Breakdown stories: Let’s hear yours

Not classic car-related, but one day as I was coming home from dropping off my daughter, I saw a plastic bag in the road.

Normally, I try to avoid random objects in the road regardless of what they are, but being a two-lane road with traffic, all I could do slow down a little.

Turns out, it wasn't a bag. It was a rock. A big one.

It felt like I ran over a speed bump too quickly. After confirming that nothing felt off, no weird smells and no lights were flashing on the dash, I made the last mile or so home.

I pulled up to my house, turned off the car and got out. That's when noticed that there was gas pouring out the bottom of the gas tank. (For reference, the gas tank on a Honda Fit is located under the driver and passenger seats.)

All I could do was unplug the battery and call a tow.

The car is fixed now (thanks insurance), though the weirdest part of it all was that it kind of did happen at a convenient time. I already made it home and I work from home, and thankfully we have a second car.

Early '80s, bought a 1968 Maserati Mistral off an Hemmings ad. Flew back east in early November with my father to pick it up from 2 brothers. We proceeded to drive back home & were well on our way home weathering an  ice storm in Ohio until we got into Illinois... Mistral stalled out, we called our Maserati "buddies" in WA (the Mandaranos) for advice. They hooked us up with a great reair shop in Chicago (run by the son of Maserati factory mechanic) who diagnosed the problem as a clogged fuel line - gunk from a fuel tank of the car being left in storage a little too long. Having had to swap my radar detector to the tow truck operator for payment, my dad ponied up his last cash to get us back on the road for an uneventful ride all the way home!

1n 1975, my friend Bob and I drove my 1968 Sprite MkIV from Wisconsin to the Canadian Rockies. The car had chronic oil retention problems, and threw a rod in an isolated National Park a few hundred miles east of Vancouver. We had the car towed to a service station, where there were mangled vehicles that had ended up in ravines, etc. I had a rude tool kit, so unbolted the engine from the gearbox and we pulled the engine with a piece of chain and a sappy conifer tree. 

Luckily, a generous truck driver, Jim Jukes, offered to carry me and my engine to Vancouver, where he hosted me for a few nights and helped me to find Abingdon Motors, a Mini, Sprite, etc. garage. They built an engine for me, using my ancillaries, while I rented a UHaul box truck and retrieved the car and Bob. It cost $650 USD.

A short under the stars holiday on Vancouver Island later, we arrived back, and the guys said "Here's your engine, we're going racing". We got it in and bolted it all together. It started right up, and 51 hours later we were back in Wisconsin. The adventures of that crazy drive were continuous, cooling problems and more, improv tractor parts...

I now have another Sprite 1275. I havent blown an engine yet. 

I bought a new 1974 MGB almost 50 years ago, and still have it. We have all heard the Lucas and S.U. horror stories. I am here to say that in all my years of ownership and over 100,000 miles I have had the MG brought home on a flatbed twice, both electric fuel pump related. The first time the ground wire had fallen off rendering it silent, and the second the pump had actually failed. I replaced it with a modern electronic unit and have not had a problem since, knock on wood. In my experience the mean mouthing of Lucas, S.U. and British cars is unfounded. Maintain them properly and don't mess around with the wiring. I believe the bad rap is not warranted. Follow the trail after a failure and you may well find some incompetentence has had a hand in it.   

The year was... oh, I don't recall exactly and you don't care.

The important bit was this was how I learned that contrary to what I'd been told, ignition coils don't necessarily work perfectly or fail completely.

I'd been driving my '70 BMW 2002 daily and trying to figure out a hot weak idle that resulted in occasional stalls and hard restarting. No mystery there in retrospect, I've given it away. But the timing of its biggest failure was terrifying.

I was driving from Portland down to Eugene for Christmas with my family, and was just on the section of I-5 leaving the city. Traffic was Christmassy. I was in the left lane, stop-and-going with the crowd, knowing that I was 110 miles from wanting an exit and staying away from folks merging on and off.

Coming around a sweeping left (it didn't feel very sweeping between zero and five mph) the 2002 died again. And didn't want to restart. There was just a little shoulder next to the Jersey barrier on the left, the barrier also making my location slightly blind to folks coming down the road thanks to the curve. Which was fine when it was stop-and-go, but this was of course the moment that traffic chose to improve, and things got much scarier very quickly.

I had the hood up, but I'd been chasing this problem for a while, so there wasn't much I hadn't poked, prodded, inspected, wiggled, etc, and cooling off a few minutes was the only thing I knew worked. So while trying it sporadically, I called for a tow and hoped not to get hit.

As I am here today and only have a new nose for the 2002 awaiting installation (and not a bunch of tail and quarter panels), you might correctly guess that it did restart and I did not get clobbered by the now-cruising traffic. Shortly thereafter I threw an ignition coil at it, and lo and behold, I learned that coils can die slow deaths where they get weaker as they get hot after all.

Okay, more succinct. Same 2002, fuel problem.

Did you know that in rare cases the brass tube that runs through the venturi of a Weber DGV and actually lets fuel into the airflow can come loose and rotate so that its orifice is no longer pointed downstream?

That took some finding while stuck at a rest stop along I-5.

I was out to diner one evening with some friends and drove my restored 64 Porsche 356 coupe.  Car ran fine before dinner, no issues.  After dinner I got in the car, turned the key and it would not start.  I had power to all of the systems and the battery checked out with 12.7 volts (new battery).  Fuel was coming out of the fuel line from the mechnical pump, so not a fuel issue.  Spent a good hour in the cold dark (it was winter) running diagnostics as best I could with a flashlight in a parking lot (I always carried a small tool box with me).  I had power to the coil when the ignition was switched on and power from the coil to the dizzy.  But when I tried turning it over we had no spark at the plugs.  Aha!  Okay, so we narrowed it down to an electrical issue.  Somewhat fortuitously, my buddy checked the power line to the coil while I cranked the engine and voila!  We discovered that the coil suddenly had no power.  When I stopped cranking and allowed the key to rotate back to the "on" position, we had power to the coil.

Turns out the ignition switch had gone bad.  There was a small metal tab that connects the "start" position to the "on" position inside the switch and it had broken off.  When the key was turned to the "start" position, since the little metal tab inside the starter switch wasn't connected to the "on" switch no power was getting to the coil.  Our solution was to run a bootleg jumper wire from the battery to the coil to provide power to it while I cranked the starter and go the engine started.  Once the engine started we could remove the jumper wire and the engine ran fine.

But of all the things to break - when is the last time someone had an ignition switch suddenly go bad like that?

Back in high school, 1962, I was driving a Reanualt Dauphine with one snow tire. Hit something in the road, put a hole in the gas tank. Happened to have a wine cork that fit in the  hole with the help of a hammer. Traded it that way. never knew if it was French wine.

Shortly after that it was an Austin Healey 100. Put a hole in the oil pan just by crossing over the center line in the  road, really. Do not ask about exhaust pipes.

My brother with his wife and me with my wife was enjoying a ride around Desota State Park

near Fort Payne, Alabama. He in his Series 5 Sunbeam Alpine and me in my Series 1 Alpine.

A sudden noise from under my hood and my engine started to over heat and battery light

came on. On inspection I discovered the handcrank  crankshaft pulley bolt had come off.

along with the pulley. We found the pulley but not the bolt.

Having two cars I headed back to my house (40 mile oneway) got a spare bolt. It wasn't the

hancrank bolt but got Us home. That was in the early 80s and i still have the car. Just no

Handcrank bolt.

on the Gran Premio Nuvolari in Italy my Maserati 300S picked up a small stone from the road that got wedged in the bracket holding the aluminum gas tank, needless to say many kilomters laters gas is running out copieouly from tank. But by navaigator/co pilot saved the day by going into a tabac and buying a large packet of gum which he chews into a stick mass and patached the tank succesfully. Sold the car a few years later with the patch still holding :)