Tell us About Your Car’s Worst Road Trip Breakdown

28hr drive with a bunch of friends in my 97 burb from madison wi to boston ma on thanksgiving, whole way is wonderful, get to my buddys dorm and a coolant hose explodes, 3 days to get the necessary part fixed to make it all the way back, no cooling problems since. Doesnt seem like much, but when your college buddies are high as shit and smokes coming out the front of your truck, GTA instincts kick in and everyone wants to leave the vehicle before it catches flame and blows up.

Okay, so this is my worst.

Its june 2012, at that time i was 24 and studying product design. As most of you probably know june is that time of the year where every student lives of redbull and coffee, sits behind his desk and try to make it to the next year of university.
But as you also know, the second weekend of june hosts the legandary 24 hours of Le Mans, so yes there is the problem.
after vissiting from Maastricht the netherlands in 2011 with a straight cut rally mini i decided to save up the montly student loan ment for studying and bought myself an awesome Volkswagen T3.

Not just a Volkswagen T3, a high milage, ex police, ex rockband bandbus, ex taxi with a massive peacock in the jungle painted on the sides.What can possibly go wrong?

Chapter 1 ;Day One of ownership.
At the time i just had a new girlfriend. she was smart, good looking and most of all, just like her parents a perfectionist. everything in and around the house was spotless, and then the VW peacockmobile showed up for the first time, in a clouwd of blue smoke.
Keep in mind, this is the first time i was allowed to sleep over, share a bed with their daughter.
My alarmclock goes off, i open my eyes, go down the stairs, open the door… and it looked like a bloody BP oil disaster, The van i bought apparently had a rusted trough diesel tank and i just filled it up with 65 litres, til the last drup in the perfectionistic maintained blue stone driveway with white gravel.

chapter 2
After the BP driveway oilspill i had a week of exams followed by weekend and on monday the final exam. so i decided to follow trough with my plan.
Study like a monk, depart to le mans friday after the exam, drive back sunday night and tackle the last exam on monday.
in the meantime i still had a leaking fuelltank wich needed sorting. i sourced one on the internet, picked it up, called a mate and started the job.
after 5 hours of work its about 3 am, me and my friend where litteraly as black as charcol but decided to treat ourselfs to a midnight snack. I was living at my parents place back then just like my brother, and he picked up the smell “frikkandelen” (dutch meatsticks) in the deepfryer. so we are standing in the drivway, me and my amigo covered in grease, and my brother, only wearing underwear holding the ‘ fricandel’ and found out that the battery was flat so we pushstarted the car and went for a drive. imagine this me, pitchblack, my bro, practicly naked holding a meatstick and another nasty dude sitting in the front of this shitbox… and yes, police pulled us over, did not have the documents of the car pressent, got taken to the bureau.. explain this story

chapter 3; the jorney to le mans.
mad friday at le mans, would not miss it for the world. so we left aroud 10am, and drove off the the holly grail of motorsport. this van was not particilor designed for motorway use, the tiny 1600cc diesel engine and 4 gears blessed me with a max cruising speed of 85 km/h. after a few hours you start to push your little motor, and your luck. 95, 100, 105 kmh.
Everything went fine, and we reached our destination. or atleast i thought so, at the last “Peage” toll booth people started laughing and pointing. i did not know why until i saw a huge clouwd of smoke, My smoke.
so we did what every le mans maniac whould do, we drove to the supermarked and bought a pallet, Yes a pallet with 1000 botles beer. the handicapt van got loaded with a forklift, we drove to the campsite, started the generator, hooked up the cristmas lights, and blasted the speakers. it was an incredible party and sold all the beer at Mad Friday!!!

chapter 4, the journy home.
so, sitting on the campsite, what now?
i knew the vw was not in mint condition so i did have an AA insurance, including being brought home. called the ANWB, they told me i wasnt a client, i had the bloody membership card in my hand.
who else can be my savior? the only person i could think of was my father, who warned me for this scenario and told me, if you fuck up youre on your own.
called the man, and who did the real 24 hours of le mans, yes your can guess..
borrowed a range rover, rented a trailer, drove 700 km up and 700 km back, almost lost the vw, because 2 tiedowns came undone that where done by 2 drunk blokes.
Needless to say i failed the exam on monday..

opend the engine a few weeks after, piston number 4 was cracked, and because the MOT of the car ended and i forgot to SORN it i got a ticket of 700 euros for “no insurance, mot and no roadtax”. fantastic.

My Dad and I flew out to California, from Wisconsin and Tennessee respectively, to pick up his old 1977 320i and drive it back to Wisconsin then Tennessee. Along the way we ran into a blizzard, had the ignition switch fail, fuel pump fail and points ignition largely cannibalize itself. We made it to Wisconsin only about one day late. After the car lived in WI for a bit being repaired it made the trip to TN without any issues.

Loose my steering column, in my 67 mustang, allmost hit a motorcicle , ended in the midle of the street, now i need to do like a preflight whit this junk

Worst breakdown was a few years ago after purchasing my 1977 Porsche 911 Turbo. This is the first generation 930 (’75-77) with 3.0L non-intercooled engine, no power steering, etc. Very raw, occasionally scary, but very fun car. This was also the first vintage 911 I bought though had already owned a modern water-cooled Porsche.

I was literally driving home to the New England area from buying the car from a guy in Pennsylvania. Total distance was ~350 miles, so a meaningful haul but not a crazy multi-day trip with a new to me vintage car. The car had been largely restored in recent years by a reputable Porsche specialist, but the prior owner had done this in a series of stages over a 5+ year timeframe. In general no corners were cut on cosmetic or mechanical stuff, with a single exception… when one of the rear wheel bearings went the prior owner replaced just that one bearing, not both rear wheels. This was disclosed to me along with detailed records of all the other restoration work, and while I didn’t have my own independent PPI done, I did spoke with the shop that restored the car prior to purchase while they had it in.

This was already early December so I was mainly nervous about hitting an early sleet/snow on my from PA to New England, rather than the reliability of the 930. In general the car ran like a top, and the memory of my first 30-40 miles through rolling farm country in central PA when I first started the journey still brings a huge grin to my face. These early 930s are intoxicating to drive, and in their day they were benchmarked against Lamborghini Countach’s and Ferrari 512BBs. I did hit a patch of cold rain passing from PA into NY, but thankfully none of the frozen stuff.

But after my first gas stop in New York not far from the Tappan Zee Bridge , I started to hear a faint and occasional whirring/growling sounds from the driver side rear. At first it didn’t trouble me too much… just the sounds of an old car infrequently driven stretching it’s legs. I pulled over and inspected the general wheel area: wheel bolts tight… check, parking brake fully disengaged… check, tires not rubbing fender… check, no obvious suspension components loose… check. Ok proceed on a bit further.

Growling starts to become more persistent. Starting to get louder. Ok this isn’t right. And then I remember… he only replaced *one* of the wheel bearings when it went bad. What are the symptoms of a bad wheel bearing again? Right… when you have it on a lift, you can feel play in the wheel/hub. When you freewheel it it’ll make a noise. And if you’re driving you hear… a loud growling noise. Time to get off the highway ASAP.

I pull of 95 that moment, at a random exit just a little north of Stamford CT and still about halfway from home. By sheer dumb luck I’m just over a mile from Porsche of Fairfield. There are some good indie shops for vintage 911s in CT, but the dealer will do just fine thanks and I pushed my luck and nursed it that mile and change to the dealer… praying the bearing wouldn’t fail catastrophically leaving me piloting a 3-wheel vintage 911 Turbo. Of course Porsche dealers don’t stock wheel bearings for ’77 930s, but the head technician was super nice and thrilled to work on it and had me up on a lift as soon as I explained the situation. This was on a Friday late afternoon when they were jammed with tons of client cars to finish and deliver, so I was very appreciative.

The final chapter is that the dealer gave me a lift to the Amtrak station and I made it home a few hours later. Once the new wheel bearing came in and was installed a few days later, I caught the train back down to Porsche of Fairfield and resumed my road trip and made it home from there. And the 930 has been a blast and running great ever since.

July 2007
My wife and I built a pair of custom Chevrolet Bel Airs (mine a 1959 and hers a 1951) and drove them from Chicago to Maryland for our wedding. That’s about 700 miles one way. Mine already had a lot of road miles on it, but hers was a fresh build. The trip there went very well.

On the way home, in the mountains, we were hit with a sudden rain storm and she noticed a shimmy and pulled over. It turned out that 3 of the the 5 wheel studs on the front driver’s side wheel had snapped off, and 2 of the 5 on the other side were cracked and fell off when I touched them. Since we were on the turnpike, I had to drive 40 miles to the next exit, turnaround and drive 45 miles back to the exit we had just passed to get some parts. We got a tow, but the shop wouldn’t help us install the studs, so I pounded out the studs and reinstalled new ones in the parking lot with a hammer. We got a hotel room and started walking across the parking lot to the restaurant for dinner when they shut all their lights off and closed. Did I mention that it was my wife’s birthday? And she was pregnant with twins (although she didn’t know that yet)?

The next day we took the car to an alignment shop that swore they could check the alignment on an old car. They couldn’t. Not only that, they refused to let my wife drive the car into the shop and had some gorilla do it. He couldn’t figure out the manual transmission. Instead of asking the woman who built the car and drove it 900 miles for help, he tried to ram it in to gear, promptly snapping off the shifter. I made some calls and had the car towed to a friend’s uncle’s house since we had to get back to Chicago for a reception. We eventually sold the car from where it sat.

We got another few hundred miles and my ’59 started acting funny, losing power, etc. It was late at night and it died right in front of a used car dealership in central Ohio. Not good. I diagnosed the problem as points related. Good thing I had brought a spare set of ignition parts… but had left them in the ’51 back in Pennsylvania. To make matters worse, I had no cell phone reception. Luckily, the local dirt track races were just finishing and I flagged down a few race teams… but none knew how to work on a points ignition. Finally, a very helpful crew and family (Bruce Lenz and the Lenz Racing Team from Findlay, OH) stopped and agreed that the points were fried, but knew a shop in the next town that could help me. He helped arrange a tow, made sure my very low, very long car was loaded properly, and followed us to the shop.

The next day I went to the shop, but they were closed, and there were no parts stores around. So, we rented a car, and drove the rest of the way back to Chicago. We left with 2 cars, came back with a 3rd, and barely made it to our reception 15 minutes before the first guest arrived! I went back a few days later and picked up my ’59 and drove it home, where it once again died, but this time right in front of my garage. I then swapped in an electronic ignition and haven’t had any trouble since!

It was all my fault.

Driving from London, Ontario to Winnipeg, Manitoba cutting through a few US states for a friends wedding. A year before I had made the drive in 20 hours straight. I bought a brand new suit, first I had ever owned, packed a few tools and hit the road in my 84′ RX-7. I get half an hour down the highway and the car jerks hard to the right as I hit a bridge joint. Afterwards drives on fine. Half an hour past the border and the car is randomly jerking all over the place and it’s all I can do to keep it in my lane. I pull off to have a look and can’t spot anything other than some pretty extreme camber. Michigan state trooper pulls in behind to watch traffic and after strapping up a loose inner fender liner I drive off but take my next exit and meander into the first town and stop at the first shop I see. Must be backwoods because he won’t touch my foreign car. This is 2009 folks. He mentions it sounds like the wheel bearings. I have the car put on a flatbed and taken to the Mazda dealer in Battle Creek. They can’t even get parts for this thing without me sawing my own limbs off. Thankfully the RX community is close and I’ve autocrossed with some fine friends in Grand Rapids so I place a call and after spending a weekend on my buddies couch and yanking an entire front suspension off another junk RX-7 I hand Mazda the parts and have one of their techs bolt it all up. I spin myself around and head back home. I missed my friends wedding, spent all my money, and never wore the suit. Why?Because I had over tightened both front wheel bearings and completely destroyed them as well as the spindles. I double check the procedure every time now.

When I was 17 years old, I had the privilege of driving an original 1966 427 Shelby Cobra. The car belonged to a good family friend. The car had not been driven in a while, and we knew the battery was dead, so we came prepared with a new battery. On that car, the battery is located just behind the passenger foot well, and is installed from underneath the car. We didn’t have a lift or even a jack, which made it very difficult to replace the battery. After spending more time than I would like to admit, we finally got the new battery hooked up and thought we had everything back to normal.
We fired the car up and took it out for a nice Sunday afternoon cruise. About 15 minutes into our ride, with his feet resting against the passenger foot well, he felt the battery shift. We immediately pulled the car to the side of the road, fearing the battery might fall beneath the car and cause significant damage. It was late in the afternoon and we were loosing sunlight quickly, so we didn’t have much time to fix the issue. Given the situation, the owner decided the best course of action was to start the car and disconnect the battery. Because the car is void of any electronics, we only needed the battery to power the starter.
In the end, his plan worked flawlessly and we were able to get the car home without any further issue.

On my way to Italy, driving through the Gotthard tunnel in my Alfa Romeo 33, the car lost power. It was the third time this happened during this trip, but the two garages I visited after the earlier power losses couldn’t trace the problem. The first one suspected the fuel pump, but that was working like it should be, the second one in Freiburg thought it was a problem with the lambda probe and replaced it. While my car lost speed in the tunnel, it was clear that the probe wasn’t the problem after all. A truck behind me thought I was slowing down for fun and while driving very close to me, he put on all his lights and horns. Just what you need in a hot narrow dark tunnel filled with diesel smoke, with no emergency lanes, while your car is losing power. Putting on my alarm lights didn’t help. Just before standstill a small emergency cove popped up and with the car’s last speed I could steer into it. I didn’t have to brake, because the car stopped by itself. This cove was just large enough for one car and a tow truck, say 25 meters max.. I was at kilometer point 12 of the 16 km long Gotthard tunnel. Very soon after I made an emergency call I saw a tow truck driving in the other direction. A couple of minutes later it was at the cove, where I already had pushed my car back to make place for it. The driver of the tow truck was called Mario Ferrari, a name you never forget. Quickly he towed my car out of the tunnel and brought it to a Toyota garage in a village on the Gotthard mountain. Mario and the Toyota mechanic quickly diagnosed a non working fuel pump. They had to order a new one, which was delivered and placed the next morning.

For the third time we had to spend a night not in Italy because of the car problems. The fuel pump was a suspect earlier, but an Alfa Romeo garage had checked it and said it was ok. So our trust in the Toyota garage was not very good. And the costs of being towed and the reparations at the three garages meant I lost a great deal of my budget for the Italy trip. We decided to cancel the trip and go back to The Netherlands. This meant driving again through the Gotthard tunnel with a car you don’t trust anymore. Well, the tunnel went fine and a couple of hours later we were back home. The 33 never let me down since then. It was the fuel pump after all. The quick reaction of the Swiss resulted that we arrived at the Toyota garage with a still non working fuel pump. In the earlier cases it costed a lot more time to get the car to a garage.

Sadly the 33 never went back to Italy. Two years later it was stolen and damaged severely. Every time I make it through the Gotthard tunnel it feels like a victory and every time I look at the emergency cove at kilometer point 12.

This was back in the 80s. It is a motorcycle story rather than car. Several years running my friend Tom and I would go to the unofficial BMW motorcycle owners of America rally in Death Valley. One year the ride home was cursed. it started with me getting a flat tire on the way out of the valley. that ended up being way more trouble that it should have been, and held up leaving for a day, but was a minor problem compared to what followed. The next day we got an early start, we were having fun carving he roads out of the valley till Tom hit a patch of gravel in a turn, his front wheel washed out, and down he went. We were both riding old air-head BMWs His was a race prepped R90S with an over-sized touring fuel tank and every speed and handling upgrade offered by BMW of San Jose, mine a dead stock short swing-arm R75/5. As you might guess sliding across the pavement on an air-head boxer engine he ground a hole in the valve cover. Not a problem. We patched the hole with duct tape and were back on our way. We made our way out of the valley, hit a long straight desolate road and opened up our throttles. I was in Toms draft trying to keep up when I saw puffs of white smoke blowing out his tail pipes then saw his rear wheel lock up. I quickly got on the brakes and moved over. we pulled off to the side to find his engine seized. When he ground the hole in the valve cover it must have scooped up dirt and rocks that got into the oil pump and that was all she wrote.

I left him there and rode miles to the next town. BMWMOA gives all it’s members a book with phone numbers of other members, where they live and who’s willing to help out. Luckily there was member about 50 miles away that after a quick call said he was willing to follow me back to Tom and his bike in his truck, pick up the bike, and store it in his garage till we could get back for it.

That out of the way we were back on the road two up on my bike. we were taking turns driving and Tom was driving as we got to the long hellish strip of pavement we call Interstate 5. Tom switched to the reserve tank as rolled past a gas station. I tried to get him to stop, but he was used to his bike with a good 2 gallon reserve. As you can guess about 5 miles down I5 my bike sputtered to a stop. We started pushing in the heat of the central valley as the sun slowly and mercifully set on two sweaty motorcyclists in full leathers pushing that bike a good two to three miles to the next off ramp and gas pump. the rest of the trip was uneventful, but for a short trip from Death Valley to San Francisco, man was I beat when I finally rolled into my own driveway.

On my wedding day….
While getting photos with my 72′ 250 Benz I got a call from the driver of the London double decker bus I ordered. (to drive the complete wedding party around)
He said that he was stuck in a back street and that he couldn’t turn around because reverse wouldn’t engage.
I quickly drove down the street to help him out and as I pulled up my benz stalled and broke down.
A passer by offered to tow the bus a few meters back so we could complete a 3 point turn, he was smoking all 4 wheels on the 4×4 with the complete grooms party pushing the bus from the other end. After 30 mins we finally got out and with a quick Dizzy check the Benz was back in business. We arrived on time to the church but my wife still doesn’t like hearing this story. It made a great photo.

I was driving a ’72 Datsun 240Z at about 65 MPH when I came to a small town where the speed-limit was quickly reduced to 45mph then 35mph. When I went to apply the breaks they were to my surprise, completely gone. There were cars slowing down to the appropriate speed in front of me and I was coming up on them fast. With nowhere to go but a small grocery store parking lot to my left I swerved across traffic into the lot at speed. I went blasting past the front of the store and around the outside of the lot, tires squealing. Luckily half the lot was empty and I threw the Z into tight circles in the vacant part of the lot until I slowed enough to pull my e-brake to aid in the stopping without spinning me out. I must have looked like a complete crazy idiot racing around the lot. The culprit was a worn out break booster. Thank God I had an opening with no people in the way or I would have had to crash her into the trees to keep from hitting anyone.