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I'm sure we have all wittingly or unwittingly driven some rather terrifying machinery, from cars with crazy bhp and not much grip, to that apparently MOTd car that seems to have been pull out of a ditch. Tell us your story.
I've got two.
The first was my old camper van. You see I bought it when I was at my poorest and without a garage. It was a Swedish import 1972 bay window VW Type2, in white, with no rear interior. It was also my daily driver. It was pretty rust free and mechanically sound. Fast forward three years of daily use, and weekend use, and minimal running repairs, and scraping through MOTs. One morning on the way to work it breaks down on Swansea seafront at rush hour and causes a huge traffic jam. I get it home, sort out the electrical problem and drive to work the next day, as I pull in to the works car park the brakes bind and I skid across the car park (handily in to a space). I by the time I come to leave the brakes seem to be okay and I head home, I discover only one side seems to be working properly. On top of this it is running on three cylinders more noticeable. Okay I say, time to give this some love. Then I look at my bank balance.
So I made the decision to get rid of it, believe it or not I didn't think it was worth a whole lot of money at the time (which it wasn't), and selling it in that condition wasn't really an option to me at the time. So I gave it to my dad as a project. Thing is my parents live in South London (well Surrey borders) and I was in South Wales. Couldn't afford a transporter, so I drove it. Three cylinders, possibly two up hills (lowest speed I got to was twenty miles an hour up the hill to the M5 interchange where you have to be in the middle lane to stay on M5), every time I pressed the brakes it lurched violently to the right, almost swerving across lanes. Gradually overheating I arrived at my parents house with it a out ready to expire.
Probably the most dangerous car journey I've undertaken. Well the most dangerous I've knowingly undertaken, next time I shall tell the tale of the car that could have killed me and I didn't know until I got home ...
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Midas
Part of things
Posts: 505
Club RR Member Number: 14
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A Citroen BX that fractured the main pipe from the hydraulic pump. The sudden loss of brakes, steering and suspension in the outside lane of the M1 at 70mph was thought provoking.
In terms of knowingly getting into a death trap, that would have been a Mini that I drove home many years ago, no brakes, overheating and a cracking view of the road through the flintstones floor.
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Driving a very early bare bones Mini Moke on the motorway has got to rate as the dangerous feeling ive ever felt. It was like a cross between a go-cart and a pallet. Just like this one.
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My brother bought a mk1 Escort estate to use as an engine donor for his mk2 escort van years ago. I picked it up with him and drove it home. The thing hadn't been on the road for years looked a little rusty, but it was running, and seemed deliverable. I jumped in and headed off, the drive home included some big country roads with long sweeping corners, and as it was quite late at the night, and we were trying the engine out I was doing about 90mph along the roads and around the longer bends, in fact I drove it home as hard as I could! It went well and got me home safely. When my brother performed the engine-echtomy a couple of days later the shell broke in half as soon as he got it out. It seems that the thing that was keeping it together was the engine being bolted to the front, and the gearbox being bolted halfway down the car!
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Apr 13, 2019 10:11:47 GMT
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My mini when I first got it had terrible brakes. It got worse and worse to the point that the pedal when right to the floor and the car barely slowed down... it was a combination of leaking brake hoses and rusted up brake cylinders.
The ancient cross ply tyres didn't inspire confidence either!
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,712
Club RR Member Number: 34
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Apr 13, 2019 10:12:08 GMT
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It’s fair to say I’ve had more than my fair share of utter wrecks, and a fair amount of those were aircooled VWs too.
But My old Pontiac lowrider was ‘interesting’ when it had the olds 455 in. Over 400hp, full-size chassis, factory drums all round, little in the way of suspension and skinny 175 whitebands. I found out after I bought it it also had a hi-stall torque converter 🙄 It was largely impossible to pull away without smoking the tyres, and edging forward in traffic involved standing on the brake pedal and blipping the throttle so the torque converter grabbed, overpowered the rear brakes and you slid forwards with the front wheels locked. Used to terrify other drivers that’s for sure.
TBH I think a ‘normal’ driver would consider most of my cars I’ve had dangerous, but that’s just cos they're not used to things like crossplies, non power drums, non synchromesh gearboxes, cable brakes, no power steering , etc.
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Apr 13, 2019 10:12:43 GMT
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A friend and me pulled a rusty mk3 Capri out of someone’s front garden for £100 about 14 years ago My mate said he’d tow me home in his rover gsi Told him to take it slow as the brakes weren’t great on the Capri , he proceeded to take off at about 50 Along a carriageway as I gripped the mouldy steering wheel tightly! To cut along story short I ended up overtaking him and spinning both cars full circle with the Capri ending up on the central reservation, both luckily unhurt and no damage done miraculously!!.....the brakes had gone to the floor on the Capri then suddenly caught , did I telll my pal what I thought of his driving? ........put it down to experience
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Fraud owners club member 1999 Jaguar s type 1993 ford escort
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Apr 13, 2019 10:16:45 GMT
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My friend had a habit of buying sporty but dodgy cars in the mid 90s, usually from used car dealers in East London. He bought a 1986 Escort XR3i which could only be described as "Nope". It was about 12 different shades of bright (sometimes matt) red and someone had add "XR3 INJECTION" in foot-high yellow vinyl letters on the doors and side panels. He let me have a go and I immediately told him to get rid of it. The brakes were an amusing lottery of "left, RIGHT! or nothing until you really stamped on the pedal". The handbrake was just a lever - it did nothing at all. There appeared to be a blanking plate where third gear once was (I never found third), and every corner made alarming clonking sounds whenever you went round a bend. I decided to have a closer look and saw cracking around each of the strut tops. Further inspection revealed filler - on all 4. That car was horrific.
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Last Edit: Apr 14, 2019 11:14:37 GMT by mrbounce
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Apr 13, 2019 11:58:59 GMT
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Had the same dodgy mini brakes , once with only a front right and opposite rear working all of a sudden meaning the car went 90 degrees immediately with me looking through the passenger window going 50 mph with both rear wheels on the pavement .
Lost all brakes coming up to a roundabout once going 70mph , enhanced brown pantness by flames shooting up the windscreen from the bonnent gap . Managed to get around without hitting anyone and i was so p**sed off with the car i kept drving it home for another 1.30 with it on fire as i hated it so much at that point .
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Apr 13, 2019 13:54:38 GMT
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Last year the Ford Motor Co. started importing the Mustang into Australia. In order to do so the Mustang had to undergo a standard safety and crash test evaluation to give it a safety rating - a rating of zero is the worst, and a rating of 5 is the best. The Mustang scored 2 out of a possible 5. Thus making the Mustang about the most unsafe new car you could buy in Australia. Most of the cheap Chinese vehicles did much better than that, and the vast majority of cars had a 4 or 5 star rating. So the Ford Mustang must rate as one of the most dangerous cars in the world, I would imagine. I cannot believe that a multinational company such as Ford would ever offer such an unsafe vehicle to the public for sale. And it is not like it is a cheap or slow car either. I found this in Quora.
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fer4l
Posted a lot
Testing
Posts: 1,497
Club RR Member Number: 73
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Apr 13, 2019 13:58:27 GMT
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An e55 I bought from a chap on here for its engine on the basis he could remove anything else before collection It had no steering wheel (molegrips to the rescue), no brakes, a milkcrate for a seat, and I had to get it off the trailer and park it between other people's cars in the dark. On fast idle, so already making decent power & torque. With zero brakes - just drive, reverse, & the mole grips, which in all the circs were a bit less instinctive than a big wheel to palm The most harrowing thing ever - except when the Atom steering wheel came off at the bottom of Foxhole at the Ring (the lap after my co-owner mate came in and said 'that felt like the steering wheel was coming off at times' & I told him not to be so silly). I honestly thought I was going to prove Darwinism to perfection and saw God before it somehow popped back on - we made the corner, pulled off at Breidscheid, and put a nut & bolt through it which remains to this day. Turned out to be a defectively machined QR hub... Then there was the mini clubman with one functioning drum, the £25 Avenger that would go into 1st & reverse simultaneously, the X1/9 with fubared reverse I did 25000 miles in in a year, all forwards, using kerbs and the CROWN of the road to turn round and ever avoiding downhill culs de sac... Ah memories! Cheers Matt
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bazzateer
Posted a lot
Imping along sans Vogue
Posts: 3,653
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Apr 13, 2019 14:04:47 GMT
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Back when I was about 17 a mate was running a very nice Triumph 2500S. He bought a non running Bond Bug off another guy and we towed it back to his place with me in the Bug steering and braking. Well, I would have been braking if they worked! He was doing 60mph along a dual carriageway and I was crapping myself in this little wobbly plastic coffin with just the handbrake to try to slow it down.
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1968 Singer Chamois Sport 1972 Sunbeam Imp Sport 1976 Datsun 260Z 2+2 1998 Peugeot Boxer Pilote motorhome 2003 Rover 75 1.8 Club SE (daily) 2006 MG ZT 190+ (another daily) 2007 BMW 530d Touring M Sport (tow car)
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bazzateer
Posted a lot
Imping along sans Vogue
Posts: 3,653
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Apr 13, 2019 14:05:34 GMT
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Back when I was about 17 a mate was running a very nice Triumph 2500S. He bought a non running Bond Bug off another guy and we towed it back to his place with me in the Bug steering and braking. Well, I would have been braking if they worked! He was doing 60mph along a dual carriageway and I was crapping myself in this little wobbly plastic coffin with just the handbrake to try to slow it down.
PS. I survived, obviously!
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1968 Singer Chamois Sport 1972 Sunbeam Imp Sport 1976 Datsun 260Z 2+2 1998 Peugeot Boxer Pilote motorhome 2003 Rover 75 1.8 Club SE (daily) 2006 MG ZT 190+ (another daily) 2007 BMW 530d Touring M Sport (tow car)
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Apr 13, 2019 14:13:10 GMT
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It’s fair to say I’ve had more than my fair share of utter wrecks, and a fair amount of those were aircooled VWs too. Wondering if you still have that picture of your front beam floating around...
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Apr 13, 2019 14:26:29 GMT
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It should probably be my Beetle.... In the time I owned it; 2 wheels fell off, engine fire, wheel bearings failing, dropped a rod at speed and seized.... but they were all experiences because I loved it! I had a Talbot Horizon given to me! mate drove it 250 miles to Newcastle, it broke down, he needed to get home so gave it to me to get rid of... I owned it for a day, got it running again and went to pick it up, the brakes failed about 3 miles into the journey and I crashed it into a wall... so that one it travelled about another 3 miles to a scrappy
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,712
Club RR Member Number: 34
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Apr 13, 2019 14:29:09 GMT
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It’s fair to say I’ve had more than my fair share of utter wrecks, and a fair amount of those were aircooled VWs too. Wondering if you still have that picture of your front beam floating around... I don’t unfortunately. Lost to photobucket many years ago now. Out of all the things I’ve done over the years that one always seems to get remembered!
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Apr 13, 2019 14:45:18 GMT
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A mates 80's Toyota Supra Turbo, It had shagged suspension and different brands of tyres all round with different amounts of wear ea with different sizes of tyre on each side of the rear axle. It went well enough in a straight line, but turning and braking were another matter.
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OGDB
Part of things
Posts: 544
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Apr 13, 2019 14:55:06 GMT
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911 GT3 RS in a torrential downpour, brown pants moment multiple times! Probably would have been fine if I had driven it according to the conditions... but who drives one of them tamely?!?
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fer4l
Posted a lot
Testing
Posts: 1,497
Club RR Member Number: 73
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Apr 13, 2019 15:05:09 GMT
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An e55 I bought from a chap on here for its engine on the basis he could remove anything else before collection It had no steering wheel (molegrips to the rescue), no brakes, a milkcrate for a seat, and I had to get it off the trailer and park it between other people's cars in the dark. On fast idle, so already making decent power & torque. With zero brakes - just drive, reverse, & the mole grips, which in all the circs were a bit less instinctive than a big wheel to palm The most harrowing thing ever - except when the Atom steering wheel came off at the bottom of Foxhole at the Ring (the lap after my co-owner mate came in and said 'that felt like the steering wheel was coming off at times' & I told him not to be so silly). I honestly thought I was going to prove Darwinism to perfection and saw God before it somehow popped back on - we made the corner, pulled off at Breidscheid, and put a nut & bolt through it which remains to this day. Turned out to be a defectively machined QR hub... Then there was the mini clubman with one functioning drum, the £25 Avenger that would go into 1st & reverse simultaneously, the X1/9 with fubared reverse I did 25000 miles in in a year, all forwards, using kerbs and the CROWN of the road to turn round and ever avoiding downhill culs de sac... Ah memories! Cheers Matt Paulo found the vid...
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Apr 13, 2019 15:12:55 GMT
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Without doubt the car I currently own was the most dangerous car I'd ever driven. I still consider it to be a relatively unsafe car three years later after working through it all at my own pace and in my own inimitable style.
I got the car for a good price after seeing it re-listed on ebay endless times and failing to sell, or selling and then failing to be completed. So I contacted the seller and said that if he just wanted shot of it I'd come up and give him £X in cold hard cash and it would be mine along with all the faults. No inspection... as long as it ran and matched the description, and as long as he accepted my price I would do no more than arrive with the money, sign the slip, and take the keys.
It was in Northampton area. I then had a 140 mile drive home in it.
It was the first junction that I came to where I discovered it had pretty much no brakes at all, and didn't stop so much as gave up moving eventually. So the entire home journey had to be strategised with me encouraging the car to give up going forwards way in advance of any need to stop.
None of the electrics worked either, so I had no lights or indicators.
It was mis-firing, overheating, lost oil and coolant.
But it got me home eventually, and has been my daily driver ever since.
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Last Edit: Apr 13, 2019 15:13:59 GMT by Deleted
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