emabarrassing car moments

[f6125a]

I was reading some of the various threads below and felt just aweful for some of the situations people had gotten in as far as being stalled at round abouts, stuck in a parking lot with a car that wouldn't start and other things. I worked here in the US at a drive thru restaurant and have seen people quite embarrased in the drive thru when there car died in line. One lady sat there right next to the window for almost five minutes before she got her car started again. Have any others had embarrassing car experiences?

[franfran]

Given that, until recently, I've always driven old cars, I have had my share of breakdowns. Except for one occasion, I have always managed to either restart the car or get it off the road and call for roadside assistance. The one time I got stuck was at the exit from the shopping centre where, of course, there was only one lane for the traffic. The car started misfiring, came to a stop and wouldn't start (cue for sound of multiple horns going off.....).

Fortunately it only took a few minutes before someone in the queue behind me figured out what had happened - the distributor was arcing at the points because of a fault in the capacitor and, due to the hear being generated by the arcing, the points had stuck together. He prised the points apart, broke the bit of metal that was joining them off and - the car started. It wasn't running as smoothly as it should have, but it got me home. That weekend I bought the bits I needed and fixed it myself. As I mentioned in another thread:

Well, quite a few years back, when I was driving a 1976 Holden Gemini (for those of you who don't know what that is, it's more or less the Australian version of the Opel Kadet) I had a problem with the points in the distributor burning out. I decided to replace the points, capacitor, plugs and leads myself. When I took out the old points, one of the retaining screws fell off and into the distributor, underneath the baseplate, where I couldn't reach it. Then my glasses fell off, hit the engine and landed on the concrete floor, getting chipped in the process. After trying to get to the screw unsuccessfully, swearing at it, staring at it and wondering what to do, I unbolted the distributor from the block (remembering to mark its position before I lifted it out), held it upside down over a sheet of paper and shook it until the screw fell out. Then I proceeded to fit all the bits and reattach the distributor. I must have done something right, as the car ran much better afterwards, although the job took a lot longer than it should have done.....

[Pamb]

I've got an old Mini which I really love but in the winter I had lots of problems with it stalling and being hard to start. Sometimes if it is rainy or very cold it takes 10 or 12 goes to start and then keeps stalling on me! It is really embarassing if I am giving someone a lift or trying to start it outside work where people are watching.
I really love my Mini though.

[Kagirl]

Pam, my first car was a Mini - I really loved it except when it would refuse to start when it rained! Sometimes I would be driving along on a wet day and it would just start stuttering and cut out. Believe it or not my dad cured it with a rubber glove, he put it over part of the engine somehow - a black bit with wires coming out - and it was much better after that!!

I learned to drive on my mums Hillman Imp which used to keep stalling - my dad who was teaching said it was me but it used to do it to mum as well, it was really bad in the winter, she would give me and my friend a lift to school and it would stall every time she came to a junction or even half way round a roundabout, she used to have to pull the choke out to keep it going, poor mum hated driving it in the winter.

[f6125a]

when i was in high school I drove a buick century that was my fathers originally. I was the first to get my license amongst my friends so that was the car that we took everywhere. One night we went out toilet papering. (don't know if you do that in the UK; in the middle of the night kids go to others houses and throw rolls of toilet paper on the roof, the lawn, and over the trees as a prank) Right in the middle of our papering we see a light come on in the house as someone had woken up. We all ran to the car and it wouldn't start. I know that i probably shouldn't have but I began pumping the gas as I was so nervous we'd be caught. All the girls in the car were yelling at me which only made me more frantic. I kept trying and trying as the father came out of the house and walked right up to my car. He offered to help but I refused knowing it would start eventually and after a few more tries it did. I just about died right there in my pajamas.

Anybody else been caught in a situation where they weren't really prepared or dressed for the occasion?

[franfran]

Pam, my first car was a Mini - I really loved it except when it would refuse to start when it rained! Sometimes I would be driving along on a wet day and it would just start stuttering and cut out. Believe it or not my dad cured it with a rubber glove, he put it over part of the engine somehow - a black bit with wires coming out - and it was much better after that!!

The "black bit with wires coming out" is the distributor and, being an electrical component, it doesn't like getting wet. If it does, the electricity doesn't always make it to the spark plugs, which in turn leads to starting difficulties and rough running. The problem with the Mini and the other BMC/Leyland front wheel drive cars of that era is that the distributor is at the front of the engine and gets a bit wet when it's raining with the rain coming through the grille. When I used to drive one, my way of fixing it was to spray a bit of WD 40 on the distributor, as WD40 acts as a water dispersant. I never tried a glove, but I have known other people to have used plastic bags over the distributor.

[Smartassidiot]

Embarrassing car moments!! Ok #1 I used to own a sierra cosworth with the high level spoiler on the back(whale tail) and through pure lazyness I went through a car wash with it only to have the large brushes wrap round my spoiler and tear it from the car!!! First I had that car in a car wash as I usually do it by hand and it was the last! Ok #2 being a fan of old skool cars I bought a mk2 ford escort rwd, I got a fancy set of rally wheels for it and was so excited about getting out in the car with them on it that I forgot to tighten the back offside wheel nuts resulting in a quick pull away from a set of traffic lights ending with my car loosing a wheel! Ok last but not least #3 trying to be smart and drive like a rally pro on a dust track in the countryside I ended up ditching my car on it's side in a field of yellow flowers gaining me the life long nickname of DAISY!!!!

[sarahjane113]

My mini is the same when its wet and like Pam it can be a bit embarrassing if your with friends and sat there trying to get it to start. Mines been better with the summer weather although we still have wet and damp mornings so I always have to leave a bit of extra time to get mini to start.

[Moira Mac]

It didn't involve me, but I once heard of a woman with a car with an automatic gearbox who couldn't understrand why her car worked during the day and not at night. She soon got the problem sorted when a mechanic told her 'D' means 'Drive' and 'N' means 'Neutral' and that the letters do not represent 'Day' and 'Night'.

[franfran]

It didn't involve me, but I once heard of a woman with a car with an automatic gearbox who couldn't understrand why her car worked during the day and not at night. She soon got the problem sorted when a mechanic told her 'D' means 'Drive' and 'N' means 'Neutral' and that the letters do not represent 'Day' and 'Night'.

I don't know, but that one sounds a bit like an urban myth to me. I mean, how could she start the car with Drive selected...........

It might fall into the same category as the old one about using the choke to hold a *a**a*:

Have you heard the one about the young lady who bought a brand new car? She kept on returning it back to the dealer, complaining that the engine was over heating, and was high on fuel consumption. This really baffled the dealer, as his mechanics repeatedly examined the car but could not find anything wrong with it.

The young lady insisted that there was something wrong with the car. "It always happens when I drive it!" she informed the dealer.

In desperation, the dealer asked the young lady to drive the car in his presence. So he sat in the passenger's seat and asked her to start the engine and take the car for a short drive. The young lady got the car keys out of her *a**a*, pulled the choke lever out to its full position, hanged her *a**a* on the choke lever, started the car and proceeded to drive it!

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/choke.asp

[Moira Mac]

She reversed it first, out the garage, or something. I heard about it ages ago when listening to BBC Radio 2 (Sarah Kennedy). I've only ever driven an automatic once, and that was only for a short time in America. I was trying to figure it out too. It's like when it was pointing in the right direction she selected the wrong gear at night.

[franfran]

I've only ever driven an automatic once, and that was only for a short time in America.

Pretty much the same here. The only times I have driven automatics is on the odd occasion when I've driven one of the office cars and also a loan car I had a few years back for a week when my car was stolen. I remember the first time I had to drive one of the office cars - I collected the keys, went to the downstairs carpark and had to get the instruction manual out of the glovebox to find out how to start it - and then it was out into the traffic in Castlereagh Street (one of the main streets in the Sydney CBD) in the peak hour - and it kept creeping forwards all the time because the engine was running too fast..............

[none of the above]

A bit O/T but I had only motor bikes for many years...

I remember once going to a shop to collect a fishing landing pole, I'd assumed it would come in sections...but it didn't! Cue one girl on a motor bike riding through town with landing pole at a rather jaunty angle sticking out the front like some sort of knight's jousting lance.

A few times also I would stop at traffic lights and forget to put a foot down and just fall over...

Trying to ride off with disc lock attached was also a fun past-time, 4 inches of travel and then stop...

I also remember leaving work one evening and the bike wouldn't start. The kindly old security guard offered to push to bump start it...after about 10 minutes of nothing happening I remembered to turn on the engine switch and it magically started. The security guard was in a bad way by then, he'd had a heart by-pass operation poor chap and this was his first job after it...

Riding about happily and then running out of petrol because you'd left it switched off was also one of the highlights of biking...

[GingerTeri]

oohhh I can sympathise with you none of the above . Done most of that too being a biker for 13 years.
Only been driving a car for just over year and most embarrassing thing I've done was reversed into our gate post!

[Guest]

Bought a new locking pertrol cap then went on holiday. After about 100 miles we needed petrol and found we'd left the key to the cap at home.

My motorbike (750) stalled once on a cattle grid. My foot went between the rails and the whole lot fell on top of me. Fortunately it didn't damage me but the bike needed some TLC after that.

Did a similar one on the same bike. Stopped in a field and my foot found a rabbit hole. Again the whole lot went down on me.

Just after I'd bought my first big bike, I pulled up to a kerb to go into a shop. Stopped the bike, turned off the indicator, turned off the lights, turned off teh engine and got off. Forgot to put the stand down!