Any mbarrassing stories with your mopar ? haha

-
DartThis74

DartThis74

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2008
Messages
486
Reaction score
5
Location
Houston,Tx
I got to thinking about some of the embarrassing moment I've had with my Dart Sport over the years and thought it would be nice to hear some stories from everyone else :toothy10:.

To start off the worst was when I was driving over a two way bridge with two lanes on each side. It was at the worst moment of the day RUSH HOUR. I proceed to turn onto the bridge and while pushing the accelerator in to get up it my accelerator cable broke at the carb ! so, I was stranded while everyone looked at me for about half an hour :angry7:. A guy in a Jeep stopped to ask for help though haha.

My engine stalled at a stop light while in the rain...

I was using the horrible BF Goodrich T/A radial tires and I usually had extremely poor traction in the rain with them. I was taking a left turn from a stop light and I barely pressed the accelerator in and I basically turned side ways in the middle of the road(with a slant six mind you). I think everyone thought I was trying to show off when I wasn't 8) was kinda fun though haha
 
When I came home from college for christmas my freshman year, I drove my Dad's 67 Dart Convertible to work. I was turning left in an intersection and was only lightly on the gas pedal ( only has a slant six ) and did a 180 spin so I was facing the guy in the car behind me, freaked the guy out! I just kinda waved, punched the gas again and flipped back around and drove to work like nothing happened...

I was having problems with my voltage regulator in my 73 Dart when I was up at school in washington. I had gone driving and ended up needing gas in some town that I didn't know. I filled up and then my car wouldn't start. I asked the only other person there ( a big burly black dude ) if he could jump my car and he did. Then, another one of his buddies show up and start talking about how he had just gotten out of jail and then did a drug deal right there in front of me. Needless to say, I was happy to get my car started and get outta there!
 
I was with my buddies racing a little rice hopper and took a sharp corner and heard a loud bang. Thought someone threw something and hit the car. Those guys took off, and I got out of the car ready for blood to find out my torsion bar ripped right out of my frame due to taking that corner too quickly with three guys in the car. We limped home beaten by a ricer.
 
In high school, went out on a date with my head football coach's daughter (not the brightest thing I ever did). He gave me the stink-eye when I picked her up and I was legitimately afraid that he would make my life into some type of hell if I brought her home 1 second late, or crying, or too happy, or, lets just say it added a whole new diminsion to the date. Anyway, my dart chose that night to burn out the headlight switch. Luckilly I had these amber fog lights, but there was no moon and a drizzling rain. We had to drive 3 miles up a dirt/gravel road to get back to the blacktop from the spot where we went after the movie (don't ask), then creep back to her house with extremely reduced visibility. I got her home on time (barely), but her dad was not real happy about "puting his little girl in danger". I got in a lot better condition that season thanks to some "special attention" from the whole coaching staff.
 
Well, it wasn't embarassing for me, but while I was in high school and my Barracuda still had the 225 in it, I was at a stop sign and another guy in a Chevelle was beside me. It was raining and we both had a car load of friends in our cars. He was reving his engine, so I obliged and returned the favor - never thinking I was going to beat him. We hit the gas and I left him behind - because of the rain and his high horsepower V8 he just sat there and spun his tires! He caught up to me a little later and blew past me...

There were several times in the rain where I spun around with the 225 - almost took out a neighbor's mailbox once!
 
67DartGT340 said:
my torsion bar ripped right out of my frame
Click to expand...

That was pretty scary:happy10:funny! LOL

What wrong with it? Is it the torsionbar-crossmember rust out or due to torsionbar thichniess? Can someone please give me a clue? Im surely dont want it happened with mine!!!
 
When I was in high school, not long after I bought my Barracuda, the fuel filter plugged up & left me stranded. The car stopped at the one stop light on the main cruising road one evening in the town where I lived. Fortunately my dad was working lat at his office about a block away. I walked over there & got him to help me push it off the road. Had to leave it sitting there till the next day when I could get a filter for it to get it going again.
 
Showing off with the muscle car usually ends up in embarassment in one way or another.

The only semi embarassing moments I've had are not really bad.
1.) I pulled into a cruise in on a very hot summer day after sitting in traffic with the car running fairly hot, and dumped a large stream of coolant out of my overflow onto the parking lot.
When asked I just said my car was marking it's territory.
Have since installed a catch can-lesson learned.

2) I had a hard time cranking it over one day at a cruise in due to a carb issue and ran the battery dead, had to get jumped off by a chevy-very embarrasing.

Same chevy did a whole shot in his camaro the next week and destroyed his first gear.

3.) Another lesson learned....never goose your Muscle car from a dead stop while making a turn because you just might spin out and go into your neighbors yard and have your best friend look at you like you are on crack while doing yard work- you know that look.
 
I threw a piston rod in my 225 slant six valiant. Someone that lived down the street from me just happened to be on the highway, stopped and offered to push me home. So, I was pushed home by an older Ford Ranger. I hadn't realized it, but he was in the process of restoring a '68 pontiac Lemans.

Another time, when the choke first went bad, The car stalled out in the middle of an intersection; with everyone honking and giving me dirty looks.
 
The first day I owned my 70 Dart, /6 and all, I was showing it off with some friends, and driving through town. There is an intersection right beside the police station, and as we came up to the green light, I looked over at the police station and a cop was in his car, watching me drive by. As I made eye contact with him, I didn't notice the light had gone yellow, so when I looked back, the light was yellow turning red, so I slammed on the brakes (full drums), and slid all the way into the middle of the intersection, and ended up sideways in the middle. Fully embarressed, I just drove away, and surprisingly didn't get a ticket or even pulled over.

Another time, in the winter, I would take the plates off my 1988 Dodge Aries, and put them on the Dart for a half hour, and drive down to the gas station and back just to run it. I got to the gas station, parked it, shut it off. Filled the tank, turned the key, nothing. Dead battery. So I'm stranded at this station, and the only person there, to ask for a jump, is a cop. So nervously, I asked him if he could give me a jump, he agreed, and the car fired up and I was on my way. I quickly drove home, and hopped in the K car to head elsewhere. In my panicked state, I forgot to switch the plates back to the K car, and drove for about a half hour down the highway, people staring at me as they drove by. Went around a round-a-bout, and another cop sitting there watching people! Didn't even notice I had no plate, and I didn't even realize I had no plate until 5 minutes later when it all sunk in. I turned around and took a lot of back roads back home.
 
Here is a good one. I was in my 78 Lebaron, it was right after a snow, no snow on the roads but the left over sand and crap was still there. You Seattle guys will know what i am talking about here.

This was in 87-88 when they were re-doing the Mercer Island floating bridge and they stil lhad the reversable lanes and the little guards that the lowered for the correct lanes.

I was crossing the bridge and going 60 or so, and the lane was ending, and i tried to get ahead of a delivery truck. I was losing my lane and there was a semi infront of me getting over. Of course he was spraying all that crap on my windshield.

I used my wipers and of course blinded myself since it just smeared all the crap across my window. I use the squirters and looked up with one of the shorter guard thingys right in front of me, i hit it and it goes flying over the car and the delivery van runs over it, i just keep right on going.

Broke my grill, headlight and side light though.
 
Another one

Another snow story. Right after the snow, bare center of the road, but snowy slush on the sides.

This time in my Custom 880.

I was coming home and playing in the snow on the sides of the road, doing little drifts and such.

I was goofing off, looked down and looked up and there was a parked 79 Mustang right in front of me. If i hit the brakes i would have slid into it. So i nailed the gas.

The rear end came around and i just ticked the Mustangs bumper with mine on the way around. I ended up doing the most perfect 180 ever. Ended up on the other side of the road, facing the opposite way, about 6 inches from the curb. I lost my hubcap though, it came off and went into a guys yard. He had been outside and saw the whole thing. I was too embarrased to go ask him for it.
 
I can think of two times.

The first time I pulled into the local Sonoco for gas after leaving the local drag strip.
My 65 coronet when I went to start it, the starter solinoid stuck and it would not quit cranking, a guy that was fueling his car hauler with a much faster car than mine said that mopar is so bad it won't stop starting. (not so bad)

Second time was a girl asked me for a ride home from college campus, I stepped on the gas on my 71 Challenger and the throttle cable broke. Took my shoe strings off and rigged the throttle to give the girl a ride home. (bad)
 
This is the story of when my father and I replaced the horn in his (now my) Lancer.

Dad wasn't into cars and didn't know much about how they worked, but we worked on the Lancer as a father-son type of thing—just the other way around from the way we normally think of it; it was the son (me) teaching the father (him) his way around under the hood. One of the car's dual horns stopped working, so I grabbed one (sourced from a wrecking yard) off the garage shelf, tested it on the workbench with a reasonably well charged 12v battery, got some noise out of it, figured it was good, and dad and I proceeded to do the simple swap.

Once the "new" horn was in place and hooked up, dad put the battery cable back on the battery. I leaned in the passenger door and touched the horn ring. The new horn began to emit kind of a mix of squawk, quack, and wail which didn't stop when I jerked my hand away from the horn ring. After what could not have been more than one second, there was a giant puff of smoke, a loud frying sound, and the horn stopped making noise. All of this right in front of my completely stunned father and me. I scooted fast round to the battery and yanked the cable off, but I might as well have taken my time and stopped for a coffee on the way. The entire engine wiring harness was charcoal, burned beyond recognition — And it hadn't taken more than 2 or three seconds, though those two seconds went by in super slo-mo.

We stared at the smoke still curling up from the ruined wiring, and stared at each other, and stared back at the wiring, and back at each other. Obviously, the horn wasn't as good as I'd assumed based on my quickie bench test. I started apologising, but he waved it away and said "Dan, I think if you'd done something damn-fool, we'd both know it." It was just one of those things; ѕhit happens.

Of course, that still left us with a garage monument (non-running, non-driving car — and it was dad's only!) until it could be fixed. I was in high school at the time, so the next day on my lunch period I drove my '65 down to Santa Fe Blvd where there was a little-known wrecking yard, set back from the road and sunk down to a level well below it. I knew there was a '62 Valiant there (it contained one of four or five aluminum 225s around the Denver area that I kept meaning to add to my collection and never did...). The yard was fully staffed with scary dogs and even scarier goons. I asked about the '62 Valiant and one of the goons chewed on his wodge of tobacco and said "I donno, twenny bucks for however much wiring you want out of it." Mokay. Working quickly but carefully, I removed the engine wiring harness and a goodly portion of the dash harness, paid my $20, and gave the dogs wide berth on my way back to my Valiant.

On the way home from school that day, I stopped at a coin-op car wash, hung the engine harness on the wall by the floor mat clips, and powerwashed the grime off. It was in basically perfect condition...score!

That night, dad and I put in the "new" harness. It didn't take but about half an hour, working carefully; there aren't many wires on a '62 compared to later cars, but they're all important. The only wire we didn't connect was the one to the now-absent low-note horn.

That harness is still in the Lancer, but now it contains some main circuit protection (I don't recall what type or rating I added).
 
Way back in the day I was driving beside a couple of cops. They used to have a flashing green for the busy street and flashing red for the crossing avenue. Well just as we were coming up to the intersection the light went from flashing green to split second of yellow and then red. It was at the beginning of rush hour when these lights changed from flashing to solid. We both blew through the red.
I thought here comes a ticket but the passenger cop looked over at me and shrugged his shoulders. Caught a break that day
 
Two come to mind,
1. Started my 68 Road Runner in gear on a jack stand and touched the gas pedal.........came down hard on the front drum,crushed the oil filter.

2. Racing a GTO with my 340 duster. had him beat, had the fuel pump power wire stuck in the fuse box which I kicked out with my foot. My friends watched the car nose dive and me loose. We went double or nothing and I broke the rear end, lost again, pride and $$.
 
I was at stop light in my 69 road runner when late 60s ford pick up pulls up next to me. we each give the head nod, so put 4 speed in 1st so I thought.when the light went green I did a nice burn out in reverse. At the starting in my duster at the mopar nats in woodburn Or, my carb popped and cot fire.
 
i had a 78 aspen ,pulled out the /6 put in a 318 4 bbl threw the old manafolds in the scrap bin and bought my first set of brand new headers.my brother and i bolted on the headers and decided to tour the town with wide open headers, now in the middle of town is a set of railroad tracks.we saw a buddy of mine on the sidewalk and decided to give him the customary wide open blow by(with open headers it sounded pretty good)but when let off i caught the tracks crushed two tubes of my nice new headers,limped home with my head held in shame only to find out they came and emptied the scrap bin and couldnt even put the old manifolds on till new headers were ordered
 
Had all my friends hit the track to watch me bracket race. I only put about a gallon in the fuel cell at a time and refill every 2nd run. Made it to the semifinals and you guessed it. Forgot to fill the cell. Did my burn out ,staged and watched the other guy take the win from the tree. All my friends thought I broke. I told them what happened and they laughes their asses off. They still razz me 5 years later.
 
One more. It must have been around 1985-87, due to the car involved. In my buddies 69 Dart he had put a 440 in, a real feat for two high schoolers. We came up to a stop light with a black GM type car sitting there. "Hmm, what's a GNX? "Who knows, smoke em its a GM".

Sitting at the light my buddy revs the 440, fender headers and side pipes, it was a real annoying car.

Of course the guy in the Olds was not giving us the time of day. The light turns green and there is a chirp from the GNX and its gone. We looked at each other with a gasp on our faces
 
was in the parade with the 383 71 roadrunner idling for awhile, went to stab the throttle to make some sound and it just died... had to whirl and whirl to get to restart... how do you stall an automatic...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top