Ever Had a Road Trip from Hell?

Maintenance/Repairs
, , , ,
121

It was Christmas, 1971 in Tampa, Florida. My soon to be sister-in-law had just married a Philadelphia boy in Long Island, New York and they had moved to the Tampa Bay area to be near her folks. In the moving process, they had left some of their “stuff” in New York. My soon to be wife, the new husband, and I all had 3 days (count them 3!) off for the Christmas holiday. In order to shorten the story somewhat, let’s just say it was decided that we would go to New York to get “the boat”. The Brother-in-Law (let’s call him Bill) had a 1965 Ford Fairlane which the three of us climbed in and headed up the coast.

Somewhere just north of Atlanta, Georgia (remember it is Christmas) I opined as to how it might be nice if we turned the heat on. This is when Bill informed us that the heater had not worked in this car for some months (I don’t know if this was a part of the decision to move to Tampa). Army blankets and light jackets (being comfortable with Florida winters) just are not quite enough to make one comfortable driving up the east coast in the dead of winter. Somewhere near Tennessee I could stand it no more and I purchased a small propane heater which we ran inside the car (amazingly, I am still alive to tell this).

Once on (the very tip of) Long Island, I first laid eyes on the boat which was 20 feet long, constructed of oak and loaded to the gunwales with household miscellany. Needless to say, the boat weighed much more than the car. We hooked it up and headed west into Brooklyn where we had a flat tire about 11:30PM on the boat trailer of course!

As much fun as we had had on the drive north, the drive going south through the smoky mountains dragging that boat and trying to keep it from passing as we went down hills was even more delightful. The only thing more exciting than going downhill trying to stay in front of the boat was trying to maintain control while being passed by a semi.

We did make it back to Tampa and remained friends for several years.

122

I was about 22 years old and was out having adventures with my two friends, Paul and Ed. I had gotten a job working on an off-shore oil rig out of Huoma La and was out there for 7 days while my two friends stayed in New Orleans at a rooming house because they hadn’t gotten hired. They didnt have any oil field experience and I did.

I came back off the rig and went to the rooming house and my friends were gone! My car with all my possessions was also gone with them. I asked the landlord if they had left a message and he said that I should check the city park. I went out there and walked around for a while. They jumped out at me from behind trees, said they had been living in the park for about the past three days because they were tired of living in that hot rooming house with the 3 inch (no joke) cockroaches.

Since I had slept about 3 hours a night while working on the rig, I was not at all allergic to staying on land. I figured to go back to West Texas where I had a sister living.

We jumped in the car and took off. The car was a 66 Chevy with a small block V8 and a three speed transmission in it. We got down the road about 10 miles and the car started to backfire and misbehave terribly. It didnt want to climb hills and wouldnt go fast at all. It had no power. It would idle fine but had lousy acceleration and would backfire and snort rudely when I pressed on the gas. This made me grumpy. If we shut it off and let it cool down, it would be OK for about another 10 miles and then start to act up again.

My friend Ed remembered that he had a buddy who had a car that was doing something like that. He said that his buddy changed the timing chain and everything was fine. No problem, we will just change the timing chain. Simple. We pulled off the road in a sort of driveway that had a tree next to it. I looked at my tool box. I had a pair of vice grips, a 12 inch crescent wrench, two screw drivers and a tire iron. Two days later and a lot of skinned knuckles and curses later, the front of the engine was taken apart enough to see the timing chain. It seemed a bit loose but didnt look horrible or anything. Ed and Paul walked down the road 3 miles and came back with a new timing chain and a Chilton manual. It cost 30 bucks. That left me with 20 bucks to get the rest of the way to West Texas. Paul and Ed had undisclosed amounts of cash, but not much different than I. Another day and a half and more skinned knuckles put the car back together.

Now for the big test! We jumped in the car and started it up. It WORKED FINE! For about the first 10 miles. Then it started to backfire and snort and curse us for trying to get it to go up hills again! We nursed it along for a while and got to the hill country of Texas. It would NOT go up one of the hills, even in low gear!

I was somewhat perturbed by this time. In low gear, it snorted and popped to a stop and refused to go further. We had just cooled it off at the bottom of that darn (I acutally used much stronger language at the time) hill! I sat for about 5 seconds, cursed loudly, slammed it back in low gear, revved the engine to a scream and popped the clutch. There was a banging sound, the engine died altogether, the transmission would not go into gear at all and the car started to roll backwards down the hill. I HAD IT at the point. We coasted backwards all the way down the hill. There was a little gas station at the bottom of the hill. There was just enough momentum for the car to gently bounce over the entrance and come smoothly to a stop beside the gas station, next to a rusted out pickup truck, some empty oil cans and a busted up old radiator. I could feel the car heave a great sigh of relief at being near friends who wouldnt curse it and slam it around.

I went into the gas station and talked to the grizzled old guy there. I asked him if he would give me 25 bucks for my car. I was done with it. All he had to do was watch the stuff in it for a few days until we got to West Texas, borrowed my sisters 72’ Monte Carlo with the ‘cop chaser’ engine in it and come back for the stuff. He reluctantly agreed. Paul, Ed and I got small backpacks of our stuff out and hit the road hitch-hiking.

We figured we would go back through Austin and then north up to Dalas/Ft Worth and then West to Midland Texas. Most of it would be freeway so the hitching should be pretty OK.

It started to drizzle after about the first 10 minutes. I walked along singing, I was so glad to be rid of that old chevy. A guy with a pickup truck full of mattresses came along and offered us a ride. It looked like he had been drinking and he had his buddy with him so there was only room for one in the cab. Ed got the cab. I and Paul got in the back and hung onto the sides so that we wouldnt fall out. Our backpacks were back near the tailgate. We went driving down the road and then this guy starts SHOOTING out of the windows with a rifle or shotgun. Of course, I am on the passenger side, so the bloody thing is going off in my ear every time. All the while, the guy is screaming curses and laughter like a crazy man.

The driver screeches to a stop. Ed jumps out of the cab and says “This guy is going to KILL us!” The guy takes off before we can jump out of the back. As the guy takes off, Ed grabs onto the side of the truck and snobbles into the truck. Now there are three of us in the back of the truck on a pile of mattresses. Paul is on one side hanging on for dear life, I am in the middle with an arm around his neck and Ed is on the other side hanging on (also with one of my arms around his neck). We go flying down the road, the guy is swerving wildly left and right trying to dislodge us. We are going much to fast to risk jumping off. We come to a little town. The guy ducks off the main road and through the dirt streets. We go around a bunch of corners, still with the guy shooting out of the window and screaming curses and laughter. The guy is about to run out of dirt streeets and needs to get back on the main road. I figure that when he gets to the main road, he is probably going to have to stop or at least slow down in order to get back on the road. I told Ed and Paul that when get comes to the stop sign, we grab our backpacks, jump out, get into the ditch and DOWN in the weeds.

That is what we did. The guy almost came to the stop at the main road stop sign because a car was coming. We grabbed our stuff and were on our faces in the weeds in very short order. He blasted out the window a few more times and took off.

We were sitting up and taking stock of ourselves when here comes the town cop. He asks us how much money we have and what are we doing in town after dark etc etc. We told him our story but of course he didnt believe it. We were about to be taken to jail for vagrancy when a neighbor came out of his house and said that he had been listening to the whole deal and told the officer that we were telling the truth. He had seen the guy driving around through the streets shooting out of his window. He even offered to take us into Austin.

So we got a ride into Austin by that neighbor. We spent the night under a bridge in Austin. Woke up the next morning and were a bit soured on hitch-hiking for a while.

We caught a freight train out of Austin headed North. It took about 8 hours to get up to Palestine Texas. Seemed to go awful slow. We decided to split up and hitch-hike race to my sisters place in Midland. Ed went first, then 20 minutes later, Paul and then 20 minutes later I left from the railroad car.

Somewhere out by Abilene or Sweetwater, I went into a truck stop and there was Paul sitting down having some breakfast. We decided to go along together, we werent doing too well separately anyway. We hitched along and got one more ride that got us out into the middle of nowhere about another 100 miles down the road. There we stuck.

We were sitting by the side of the road totally stuck, had beens stuck for about 4 hours when here comes Ed driving a Cadillac with cow horns on the front and a drunk cowboy in the front seat. We got in and the cowboy asked if we could drive. We said yes. He said “Great! That means that I wont have to drive a lick the rest of the way to Big Spring! You-all can drive and I can sit here and get REALLY drunk!”

So that is what we did. Ed did the driving, the cowboy did the drinking and Paul and I listened to his stories. He had several similar to this one but they came out sort of slurred and before long he was snoring.

We got to Big Spring, woke the cowboy up enough so that he could tell us where his house was. We dropped him and his Cadillac off and walked back out to the freeway. We resolved to go the rest of the way together, even if it took a day to get a ride. We got a ride in about 10 minutes from another guy in a pickup who said that we looked totally safe since no self-respecting criminals would be stupid enough to try and hitch-hike in a group of three.

He got us the rest of the way to my sister’s place. She was surprised to see us but was willing to lend me her Monte Carlo. That was a great car. It would go 0 to 60 in a VERY short time, drank huge amounts of premium gasoline and basically gobbled up with exuberance the miles and hills back to the hill country.

I went into the little gas station and the guy looked a little shamefaced and told me that he felt a bit bad about keeping the car and would sell it back to me if I wanted. Said he had fixed it. I told him that a deal is a deal and I didnt like that car any more anyway. He brightened up and said that the problem with the backfiring was simply a cracked coil. When it heated up, the coil expanded and the crack was bigger so the voltage to the spark plugs was lower so no power. Cost was 5 bucks for a different coil out of a junker. The problem with the transmission was the linkage had come loose in my last violent gesture on the hillside. Cost to fix that was about a nickel for a new cotter-pin. I laughed and marked it up to experience.

We loaded all my stuff into the Monte Carlo and took off in a high octane burst of gravel and speed.

Steve
(Although it sounds pretty far fetched, the story is almost totally true. The chevy did not in actual fact heave a sigh of relief upon coming to rest at the gas station.)

123

It’s true, I have a tiny bladder. It’s definitely not that which should be in a 25 year old’s body. I even convinced myself that my frequent peeing meant that I must have diabetes. I went to the doctor and told her my theory. She basically laughed in my face and said that I drink a lot of water and to stop trying to diagnose myself via the internet.

However, I think i can pinpoint the exact moment when my bladder control went to shit. I was about 12 years old and it was during our yearly torture session, I mean vacation. We used to drive down to Florida because, well, I think my parents liked proving that they had the ability to make our lives awesome or awful depending on their mood. When five people are driving 1300 miles there are bound to be tons of bathroom and food breaks, and this trip was no different. We were somewhere in North Carolina when I announced, “I really have to pee.” My dad thinks for a moment and replies, “Okay honey, we’ll stop to pee as soon as we get to South of the Border” (which is the first rest stop upon entering South Carolina. I thought it would be fine until I see a sign that lets me know that I will have to wait for OVER FORTY MILES before my dad will stop to let me pee.

Ten miles pass and I am trying to do anything I can to keep my mind off of going to the bathroom. My brothers know this and decide to make water sounds and talk about all things liquid. Thanks bros.

Twenty miles pass and I am not quietly whimpering in the back seat of the car, tugging on my mom’s seat and begging her to get my dad to pull over anywhere. At this point even the side of the road would be fine.

Thirty miles pass and I am crying about how I’m going to pee in the car. My brothers are freaking out that I really might pee in the back seat of the Jeep and that they’ll have to sit next to me for the rest of the drive.

Forty miles pass and I am now sobbing uncontrollably and my mother has dubbed my father "The Driving Nazi’. I am yelling that this is considered child abuse and once we get home I’m going to call child services. My dad does an excellent job at tuning us out, as always.

Finally, FINALLY we get to South of the Border. I don’t think I even waited for my dad to park the car before I was out and running. I came back to the car scowling, so angry at my father that I refused to talk to him for the rest of the drive. It was only years later that I realized that this was a double win for him - he didn’t have to stop before South Carolina AND he had silence for the rest of the trip.

124

We had been married a month and drove cross country from outside Allentown, PA to S.F., stopping along the way at my parents and various friends so we didn’t have to spend a whole bunch of money on lodging. Our first stop to visit for more than just over night was in Fort Collins, Colorado. We had turned left off of I80 and just as we came into Colorado a really bad storm broke and kept right on breaking, severly. We were newly weds so we were being nice to each other and not commenting on the other’s driving. Until this storm hit. I have never driven in anything that bad. Suddenly the car, a Charger that was only about three years old, started to sound like a truck. The exhaust system had pretty much fallen off and was left on the road so a fellow driver could also have the worst road trip they ever had by dodging various pieces of our exhaust. Nothing we could do about it but we opened the windows a little to get some air circulation, and a shower from the horizontal rain blowing in the window, in case were we also being gased with exhasut fumes. The next thing we see is a large sign which reads, “Caution High Winds Car May Be Blown Off Road” or something pretty close to that. This did not make us happy campers but I’m not one to give up so we just kept driving until Fort Collims came into sight, which, thanks to the rain, didn’t happen until we were almost through it.
The Sears in Fort Collins is a wonderful place. My wife and I are teachers and we only had so much cash and, as newly weds, we only had one credit card, a Sears card. Please keep in mind this was back in the days when cash was still accepted as the currency of the land and credit cards were only for special purchases. We went to the Sears auto place to get an new exhaust system. They checked it out and told us exactly what was wrong, as if that weren’t more than a tad obvious, and then said they couldn’t possibly fix it. They didn’t carry those parts and we would have to go to a dealer. My wife teaches art. I teach theater, which comes in handy on occasions such as this one. I put on my best pathetic look, (In my 20s I could do a great pathetic. Now in my 50s it’s pretty much always pathetic which my wife reminds me of, often, which is pathetic in and of itself but I digress.) My wife manages to squeeze out a tear and the guys at Sears were nothing but understanding. They found the parts and installed them for us so we could continue on our trip. They charged us for them, which is what makes this the worst road trip we’ve ever had, but they did the work which is good since after I get past opening the hood there’s no point in me even being at that end of a car.
I just read this. It really isn’t all that bad of a road trip, is it?
My wife just read this and she gave me the same look I gave those guys at the Sears in Fort Collins.
Oh well, what can I say. Every other time we took a road trip, with and without the kids who are now grown and won’t go anywhere with us unless we’re buying dinner and/or the tickets, everything went well. We never even ran out of gas. The kids were always great. The weather was always good. I’m going to submit this anyway. Maybe everybody else who listens to your program is on vacation and can’t even get that space radio thingy.

125

About three summers ago, my family and I were going from bear Bradford, PA to Springfield, MA on our way to Maine. The weather over the past weeks prior had led to some very bad flooding; so bad, in fact, that bridges were beginning to wash out. Our route would take us along the south side of upstate New York, then up to Albany and onto MassPike. Unfortunately, it did not work out this way.
Somewhere around Binghamton, traffic on the interstate was diverted up the off ramp to a local deputy. He asked where we were going, to which we replied “Massachusetts”. “I’m afraid the county is closed.” said the officer. He explained that the bridge was in danger of washing out, and directed us to the opposite on ramp.
We then began to trek north, through Ithaca, hoping to grab the New York Turnpike and continue to Albany. When we reached Utica and attempted to get onto the Turnpike, there was a New York state trooper at the on ramp explaining that the bridge had been washed out ahead, and that we would have to take US 20 if we wanted to get to Albany.
We got on US 20 as the sun was going down, and found that not only was traffic bumper-to-bumper, but that a construction project in one of the towns up ahead had diverted traffic onto what I will describe as “local” roads. The locals were often found to be sitting on their lawns, waving, as the traffic crawled past. Some little girls had the wise idea of setting up a lemonade stand to cater to the lugubrious traffic. Eventually the traffic started moving faster as the night wore on, and roadside motels that I doubt had used their “No Vacancy” signs in well over a decade filled up.
Around midnight we finally made it to what I believe was Duanesburg. We saw another local police officer stopping people ahead of us. We decided to circumnavigate his checkpoint, and finally made it on to I-88 and onward to Albany!
We stopped at a rest stop with a McDonald’s to get some snacks (it was now around 1 AM). My father, having driven since around 9 AM, finally relented the wheel to my mother. To put it nicely, Dad was stressed out and kaput (my siblings, meanwhile, had begun to fall asleep). With my mother driving and I as her navigator, we began to quickly move down foggy MassPike.
Having canceled our reservations with the Springfield, MA hotel earlier in the day (assuming we were never going to make it), you can imagine the surprise of the hotel clerk when we showed up at 2:30 in the morning, finally collapsing into our beds for a few hours of well-deserved rest.
All told, we had spent 14 hours driving throught New York state - an experience I never hope to relive.

126

My Road Trip from Hell took place circa 1972, when I drove with two co-workers from Central NJ to Daytona Beach, FL. Since I have always been obsessive with car maintenance, I naively assumed that my friend’s Maverick–which was less than 2 years old–had been maintained properly. Oh, how wrong I was.

At our first gas stop, the station attendant checked the oil, came around to the driver’s window with the dipstick, and asked “When was the last time you changed this MUD”? The black, congealed oil on the dipstick actually looked more like tar than like mud. My friend replied, “Oil changes? I don’t believe in them!” As I soon learned, he did not believe in any other auto maintenance either.

Fast forward to Virginia. As I piloted us through the outskirts of Richmond, VA, I shifted the three on the tree into second gear, let up on the clutch, and immediately concluded that we were actually in neutral. Once more, I shifted to second–with the same result. We coasted over to the side of the road, and I found that shifting into first gear was also to no avail, and then I also noticed that the shift lever seemed unusually loose or…floppy.

We had the car towed to the closest Ford dealer, retired to the nearest hotel for a few hours (very few) of fitful sleep, and returned to the dealership at 7:30 the next morning. Examination of the car revealed that the shift linkage had snapped, either as a result of lack of lubrication (everything needed to be lubed periodically in those days) or from a defect in the linkage.

As it turned out, this Maverick with ~19,000 miles on the odometer had NEVER been serviced since it had left the showroom almost 2 years previously! The service manager tried to convince my friend to allow them to do a full 15,000 mile service, but he refused. The shift linkage was repaired in about 3 hours, and we were on our way again.

In South Carolina, suddenly we saw steam streaming back from the hood. The temp gauge was pegged to the limit. We pulled over, I opened the hood, and found everything drenched in rusty, muddy coolant that had spewed from a split top seam on the radiator. I prevented my friend from opening the radiator cap, and I insisted that we wait for almost an hour for everything to cool down. We then began a “bucket brigade” with two of the car’s “dog dish” hubcaps, taking water from a nearby stream and hauling it up a steep embankment to slowly refill the radiator. Believe it or not, I had to really press my friend to stop at the next service station. He thought that we could just stop every 20 miles or so to refill the split radiator!

The service station was unable to fix the radiator, so they unbolted it and transported it and the three of us to the local John Deere tractor dealer where they were able to weld the seam shut properly. However, in a scene loosely reminiscent of Deliverance, we had an uncomfortable hour or so as some of the “good ole boys” eyed us closely. Finally, after the radiator was reinstalled by the original service station, we were on our way again, albeit sans the proper 50/50 coolant/water mixture. My friend would not agree to the $4.00 or so for coolant, so we were running with just 100% water in the cooling system. The car frequently ran “hot” after this incident, but, at least we were on our way.

Finally, we reached Daytona, about 1 day late as a result of the unscheduled stops for repairs. After a few restful days of boozing and sunning on the beach, we headed back home. The return trip was uneventful, except for when my friend fell asleep at the wheel. As he put it, “At least I woke up when we went off the road and hit the gravel”!

When it came time for a similar trip the following year, the third guy in the group proposed that we take his Mustang, because it was “in great shape”. Oh yeah. We did not go more than 600 miles before that car needed new plugs, points, rotor, condenser, and air filter–thus necessitating an unplanned, and loooong stop for servicing his car.

Needless to say, after those experiences, when it comes to long-distance travel I either use my own car or I fly. I will no longer travel long-distance in someone else’s car unless I can personally verify its maintenance history. As the veterans of this board know only too well, when someone says that his car has been “well-maintained” it frequently does not fit any reasonable definition of that term, and I do not feel like being the victim of poor maintenance again.

127

My 80 year old dad, me (50 year old mom) and 10 year old daughter were on our way back to Tucson from our annual vacation in the Sierra Nevada, driving our jam packed 2000 Subaru Outback wagon on US 395, through the hottest, emptiest stretch of the Mojave Desert. Suddenly the power steering failed. Realizing we were in the middle of nowhere, out of cell phone range, and having checked the manual and finding nothing we could do, we decided to continue to the nearest “town”, Kramer Junction. For the next hour, various systems failed but the engine kept on running. We shut off the A/C and opened the windows. All the guages were swinging wildly back and forth. Finally we limped into Kramer Junction, and at the only stoplight, the engine began to miss badly. Unfortunately the light was red, we were stopped on the tracks, and a train was hooting in the distance heading our way. I was just planning to tell my daughter to hop out and run for it, when the light turned green. We floored it, barely making it across the intersection into a gas station parking lot, where it died completely. It being happy hour, and my dad being a practical guy, he sat on the curb and poured his usual Scotch into a paper cup as we called a tow truck. After a gorgeous sunset ride on the big flatbed through the Joshua trees to San Bernardino, a very nice dealership fixed our broken alternator bolt (and a few other things - like no transmission fluid) for just over $100 and we were on our way. I have changed mechanics and the old Subaru’s still going strong at 120k miles.

Holly Finstrom
Car Talk Fan

128

I was 40 years old in the early 1980’s driving 400+ miles in new Chevy Citation to Boise, ID on a Saturday (repair shops not open) to enroll our older daughter in college. Half way down the state driving up the steep Winchester Grade (between Lewiston and Grangeville, ID - basically middle of nowhere) we get a flat tire. Neither of us had ever changed a tire but I pulled off the road, set the emergency brake, got the manual out and we got the job done. Got back in car, pulled the lever to release emergency brake and pulled the entire mechanism out of the dash but did NOT release the emergency brake. Made a “HELP” sign on cardboard with lipstick but no one would stop. Finally an elderly couple pulled over. They rolled the window down as I ran up to ask them to send help from Grangeville. (This was long before cell phones!) When I got to their car, they rolled the window back up, leaving just a crack to talk through. As I was trying to talk with them, my daughter yelled that she had (by sheer strength) released the brake and we were good to go. I asked the couple if they would mind driving slowly (really no other way to drive on that stretch), keeping us in sight until we got to Grangeville to a service station. They agreed. I got back in the car and was explaining to my daughter how strangely they had acted. She said, “Mom. Look at your t-shirt.” My shirt said : “Ladies Qilting Circle and Terrorist Society”. No wonder they were suddently reluctant to help! We bought a new tire in Grangeville and I drove onto Boise and back going up and down many steep grades with no emergency brake. It could have been worse but it was bad enough that I didn’t tell my husband until I got back home. Needless to say, the dealer heard from me right away!

129

For our 25th wedding anniversary my husband bought us a Winnebago - the smallest one they had but it did have a kitchenette and a potty. In all our life together I had never, at any time, indicated that I would be thrilled and delighted to be cooped up in a metal box, traveling anywhere that would require hitching up in a camp ground with other people in metal boxes. But with as good grace as I could muster, I agreed, for our first trip, to travel from Milford, Pa. to San Francisco Ca. (approx. 2500 miles one way) to visit our daughter who had just started school at SF Art Institute. The best I could say about what I called the 4-wheeled port-a-potty was that I didn’t have to beg my husband to make pit stops. (What is it about guys and pit stops - almost as bad as suggesting they ask for directions.) I had been using it successfully and had pretty much stopped complaining when we eventually hit some interesting territory in Nevada. At some point I had to use that potty, which required pulling the retractable walls and door out until something clicked, opening the door, and closing it behind me before I could sit on the toilet. Having done all that, and just getting down to business, my husband went around a sharp curve and all of a sudden the walls closed up on me and in order not to be totally crushed I had to quickly pull my legs up on the seat. After my initial shock I starting shouting to my husband, “Quick, quick go around another curve the OTHER way!!!” Which he managed to do. Apparently the walls hadn’t “clicked” but they slid back to where they had been, I finished my business, walked back to my seat and burst out laughing…and continued to laugh off and on through the rest of the trip. We did make a deal, however. I would only use that potty on straight flat roads, and when they weren’t he would have to stop at gas stations, cafes, whatever. That was 20 years ago. The Winnebago is long gone (he got over his wanderlust after a few years and much, much money spent in maintenance and repairs, and we went back to hotels, motels, and B&Bs) but every so often I remember that visit to the potty and I laugh all over again…makes a great story when we meet new people. Not quite the trip from hell -but close.

130

trying again, my cat hit the escape key. she does that (and smiles that cat smile)…she’s been trying to guess my passwords.

1970s, Northern Wisconsin, 3am, middle of some cranberry bog, heading to Minnesota for some reason, dunno why, but probably to visit a female… BANG! (lots of bangs) spark plug blows out of the head on my VW Bug. I know this car - rebuilt the engine myself, and had parts left over (doesn’t everybody?) but it still ran fine. Gozillion miles.

What I have is a flashlight, screwdriver and pliers, and those wrenches to adjust the gap on the … tappets? I am royally screwed. After the engine cools down, I can put my little finger down the smooth hole where the sparkplug sits in the cylinder.

After an hour of despair, Mother of invention = chewing gum somewhere in the car, and NOT ABC gum (!) chewed it up, wrapped it around the sparkplug threads (after chipping out the aluminum) and shoved it in the hole…
This VW made it to Minnesota (mission accomplished) AND back to Madison WIS.
Loved that car.

131

Hi Guys,
It was the summer of '78, I was in college, and a couple of buddies and I decided to drive Alaska from California for a summer of gold mining and exploring.

Between us, the only suitable vehicle was a well worn 1964 International Travelall 4x4 that belonged to “Larry.” The faded orange paint of this road tank was evidence that its best years had been spent as a state DOT vehicle. You’ll get an idea what it was like if I tell you that, when it came to vehicle maintenance, Larry’s guiding principle was that it is cheaper to replace an engine periodically than to change its oil regularly.

So, rather than preparing the Travelall for a 5,000-mile round trip, we spent the night before departure replacing the clutch in the car of a pretty co-ed friend.

The next day, we hadn’t gone 100 miles up the road before we decided that the truck needed some attention. It clearly wasn’t firing on all eight cylinders, so power and fuel economy were poor. We pulled into the parking lot of a parts store and did a tune-up right there – spark plugs, wires, cap and rotor. Best we could tell, that got us up to seven cylinders. It probably had a flat cam.

The second day, a retread blew. Fortunately we had a couple of spares tied to the roof.

On the third day, we were well into the wilderness of northern British Columbia when we noticed that the brakes no longer worked. A quick look revealed brake fluid leaking from the right rear wheel and an empty master cylinder reservoir. Not to worry, we could control the speed, and even stop the truck eventually, using the manual transmission. Larry couldn’t remember when the hand brake last worked. There was no choice but to keep going. We would stop in the next town and get some brake fluid.

It so happens on this Travelall that the hydraulic clutch used the same master cylinder as the brakes, so the clutch didn’t work either, and we had to shift gears by letting off the throttle and slamming it into the required gear.

Before we reached the next town, toiling up a hill on the graveled highway, we rounded a bend and came across a long line of cars, trucks, travel trailers and motor homes stopped in front of us. As luck would have it, we had encountered one of those ubiquitous summer road construction projects.

Naturally, Larry didn’t want to stop. That would require killing the engine. And how would we get started again on an uphill without a clutch? He decided to slowly pass the line of parked vehicles in the left lane and hope that by the time we reached the front of the line the flagger would have started our line of traffic moving again. People glared at us as we chugged past them in second gear.

Unfortunately, upon arriving at the head of the line, traffic was still stopped, and the indignant flagger scowled and pointed us to the back of the line like an angry school teacher. Larry was rolling to a stop on the hill, but he couldn’t just park in the lane of oncoming traffic. Where would they go? We would have to back down the long line and figure out something else.

As we came to a stop, Larry slipped the gear shift into neutral and then, quickly, tried to slam it into reverse. He missed. Gears grinding, we we slowly started rolling backward.

We rolled slowly at first, and Larry’s head was jerking from from side to side as he surveyed our situation and looked for alternatives. Desperately he pumped the useless brake and clutch pedals and ground the gears to no avail. To our left was a deep ditch and a high bank. Going that direction would tip the truck on its side in the ditch and against the bank. To our right was the long line of cars, trucks, travel trailers and motor homes we’d just passed.

Larry decided to try to keep to the road and ride it out. As we started rolling back, the the faces of the people we’d just passed registered smug pleasure that we’d been sent to the back of the line. But as we picked up speed, the smiles turned to looks of alarm.

Faster and faster, we rolled, starting to weave. Larry was fighting to keep the truck going straight, a full-time job in the best of times, even going forward, because of the loose steering. Soon the faces in the parked cars beside us were a blur of wide-eyed fright. We must have looked the same to them, careening down the hill backward.

Just when we thought Larry would lose control and we would crash into a car beside us or tip into the ditch, we rolled past the last car in the long line to our left. Larry saw his opening and cranked the steering wheel, and the Travelall whipped and slid across the gravel, bounced through a small ditch, rolled up a low rise and slammed into a dirt bank where it steepened. The rear doors flow open and stuff we had packed to the roof flew out, scattering across the ground. We rolled forward, into the small ditch, and came to a stop.

We were still reloading our gear and deciding what to do when one of the road workers pulled up to ask if we needed help. We explained that we had a leaking wheel cylinder and an empty master cylinder reservoir. He gave us a small nail and some brake fluid. We unscrewed the brake line at the leaky wheel cylinder, inserted the nail and re-tightened it. This formed a tight seal and stopped the leak. We refilled the master cylinder, bled the clutch and brakes and were on our way. The fix held for the duration of the trip, but it left us with only three brakes.

The very next day we were motoring through Yukon Territory when a terrible metallic screeching sound started coming from the engine. We stopped for a look. An engine mount had broken and the motor was sagging at an odd angle, causing the fan to hit the radiator. Somehow we were able to jack up the engine and hold it in place with a chain that Larry happened to have. This fix also held for the duration of the trip.

Oddly enough, with the exception of another tire failure, we didn’t have any more vehicle problems all summer, and what started out so inauspiciously turned out to be a great adventure of gold panning, fishing, hiking, log cabin building and exploring.

Maybe I’ll scan some pictures and post them later.

Love your show.

Regards,
Kurt

132

My road trip from Hell (hope my wife?s not listening) was my honeymoon
My wife and I bought a brand new 1st year made VW Rabbit diesel pickup added a bare bones cap and my/ our Sheepdog Waldo and headed west a 4 week cross country honeymoon. By the time we got to Las Vegas the exhaust didn?t sound too good, and Waldo with his head sticking into the cab looked kind of sick .Turns out the exhaust pipe broke and fed fumes into the cap turning Waldo into a Black Sheepdog.
The Vegas VW dealer told us ?You didn?t buy it here?and sent us down the road.
A Meineke shop near by told us the car was to new and they didn?t have the parts,
They did however say they could weld it for a temporary fix, which they did for FREE. The owner told us just tip the welder, we did and with some Irish spring and Lake Meade Waldo was also good as new. That was almost 30 years ago the VW was the first to go GLADLY Waldo next SADDLY but the wife and I carry on.
We even took our three kids on a cross country trip in a 1973 Winnebago Brave but that?s another story

133

My husband and I belonged to a state wide motorcycle group that held it’s meetings in variouse parts of the state. We were attending one on the opposite side of the state one weekend. We were carpooling with the group’s newsletter editor and lobbyist. Two different people, just so you know. We had stopped at our usual truck stop to get us some dinner et al, but forgotten to get gas. This was around 9pm. No problem, we knew of a gas station right after we got off of the interstate, we’d just get gas there. Well, we get there and the station is closed! Still, we have enough gas to get to the next town, there should be a station open there. I should tell you now that our lobbyist is a read-aholic. Our van was one of those older ‘home’ conversions with the bed in the back and an ice box and wine rack with the carpeting on it. The lobbyist sat in front with my husband and had the little avation style light on him so he could read his book while we were traveling. The newsletter editor (I should state here that it was a she) and I were in the back visiting. Next thing you know, there’s police car lights shining behind us. Now, I don’t blame the cop for stopping us. If I’d been a cop I’d have been doing the same thing. I haven’t told you we were doing about 30 mph in a 45 mph zone looking for the gas station. None of which were open. And there was a prison there. So, you have an older van with two seedy looking men in the front with the light on doing 30 in a 45 with a prison nearby. No reason whatsoever to get stopped! The cop asked if he could search the van. He says we can do it now or we can wait for the dogs. Not that we have anything to hide anyway. At least as far as I know! Did I mention that our lobbyist was an ex-con? Or as he liked to put it, reformed and rehabilitated. And that he liked to drink beer? And that he had his container of cans with him? And was putting the empties behind my husband? We all pile out of the van and stand in the grass beside the road while we wait for the cop’s backup. They arrive and we settle in with them while he searches the van. We’re visiting with them and they ask where we are going etc. and we tell them about that and why we are where we are. One of them happens to have been a member of our group! The cop gets done searching the van and asks about the beer. The lobbyist says that it’s his, and no, my husband wasn’t drinking at all. Yes, we’re sure. We get back in the van and the editor sees that the cop has gone through her purse. She’s a tad upset to say the least. The backup cops have us follow them and they take us to the local gas station that DOES stay open late. It’s not on the highway.

134

I was living in North central Pennsylvania in the 1980s and driving nearly every weekend to see my ailing parents in Western PA. a round trip of about 300 miles. My 1974 VW bus needed extensive bodywork for copious rust and a paint job. My folks had just been saddled with a Mustang II they had co-signed on for my niece, who then skipped town with the boyfriend du jour, leaving them with the car and the loan payments. I took over the payments so I could have a car to drive while mine was hors de rust. I picked up the car one weekend in Sept. and on Sunday I headed East for home on I-80. Just as I got to the exact middle of nowhere there was a big backfire under the hood and the engine stopped. You remember the Mustang II, a Pinto with an even uglier body. I pulled off onto the shoulder and popped the hood. As trucks rushed past at 80+ MPH, inches from my backside, I examined everything. I finally tried to adjust the distributor timing on a hunch. It started but ran terrible. I then adjusted the timing by ear with it running, it smoothed out, and everything seemed okay. I headed off again and perhaps 8-10 miles later there was a huge explosion, blowing the muffler’s seams wide open and lifting the car several inches off the road. Of course the engine died again. I tried adjusting the timing again, but this time it was no go. After an hour or so of fooling around, I pulled the distributor and discovered that the gear on the bottom that drives it was just spinning on the shaft, the pin that locks it to the shaft completely missing. By now it was getting dark and I was getting a little desperate. I looked around and noticed the radio antenna was about the same diameter as the pinhole, so I snipped off the top with pliers and it fit! The ball at the top secured one end and I bent the other end over trimming off the excess, then reinserted the distributor. Many trial and error adjustments finally got the timing close enough to start. I then readjusted the timing by ear again and off I went home, the engine running smooth as a top and roaring as loud as a dragster. When I finally sold the car 4 months later, it was still running fine.
Mike from Erie, PA.

135

Shoulda listened to Ralph Nader! On a work trip to Lubbock, TX, with all our belongings in our RV, truck, and in the front trunk of our '62 Corvair, we finally reached our exit. Right at that moment, I was driving along and suddenly I was looking at our luggage in the front trunk. My husband who was behind me, saw the hood of the Corvair go sailing straight up into the air! It landed on the grass behind him. Thankfully no one was hit. And then it rained for a solid week after that! :frowning:

136

Back in April 2005, I was going to drive from Minnesota to Utah to bring my second oldest daughter home from college. As neither this daughter or her older sister (who was attending college in Idaho) had ever been to California, we decided to take a side trip there before I brought my second oldest daughter back home.

I left one early morning with our Plymouth Voyager minivan. I had not traveled 5 miles from home when I heard a loud clunk and started to lose power. A couple of seconds later I heard a second louder thunk and the engine stopped. I managed to coast off the expressway, walk to a nearby hotel and call my wife to me pick me up. I then called the motor club to have the Voyager towed to the local Chrysler dealership. The transmission had literally had a shaft break and punch all the way through the transmission case. As fate would have it, the minivan had about 104,000 miles on it. If Chrysler can engineer a transmission that fails just a few thousand miles after their 7 year / 100,000 mile warranty elapses (I found several other people who had the same problem), I cannot figure out how Chrysler could become bankrupt.

A day and a half and $3000 later, I was finally on the road. After picking up both daughters, we headed to California. Our first stop was Yosemite National Park. After we paid the entrance fee, my oldest daughter asked me to stop by a nearby pullout where a large tree had snapped in two. My oldest daughter thought it would make a great picture if I went next to the tree and make it look like I had pushed it over. I managed to go from the asphalt pullout and several steps on to the dirt when I slipped and injured my leg.

My oldest daughter drove us to the clinic at Yosemite where I complained about my ankle which had swollen quite a bit. The clinic x-rayed my leg from mid-calf to my foot and did not find any broken bones. I was given a air splint and some pain medications and was sent on my way.

Despite my best efforts to get around, after 2 days I had to cut the trip short. After I was home a couple of days, I scheduled an appointment with my family doctor as my leg had turned black and blue and yellow from my knee down. My doctor sent me from her office to the lab the floor below to have more x-rays taken, this time from my knee down. After I had the x-rays and walked back to her office, she came in a few minutes later with a grin. I had broken my fibula near my knee and pulled the tibia and fibula apart by my ankle (a Maisonneuve fracture) and she could not understand how I had managed to walk 10 days on my leg. I was shoved into a wheelchair (as I was no longer allowed to walk, though it was Ok to walk to the lab earlier) and 30 minutes later had a cast on my leg. I was in various casts then for the next 10 weeks.

BTW, in April 2009 I went back to that very same spot in Yosemite and finally managed to get that picture taken.

137

Every day. I drive a 1978 Volkswagen bus. If you have to ask, you’ll (thankfully) never know.

138

My first husband and I embarked for Portland, Oregon from Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Massachusetts the day of his graduation in May of 1972. We drove his 1964 Chevy Impala (standard, 3-speed on the column!) towing the smallest U-Haul trailer, which contained all our earthly possessions. Which meant a lot of books. Note: a lot of books.

Drove to Torrington, CT to stay overnight with friends and then made it onto I-80 the next day, entering at Stroudsburg, where my husband thought he heard a strange sound which we then dismissed. The car died just east of the Loganton, PA exit, where, as luck would have it, a brand-new gas station had opened. My husband hiked there and returned with the tow. We waited several hours to discover that they were going to have to pull the engine block. One of the mechanics drove us to his home for dinner, and then to a motel in Lock Haven. Returned us to our car the next day. Eventually we were on the road again. We made it without incident almost to Newton, Iowa, where the car, smoking, gave out. A mechanic said that apparently the cam shaft cover (??my memory is faulty here) had not been put on tightly ? and the car was not going to do any more for us on this trip. We used all our money (before ATMs ? and before we really had any money) to get a U-Haul truck, reloaded all our possessions, hitched up the car. By the way, the only truck they had was the next-to-largest one U-Haul owned. In retrospect, we should have put the car inside, too?as you will discover later.

We made it to Omaha, NB, where we had planned to have parents wire us money at Western Union, about 12:15 a.m. ? Western Union had closed at midnight. So we decided to look for the church that a fellow graduate was going to serve as Associate Minister, so we could park in the parking lot overnight. Found it, and he slept in the truck, while I slept in the car ? no money left for lodging?..and it hailed that night.

Went without further obstacle ? until ? near Pocatello, Idaho the truck died on the interstate. He hitched, got a tow ? who came upon an accident and had to respond to it first ? but eventually they got to me in the truck. The truck was repaired, and we headed on our way.

In LaGrande, OR we were stopped with a warning from a police officer that we didn?t have lights on a towed vehicle, including turning lights. We had drained the battery keeping the Chevy?s lights on ? and turning lights had never occurred to us anyway. So we got the necessary wiring installed and continued on our way. I was driving when a state policeman stopped us for driving above the truck speed limit (55 instead of 50). I absolutely broke down in tears ? I had pretty much had it for this trip ? and I think the officer was so taken aback that that was what moved him simply to issue a warning.

Going downhill toward Pendleton the engine was heating ? not a good sign. We started to go beyond Pendleton, thought better of it, and turned around to find a U-Haul dealer. The only truck they had was the very largest model. Once more a shift of possessions and a rehitching of car. And I finally noticed that my few houseplants that had been sitting in the car were completely asphyxiated by exhaust fumes from the truck.

Learning to drive the big truck was hard ? I couldn?t shift into one of the gears, so we had to use both of us to do it ? yet another adventure. But we made it to my mother-in-law?s. All that summer we spent borrowing her car to have while he worked on the coast, and we paid a mechanic on the coast on time to get our Chevy fixed ? and gradually worked at paying back parents on both sides.

I love books, I really do ? and need them in my work ? but I will never consider hauling them in a trailer of any kind. And I bless the advent of cell phones for emergencies and ATMs for needed on-the-road cash.

My first husband and I had a few other cross-country trips, another one of which involved a rotted-out brake line on a 1966 Ford Falcon that had sat a year while my dad was terminally ill, and one that involved loving with our dear large dog who had to have Dramamine so he would throw up in the truck (and who unfortunately passed a lot of gas in his sleep!). We divorced after ten years of marriage. The trips were not the reason, remarkably enough!

Someday I want to take my present (and final!) husband on a road trip across country simply to take in the sights. I am trusting that it will be a much easier journey!

Jamie Howard
North Billerica, MA

139

When my son was 11 months old, we decided to take him and our dog in our 1995 Ford E350 van down to Ft. Worth, TX for Thanksgiving. It’s just about 1000 miles from Denver, CO. The trip down was fine, the family thing went fine, but on the way back, our son started getting very sick. By the time we reached Amarillo (8 hours into the trip), he had vomited and diarrhead all over his carseat and myself. When we finally stopped, it was after 8pm and my husband had to go to Walmart and purchase laundry detergent, plastic bags, and dinner (the most disgusting fruit salad I’ve ever eaten). Then, he had to go to the laundry mat and wash the baby seat and my clothes. Meanwhile, our son was still vomitting and whatnot all over the hotel room. We somehow made it through the night and on the next day, we used the trash bags to line the car seat, so each time our son got sick, we could just sort of scoop it all out in the trash bag. It still leaked all over the seat below, but we figured we’d clean that if we ever made it home. He wore just a diaper as all of his clothes were ruined by vomit and diarrhea, so we had to keep the heat on pretty high so he didn’t get cold. A blizzard hit Eastern Colorado when got into the Southeastern part and state troopers had to direct us another way because the roads were closed. That happened twice. Of course, we needed our chains and we were on the road for hours and hours and hours going no more than 30 miles/hour. But, we were quite worried about our son and wanted to get home and him to a doctor in the morning. He ended up having norovirus and of course, I caught it since I was the one cleaning up the projectile vomit and diarrhea. Of the four of us, our dog, Rufus, handled it the best. He just sat in the front passenger seat and watched the world go by.

140

Gentelmen
Here is my story,it is short but everybit a nightmare.Some thirty years ago I was dating a girl who lived in northern Calif. but was down in San Diego visiting her father for the summer.I had an old SAAB 96 that she was going to purchase and we were going to drive it back to her home town at the end of the summer.I would then fly back to SD.Befor we left her father decided to do the fatherly thing and change the oil.He told me he had done this the morning we left.We got as far as Los Angeles when a horrible noise started to come from under the hood.These cars always have a ring & pinion noise but this was 10 times worse.Soon after the noise started the speedometer quit working.A few more miles down the road the car began to slow down,rapidly.I pushed in the clutch and managed to coast it to the side of the highway,not an easy feat in LA.We walked off the highway and found someone who would tow it back to her father’s house.She flew back home and the next weekend I rented a hoist and pulled the engine & trans out the front of the car.I was surprised to find the transmission completely devoid of gear oil.In fact it got so hot that it melted the plastic worm gear for the speedo.The awful truth was becoming apparent to me.I asked my girlfriend’s father,who was standing right there, what the drain plug he removed when he changed the oil looked like.He said it was an odd little plug with a square hole.“Did it look like this?” I asked as I handed him the transmission drain plug.The realization of what he did came over his face like a pall.Sure enough there was 8 quarts of oil in the engine and nothing in the trans.I would like to blame this for why the girl soon dumped me but I can’t.
Yes,this is my SAAB story.
clyde s