Before you type the tale of how you backed your new Z28 into a telephone pole, I must clarify that today’s Autopian Asks is enquiring about things you intentionally did to your car (or people you know did to their cars) that turned out to be horrible decisions, not fender benders and the like (but still, sorry about your Z28).
I think the classic Bad Car Move is the DIY convertible as crudely depicted in the top graphic. Like many of you (I bet), I had buddies in high school who made this tragic alteration to a malaise barge. In my case, I recall it being a Chrysler Newport that was sacrificed to the Sawzall. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this mod is only appropriate if the AC is non-functional and you’re about to drive more than half an hour in the middle of August to deposit the car at the salvage yard – and it’s still dubious even then, as the roof was contributing rigidity that is kinda necessary for safety. But if we’re talking a relatively decent runner you actually need to get around, well, ya really blew it by sawing that top off, because now you do need to take it to the salvage yard. Or learn to weld.
Other fails I witnessed included the absolute destruction of an interior in a painted-dashboard attempt by a would-be Hot Important Nighter who thought the job could be done with a rattle can, painter’s tape, and zero parts removal – just get in the car and spray. Things went south fast, and he was furious. And also purple, as the spray paint covered him as thoroughly as everything else in the car.
And me, personally? The worst thing I ever did to a car (a 1980 Honda Accord, specifically) was knowingly drive it a full half hour with the temp needle buried in the red, every drop of coolant prevented from entering the block because of a bum thermostat. In my defense, a tow would have cost more than the car was worth, and infinitely more than the zero dollars I had, and I had to get home somehow. But if “worst” is defined by consequences, then what I did wasn’t bad at all, as the Accord’s EK1 engine seemed no worse for wear once a new thermostat was in place.
Your turn: What’s The Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done To A Car?
Top graphic images: DepositPhotos.com; Milwaukee
In high school I put a “Type R” decal on my base model 70 horsepower ’91 Civic hatchback.
I love how many of these start with: “When I was a kid” “When I was in college”. I’m 48 and still doing terrible and fun things to cars. My son and his friends like working on their shitboxes here since Dad knows how to get things going again. I do always make sure they use jackstands, wear safety goggles and ask that they don’t weld in a t-shirt. It’s a fun workshop.
When I was a kid I chopped a Ford Taunus in pieces with an axe and a hacksaw.
Once I threw a fistful of gravel into the intake of my friend’s Opel Omega while it was running max rpm. It was end of that engine.
Once I opened a door of same friend’s Fiat Tempra in speed and the door hit a tree. Glass was luckily lowered so all the shrapnel stayed inside the door.
Once I hand brake drifted my Nissan Sunny on to a snow bank so hard that the passenger door refused to stay shut until I cracked the door panel and did some forceful adjustment with a heavy steel pipe. On another occasion I hand brake drifted the same Nissan on to a snow bank so hard that whole car got airborne.
Quite recently I kicked in a driver’s side window of an abandoned VW Golf mk V in a parking garage just to see if I can do it. Glass broke in second try.
After a huge snow and ice storm several trees were severly damaged. One broke in half with it still attached and just folded towards the ground. I attached a sturdy rope to the top of the tree which was at ground level. I attached the other end to our ’87 Subaru wagon and backed up to pull the top half of the tree down. I kept at it backing it up over and over going harder each time. At one point the front end was well over 4 feet off the ground. At this point I realized that IF the tree broke the Subaru would come crashing to the ground from a height that would cause major damage. I wisely stopped. Almost a disaster. I ended up having to climb the tree with a chainsaw to cut the top off.
My brother and his buddy flipped a lot of cars when they were young. They bought one car just for the engine. It was driveable, so for fun they removed a door, drive it, remove another door, and then proceeded to remove the hood, the trunk, the fenders, the quarter panels, the roof, and on and on. I remember seeing it with basically just the driver seat, steering wheel, and the floor pan and the drive train, and that was it. Down to the absolute minimum there could be and still be driveable.
Installed a fuel filter backwards into my college days Pontiac 6000.
Eventually resulted in in problems including puttering along on the LIE so slowly that a cop pulled us over to check on us.
Also more recently, I left eight two liter bottles of diet pepsi in my Juke. A cold snap of nights near 0 degrees happened, and four bottles exploded.
My 1982 Buick Skylard (yes, spelling is intentional) had a small engine bay fire caused by petrol leaking from the carburettor. That melted many of the vacuum tubes used for emission control system. None of those DIY repair books had any diagrams of where the tubes were connected (why???). I visited several secondhand car sales centres that had cars similar to Skylard so I took photos and made diagrams.
Once the car was running, it had a prodigious appetite for the volatile remainders of dinosaours. The fuel consumption went from 20 mpg to 5 mpg. Yes, really. The car was so thirsty that I visited the petrol stations almost every three days. I did consider building the 50-gallon fuel tank in the trunk.
Instead, I sold the car to a very dodgy guy who paid in cash, using the banknotes that seemed to gone through wash cycle many times. Three months later, I received a rather odd letter from the US Customs, asking whether that alcoholic Skylard belonged to me. That car was used to smuggle the illegal aliens across the border and was seized and impounded. The new owner didn’t bother registering the title (good thing I took the numberplates off the Skylard before seeing it off). I wrote back that I had sold it and included the photocopied sales receipt.
I had a 1985 Mustang LX 5.0 I had bought new. Shortly after I bought it, I heard a terrible grinding noise in the rear. I was very close to the dealer so I took it over, and they determined there was a problem with the rear differential. OK, makes sense. They had the car for a couple of days and declared it “fixed” but were somewhat vague about what they had done (and as it was warranty work, I didn’t have to pay). Being young and stupid I didn’t get any paperwork or ask any questions.
A few days later, I am driving home around midnight from work and it starts with the horrible grinding again. I was several miles from home and wasn’t about to stop in the middle of the night if I didn’t have to. So I drove it home and into the garage, and not too gently, either (I was on the freeway). I wanted it so broken that they’d REPLACE the dif this time instead of whatever they did last time. You could tell where I’d been as there was a trail of oil leading back from my garage and at least all down my street.
Had it towed the next morning to the dealer, and what do you know? They *really* fixed it this time.
I took a VERY high-mileage E46 325i from my parents. Oil leaks galore. I figured I could piece-meal them. I started with the oil pan–it’s on the bottom and easy to get to, right? Out came the dipstick tube and all the bolts and then I wrestled with getting the oil pan around the subframe. Success. I get the pan back in position and go to do up all the bolts. About halfway through, I dropped my 10mm socket (tricky bugger) and grabbed another after rolling around on the floor under a car for several minutes trying to find it. Put oil back in it and go on my merry way.
A year or so later, I have another car, and I figured I’d do the responsible thing and pull the engine to reseal all the oil leaks while doing the VANOS and timing and other things (the “while-I’m-in-theres”). I get the engine on a stand and pull the oil pan and lo and behold, that little 10mm bastard is sitting at the bottom of the sump.
I still have it as a reminder to myself.
love the gen 1 – 2 door accords
Under the influence of Fast and Furious, I did bad things to my Mercury Topaz in college. Blue under-glow using cheap 12v running lights? Check. Home-built cat-back exhaust that would occasionally separate, letting that 2.3l be straight-piped? Check. Install ram-air intakes on the sub-bumper using Home Depot ducting? …yeah.
Wasn’t me but a friend turned an Olds Delta 88 farm car into a “dirt buggy”…for farm use only.
He took off all 4 doors, hood, trunk lid and cut off roof and lastly the windshield. That was the big mistake. People don’t appreciate a windshield until you drive over 20 mph. Undriveable.
Ah Farm living for young boys…too much idle time and too many readily available tools.
That’s what goggles are for! Or a full-face helmet.
During my financial nadir (my 4th year of grad school) I was driving a beat-to-shit but a great runner 1988 Chevy Corsica. I’d been without a car for 4 years but I was preparing to defend my thesis and move onward and upward soon so I humbled myself and asked my dad for a hand. The same dad who provided me with my high school first car – an even more beat-to-shit 1978 Dodge D100 (his wood hauling truck). He found said Corsica for $400 needing a water pump so in the frigid Chicago cold I performed a waterpumpectomy and reinstall and had a decent running car I could care less if it was hit on the street, broken into*, or stolen.
6 months later my then-new-gf (now wife of 25 years) and I made the trek to Happy Valley to visit her Alma Mater and crazy friends. On the way down I mentioned several times that I needed to check the oil as I hadn’t in a while. It didn’t burn any/much, but it was only sporadically driven and that was the One Unforgivable Sin in my dad’s eyes (what kinda asshole drives a car with the oil light on, huh???).
After a big fun weekend of making a bunch of new friends (and realizing I could not keep up with frat boys twice my size on the beer-pounding front) we’re hobbling home and hit south side Dan Ryan Sunday traffic and its NASCAR-qualifying speeds and cutting-and-dicing. 5 miles of that and one big gallumph over a frost heave and what little oil was in the sump musta hopped up and lost the prime.
Oil light on but nowhere to de-orbit I pushed the poor bastard 3 or 4 more miles up the road. 1 minute in that poor 2.8 V6 began making a grinding noise, much like metal-on-metal. 2 minutes later, foot to the floor, we were going 35 and a hot, foundry smell began emanating through the cabin. Sensing the end but still 19 miles from home (the whole loop and north side) and with no pleasant place to land I threw it into neutral, shut the thing off, and coated into the parking lot of a BP that had seen its better days.
Cursing, swearing, pissed at myself and now a little afraid of our situation (south side if Chicago is, and was, way less bad than most people have been lead to believe) of trying to get ourselves and our luggage from where we were to the closest El stop (this is 1997 – no cell phones or idea where we were) but far more terrified of having to tell Dad I committed the one unforgivable sin on this kind and necessary gift he’d bestowed upon me, I began to think.
Me: “How much money do you have?”
Then-GF-now-wife: “$14”
Me: “ok, I’ve got $13. We can grab the plates and ditch the car and hike to the El with our stuff but we’ll never have a future cause dad will kill me. Or I can go buy $20 worth of oil and $7 in gas and we can try to make it home.”
TGFNW: “I thought you said if you drove it with the oil light on the motor was fucked? It certainly sounds and smells fucked.”
Me: “Yes. But maybe God will smile on us this day.”**
So I head in, buy 5 quarts of the cheapest oil the guy had ($3.50 a quart), $4 in gas, and a 40oz of Busch Light in case we had to walk and I didn’t want to waste $7 worth of gas if we had to ditch. The friendly attendant mentioned that we should probably get moving soon – local entrepreneurs or wildcat tow drivers were just starting their shifts – but the closest El stop was only 2 blocks away if we needed to walk.
I opened the sizzling hot oil filler cap (never a good thing), poured in 5 quarts of MeisterSchwantz 13W26 (sounded like pouring water over the rocks in a sauna) hopped in the car, cracked the 40 took a huge pull and handed it to the TGFNW.
“You’re catholic, right? Could you do one of those things?”
“What, pray?”
“No, one of those serious things, like they do in football.”
“A Hail Mary?”
“Yes. That”
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
Rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr…
Rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr…
“Goddammit. Sorry.”
Rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-VOOM-grind-grind-grind-grind-grind less-grind-less-grind-less…for about three minutes then back to sounding mostly like an engine.
“Well shit, hoss, let’s GTFOH”
2 miles at 30 mph, smoother and smoother idling, fewer and fewer smells. Then onto lakeshore and by the time we hit the North Ave beach she was purring along at 50 just fine. By the time we rolled up to our dump in Evanston the smells had cleared and she was idling at 650 like nothing had ever happened.
“Please don’t ever tell anyone about this, especially if we ever get married. People will think I’m a dumbass. Especially my dad. And he will definitely kill me.”
“But you are a dumbass. And I promise to never tell this story to anyone. Except our kids.”***
We named that Corsica Antig
My buddy in high school did something very similar at least two separate times I know of in his 02 Cavalier. Thankfully I saved it both times and the car never died on him the nine years he owned it. Those EcoTecs were very resilient.
Worked in an autobody ‘restoration ‘ shop in the late 80s early 90s, oh the horrors I did. lets see made some convertible XJS’ with a sketchy kit out of the USA, converted some early 911s to look like slantnose 930s and the biggest we chopped the roof off of a Daytona coupe to make a spyder- It never got finished as the bills kept rising, good thing is when it went off to a new owner the original roof and bits went with it and I understand it was fixed.
Summer 1988 in my ’71 Volvo 1800E. The oil pressure sender on the block leaked oil habitually. As did the valve cover, timing gear cover, and oil pan. Going over Beltway 8 bridge would have the warning light flicker due to the incline. As a cash strapped teenager I regularly ignored it. Until heading home from a girlfriend’s house, the crank shaft gave it up from lack of lube. Her dad flat towed me behind his pickup with a strap. I was not great at following in said situation.
That’s when I learned how to pull an engine, what oversized bearings were, and how to replace piston rings.
Dude, you killed a red block? Those make early Nokia phones look like they are made of glass. My hat’s off to you.
I mean, it survived. After re-surfacing the crankshaft, new bearings, and got to replace all the gaskets. I recently learned those engines started out their design life in tractors, hence the 5? main bearings. I recently got a ’73 ES to make up for my sins.
Blasting an overstuffed Tercel SR5 wagon with a bone dry cooling system through the hot Mojave desert with the gas pedal firmly planted into the floor comes to mind.
In my defense:
The engine was already doomed
I wasn’t driving.
I doubt we were exceeding the speed limit.
For me personally? Probably installing polyurethane spring bushings on my XJ. “They’re quiet” they said, “no squeaks” they promised!
They lied. Polyurethane SUCKS!!
Poly bushings are/can be great. But they’re not zero maintenance. I notice mine squeaking about once or twice a year and hose them down with silicone spray.
Putting them on an XJ, though? I usually think of poly bushings as being something you’d put on a car that you wanted to be lower and tighter, not adjectives I would use for most Jeep builds. Not experienced with heavy off-roading, and haven’t had a lifted vehicle, so others may correct me on this.
I replaced the bushings because when I bought the XJ used the original rubber bushings were squeaking. I first sprayed them with WD40, not knowing it’s bad for rubber. That made the problem so much worse! In poly I wasn’t looking for performance, just a squeak free, no maintenance replacement. Which is exactly the opposite of what I got.
I would have replaced the poly with rubber but in the original job I broke loose one of the poorly welded captive nuts INSIDE the framerail that holds the shackle bolt. It’s a very common failure on these made much more difficult by the fact my tools were just slightly too big to fit into the tight space of the cut open framerail. It made the job such a PITA I was afraid to try it again out of fear of breaking loose the one on the other side. So I ended up with a noisy Jeep that demanded weekly tributes of silicone spray.
I did that with the captive nut that holds the stud for the front lower control arm in one of my Subarus. What a royal debacle. I had to have a guy cut a “window” in the inner frame, reweld the nut, then weld a patch over the hole. DON’T USE IMPACT WRENCH TO TIGHTEN THE CONTROL ARM STUD.
I’m pretty boring when it comes to mods – very boring, because I’ve never really done even one of them on any car I’ve ever owned (factory preservation to a fault). One thing does come to mind though, which falls under “thinks he knows something but actually doesn’t”. I was working at a gas station garage for about three years, and had performed a bunch of oil changes, differential fluid checks/fills, belts, hoses, tires, etc – so I thought that I had a pretty good grasp on the basics of things. Good friend of mine came in with his ’84 GTI and I offered to look it over for him. In fairness, most of my experience was with american and japanese cars – didn’t really have much of a feel for VW beyond the basics. I really dug into it, and found a removable plug on the top third of the bell housing – took it off and stuck my finger in to check the level of gear lube in the transmission. Couldn’t get anything, so I started pumping some in. Took more than a few pumps until I finally got something on the end of my finger. Satisfied, I sent him on his way. Should note that I did the exact same thing on another rabbit that came in for a fluid service a few weeks prior, so I figured that this was just a thing on VWs. It very much wasn’t. Friend came back to me and mentioned that his clutch was slipping and there was a pool of gear lube on the ground underneath it. I mentioned this to one of the actual mechanics and he informed me that this wasn’t a fluid fill, it was plug to cover the timing hole. Eventually the fluid worked through and my friend’s GTI was fine – kind of amazed that he didn’t need a new clutch. As for the other guy that I did this to, well he was on the road and heading somehwere – never heard from him again. Maybe that’s best.
Nothing really bad compared to some of the stories on here, but two summers ago, I diagnosed (I now think misdiagnosed) that the Tracker needed a new head gasket, with ~2 weeks before I had to drive 4 hours back to college. I got it torn apart and replaced, but in my rush and cheapness, I didn’t bother with planing the head.
Then, in the spring, I stuck the Tracker in a mud pit out in the woods, and almost got it stuck. Luckily I got it out in the end, but unluckily I overheated it in the process. And then overheating it blew the head gasket.
I limped it most of the way home, but then it started running really weirdly, so I pulled over and shut it off. Then when I tried to start it, it wouldn’t start.
After letting it cool down some more, I was able to get it started, and limp the rest of the way home, where I proceeded to change the head gasket again in my apartment parking lot! Luckily the engine seems to take overheating well, and this time I made sure to plane the head (using a mirror and sandpaper, but it seemed to work). It’s been back together for a while now, and seems to be working great, so hopefully I can be done with head gaskets for a while now!
Flashes back to me drilling out a motor mount bolt because I didn’t comprehend I’d need to hold the motor up after letting it go slack on the mounts (having removed the other bolts and any ancillary hard points). Stuck with a single bolt holding up one side of the motor, I proceeded to drill it out, rather than evaluate my terrible choices. I’m smarter now.
Probably.
You just reminded me of the time I did something similar, except with an entire car. My then-GF and I were traveling in her Ivecco-based 80s Barth RV, which was nicknamed “Dragonfly” after a truckers’ CB term – “draggin’ uphill, flyin’ downhill.” It was a gorgeous rig inside, with actual real cherry cabinetry, but it could not get out of its own way. And that’s before we hooked her 2001 Jetta to the back on a car dolly.
So we are somewhere in north central California, trying to get to a friend’s house where we were spending the night – a house at the tippy-top of a very hilly neighborhood – when about a half-mile from our destination, the Barth just gives up. “Nope, you ain’t getting THIS rig to the top of THIS hill THIS way.” Sigh. Well, it looks like we have to drop the car off the trailer and drive it up there separately. Mind you, this was about 1am at the end of a very long travel day, and there was hardly any other type of travel day at the wheel of that rig, so in my defense, I was not exactly at my sharpest.
So I set the brake on the RV and hop out to set about dropping the VW off the dolly. I ran into trouble releasing the tilt mechanism, since the tongue and the trailer were at full tension, the whole rig being pointed steeply uphill. This compounded my already deep frustration. I had to get the hammer out of the back of the RV to release the pin that held the tilt mechanism in place.
But in my roadworn stupor, guess what I forgot to do?
Set the parking brake on the VW first.
After a few solid taps on the release pin, it popped out of its bushing with a satisfying “clank,” and the ramp lurched upward – at which point, my girlfriend’s car begins rolling downhill rather quickly, ass first. All I could do was stand there and watch like the dope I was, hoping and praying that it didn’t hit anything expensive – such as the house it was barreling toward – much less anything living and breathing.
Luckily for me, the Lord looks out for drunks and dumbasses, and the car missed the utility pole, instead being stopped by the guy wire at the base of the utility pole, which was good since the car otherwise would have plowed straight through the living room window backwards. Like a cheese slicer, the guy wire cut about six inches up into the rear bumper cover, with the car coming to rest with the back wheels off the ground as though it was on jack stands. The simultaneous emotions of “oh, thank God” and “well, what the hell do I do now?” are pretty overwhelming to deal with at the same time, especially since the entire disaster only took about six seconds to unfold.
So now I have to call the cops, and I have to explain to the cops exactly what in the hell they were looking at; and I also have to call AAA, so that someone with more experience and better equipment than I had at my disposal could remove the car from the guy wire without ripping the rear bumper off. Thankfully, no charges were filed, and no body parts were ripped off the car. It had to spend a few weeks in the body shop when we got it home, but it was generally no worse for the wear.
Meanwhile, when we finally got to our destination at the top of the hill, after I became too exhausted to mentally rake myself over the coals anymore, I slept as hard as I have ever slept in my life.
Several, um, modifications come to mind for me:
First would be my ‘98 Dakota that I wanted to be a Jeep. It had a torsion bar suspension so naturally for a lift I just cranked those to the moon for 2” of free(!) lift. Turns out 99% of my suspension at that point was tire sidewall flex. Wound up going through suspension components like they were shrimp at a Vegas buffet. Ended up selling it because I got tired of replacing ball joints and lowered the suspension back. It wasn’t until years later that I learned about suspension geometry and spring preloads.
Second would be my 2000 Firebird with the 3800 V6 that teenager me thought needed headers. I broke most of the manifold bolts off in the heads and just pretended I didn’t need those because they were “extra”. Well my Bluetooth exhaust system leaked about as much as you’d expect and I had to pay a shop handsomely to fix it. I was also scolded profusely by my parents and the shop owner for trying to make a race car.
Last would be my first car, a ‘93 Geo Storm. I only paid $300 for it and the paint was shot. I thought it’d be a great idea to let people draw/sign it…… well let’s just say there were lots of genitalia by the time I realized this was a bad idea to let high schoolers loose on a car with a sharpie.
As soon as you said “torsion bar” I pre-cringed for what was coming and yeeeeup. Sounds like something I would have done, haha. And a lot like the kinds of things we get in the shop, sigh.
At least I learned! It was the hard way but those lessons are ingrained into me lol
I bought my 1968 Olds (which I still have) back in 1995. I wanted to use it as a learning opportunity and I wanted to do all the mods all of my car friends kept bragging about, even though I had no idea why they were (or weren’t) necessary.
I ordered a set of headers for it. How hard could it be? It looked I just needed to unbolt the exhaust manifolds, take ’em out, bolt in the headers, then go to an exhaust shop and get a full dual exhaust system put in. Easy, right?
Step one? Grabbed a hacksaw and started removing the old single exhaust system in small pieces until I hacked things up to the manifolds, leaving just a little bit of pipe. So far, so good I guess…
Then I went to unbolt the manifolds and those bolts did not want to move. I discovered that the upright part of the car’s original bumper jack fit over my ratchet, creating a huge breaker bar, and things started going smoothly again. One bolt came loose, then another, then another, then… SNAP. Broke one off in the cylinder head.
Panic ensued, and I decided to keep going to bolt the headers on with one less bolt until I could get professional help. All the other bolts came off just fine, so I removed the manifolds and went to install the headers.
But I couldn’t get the headers on. There just wasn’t enough space to squeeze them in. More panic. Then I grabbed the manifolds with their one inch of pipe and bolted them back on and drove it twenty minutes to the nearest shop while it made noise so loud that it set off peoples’ car alarms and the pipe was so short that it backfired loudly any time I let off the gas.
The shop was pretty pissed at my (literal) hack job. It took multiple tries for them to get the broken bolt out, ultimately drilling a small hole in the cylinder head to get lubricant down to the other end of the bolt and welding a piece on top to remove it. They must have been really annoyed once they were done because they didn’t tell me I had the wrong headers.
Instead, they unbolted the motor mounts, jacked the engine, bolted the headers on, rested the engine back down on the headers, got one of the motor mounts bolted in and left the other mount only partly bolted in and gave me the car.
Anyway, put your own headers on. You can totally do it.
I have a similar story for my 2000 Firebird with the 3.8 V6 that I wanted to be a V8. Decided headers would be the ticket. Broke about half the manifold bolts in the process but 19 year old me thought, “eh, it’ll be fineeeeeeeee.” Bolted it all back up and you’ll be SHOCKED to know that there were exhaust leaks galore. Had to take it to a shop who had some strong opinions on my life choices.
That is a brilliant, awful story. Thanks for sharing.
I had good intentions.
First car was a 77 Grand Prix (listen up password stealers) & the silver paint was fairly meh. The on-base auto hobby shop had tools you could borrow and a decent number of bays to work. I decided to fix the various rust spots, and repaint it black.
The rust repair went ok, I did a decent job of figuring out how to mount the screen to apply Bondo to a bit of missing metal on the backside of a wheel well or two. Friends helped my sand it all down to remove surface rust, pinstriping and prepare it. That part turned out nicely for a bunch of early 20 somethings with no clue.
But the paint guns… they leaked. Badly. The spray pattern wasn’t good. And to top it off, the ventilation didn’t work, so I was almost too stoned to care. I got the car to be black (primer), but it wasn’t pretty.
I took a perfectly nice 2000 Nissan Frontier and went totally ham on it. Lift, big off-road tires, lots of KC lights. Power seats from a Ford Thunderbird. It was still good at this point.
Then I did a graffiti paint job, Cadillac taillights, angled license plate frenched into the tailgate. I did straight pipes with an exhaust stack, ripped out the carpet and put in astroturf, ripper out the headliner and painted a sky on the metal roof. I did a Miller High Life shift knob.
I did a lot of pretty terrible things to my Geo Prism LSi. It was a 700$ car, I was 17, and it was so rotted out that my friends and I just started piling on garish crap, mostly turning it into a rolling joke of sorts.
But the worst thing I probably did was a more practical fix, removing the bent/broken antenna and replacing it with a new one in a different spot, this time centered on the roof between the sunroof and the windshield. I mounted it, but relied far too much on a rubber washer to properly seal the new hole in my roof.
Well, one day we got a pretty severe rain storm, and as I drove away from the school, I’d say about a solid 2 gallons of water dumped out on top of me as I took a turn and all of the water made it’s way through the side of the sunroof frame.
At the time, it never made a ton of sense that much water could get through a small hole under the antenna. But our theory was that letting moisture in eventually led to some rot around the seal on the exterior of the sunroof, and over time the sheetmetal around the seal began to fail. I would try to caulk that edge of the sunroof a few times, but it never seemed to work, and would continue to get water dumped on me while driving during storms. I used to keep a half dozen bath towels in the car to throw onto my seat, and dry myself off.
There’s also the time I PB Welded a hole in my tailpipe that naturally failed and resulted in my friend getting pulled over and the cops basically tearing apart my interior to find nothing. That sucked.
Oh youth.
I had a Polo with a sunroof, but a previous owner had completely sealed it shut with what I’m pretty sure was bath sealant.
It didn’t leak though, so I just left it well alone.
Smart
I once sawzall’ed the side profiles off a ’71 Saab 96 and hung them on my garage walls. Those heavy panels must have been left over from a submarine they were building over in the warfighting department – they were measuring steel thickness with a yardstick back then.