Pranking your buddy's cars

Saw a post on Reddit justrolledintotheshop where a guy brought his Jeep into a shop because there was a whistling sound coming from under his ride.  Put car up on a lift and it turns out a buddy of his had zip tied a harmonica to the bottom of the frame rail.  Made me think back to my younger days when I worked overnights in a big warehouse.  Some of the stuff that went on there is legendary.  Grease on door handles and wiper blades, reducing exhaust system outlet to the size of 1/2 EMT tubing, shrink wrapping motorcycles.  Somebody put the roof down in my TR8 one night as the remnants of a hurricane blew thru.  Man that was alot of water.  Worst was one night we grabbed a couple of five gallon buckets of water and a roll of those brown paper towels from the bathroom.  It was 6 degrees out that night.  Wrapped a guys car in wet brown towels.  In the morning it was like his car was encased in plywood.  Sat like that for a couple of days until he could get a door open and could get in to start the car.  My personal favorite was when we covered a guys corolla in every tacky stick on thing we could buy from Autozone.  Fuzzy dice, big palm tree sticker in the back window, personal windshield banner, bight yellow wiper arms, etc.  What are some of the pranks you have witnessed?

I think you mentioned most of them, as I recall. Back in the early'80's I worked in a machine shop - where similar pranks were performed. A common one was to turn on the radio full blast and the wipers on high speed. For some reason guys would not be amused by this, when they turned the key on. 

When I worked at a machine shop just out of high school I left the windows open in my cutlass and my coworkers filled my car with packing peanuts, clear up to the window openings. I scooped out enough to get in, then just drove 60 mph home with the windows open to get rid of the rest. It was like being in one of those old game show tunes where money flies around and you try to grab it. I can't imagine what it must have looked like from the outside. 

At another job we took two of the largest wheel balancing weights we had and put them on a coworker's honda del sol. One on left front, one on right rear. He didnt make it very far before he came back panicking. 

Not car related but I had another coworker who tended to over react to any little bit of mess or clutter. We took an 8" x 8" cardboard box and cut the bottom out. We set in on his toolbox and filled it with every little nut, bolt, screw, and fitting we had sitting around. When he came in and saw it he made a real dramatic show about it being left there and when he went to take it off they dumped all over the place. I dont think he spoke to anyone for a week.

Multiple occasions in high school we'd fill the interior of someone's car with crumpled up newspaper. 
 

The volume of material was so much that there wasn't much you could do with it after clearing it out except burn it.  

I always wanted to put a Screamin' Meany truck driver's alarm under the seat or one of those cat toys that squeak when they move.

I put one of those giant zip ties used for duct work on a friend's driveshaft(left the tail on it). It was hard to see from the side of the truck and it took him a half a day to diagnose where the weird sound was coming from.

I like that harmonica prank - harmless. 

We had one of these ignition rotors with a rev limit of 4000. We would throw it in a buddy's Jetta when he wanted to race.

He wasn't savvy enough to understand what was going on. It could be replaced before he got out of the car after popping the hood.

See, your car revs fine, go get 'em tiger. *swap rotor out,  close hood"  he'd come back with a 20 second ET slip and we would suggest letting one of us make a run and return with a 15 second slip. 

In retrospect, it was a dick move (all pranks are) but for some reason we thought it was funny

I responded to a car fire, and picked up an Impala that had burned to a shell. A woman that worked next door saw it, and asked us to help prank her husband. One day she took his prized Caprice and parked it somewhere else, and we sent the crispy carcass in their driveway.  It was so evil, I wish I had thought of it. 

I once taped the rope of an air horn to the driver window of a delivery truck. I had the drivers helper go start the truck, from the passenger side and made sure to irritate the heck out of the guy before he walked out for his daily route. Tugging the door open triggered the air horn, which caused him to scream. He didn't speak to me for weeks but it was worth it. 

A less funny one was when some high school friends packed my brakes full of crisco. Luckily we were country kids, and there wasn't much traffic. I blew every stop sign that morning and the next

tr8todd said:

Worst was one night we grabbed a couple of five gallon buckets of water and a roll of those brown paper towels from the bathroom.  It was 6 degrees out that night.  Wrapped a guys car in wet brown towels.  In the morning it was like his car was encased in plywood.

It's called Pykrete.

Remember, it's only a prank if both people are laughing at the end.

Years ago I wired a friends horn to his clutch.

Now you can buy something similar on Amazon.

https://a.co/d/gcOCyYa

Some bubble wrap rolled up in front of the passenger rear tire.

It makes a good bang without any chance of damage. 

I don't know if he ever found the noise...A co worker of mine just out of high school (1971) had put a marble down the fuel fill of one of his school mates Frogeye Sprite. That tank has several shallow stiffening ribs stamped in the bottom. Around 1983 the Sprite in question, still with the same owner came in for a tune up. I road tested, and yup, you could still hear it roll across the tank every single direction change!

An air horn on an atmospheric BOV is always funny to me

Putting one of the very large zip-ties around the driveshaft or u-joint and makes an interesting noise and is sure to make someone quite nervous. Not that I've ever done it to anyone.................

Drew many black sharpie dongs on windshields. Not very visible until they are. 

Hook up the horn to a blinker wire.

Or better, the brake wire.

I attended a wedding at which the bride and groom were going to leave the ceremony in the groom's prized MG.  Dire warnings had been given to the groomsmen about defiling said MG (with "just married" paint, etc).  So they completely covered the car is small post-it notes.

It even satisfied the "both sides were laughing at the end" criterion.

At my last duty station before I separated from the Air Force, I had a troop that drove a very nice TJ Wrangler. At the time I had a JK Wrangler. We would always drive to work sans top and doors.

We would berk with each others Jeeps. Nothing nefarious but it's too easy to turn the wipers on, turn the radio volume knob all the way up, adjust the seats/mirrors/HVAC fan speed when you can just reach in. 

After a long, crappy day, I'd hop in, turn the ignition to start my Jeep and be greeted with the wipers, radio and A/C going crazy. I couldn't help but laugh. That jerk got me so many times lol. 

Mine in high school was ketchup on the windshield, or if you wanted to be stealth you'd steal a bunch of packets from the lunchroom and squirt em under the wiper blades. It just smears everywhere lol

In reply to Trent :

My boss put one of these in his kid's GTi after he over-revved it screwing around and damaged the head. Took him quite a while to find that.

Members of a local VW club up here for a while would tip your rear wiper up to let you know you've been spotted.

friend of mine and I painted two cinderblocks black and put them under the shock mounts on a buddies 78 firebird. He worked nights. We were hiding around the corner watching when he tried to drive away. The rear tyres were less an an inch off of the ground.

We also shrink wrapped another friend's car from bumper to bumper.

A shift manager at the store was a real "B". My friend was a Chem major in college (now a professor!) and we coated her door handle in Silver Nitrate right before she got off work. It took close to a month for the black to come off.

Our friend's Firebird was super easy to break into too. I had skinny arms so one friend would pull the door glass away from the roof and I could get my arm in to unlock it. Lubricated condoms on the shifter were fun.

When I was just a pup, we had a neighbor who drove - caned, really - a Dodge D50 pickup. Rather than let the thing warm up on its own for a few minutes, he brought it up to temperature by stomping the throttle relentlessly. He left for work early in the morning, so we were awoken at oh-Christ-hundred hours by a clattering, sputtering little pickup begging for mercy at revs that woulda put a tear in the eye of Enzo hisself.

One Friday night I snuck a couple of potatoes out of the kitchen. No extra points will be awarded for drawing the obvious conclusion here. I packed one into the tailpipe just as tight as I could, and it was tight. 

We were up early the next morning to watch the show. He'd crank and crank and crank on the starter, get it to cough into life, then boot the throttle, and the poor old dog would just lay down and die, over and over and over again. Out of the cab, slam that door shut, throw the hood open, fiddle with some wires or hoses or whatever, then slam the hood shut, pack himself back into the cab and go through the whole rigmarole time after comitragic time.

Eventually the potato found it way out of the pipe - we saw it laying on the ground later, apparently unmolested, so I think the engine just pushed it out after a while. I don't think the dude ever even figured out what happened.