What's the sketchiest you've ever felt while on the road?

"Jesse Shaffer" (7esse)
10/14/2014 at 21:02 • Filed to: None

We've all met that guy... the one with a completely stripped out interior with rust holes in the floorboards and a lawn chair for a passenger seat who inevitably asks you to go for a ride in his modified noise-box. He starts driving like a maniac and you suddenly can't stop wondering how old his tie-rods are.

I'm not quite that bad, but I've definitely been guilty of forgoing a bit of safety for a cheap thrill. What's the sketchiest condition in which you've ever driven your car to get somewhere, or what is the sketchiest vehicle you've been in?

I'm kind of torn... on one hand my DD is a car that can make !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but oh how that A-pillar can bend:

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And, then - there's my 26 year old motorcycle with 40,000 miles, which constantly finds some new, out-of-production part to dismantle underneath of me on every other ride:

I'm aware that my odds in the unforeseen aren't too hot on either of one of these... but as my old History teacher would say when asked "what if" questions - "what if a meteor falls from the sky and kills you tomorrow?" The world has endless variables, so you might as well try to have what fun you like.

DISCUSSION (53)

AM3R > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:06

I once drove my friends E30 with no doors or windshield and a completely gutted interior besides a race bucket seat on my favorite twisty road. Then it started raining.

The tires were bald.

jkm7680 > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:09

I rode in a taxi where everything mechanically possible was broken, yet the car still ran.

Ex: The rear axle would make dreadful noises.

Jedidiah > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:09

I rode in a Cutlass with no floorboards, no fenders or hood or lights or bumpers with 3 people

The backseat was gone, so we all had to fit in the front buckets somehow.

Mattbob > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:09

driving my e36 home from buying it. The back end was... unpredictable. When I got it home, I found that the rear trailing arm was held to the chassis with one bolt half way in. It was a sketchy drive.

Racescort666 > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:09

Kinja'd!!!

Probably riding my project bike at 60 through a business park the first time I got it running. It hadn't been running for several years, questionable brakes, and yes, there is no seat, I sat on the battery.

beardsbynelly - Rikerbeard > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:10

probably a honda civic my brother had rolled.

no windscreen, passenger a-pillar bent, no hood. bald tyres. dead Echidna in the backseat.

Drove it 10km's from one farm to another.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:10

A geo metro i drive for 6 months in you school. Bought it for 50 bucks, bought another 250 worth of fenders and parts. Had the hood latch break while on the freeway and got a nice windshield full of hood. I drove it until the right a arms completely broke off the car while stopping with a couple friends in it. Man that thing was a rust bucket, but 45mpg

mcseanerson > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:11

My CRX. Cable clutch held on with vicegrips. On the interstate. In rush hour. My buddy felt even sketchier. The only thing holding his seat to the frame was a tie down strap.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:11

My first time driving a non-modern car was a 1976 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. I was doing about 55-60mph on one of those hilly country roads that goes up and down every 20 seconds and you can't see what's coming the other way. And I had no ABS. Or any other safety features. And I had the stopping distance of a train. And Ifelt like I was drifting off the side of the road and drifting across the double yellow at the same time, because that car was a mile wide and the steering wheel wasn't connected to anything.

luvMeSome142 & some Lincoln! > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:11

I've been up to 115 on a country road on my own 26 year old motorcycle and that's pretty sketchy. But, the worst was finding out that my car's tie rod end was so worn that it was about to fall off the day after bombing down some back roads through the woods. I just kept imagining what would have happened if my front wheels decided to point in opposite directions.

Pedro > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:12

My first car was a 94 Nissan Sentra. It weighed under 2500 pounds. So when we had 5 people and our shit in it the car would weigh nearly 3500 pounds. I never told my friends that the brake pedal was touching the floor boards.

Jesse Shaffer > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:13

You guys driving around without windshields are my heroes.

Vimto > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:15

When my rich sixteen year old friend drove me in his brand new 2013 Mustang V6 auto for the first time. His idea of impressing me was taking it to a winding, narrow 45 mph road and flooring it uncontrollably towards oncoming traffic. Pretty sure that took a month or two off my life.

Viggen > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:16

Driving my Crown Vic after I picked it up from storage after deployment. I had to keep my foot on the throttle to keep it idling. Tires: cue ball smooth. Wipers: Did more bad than good. Defrost: You mean refog?

Jesse Shaffer > Vimto
10/14/2014 at 21:17

Wow. That sounds terrifying. At least his parents didn't go for the 5.0...

Hermann > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:17

Friend of mine was restoring the bodywork of his 71 Beetle. This didn't stop him from DD'ing it. He drove around on its chassis. The seats were loose, the steering wheel wasn't fixed in a position, the fuel tank was a soda bottle. He gave me a ride with a small detour on a highway.

We found out the hard way the brakes were leaking. Engine braking to my garage and since the car was so light we were unable to make it stall to a halt. The steering column was our bumper.

TheJWT > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:19

Anything over 90 in my car is terrifying, which is a good thing, I suppose.

But the sketchiest thing was driving home on I-71 one day on garbage tires in a heavy rainstorm. The wipers worked just well enough to keep me on the road, but I had absolutely no control every time I hit a patch of standing water. Even at 50MPH in the slow lane I was hydroplaning all over the place. Not fun...

Vimto > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:24

Yeah, 305 is, uh, shall we say, more than enough horsepower. At the time I was two years older and had a stick shift 4 cylinder Tacoma, so I wasn't going anywhere fast. Still aren't with my Grand Marquis.

jariten1781 > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:28

Lanyard tied to throttle cable to act as a hand throttle after the pedal itself sheared. Pull to go. Right hand was throttle and I had to reach over with my left hand to shift. Drove about 240 miles home that way.

Jesse Shaffer > jariten1781
10/14/2014 at 21:30

Nice! Makes my three hour trip home with a bungee cord holding the car in 5th look like cake... synchro went out on a long-haul.

StingrayJake > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:31

Any time I'm driving on I-40 through Oklahoma... HEY-OHHHH!

Scary__goongala! > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:34

Doing donuts in my W123 in a gravel parking lot in the center of a soccer field complex gravel parking lot.(where multiple games were being played.) No I didnt't spary cars with stones. Granted I did have to turn around because my friends gave me poor directions. Might have overdone it. *shrugs

shop-teacher > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:37

I worked (very briefly) during college for a guy who cleaned restaurant exhaust hoods. It was truely disgusting and miserable work. It consisted of scraping down the hood surfaces, power washing the vent/chimney with hot water and caustic soda, then collecting all the runoff, and cleaning up.

Not surprisingly, every surface, every tool, everything, was covered in grease. Including the work van I had to drive. It was an early 90's Lumina APV minivan, that was approaching 200k miles. The interior was gutted, it had a "ladder rack" made of 1/2" gas pipe bolted straight through the roof skin. Mechanically, it had a broken motor mount, so the motor would flop over every time you hit the gas, the front end was completely shot, the shocks were just a suggestion, and those were just the highlights. It was the sketchiest vehicle I've ever driven, by a wide margin.

thebigbossyboss > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 21:39

I am not admitting to this on the internet lol.

ranwhenparked > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 22:25

I had a friend in high school with a Dodge Spirit that had the headliner held up by wooden lattice and a busted radiator that sprayed antifreeze over the hood and needed to be topped up every 20-30 minutes. Also, the passenger seatbelt was broken.

NWAForester > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 22:27

How about having the back end of your 93 Nissan 240sx step out repeatedly at 160+mph.......
"Poos come out!!"

Kinja'd!!!

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 22:41

Mountain road on crappy AT tires in 2wd. Ended up in a ditch. Not might brightest moment. Also, Joe Dirt just got a confirmed sequel.

Jesse Shaffer > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
10/14/2014 at 23:30

I once restored a broken down mk3 VR6 GTI... the first time I get the replacement engine fired and move it down the driveway and back - a gust of wind comes along and smashes the hood right in to the windshield... I didn't even have the hood latch back on it yet. I was infuriated and humiliated all at once.

Jesse Shaffer > shop-teacher
10/14/2014 at 23:34

Kinja'd!!!

... I haven't seen one of these things in almost eight years, or better. I've driven cars with busted motor mounts, where the engine actually shifted about - that takes some skill to get done without destroying things.

Jesse Shaffer > beardsbynelly - Rikerbeard
10/14/2014 at 23:36

dead Echidna in the backseat.

Care to elaborate?

Jesse Shaffer > luvMeSome142 & some Lincoln!
10/14/2014 at 23:40

I once had a wheel bearing go bad - which I proceeded to drive on for a couple hundred miles... Yeah... I put the car in the back yard of my buddies place on Friday night so we could work on it that Saturday.

When I went to back it up the next morning- the bearing fell apart and the entire hub/wheel assembly fell right off of the axle.

Talk about in the nick of time.

Tie rods/wheel bearings/ steering gear are nothing to mess around with.

Jesse Shaffer > mcseanerson
10/14/2014 at 23:42

Where were the vice-grips? Which part of the assembly broke? Was it the piece that attaches to the shift lever or the clutch-fork?

beardsbynelly - Rikerbeard > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 23:43

it somehow entered the car when it was rolling over. no one knows how.

Jesse Shaffer > NWAForester
10/14/2014 at 23:44

Nice. By the time my car gets to 140, I'm glad it's FWD for as cheap as it is. It starts using a loooot of road surface at those speeds, even without stepping out of traction. A bad gust of wind will put me halfway in to the next lane.

Jesse Shaffer > StingrayJake
10/14/2014 at 23:48

At first I was like - is that the OK border that's guarded by McDonald's? But IIRC that's at I-44.

StingrayJake > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 23:51

Nope I-40 is the old Route 66. Cuts clean across the state east to west. And it feels like a washboard for the vast majority of it, especially around OKC.

shop-teacher > Jesse Shaffer
10/14/2014 at 23:58

Really? I still see them semi-regularly, and they make me cringe.

Who knows how long the mount had been that way. When I told the dude about it, he said, "Oh, really? I should take it in then, it's still under warranty." My jaw dropped. He had purchased the van new, and he also bought a 10 year, 200,000 mile warranty. He was just under both.

He thanked me when I saw him a few months later. He happily reported that, "A whole bunch of stuff got fixed."

Jesse Shaffer > StingrayJake
10/14/2014 at 23:59

Yeah, it's 44 I was talking about. There's a McDonald's literally hanging over the highway. 40 sounds rough, though. It's "old 40" and just a normal roadway where I live, so we mostly avoid it to use I68/70. We really only used it in town.

Magnetic suspension or no?

StingrayJake > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 00:02

Negative. Z71 suspension on a 2001 Silverado. Smooth ride, it ain't.

fishtankwog > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 00:04

Once upon a time, a good acquaintance traded in his 59 Chevy 6- 3 speed on a 57 Plymouth Fury 2 4bbl Torqueflite - So naturally 7-8 of us piled in and dared him to floor it out of the drive in- up a side street, through traffic, across the median and into a field - where he discovered the brake imbalance and flipped it - no deadly injuries - but mass stupid.

Jesse Shaffer > StingrayJake
10/15/2014 at 00:10

When my family still had its business, my Grandparents fielded GM W/T pickups at the shop and went through every premium truck that GM made, for themselves, from 95-05 - Tahoe, to Z71 Silverado, to Avalanche, to Escalade to Denali...

I can concur - even the softest sprung truck wasn't all that soft. I had the Escalade on two wheels coming home from Prom (it's a long story on an unfamiliar road with zero alcohol involved) and I got the back-end loose in the Avalanche more times than I'd prefer to tell them about...

StingrayJake > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 00:14

The place I used to work in the summers involved lots of dirt road driving in a mid-90s Silverado pulling a trailer filled with 500 gallons of agricultural chemicals. It's a wonder I never flipped that thing.

Jesse Shaffer > fishtankwog
10/15/2014 at 00:15

Christine! Sounds like a terrifying ride... gotta love being kids and learning together without supervision.

Tohru > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 03:07

My red Ford Escort, before it died.

Kinja'd!!!

It was rusted pretty bad from a previous owner putting a sunroof in wrong - holes in all 4 footwells, with the driver's side being the worst. No carpet, no passenger's seat, no back seat, no center console. Rockers were pretty bad. Tweaked uni-rail on the right front from hitting a snowbank. Right front damaged from a deer hit, with a sealed beam zip-tied in. Kept buying cheap sets of used tires and running them until the second layer of cords showed.

The diff finally shit the bed and punched gears through the side of the case. It donated its motor to a replacement.

Kinja'd!!!

It has been crushed. Nothing of value was lost - I stripped it to a bare shell. The passenger's seat from it is my desk chair.

mcseanerson > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 06:37

It was on the cable going to the clutch. It was right by the firewall just to provide extra resistance. Looked like I was missing a big washer or something.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 06:43

At least you were in the driveway...as i was slowing down and pulling on to the shoulder the lady behind me is laying on the horn. Really? I can't see a damn thing so I'm slowing down and pulling over why the hell is that pissing you off. Had to tie it down with my belt to make it home

505Turbeaux > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 09:21

I drove a karmann ghia in a snowstorm with almost zero floorboard action going on all the way across my state. Thing was a snow globe.

Also bought a 68 Bronco with a rotten fuel tank, I had a 5 gallon marine tank next to me and no license plates. Also drove all the way across the state to bring it home.

Hmmmm...65 beetle convertible in storage for 40 years. Started it up and drove 45 miles home, lost the brakes halfway there

bought a Ford Super Coupe T bird at auction, drove 70 miles home, no plates, blew the head gasket 20 miles in and kept driving, made it somehow with the needle in the red for a great long time.

Probably the sketchiest was helping my dad bring home a Duster for parts behind his Duster with a goddamn rope from upstate NY to southern CT. When I was 13. I was the towed one. "Now remember, when you see the brake lights come on, brake. When I let go, let go. And steer". WTF I have too many sketchball stories.

kbasa > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 11:29

Through college in the late 70s, I drove a string of cars I bought for $100. Rusted floorboards, crushed panels, wonky brakes and steering, I had all of that, usually in a single vehicle. I carried my tools in the trunk and they were worth more than the cars in most cases.

I had a 1970 Toyota Corona that I bought from a woman diagnosed with epilepsy after she plowed the 'yota into a Cadillac and totalled it. The floorboards were rusted through in a couple spots on the passenger side, so when my girlfriend (now wife) was over there, she had to keep her foot on the rug when we went through puddles. Otherwise, water would blow the rug off the hole and she'd get soaked. Such hilarity.

I'll say this, though: I learned how to diagnose problems quickly and could almost always get home or to somewhere that had parts. IMHO, everybody should own, drive and love a shitbox when they first learn to drive. The one skill I learned from that and that I've been able to apply to many portions of my life is structured troubleshooting. Data structures, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, people, organizations, processes and all the other things I have to fix have benefited from me standing by the side of the road troubleshooting old cars when I was 19.

TheHighwayStar > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 13:24

Driving my buddy's 1993 Geo Prizm. It had 250,000 miles on it with all-original suspension parts, a trashed interior, and was 3 different colors. The rocker panels, quarters, and fenders were all rusted through. The shifter moved just as much in gear than in neutral. We moved him across town in it, so I got to drive this shitheap on the freeway and busy urban trafficways while bottoming out on every bump and weaving in and out of the lanes. It also had a cop-magnet 3-inch fart can.

kalabaddon > Jesse Shaffer
10/15/2014 at 13:43

Back when I was a kid, doing 100 mph on the freeway in the rain in my 87 Mustang GT with mismatched bald tires. Hydroplaning from one lane to the next (the car just shifted over lanes in a blink of the eye) was an eye opening experience!

The Biebster's got a P71 (Formerly not Justin Bieber) > Jesse Shaffer
10/16/2014 at 23:07

Pretty much every time I drive since I drive a flat-black spray painted Police Interceptor creeping towards 300,000 miles. It's especially sketchy when bikes/pallets/lumber/etc are hanging out of the trunk

Shiyal > Jesse Shaffer
11/06/2014 at 16:39

I didn't drive it on the road after I rolled it. Much.

Rolled over and over and over. Windshield and passenger window gone. Headlights hanging out pointing down. Everything else worked. Doors, turnsignals, heater, a/c... Took the doors off during summers. Drove it with no exhaust. Loved the 318 V-8 uncorked.

Fresh-Outta-Nissans > Jesse Shaffer
11/10/2014 at 20:08

My old VVL-swapped 200SX SE-R (OMG, BBQ) before I fixed the exhaust.

The car was running open headers, because when it got rear-ended prior to my purchase (which folded the trunk region slightly upwards) the exhaust split in half. It was running in limp mode due to an ill-advised splice block in the wiring, because obviously you want the check engine light and the oxygen sensor to run signal off the same wire. Meanwhile, the aftermath of multiple lazy engine swaps meant the evap canister was missing and the lines were uncapped.

So: every time I lift throttle to shift, a small explosion happened right next to my feet, threatening to light off some fuel vapor lines leading back to the tank.

God damn I miss that car.