Dodgy breakdown storys

HDI Dave · Unread post by **HDI Dave** » 02 Aug 2010, 23:52

Just pondering on peoples breakdown experiences..

19 yr old daughter broke down tonight in her pug 106,rough as fk area,like gangland..Bradford, Manningham. No offence intended to the good people of Manningham.

Gangs,colours/scarfs on heads,climbing every climable object etc! 'What u lookin at bro, innit,yeah, etc etc'...Quite intimidtating to be honest! and I'm no mary poppins

Gave her a right verbal,which isn't like me,as me an my daughter are closer than her and her mum..she's a proper daddy's girl,love her to pieces

Only gave her grief as she'd said her exhaust was 'blowing' 2 days before,(bring it over i said, i'll have a look), No it's alright,stuff to do,people to see,you wouldn't understand, (i'm an oldie,etc,basically,lol)
Fekin snapped off,at the cat,

in the bradford bronx.

She didn't know where she was,then her phone went dead! Found her eventually.The zorst was digging into the road.Easiest and quickest solution was to rive the whole middle and back zorst off,and chuck it in the Xant, (strange people were now milling around like flys round poo poo

) and follow her home.

good job the Xant has that ski hatch jobby!

Then she says (exhaustless), can i carry on my journey now? !!!

"No!,bring it to mine,where it will be magically made quiet!!!for nowt!

Needless to say, she's gone off in a huff

kids

At least it was still late summer/light..dread to think of venturing into the bronx in darkness!

Anyone got any hairy breakdown escapades?

andmcit · Unread post by **andmcit** » 03 Aug 2010, 00:08

I've had this, ran a length of small diameter twine bought at local shop from
hinge on one door across under the car and up onto opposite side of the car
thus pulling the exhaust up off the floor to allow forward progress again!

Noisy buy driveable.

Andrew

pug_owner2002 · Unread post by **pug_owner2002** » 03 Aug 2010, 00:26

My mates old XR3i had the throttle cable snap, Luckily? the layby we rolled into was furnished with some old string. this was attached to the throttle run through the bonnet to the window & he drove home (in the winter) with his arm out of the window pulling on the string to accelerate.
I nearly s**t myself when he did (overtook) a line of about 8 cars with this setup.
Ah well it got us home.

HDI Dave · Unread post by **HDI Dave** » 03 Aug 2010, 00:35

Lol,

I see what you're saying mate,Andrew,

It was just a really hairy situation and I was trying,as usual with kids etc to get a point across to her/my daughter.
I could indeed have bodged a quick repair if it was me (broken down).In my small boot toolkit I have bare wire! Sounds sad but it did help a fellow biker when his exhaust fell off on the skipton bypass

..but I'm hoping she's learn't summat, ie,when dad says it's gonna break,LISTEN! Lol.

but she won't...her car will be magically fixed by the mechanic fairys

Just wondered if anyone else had some scary breakdown tales

andmcit · Unread post by **andmcit** » 03 Aug 2010, 01:09

Scary breakdown story #1

I got well stranded in a dead head gasket Cx on the elevated section of the
M5 just off the M6 in Brum in the small hours of a Sunday night with rain
lashing a gale horizontally and only a half width hard shoulder...

I'd say boiling up (myself and the car) in diabolical jammed up traffic for
hours and the cooling system fibnally called it a day on my DTR saloon.

Oh, and the Cx was towing a deathtrap dolly spectacle lift I'd hired to tow
a rolling shell Cx Gti Turbo home from Halifax.

I was sooo wet just getting out of the car to see if I could get it to run again
and I couldn't have got more soaked through if I'd stood fully clothed in a
shower.

The Police turned up fairly quickly as I was pondering what to do to summon
help (pre mobile phones) and sat in their Range Rover with their blue lights
flashing in a lairy strobe and when the AA man arrived he was in a Meastro
van (we're going back a few years now) and he was as white as a sheet...

this guy was determined come hell or high water to move me off the
motorway and towed mer in the stricken Cx and the other Cx shell on the
dolly the several hundred yards off the next slip. It's only when he stopped
me on the roundabout below and called the flatbed did he tell me his
colleague had been killed by a truck hitting him on that very stretch a
short while previous attending a breakdown...

and there I was faffing about in shirtsleeves drenched in the dark in no
space in poor lighting on a walled blind bend and elevated high enough
to have been almost at flighing altitude judging by the lashing rain.

I think I may be lucky to still be here and I'll never forget the AA man's face
of the Police officer telling me to stay in the car as it was ' a nasty stretch of
road".

Getting home in the flatbed lorry was a walk in the park after.

Andrew

Julz · Unread post by **Julz** » 03 Aug 2010, 15:18

my scariest was changing an off-side tyre on the M25 after a blow-out, about 10 years ago. Had a laden astravan at the time, with my dog in the back too.
First had to get the dog out the back and into the front, then had to unload half the contents to get to the spare.
It was near Jct 8 where the motorway is in a cutting with narrow hard shoulders, so couldn't get far from the carriageway. Had to get my wife to stand at the rear of the van and look out for any vehicles getting close to the hard shoulder so we could jump to safety if needed.
Quickest tyre change I've ever managed in the dark by touch alone.

Another one, not scary but no fun at-all was after a flash-flood driving my 306 through 8" flood and sucking half the puddle into the air intake. What a stupid place to put the air intake, bottom of the wheel arch. Then had to wait 5 hours for RACto turn up and take me home. that's how I wrote it off

Luckily was able to claim on the insurance under accidental damage, got £2500 when I'd only paid £2,700 18 months previous.

Xaccers · Unread post by **Xaccers** » 03 Aug 2010, 15:52

Back when I worked for the AA in Basingrad they used to lose 4 patrol men a year on motorways, which is why they feel they can rightly call themselves an emergency service.

Many moons ago, in Saudi Arabia, we had a volvo (240 I think). In the middle of the desert on the way to the beach, in a sandstorm, dad decides he needs the loo so pulls over and heads for the nearest sand dune.
A short while later, we see a red pair of swimming trunks fly across the desert caught by the wind, shortly followed by a rather angry englishman streaking after them

By the time he got back into the car, we were able to stiffle our giggles (I was about 6), but the car wouldn't start.
Something in the carb had dried out and seized so we were stranded.
No mobile phones, no radio, nothing.
Thankfully a couple of dad's diving buddies were heading back to Jeddah for something so spotted us.
Mum, my sister and I got into one car to be taken on to the beach camp while dad and the others looked into the problem.
In the end they managed to lube the carb by dripping oil from the dip stick.
Had the car carrying mum and us in it been stopped, mum and the driver (a male friend who wasn't a member of our family) would have been in serious trouble with the law!

KP · Unread post by KP » 04 Aug 2010, 09:40

Worst one for me was my old red rust bucket R5 Turbo phase2.

Picked a mate up from manchester airport and was heading back home along the expressway on a very hot day and the throttle melted in the WOT position

Had to jam the brakes on full bore to get it to pull over into a bus stop.
When stopped popped bonnet to see whisps of flames coming from the carb

and dashed to the back to get a water bottle out. Put it out but most of the carb was destroyed with the heat of the flames. found out the plastic link had melted due to under bonnet temps for some reason and just stuck in WOT and the pressure build up from the turbo still spinning and the throttle being open when i pulled over and stalled the engine popped a seal in the base of the carb and the mix was leaking out....

Could have had the whole car go up if i hadn't put it out sharpish.

red_dwarfers · Unread post by **red_dwarfers** » 04 Aug 2010, 17:03

KP wrote:WOT position

If you weren't sure what that means (like me) don't go Googling it at work

Unread post by **myglaren** » 04 Aug 2010, 17:35

Presumed it meant Wide Open Throttle.

Wheel Of Time/Web Of Trust don't appear to be particularly applicable, saw no offensive suggestions

pug_owner2002 · Unread post by **pug_owner2002** » 04 Aug 2010, 22:52

red_dwarfers

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

KP wrote:
WOT position

If you weren't sure what that means (like me) don't go Googling it at work
_________________

Well I had to google it (not at work though) and see what you mean.

red_dwarfers · Unread post by **red_dwarfers** » 04 Aug 2010, 23:01

myglaren wrote:Presumed it meant Wide Open Throttle.

Wheel Of Time/Web Of Trust don't appear to be particularly applicable, saw no offensive suggestions

It's nothing offensive Steve, just it appears to stand for other things apart from those listed when the full quote is searched.

Unfortunatly, all of my breakdown stories have been rather quick and happy ones. I did find that I lost most of my power steering on the way to catch a train to see the Quo, turned out to be the hydraulic supply pipe which was very quickly fixed using cable ties to squash the split. I was running a little late as it was!

andmcit · Unread post by **andmcit** » 04 Aug 2010, 23:24

Scary breakdown story #2

C'est flambé

How to empty a very busy dual carriageway:

I really get upset seeing these - I really enjoyed driving this car:

...and I never really got to try these tyres...

some of you guys have seen my harrowing pictures before...

The car was a base 2.0i wearing quite spectacular alloys shod with 2 day old 205
Goodyear NCT's on the front and near new Continentals on the rear; I was driving
hard 'full pelt' on a dual carriageway when I suddenly realised there were BIG
orange flames leaping well past halfway up the windscreen from under the bonnet...

hard to miss that's for sure!

I didn't even have a chance to pull completely into a nearby layby when it stopped being
a car and instead turned into a significant hazard to my/everyone else's health. I'd literally
5 minues earlier just expensively filled it completely with petrol for a long haul journey and
when I struggled out of the car grabbing immediate belongings a Police motorcyclist appeared
from the layby and had the road closed immediately and the Fire Brigade called when I
mentioned the fuel up!!

I knew the car was a gonner but grabbed anything I could out of the boot which contained
a good %age of my toolkit/jack/halogen lamps/extension leads etc etc and got told off by
Mr Policeman in the process! In fact I was carrying everything barr a Fire Extinguisher!

Still, it took the Fire Brigade a fair while/20 mins to arrive and these
pictures we the end result.

Happier days with buddies on front road:

The cause?

I'm now pretty sure it was either a perished fuel feed hose on the top of the engine or
an oil leak from the rocker cover gasket burning onto the exhaust manifold setting up
the sound deadening insulation.

Have you checked your fuel lines etc!? Ok, you all drive diesels?

Andrew

red_dwarfers · Unread post by **red_dwarfers** » 04 Aug 2010, 23:28

Must have been almost heartbreaking Andrew

Looking at the last picture, I bet your neighbors love you

addo · Unread post by **addo** » 05 Aug 2010, 00:42

Almost certainly those fuel lines feeding into the regulator. Mine have come loose a few times!