them in my trunk. I figured where the grease went, the scalding hot water would go. After dumping the second kettle of water in the trunk, and hoisting the pot of water into the trunk I noticed my neighbor looking at me with the most dumbfounded look I've ever seen. I just shrugged my shoulders and dumped the pot of water in my trunk, closed it and walked in the house.
She never even asked me what the heck I was doing. They don't know I run veggie oil either. They only know that the neighbor dumps hot water in the trunk of a Mercedes Benz.

I was running to the auto parts store in my $350 Volvo 745 Turbo wagon. I needed to get a new battery for my wife's Volvo. I had run my battery down a bit trying to jump her car several times, so I hit the highway for a quick blast to put some charge back in it. I ran about ten miles outbound, then turned around to come back. I was just nearing my home exit when it happened; as I was about to crest a large hill, which saw me in top OD and boosting, a sudden brrrrrAAAAP sound began. Quicker than I could drop my foot off the throttle, the engine let go - with a loud bang! I could see the sparks in my rearview as engine bits scattered across the road surface. Now I'm at the top of a large hill, leftmost of five lanes, and I realize the engine is still going on 3 cylinders! I had nothing to lose at this point, so I gave it all the beans, crossed the lanes and made it to my exit. On the ramp, the engine gave one last eruption as another connecting rod let go, and that was it. I coasted to a smoking, silent stop at the end of the ramp, just as a tow truck rolled by.

The driver gave me and the wreckage a lift home for a nominal fee, and here's where I made my first wise decisions of the night - he asked if I wanted it in the driveway (next to my wife's car), or curbside. Seeing a worrisome amount of smoke still puffing out of the engine bay, I said 'curbside.'

After the tow truck drove off, I lifted the hood to see just how bad it was. I was greeted by a new window into the oil pan which was conveniently self-illuminated by a small fire. Next to the fire was the silhouette of the main fuel line, severed by the liberated connecting rod. I slammed the hood shut and yelled for my wife to call 911. At that moment, I heard that subtle 'woof' sound that fire makes as it flashes over, and suddenly there was a lot of light under the engine bay. As the flames began to lick out the edges of the hood, my neighbor helpfully yelled to me, 'Hey! Your car's on fire!'

Less than three minutes later, I was staring at this:

And the next day:

DrBoost wrote: She never even asked me what the heck I was doing. They don't know I run veggie oil either. They only know that the neighbor dumps hot water in the trunk of a Mercedes Benz.

At least in 'Jersey, this is the first thong that comes to mind: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ckPHBJWQvpE

11110000 wrote:

I think I may have found the cause of the fire, are those Lamborghini fender badges?

Mmadness wrote:

11110000 wrote:

I think I may have found the cause of the fire, are those Lamborghini fender badges?

pretty sure that was sarcastic, but I assume they are prancing moose badges.

EDIT: I got tree'd

Wow. I think the burnt Volvo is about the top story so far.

My stoopids are numerous, but my best (or worst) are :

the night I tried to play drift king in my freshly painted 1965 Falcon and hit a tree;

the day I shot same with a pellet gun (don't ask )

the day I was on my knees looking under the dash of my idling Spitfire and accidentally kicked it into gear thus hitting the garage door,and

the time I was towing a GT6 body shell and frame on a motorcycle trailer behind my VW GTi, it started to weave, I touched the brakes lightly and the trailer immediately flung the GTi around about 270 degrees and into the ditch.

the day I accidentally kicked my Spitfire into first with it running and hit the garage door, breaking two Masonite panels.

Well I was backing down this sidewalk a little too fast one day...hit a guy wire for a telephone pole. Popped me up and around so I ended up on the drivers side wheels at about a 45 degree angle between a chain link fence and a pallet of flat rocks. Forklift guy from the rock place pushed me out and I landed on the wheels.About 2 minutes from start to finish and I finished delivering pizza with just a small dent behind the front passenger tire.

Or the time I was doing donuts in an Eckerd Drugs and the 2 back tires came off because I used the lugnuts from my Mustang to put shiny wheels on a Datsun pickup.

Or backed a Pinto into a storm ditch...later when we went to pull it out it had washed about 50 yards down the ditch so we went to get a longer chain and more help. When we came back it was gone! Followed that ditch about 7 miles to the river and never found the Pinto.

Don't get me started on Go Karts, or while I was backing a trailer, or golf carts and puddles, mini bikes with rocks stuck in the clutch or using vice-grips instead of a steering wheel...hint: at center, have the vice-grips pointing UP!!

Bruce

Found a pic of how I stuck the Sammy.

I had a lot of free time while waiting for some buddies to show up and pull me out.

BTW one of them tried sitting on the front-right corner of the hood and it tipped the front wheels down...still no way to get enough traction in the sand though. The frame rails were dug into that ridge.

It was so shiny back then...

A few friends and I try to take a guys' trip to Deal's Gap twice per year. Another friend of ours decided that he wanted to ride with me for his first trip with us, so we get all loaded up in my 900 and head off. We stopped to fuel up before getting to the meeting place here in Louisville. I realized that I had stopped with the fuel door on the wrong side, so I hop in the car to move it. The throwout bearing makes a terrible noise and the clutch is stuck engaged. Sweet. I fuel it up and drive it to a friend's house nearby without a clutch. We immediately get to work pulling it out to replace the busted TOB.

A friend had a new one in the box, so off we go to get it from him. After many curses, bloodshed, and a bit of hammering, the clutch is back in the car and we're ready to bleed the slave. First press of the pedal and the slave starts shooting fluid out around the piston. berkeley. The clutch assembly comes back out of the car and we rebuild the slave with some o-rings we collect from various places around town. We get the clutch back in the car for the second time in one day and get it bled. It all works! Time to go, more than nine hours after our friends had left.

The drive to the Gap was uneventful and took about 5 hours. We get into the groove of the road and make it about three miles past the overlook at a medium pace before the clutch gives up completely. At this point it is after 2300, completely dark and there are NO cars around. I managed to keep the car rolling until the next pulloff but at that point, it was done. No more. There's no cell phone service on the Gap. There's nowhere to which to walk unless you're already across the NC border and near Crossroads. So what do you do? You open the sunroof, turn on some music and the heat and sit. Someone would stop when it got light outside.

We fall asleep in what had become a roadside Swedish resort with a nice view of the stars. Sometime in the middle of the night, an off-duty Sheriff's deputy from North Carolina stops beside us and offers to place a phone call for us at Crossroads. He contacts our friends at the cabin and we are awakened by the sounds of a WRX at full bore, full of people we know and equipped with a trailer hitch and a tow strap. We flat tow the 900 the remaining 4 miles or so through the Gap and abandon it at Crossroads for the next day and a half.

Then we did this:

Loading a car backwards when it has rear window louvers is not a good idea. Just FYI. They folded backwards on the highway, berkeleyed up the paint on the roof, then removed themselves and were run over by a semi. Oops.

... And that's the story of the weekend I wanted to set my 900 on fire.

I have a couple
- I had an accident with my Nissan Hardbody and it had just come back from the body shop after getting painted. My wife was not aware it was there and apparently... not in the habit of looking. She backed our Diamante out of the garage and smashed both together (there may have been some temper involved in the hasty exit from the garage). My insurance took a long time to become "reasonable" again after that.
- I bought my first pavement capable bike when I was 17. I didn't know anything about street bikes or four strokes except a guy I knew had a Suzuki GR650 for $500. I asked another friend who had a CM400 (so obviously an expert on everything motorcycle :) ) to go along to check it out. He explains the best way to tell if it's ok is to take it for a quick trip around the block. So... I hop on the back and off we go. All seems pretty good and as we come back around to the alley where the guy keeps it my expert adviser hammers it - then grabs a massive fist full of front brake and dumps us both right at the guy's feet. I bought my first bike for asking price with a broken clutch lever, mirror, turn signal and a bunch of bent things I never did fix.

Not so much an accident but I was still entertained: Customer asked us to weld a broken bracket under the dash. So he does the expletive laced dance to get in the right position and starts welding. It was going fine until the floor mat caught fire right next to his head. Mild panic sets in and he can't decide if he should put the fire out, which he can't because his arm won't bend right, or clamber out or what to do. He finally pulls his head out after whacking it on a few things and smothers the relatively small fire. No one could help him without dousing him and the interior with fire extinguisher and the fire didn't warrant that. So we all got to stand and watch with the extinguisher ready as he beat his head on the dash, the steering wheel, and the door frame while evacuating the vehicle.

Powar wrote: A few friends and I try to take a guys' trip to Deal's Gap twice per year. Another friend of ours decided that he wanted to ride with me for his first trip with us, so we get all loaded up in my 900 and head off. We stopped to fuel up before getting to the meeting place here in Louisville. I realized that I had stopped with the fuel door on the wrong side, so I hop in the car to move it. The throwout bearing makes a terrible noise and the clutch is stuck engaged. Sweet. I fuel it up and drive it to a friend's house nearby without a clutch. We immediately get to work pulling it out to replace the busted TOB. A friend had a new one in the box, so off we go to get it from him. After many curses, bloodshed, and a bit of hammering, the clutch is back in the car and we're ready to bleed the slave. First press of the pedal and the slave starts shooting fluid out around the piston. berkeley. The clutch assembly comes back out of the car and we rebuild the slave with some o-rings we collect from various places around town. We get the clutch back in the car for the second time in one day and get it bled. It all works! Time to go, more than nine hours after our friends had left. The drive to the Gap was uneventful and took about 5 hours. We get into the groove of the road and make it about three miles past the overlook at a medium pace before the clutch gives up completely. At this point it is after 2300, completely dark and there are NO cars around. I managed to keep the car rolling until the next pulloff but at that point, it was done. No more. There's no cell phone service on the Gap. There's nowhere to which to walk unless you're already across the NC border and near Crossroads. So what do you do? You open the sunroof, turn on some music and the heat and sit. Someone would stop when it got light outside. We fall asleep in what had become a roadside Swedish resort with a nice view of the stars. Sometime in the middle of the night, an off-duty Sheriff's deputy from North Carolina stops beside us and offers to place a phone call for us at Crossroads. He contacts our friends at the cabin and we are awakened by the sounds of a WRX at full bore, full of people we know and equipped with a trailer hitch and a tow strap. We flat tow the 900 the remaining 4 miles or so through the Gap and abandon it at Crossroads for the next day and a half. Then we did this: Loading a car backwards when it has rear window louvers is not a good idea. Just FYI. They folded backwards on the highway, berkeleyed up the paint on the roof, then removed themselves and were run over by a semi. Oops. ... And that's the story of the weekend I wanted to set my 900 on fire.

You need to spend some time learning to shift without a clutch. Stick it in first, light turns green, start car, drive away, match revs, drive across the nation.

I could write a book

When I was with the towing company I got a call to pick up a car near Elmhurst Hospital. The car was on a pretty steep side street. I stop the truck, an old F350, and lower the wheel lift. I got in the dead car and rolled it down to the truck. When the tires hit the wheel lift it was enough of a tap to make the truck roll. Luckily I had the wheels cut and it hit a parked Rav 4 and pushed it into a pole. It had MD plates so I tried to get the hospital to page them and when that failed I left a note with my info.
Back at the shop this man calls up screaming about his truck. He calms down and I ask for a fax number and we get to talking. I end up getting him to give us the car to fix. The day it's done he comes to pick it up he has his wife's car parked on the same hill and a UPS truck hit it so he left that with us to fix too.

Streetwiseguy wrote: You need to spend some time learning to shift without a clutch. Stick it in first, light turns green, start car, drive away, match revs, drive across the nation.

I am well aware of how to do this; that's how I drove the car from the gas station to a friend's house to do the TOB. The failure at the Gap was the clutch disc coming apart at the rivets. It didn't like the abuse of being removed and reinstalled twice in a day. The seized TOB probably didn't help matters either.

My old turbobrick.

It had a transmission issue. I wasn't sure what it was, but it wasn't good. Shifts were weird and sloppy. At a gas station, with the hood open, I notice the cable is loose, so I drive it home and snug it up. The kids are in bed, it's 9pm, so I decide to go for a test drive.

WOW, the shifts are super clean, crisp, and happening at the right time! This is great! let's see how it shifts under power, vrrrrrrziiiiiing, uh oh. It's gone.

At the side of the road, ::zing zing zing::.

Let's try reverse.

I back up just fine, ready to make a three point turn, if only it would go forwards.

What the heck, let's see if this thing will go into drive.

It does! Cool, let me get it the 3 miles home.

Vrrrrrziiiing!

I got up to maybe 30 mph, coasted to a stop on the side of the road.

I found that if I waited maybe ten minutes, it would go again, but only for a short period of time, and it didn't seem to be related to how much throttle I gave it. I went down this road in 3-5 second squirts of full throttle, separated by ten minutes radio-listening-sessions.

I turned on to my street at about midnight.

My street has a very steep hill in the first 50 feet, and is only 1/8th mile long.

On this slope, the car would not go. Not after waiting ten minutes, not after twenty, not after thirty. I tried pushing, but I could only back it down the hill very slowly - no forward motion, it was just too steep, the car too heavy, the sneakers too worn.

It's nearing 1 am. Everyone I know is asleep. I am not calling AAA to go 1/8th mile. I am getting this home.

Yessir, officer, just letting it cool. I'll get it home when it does. Have a nice night.

OK, he's gone.

I run down the street to my house, grab my PT Cruiser and my tow strap. I then flat tow, myself, down the street, stopping every so often to steer the Volvo out of the ditch, my neighbors yard, etc. I got it home. It was late, I was pissed, but I got it home.