Hey! Watch this!

Car Talk

What's your best "Hey! Watch this!" moment? Share it here.

Tom shared this dubious moment on this week's Car Talk. But, we all know there are other great "Hey! Watch this!" incidents out there. Maybe it was a brother, a best friend, or a college buddy. The result? Smoke, charred car parts, stitches in the ER.

Tell us yours -- we'll be enjoying the reading. In the meantime, try to keep all your fingers intact, the fire trucks at bay, and the insurance adjusters away.

mtncyber

Hey Tommy and Ray, you forgot the follow up to "Hey! Watch this!" it is "Hold my beer."

common sense answer

I've Written About This Before, But It Was Quite Memorable And Won't Leave My Memory Bank.

I was going to fix the hesitation problem on my off-road dune buggy. The one with 1700 jugs on a Volkswagen 1600 dual port engine, Tee-Pee straight pipe exhaust and Holley Bug Spray carburetor, that I had built taking the time to weigh and balance all the connecting rods, etcetera.

I set about removing the centrifugal air cleaner and starting it up and with beer in one hand, was staring down the throat of the Holley Bug Spray carb. My intention was to blip the throttle arm, rev the engine, and make sure the accelerator pump circuit was working properly by watching the gasoline spray in there.

Hoo-Bah ! . . . Hoo--Baah ! . . . Hooo---Baaah ! . . . Hoooo----Baaaah ! . . . WHOOOSH !

It was years, ago. I have eyebrows now and hair where it's supposed to be. The pump was working just fine.

CSA

oldbodyman

This was a hold my beer one. I had this rubber boat rated for a 5 hp motor. So what do you do if you don't have a 5 hp motor? You put the 18 hp motor on it! This worked well for maybe a 100 feet at which time it became a sub. It was going about 15 20 miles per hour when it nosed dived in.

missileman

When I was a teenager it was considered classy in my circle to "burn rubber" at every opportunity. A friend of mine had just purchased a 59' Chevy Biscayne with a straight 6 and "3 on the tree". He claimed he could smoke the tires for over 100 feet. We took him up on his bet and gathered in a large, deserted parking lot across town. He launched at full throttle and the smoke billowed from underneath the beast. He passed the 100 ft mark with smoke still coming from under the old Biscayne. We laughed for several minutes after he stopped knowing what the smoke was really coming from. His clutch was toast. I later towed him home with my trusty chain and we spent several hours replacing his clutch plate and disc. He never even chirped a tire after that.

Rod Knox

GM ran a test on the longevity of their pickups in the 70s. They installed a "black box" recorder in hundreds and when there was a catastrophic failure of any kind the shops mailed the tell-tale in to Detroit. There was a very common scenario on many of the Mississippi trucks. The last sounds on the recorder were HEY, HOLD MY BEER. NOW WATCH THIS................

bscar

Rod Knox

Luckily for me, when I was young there were no video recorders.

TomParker

My wife and I were barreling down a frozen gravel road in my Ford F150 when I hit a section of washboard bumps and the truck began to do a graceful 360 spin while continuing in the same direction. As our excursion from "normal flight" began and throughout the entire slow-motion pirouette, I barked, "Hang on....Hang on.....Hang on....."

Miraculously, my trusty Ford stabilized after one perfect 360 and we continued down the road, still at the same speed, with Steve Inskeep still talking calmly on Morning Edition as if nothing whatsoever had happened. My wife, however, sat in stunned silence for several minutes before turning to me and saying, "HANG ON?"

That got me thinking and, from that day forward, I vowed that, no matter how dire or unexpected the emergency, if something bad was about to happen, I would always shout, "WATCH THIS!" instead of "Hang on!" or "Help!" or "Oh my Gawd!" or "Not again!"

Why? Because, if things by some miracle work out (like my high-speed 360 degree spin in a Ford F-150..) then I would forever look like a genius.

And, if they don't? Well it won't really matter, will it? And bystanders won't be left with the memory of that haunting cry at the very end, "Not again!"

So remember, if anything bad is about to happen: train yourself to scream, WATCH THIS!"

DfromSD

Mine doesn't invove a car, but a camper. Back when I was just a young lad I was camping with my folks in the Badlands of SD. The spot where we were camping was divided from others by railroad ties elevated about 2 ft. off the ground. I had been jumping over the top of these and landing right in front of the screen door entrance to the camper. My sister came along and I thought I'd show off my jumping skills to her. I said "watch this" and preceded to jump over the tie, but caught my toe on the top of it and ended up making a head-first entrance into the camper..without opening the screen door! Other than a few scrapes and a bruised ego, I was okay. The screen did not fare as well needless to say.

Whitey

The first time I ever drove in snow, it was in Texas on Thanksgiving in about 1993 or 1994. It was the day Leon Lett blew a game for the Cowboys and handed it to the Dolphins in Dallas.

I knew as soon as I hit ice because the bridge on Interstate 35 was lined with wrecked cars, and I smiled smugly thinking my front wheel drive Buick Skyhawk was the perfect snow car. I drove carefully, but confidently passed vehicles along the way, making it all the way home in Arlington, TX from Austin, TX.

That drive made me so overconfident that I decided to drive to work the next morning, even though the roads were covered with ice and I didn't really have to be there. As my car started to slide, I said, "Hay, watch this," while I cut my front wheels to the side and gunned the throttle, thinking this would pull the car in the right direction. All turning the wheels did was ensure that I bent a rim on a curb. I was lucky I didn't hit any cars in the process.