God, where to start? So many! My bro and I had thrashed on a 57 2 door sedan about 30 years ago. The interior was gutted but we got the engine running so we had to take it for a test run at midnight. We put two pop boxes in for front seats, jammed the steering unto the splines and got a flashlight. I pointed the flashlight out of the window and we idled out of the yard. As soon as we got clear onto the road I said, Punch it!. He did and that 283 started to howl. Pretty good acceleration, in fact so good it pulled the steering wheel off the splines and we both tumbled over into the back as the car piled into the ditch! Luckily nothing but hurt pride but it was a few years before we coudl bring ourselves to tell other people what we had done. Oh well, I feel better now.
Classic tale...great stuff!. Reminds me of the time I yanked a 350 4Bbl. out of a '72 Impala and put it in a real solid '66 Chevy Shortbox panel van I'd pulled out of a farmers' field for $50.. I had to swap a later doghouse into it for the V8 width so I torched the original skinny doghouse completely and off, dropped in the 350 and hooked it up to the original 3-Tree tranny.. With the doghouse off there was nowhere to mount the seats so the testdrive w/ my buddy was us sitting on the front wheelwells, open engine between us and the fan spinning beside my knee!. Friggin' thing rocked...you could get a bounce going and w/ traction could pull the old straight axle front wheels off the ground!. Last seen about 1982 in Oshawa, custom blue/silver paint, factory side door delete...originally an Oshawa orange Dixon's Fuel Services vehicle.. Sigh...the good ol' days of fun and foolishness!.
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I like real cars best...especially the REAL real ones! ----------------------------------------------------------------
Ok here is my bone head screw up. I was 19 and and into my first ever rebuild. I was so excited and in a hurry I tore the motor apart in no time. It was a re ring and new bearing job. Crank was good and only needed to be polished . Cylinders were honed. Put bearings in and crank torque bolts on mains . Crank would not spin, what the !!! Loosed mains one at atime until I found the one that was holding it up. Went back to were I got the bearings and he gave me a new one, same thing happened ,took it back again this time he said you did put the mains back were they came from didn't you ? Hu!!! Yes they were not numbered and I never marked them. To the machine shop for a line bore. Thought I new it all back then, seems my whole life I learned the hard way.
One late night working on the racecar putting the engine back together, I set a bolt on top of the piston and said to my buddy wouldnt that suck to leave that there as a joke, kept going for a little longer got the heads torqued on and wouldn't you know I couldn't remember if I took the bolt off the top of the piston! Needless to say I wasn't about to risk it so off the head came shure enough the bolt was sitting right where I left it! I dont mess around when im building motors anymore I think im more wise with age! Good life leson though could have been alot worse
I did the loose front wheels too ie. I was young and didn't tightened the wheel nuts enough after putting them back on the front of the car following a bearing grease job, the car got awfully wobbely going down the hwy 20 to 401 Quebec-Ontario border LOL ! Another time , i replaced the front wheel bearings without replacing the races ( I trew them away as I thought I could reuse the old ones ... NOT ) resulted to a loud squeal and seized bearing on the spindle after driving it for about 500 miles LOL ! Another time I got stuck in the sand and in my drunken stupidity spun the rear wheel till I sank all the way to the frame, a year down the road I kept earing this loud grinding sound coming from the back passenger wheel going around 60mph on the hwy, when I got in town I turned at an intersection and the car fell on it's side with the wheel lying on the pavement and a big puddle of diff. oil ( the sand that was left in there cut the axle off ) good thing it didn't happen at high speed. Last one : I had a frayed accelerator cable that got hung and sent the engine way up on the rev. side, I tried to unstuck it while playing with the gas padle but it didn't work, so I turned the ignition key off then POW !!! sounded like a 12 gauge being shot, the muffler fell on the street LOL !
I'm 16 years old I have a Canadian Pontiac Lemans Sport with a 350 Chev-seems to have a flat spot pulling away so I swap carbs-the vacuum hoses from the replacement are placed in the carb-I pull them out hook up what I need , plug what I don't (some had plugs, some didn't) I start the car up-bang,bang, bang-tear the engine down-guess what ? small screw busted the piston/cracked cylinder wall-had to have come from one of those vacuum lines placed inside the carb from the previous remover. Live and learn.
in our younger days, we were cruising up Fairmont Drive in Calgary, and ran into a buddy of ours who had a early 70's LeMans. He was always tinkering with something, so we'd always stop to check out the latest improvements. He shut the car off and popped the hood, revealing a new 4 bbl carb. He didn't have the front vacuum port (for a PCV valve) capped off, if I recall he had a thumb tack in it, so it wasn't sealing very well. I was chewing gum, so removed the thumb tack, and put a blob of my gum in its place. He started the car, and my gum got sucked into the vacuum port - I'll never forget the look on his face!!! We still laugh about that one nearly 30 years later.
First car I had when I was 17 was a Type 3 Volkwagen with fuel injection. It needed a muffler, which screwed on with two pipe fittings. Problem was I culdn't get the old one off. No matter how hard I tried the nut would not come loose. After working at it for a couple of hours to no avail I finally decided to turn the nut the other way, and it came off easily. It was a left handed thread. I had no idea such a thing existed until that day.
First car I had when I was 17 was a Type 3 Volkwagen with fuel injection. It needed a muffler, which screwed on with two pipe fittings. Problem was I culdn't get the old one off. No matter how hard I tried the nut would not come loose. After working at it for a couple of hours to no avail I finally decided to turn the nut the other way, and it came off easily. It was a left handed thread. I had no idea such a thing existed until that day.
OK, heres one more-Dad knows best-I had that guys 70 Charger for sale this past summer-went to move the wheels front to rear-those rear studs were sure tight on the left side-I broke three of them ! Dad says-sure they're not left had thread-ya right-wheel studs !!! anyway I go order new ones-yup left hand thread ! always listen to Dad !
