what are some of your real life car crafting stories? strange tales, funny fixes, crazy ideas that actually worked, fun facts, trippy projects... post 'em here.

Fun Fact: Things that have fallen off my car while driving: my starter, my valve cover breather. Things that have fallen off my car and I have run over: my battery.

Fun Fix: My starter was falling off because the bolt holes in the block were stripped. To start the engine, I would crawl under the car, thread the bolts in with what little grip there was, and hold the starter with my bare hands as it jiggled when I had a buddy turn the key. I would lose a bit of my hearing every time I had my face an inch from the headers and the engine would fire up. It was months before I helicoiled those bolt holes. Ha!

Fun Fix:  When I put together my front end after building a new chevy 406, I decided to lose the inner fenders. Unfortunately, I forgot that the Battery setup I had used the passenger inner fender to hold the battery down. I needed to buy a trunk battery mount kit, but for the meanwhile I needed to get to the speed shop. So I tied it to the frame with rope and went on my way. It wasn't until I hit the speed bump in the parking lot that the battery came loose. I just remember hearing a big thump and feeling the car hop over what felt like a second speed bump. I parked only yards from where that was in front of the speed shop. I opened the hood, and my battery was being dragged by the cablesdown by the headers. What a day!

More to come later.

I just don't remember that much . . . after the crash . . . .  

I had a '73 Chevy half-ton pickup that looked like it was recovered from the Titanic.  I think it had about one square foot of paint left, the rest was rust.  I had rewired the whole lighting system due to bad grounds everywhere.  Anyway, one night I drove it into town and the whole wiring job went up in smoke as I got there.  Naturally a cop was right there as it happened, he pulled me over and said I couldn't go anyhwere without lights.  I pulled a speaker wire from behind the seat and ran it from the battery directly to the terminals on the back of the driver's side healight.  This satisfied the cop enough to get me home.  No cruising that night.  

To adjust the clutch on my old V8 Vega ("back in the day", you know) you had to jack the front up, or if you were really lazy you could just open the driver door all the way, lift up on it as hard as you could and set the end of it on a jack stand and that would hold the car tilted enough so you could barely slide under from the side and totally wedge your shoulders under the rocker panel and your head between the subframe and the ground, and just reach the adjustment with the tip of your fingers.  It was a Sunday afternoon and I was well immersed into the lazy method when my ol' dad walked along and I guess heard the grunts and groans and figured he'd help.  So he went and got an old 4x4 board for a lever and a cement block for a fulcrum, and to surprise me he pushed it all under the side of the car while I was working and with a mighty thrust, lifted it straight up about 4 inches before I knew what happened. 

I freaked 'cause for one I didn't want the help and for two I could immediately see from where I was the mickey-mouse thing that he was doing, which was worse than the mickey-mouse thing that I was doing, and that there was a big knot in that wood right where the fulcrum point was.  The open door was now lifted well off of the jackstand and waving around back and forth in the air.  Keep in mind that my head had been tightly wedged under that subframe, I couldn't shout at him to let the car back down again because if the door didn't just happen to land on that little jackstand my skull would be crushed by the weight of the car.  While I was thinking at 90mph in a panic I saw with my own eyes that board start to split right at the knot, and then it went.  "Crack!"  That was the end, I knew, no time to make peace with God or anybody else and I was an instant away from dying with my head crushed under a V8 Vega.  "Well, at least he died doing what it was he loved best", like hell...

Down it came, full-force with that 4x4 in two pieces and wouldn't you know it, the end of the door indeed just happened to land back on the jackstand, bending the door but saving my life.  What were the chances?  That was the first and only time in my life I have ever yelled at my dad, and he didn't stick around for the one-half second it took me to get myself pulled out from under that car.

Whenever I get p.o.'d by catching six yellow lights in-a-row in a photo enforcement zone I try to remember that one

My buddy had a 73 rust bucket chevy P/U. Living in Omaha means dealing with railroad tracks and pot holes. His bed always shook and rattled and danced everytime it hit a bump. One day it a made a really loud noise going over rough tracks then nothing at the next bump in the road. We turned around to see the bed lying in the road on the railroad tracks. The poor girl driving behind had slammed into it and was sitting on the tracks. We managed to drag the bed and her car off the tracks and road before the next train came along.

It seems that bed was completely rusted out around every bolt hole mounting it to the frame. It was only sitting on the frame by gravity. As I had just rode in the bed the night before as the human cargo tie down, a sudden wave of mortality came over me.

Hey, here's a story that hasn't really happened yet.

I want to build an El Camino with the motor in the back.  

Picture slammed-to-the-ground, big-block up tight against the back window, with something like boat headers, manual trans, driveshaft back to a transfer box at the tailgate and then shaft goes forward to the diff.  Trans needs to be spaced back a bit, the axle will tuck up close to the crank c/l between the bell housing and trans.  No way am I going to use a Toronado drivetrain for this.

So I aquired a couple truck transmissions to use gears from for the transfer box, and a fifty-pound chunk of aluminum to machine a case from.  A local machine shop did some grinding to make bearings fit on shafts, then I spent three days on a mill with a rotary table to make a shaft-spacer thing to move the trans back.   I made a huge body-frame jig thing that rolls on trailer wheels to, well, jig-up the body and frame. 

Next I bought a '79 El Camino 'cause I thought it would look the best, and then it occured to me that I would have to smog-test it so I told everybody I know that I was looking for an early one instead.  Within a few weeks three '64s came up (wierd) and I bought two of them, total cost $350 and no rust on one of them (gotta love CA).  The one was very nice except for one fender, I found a replacement and put it in the bed and then after a couple months a tree fell over onto the car, squashing the right-rear quarter plus the "new" front fender  but with stuff from the other car it's fixable.  Unfortunately I can't decide if I like the looks of '64s so much but I guess I'm committed.

Next thing to do is continue on solving the toughest problems first.  There is lots more machine work to do, chassis fabrication will be the easy part on this one.  Will check back in six months (damn work, finances, other projects and repairs, family commitments etc.).

heres a funny one i bought a 1979 ford thunderbird for ten bucks with a bad transmission and no engine dont ask why i bought it but it was sitting on its frame because it sunk into the ground there was a steep hill behind it being a minnesota car that was sitting since 1991 it took a day of ripping up the grass around it but when we pulled we heard a riping noise and looked ... the car snaped in half and to make it worse the back half slid down the hill and smashed into a huge oak tree the only thing holding it together was the carpet atleast i got a nice dash board and gauges i sold for $20.00 and  faded seats i gave away now in a driver  and another $50 for what was left at the crusher  had the rims untill a few weeks ago they ended up on a friends derby car