Caught a greyhound up to NYC to buy a car off my cousin a few years back.

Got up there, no problem.

Gassed up the little Honda Civic happy everything checked out on VA DMV's end and i was able to get a trip permit to drive it home- so I did.

Of course I looked at everything before I pulled off- antifreeze and oil were both full and new, brake pads looked good etc etc- watched it run for 20 minutes no check engine lights, I thought I was ok!!

So I hop in, put a full tank of premium, and get to the jersey turnpike....


then the unmistakable gurgle of coolant leaving the engine block. I turned the heat on high (it was about 50 degrees that night so not so bad) and nursed it to one of the sunoco's on the side of the road those little travel plazas they had.

had the mechanic take a look, and after charging me $100 tells me what I know "You're gonna need a new radiator and possibly a headgasket, i can fix it but it won't be done until 3 days from now since i need parts ordered, gonna cost you around $1500 though, there is a hotel right up the...."

I just laughed at him, got back in the car, dialed 411 (this is when flip phones were out, not much internet yet just talk and text) and asked for the nearest open auto parts store, which was luckily a block away (mechanic refused to tell me that either).

Made it 10 minutes before they closed, bought 5 gallons of antifreeze straight and 5 gallons distilled water to mix it with in case i needed it, dropped in a new radiator in the parking lot in about an hour (thank god I had basic hand tools and a ratchet on me! 10mm works on just about all cars) and drove it all the way home. It took more time for the car to cool down where i could work on it without burning myself on the hot hoses taking them off (about an hour) than it did for me to drop the radiator in!

I did stop every 20 minutes and keep an hawkeye on the thermostat and topped off the coolant every time until i got it home- in stop and go traffic- 6 hours later- oh and it was a stick with a loose clutch too (had to drop the clutch pedal alll the way to the floor for it to engage).

Proud of myself for that one!

Oh and in the end it WAS the head gasket- but i got an amigo in manassas to put on a new one for $200 and a case of corona in his backyard. Took him 3.5 hours start to finish with a 45 minute lunch. I was impressed.

Of course the shops all wanted $1200+ for the same.

Today's hondas suck though. I would happily buy another '93 like the one in this story. I ran it all the way up to 280k and sold it it is still running today my neighbor bought it for his kid.

Did you at least beat your cousin's ass next time you saw him?

Well, this isn't in that league, and we didn't go all the way home, but a buddy had a 1975 Chrysler Newport two-door that he bought in 1980 for $500 with 275,000 miles on it. Had zero compression in two cylinders on the one bank, so cranking it with the hood open was a bit scary -- engine looked like it was about to climb out of the bay.

It once managed to back a plug all the way out of one cylinder at 80MPH. Fun amount of clatter. We of course stopped, figured out what was going on, and almost got it back in before someone (ME) managed to drop it and break the ceramic. So we rat-rat-ratted our way a few more miles until we found a garage where we could buy a plug.

The good thing was, at that point we already knew that the beast didn't care what plugs we used. Ya see, my buddy (who barely knew which end of a wrench to turn) would change the plugs every few months as a "tuneup", because it was cheap and worked, and we were mostly afraid to disturb the finely honed disaster that was the mill.

One winter, as he's swapping plugs and we're supervising from inside (they lived on a farm, and it was about 0F), he suddenly stops and comes inside. He's holding a new plug and an old one. One has a nose a quarter-inch long, the other at least an inch. "Why do these look so different?"

"Um. You matched them to the chart, right?"

"Chart?"

Turns out that he'd been buying random sets of eight plugs for several years. They all seemed to work the same.

The Ratport (as we called it) soldiered on for several more years and a lot of miles, rusting quietly and using prodigious amounts of all fluids. Soon the driver's door sagged alarmingly when opened, so we stopped using it. The final straw was when the trunk rusted out so badly that a case of beer fell out through the hole. At that point he donated it to a demo derby; they filled the trunk with concrete, and for all we know it's still running.

1995 Im at Potomac Mills Mall and the water pump on my Subaru GL-10 wagon takes a shit. I live in Fredericksburg. I went the the auto parts store in the outlet and got a water pump. Went to Sears and got tools. Replaced water pump in my dress shirt and tie while the Chinese restaurant people watch out the window. Just as I got it back together they came out with a huge dish of pork fried rice. They said they were so impressed that the food was free. Drove home happy.

In college I was super poor and got a dude who seemed to know what he was doing to fix my brakes for cheap. Two nights later, I turned onto Roanoke St from S. Main and there was a horrific noise and my right rear wheel locked up completely. If I stopped, I was almost guaranteed to get arrested, so I just kept going, dragging the wheel. The skidding tire made a skid noise the whole way up Roanoke St and I left a skid mark all that way, into my apartment complex, into the space I parked in. I leapt out of the car and ran inside - SAFE!

Chrysler labaron. Holy shit, thing start rolling backwards during rush hour. I got lucky and yanked the wheel to the left. Just abandoned the pos in uniontown pa

Back in the late-80s, I was driving up I-95 from Woodbridge on a Saturday evening. My car started overheating by Lorton and the traffic was all backed up. I pulled over and one of those "roadside assistance" guys stopped to assist (for nearly $100). He ran a wire so my fan would constantly run to keep the engine cooler until I could get to Springfield. He topped off the anti-freeze and then followed me. 18-wheelers were blocking half the shoulder because people were trying to use the shoulder lane to keep moving through the traffic. I was stuck behind an 18-wheeler and my car's engine kept increasing in temperature.

I finally made it the Springfield exit and pulled off in a parking lot close to the old Springfield mall. My car was basically hobbling at that point.

The "roadside assistance" guy collected his money once I went to an ATM to get the cash. He topped off my anti-freeze again. I then caught a ride from there to my destination in Alexandria.

The next day, I drove the car to a service station about 2 miles away and it was smoking like crazy. The head gasket had blown. A FFX county cop caught up to me at a traffic light and asked "if I was trying to create a f*cking accident). I had only one block left to drive, so he followed me.

$1,200 to get the head gasket replaced and the valves reground on the head along with correcting any potential warpage of the head.

Op, plz quit your bullshit. You brought tools on a greyhound? Oh and the tool just happens to be the 10mm you need?
Suuuuure!
Maybe 60% is true.
Quit your bullshit

My automatic transmission lost Drive (D1) one time while I was going 70 mph on 270. I put it in second gear(D2) and slowed down to 45 mph. The RPMs went from 3,000 to 7,000 when it lost Drive.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/16/2017 09:54PM by phelpsmarc.

> Oh and in the end it WAS the head gasket- but i
> got an amigo in manassas to put on a new one for
> $200 and a case of corona in his backyard. Took
> him 3.5 hours start to finish with a 45 minute
> lunch. I was impressed.
>
> Of course the shops all wanted $1200+ for the
> same.

Another one of OP's pathetic psychopathic dream rants.

* mexicans aren't completely stupid but ARE greedy

* there's no fucking way a mexican did a head gastket for you for $200, they know the fucking price tag know what they are worth

* you didn't say what kind of car

* your pathetic looser ass asks us to beleive your too cheap for a tow truck and don't have tow insurance and can swap a radiotor in a parking lot (not mentioning tools - which ARE required) - but then ask us to believe your not so desperate you wouldn't do your own head job

fucking pathetic liar

I drove around during the winter without a working heater core. It was a pretty cold couple of months. Unfortunately, this vehicle didn't have an easy to replace unit so I needed to wait for good weather to disassemble the dash.

AlbertEinstein Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 1995 Im at Potomac Mills Mall and the water pump
> on my Subaru GL-10 wagon takes a shit. I live in
> Fredericksburg. I went the the auto parts store
> in the outlet and got a water pump. Went to Sears
> and got tools. Replaced water pump in my dress
> shirt and tie while the Chinese restaurant people
> watch out the window. Just as I got it back
> together they came out with a huge dish of pork
> fried rice. They said they were so impressed that
> the food was free. Drove home happy.
Attachments:

I was in the backwoods of Michigan about 17 miles off the nearest road in my 79 ford bronco on a hunting-camping trip when my fuel pump failed. This was back before cell phones. My buddy and I had a decent set of tools so we took apart the pump and tried to fix it but no luck. We camped out another night and a idea came to me. The next morning we siphoned a couple gallons of gas ot of the tank into a gas can I had on board, we filled the washer fluid resivor with gas and routed the hose to the open carburetor and fastened it with some wire. It was a very rough ride but we used the washer fluid pump to squirt gas into the carb and got to the main road by the end of the day and a trucker gave us a ride to a motel where we got a shop to tow and repair the truck. The next day we were on our way home. The gas destroyed the washer pump and plastic washer fluid tank but I replaced them later.

buck fuel Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was in the backwoods of Michigan about 17 miles
> off the nearest road in my 79 ford bronco on a
> hunting-camping trip when my fuel pump failed.
> This was back before cell phones. My buddy and I
> had a decent set of tools so we took apart the
> pump and tried to fix it but no luck. We camped
> out another night and a idea came to me. The next
> morning we siphoned a couple gallons of gas ot of
> the tank into a gas can I had on board, we filled
> the washer fluid resivor with gas and routed the
> hose to the open carburetor and fastened it with
> some wire. It was a very rough ride but we used
> the washer fluid pump to squirt gas into the carb
> and got to the main road by the end of the day and
> a trucker gave us a ride to a motel where we got a
> shop to tow and repair the truck. The next day we
> were on our way home. The gas destroyed the washer
> pump and plastic washer fluid tank but I replaced
> them later.

...you used the washer pump to refill the float bowl? Clever.

Now try that with a modern fuel-injected mill!

Transmission problem drove home in reverse from Lee High School to Hanover Street. Try that today!

We were driving a 1966 Studebaker from Toronto to Windsor. At about McKay's Corners, the windshield wiper motor quit. So we get out and see the wipers move freely. So 2 of us take off our pelts and tie them to the wipers down near the bottom. The driver has to take off his so we can attach it to the one on his side. So we drove from McKay's Corners to Windsor, about 100 Km (63 miles) pulling alternately on the belts to move the wipers back and forth so the driver could see where he was going. We had really sore arms at the end of it.


And for those of you who think that you are "fact checkers", yes, they did stop making Studebakers in the US in 1964, but they made them in Canada until 1967.