What’s your best roadside-repair story?
Our According to You series has really brought out the best in you, dear reader of all things Hagerty Media. Last week’s question prompted some entertaining and surprisingly insightful responses, and today we hope to get the same level of responses with this question:
What’s your best story about a roadside repair?
For those of us who travel on a regular basis, this question is either very easy or very difficult to answer. Mishaps and malfunctions can happen anywhere, and the more you drive, the more stories you have to tell.
For me, I am light on stories, as I rarely use my old cars to venture too far away from city streets or suburban roads/stroads. But when I do hit the highway for far away zip codes, I pack spare parts relevant to whatever car I may be driving.
The photo above is my 1995 Lincoln Mark VIII LSC with its spare alternator, and Constant Control Relay Modules (CCRM). The alternator is remanufactured and the CCRMs are junkyard finds. This is certainly an odd gathering, but remanufactured alternators are all of dubious quality for long term owners like myself (they only last 1-5 years in my experience) and CCRMs are unique to the late-93 to 1995 Lincoln Mark Series with zero parts interchangeability with other Fords.
Having these bits around gives peace of mind. While I can likely get the alternator anywhere, it’s better to swap it out in less than 30 minutes, instead of waiting hours for a tow to the nearest town to get the ball rolling with a local mechanic. Or local parts stores. Or local junkyards in hopes of finding an “unobtainum” relay module. I want none of this, so these parts (and tools for installation) live with my luggage in the trunk.
Just about anything else that can leave me stranded is likely found locally, so with these in my trunk I feel safe and secure going just about anywhere in this car. And what a ride it is! Maybe one day my 32-valve bullet train will actually break down on the highway, leaving me with a story worthy of an answer to this question. But for now, I have nothing…so I hope you can help us out:
What’s your best story about a roadside repair?
***
Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.
Fall trips to the U P in michigan are a required annual road trip. My friend Danny had a 4 year old Dodge panel van that was designated as the ride this particular year. Danny was not know for a maintance schedule on his vehicles. About 40 miles into our trip the transmission starts severly slipping. Oh yah he says the convertor seal has been leaking. Now he tells us. Off the first exit to the Auto parts store for 2 gallons of trans fluid, a hammer and a funnel and some rubber hose. Broke a hole thru the engine cover at the ash tray, installed the the funnel in the hole with the rubber hose connected to the dip stick tube and down the road pouring in trans fluid until the slipping stopped. Made the whole tip and a further six months before he had the seal fixed without burning up the transmission. Its unknow how many gallons of fluid he poured thru that funnel.
Sometime in the past, I don’t remember the exact date, I was driving with my wife in her 2016 Mazda3 hatchback. This car had the very low profile sport tires and, although the car was only two years old, one of them was flattened after driving over a major pothole.
We limped to the nearest gas station and, although it was closed, had an appropriate place to change the tire. So, having changed many a tire in my day (I was in my late 60s at the time) I found the spare tire and jack and started the not so easy task of jacking the car. I had the help of my step-daughter who had her own ideas about where and how to place the jack. As most of you know already, every car maker has their own custom scissor jack or at least it seems that way.
I began jacking the car and once the wheel was off the ground, I began loosening the lug nuts. Yes, you’re right, I should have done that before I jacked the car and that was mistake #2. As I was jacking, the jack slipped because I had also made mistake #1, not setting the parking brake. Obviously, it had been a while since my last tire change and I had forgotten some very important fundamentals! Well, the car came down on my pinky finger and was now jammed between the tire and the wheel well. Remarkably, I felt no pain, only pressure. I was sure that I was in shock and had badly injured my finger. Fortunately, there was another couple who also had a flat tire from the same pothole, there at the gas station. That couple and my step-daughter lifted the car high enough to free my finger. While this was happening, my wife was busy calling 911. The police came and the rescue squad shortly thereafter. Oh, by the way, my finger was undamaged! Apparently, the soft tire sans air pressure and the flexible wheel well saved my digit. Needless to say, my wife called AAA to change the tire. The rescue squad and the police arrived a short time later. The rescue workers were amazed that I had not been injured! I had my suv parked a short distance from the gas station so I was given a ride from the the police to my suv. We then unloaded all the groceries we were carrying in my wife’s car to my suv.
Lessons learned, don’t make mistakes #1 and #2. Better yet, call a road service!
Driving my 49 two door Chevy from Wilkes-Barre to Macungie, PA with the family down the PA turnpike northeast extension. Noise coming from the rear left brake. Pulled into the HOJO rest stop, one of the last, and pulled the brake drum. All done on a bumper jack with tire under the frame. I know, but its all I had. Turns out one of the brake shoe hold down clips fell off and was bouncing around inside the drum. Of course it was ground up, but no damage to the shoes. Found a paper clip that made a fine temporary repair. Could you do that today on a newer car?
Then there was the time I changed the generator at a rest stop along I80. Another story for another day.
On my red ’63 MGB, complete with electric overdrive, wire wheels and knock off hubs, The fuel pump would act up occasionally, when the points would get out of tune or pitted. The fuel pump was up forward in the right rear wheel well. I had learned how to file and adjust the points just about like in a distributor. One needed to remove the right rear wheel to get at the pump. Fortunately I had added a spare set of points to my kit, so when they went out of wack in the middle of nowhere, I was prepared. There I was at the side of a major two lane with the wheel off hoping a big truck didn’t come along, and blow my car off the jack stand. You take off the waterproofing boot, take off the pump cap, remove these small points, then reverse the process, counting the revolutions on the adjusting screw. You must remember to set the points gap, which in this situation is mostly guess work, then close it all up. After firing up the engine and being sure the pump was working, I put the wheel back on, lowered the car, put everything away and carried on. A couple of days later, on a hard smooth surface, I fine tuned the adjustment on the points and they worked well for many months.
This is the same car I was just innocently cruising past a SuperBee with a six-pack, at about 70, on a super highway, when he got upset so started pushing. When got up to about 90, I switched off the overdrive, jumping the RPM up by 700, with an immediate spurt ahead. Who downshifts at 90 mph without using a clutch? Should have seen the look on his face. I backed off at about 118, let him go, and went back to cruising at 70 in 4th overdrive.
I had wanted driving lights, but the regular bumper mounted kind didn’t impress me. I found a big Bosch 2 million candlepower spot light, and a big Bosch 200 k candlepower flood light. The spot light got mounted above the wheel center on the left fender and the flood on the right. The flood was aimed at the right of my lane at 500 feet, the flood centered. At 70, I could see about a mile down the road. No problem with high beams coming at me. 100 feet out front, you could feel the heat on your pants. It has since become illegal to mount lights on top of a fender.
I was working for the Rockefeller Foundation in Central Java, and borrowed their old Toyota Land Cruiser to take my visiting folks to see a picturesque but remote part of the coast. Had a flat, no AAA to call. The rudimentary jack would not lift the truck enough to remove/replace the wheel. Some local villagers watched the proceedings for a while and then asked why we were trying to lift the truck instead of digging a hole underneath the wheel! Which we then did and went our merry way. Good example of the benefits of looking at a problem through different eyes.
When I was about 7 years old I was with my dad in a 39 chevy farm truck and the engine just stopped. My dad got out changed the coil and away we went. I really thought he was smart! Mine was in 1971. 11 on a Saturday night and the right rear wheel bearing went out on my 64 vette. Pulled into a Moose club parking lot, got a ride home and found a dealer open on a Sunday morning and got a new bearing. Had it fixed by 3PM. The other side went out a couple months later, but I was watching for it so I replaced it in my broyhers garage.
I had a well-used mid-70’s Jeep Cherokee that looked pretty nice, but was a bit overly rusted on the underside. Headed home on a 4-hour drive after a long day of work. Running about 70 mph northbound on I95 near Fredericksburg, VA at around 1am with basically nobody else on the road. All of a sudden, boom! The left rear slammed down hard. I eased off the speed without braking and moved across 4 lanes to the right shoulder. Got out and as I figured, no rear wheel and not surprisingly, no lug bolts. Analyzing the situation, I guessed that the wheel probably went about as far as I did, so I went to look along the left lane and there it was behind the guardrail and down the bank in the median. I jacked up each corner, pulled the wheel and brake drum to steal one lug bolt and nut. When I removed the brake drum on the corner with the missing wheel, the drum had a bit of a flat spot and all the brake parts came raining out. The retainers for the shoes had disintegrated. So I replaced three of the broken lug bolts in an appropriate triangle configuration. Now to the brakes- I walked to the top of the hill where the inevitable deer fence lived and used my pliers to cut out a couple pieces of wire. Back at the brake, I reassembled the brake shoes and springs, fashioning brake shoe retainers from my fence wire. I was able to get the slightly bent drum back on along with the wheel. The brake pedal felt adequate so I packed up and slowly headed off. The rear brake made a pulsating effort to stop and go, but relented over time and allowed me a maximum speed of about 45. The repair had taken just over an hour and after another hour and a half of driving, I was home in bed. Quite the epic, but an overall success. I suppose I’m not one to call a tow truck if an alternative presents itself!
1984 being reassigned from Hawaii to Arizona, USAF, C-130 aircraft technician & heavy airframe repair, picked up my jeep in Oakland heading to Sacramento & see a young kid broke down, no start, stopped to help, got fire & air, no gas but says he just filled it, took off the gas line, crank, no gas, ck’d mechanical pump, good, ck’d pushrod, no joy stuck in block, bent never seen that before, got it out w/ visegrips, found a wrecking yard, found one, got it installed, cleaned & rtv’d fuel pump, crank, start, sent him on his way
Back in ‘07 I was traveling in my BMW 335i from Westchester County New York to LaGuardia airport early one morning. Just after the Whitestone Bridge my front right tire encountered what appeared to be a crater of a pothole. After a loud bang, my dash lit up like a Christmas tree. Pulling to the busy shoulder of the road I got out to inspect the right from tire. Sure enough the sidewall had blow out. Since I was only 4 miles from the airport I decided to make a run for it on the blown runflat tire. Once I made it to the airport, I also noticed that my right rear tire also had a rip in the sidewall. Not wanting to miss my flight, I decided to worry about the damage later. A day later when I returned to LGA, I decided that I would try to make it 48 miles home. Long story short, I did make it home on the two blown out runflats and I was able to order two new tires and have them delivered to my home which was the most cost effective way to deal with this repair. In the end, the runflats did save my day because if the car had non runflat tires I would have been totally disabled with two blown out tires and maybe just one spare tire. This would have left me on the roadside just south of the Whitestone Bridge which would have disrupted my flight plans and business meetings, not to mention an expensive tow and repair at some unknown place just south of the Whitestone Bridge.
I love these stories and missed my chance to submit my best so here goes. It’s 1974, I’m driving a 1961 Corvette with my girlfriend and it’s raining cats and dogs. Traveling about 50 mph, 50 miles from home, I advance the wiper motor to high speed and the wiper blade flies off. Two or three passes of the metal arm scraping across the windshield, I turned the wipers off and moved over to the apron of the highway. Being 21 at the time, my date preparation did not include roadside repair parts. As we sat there prepared to wait out the storm, she reminded me of the consequences with her father when I brought her home past her curfew. She was equally horrified. She had a little clutch style purse, and as she popped it open, I laughed out loud and said ” what do you have in there, a wiper blade?” She said, “No Silly, but I do have this, will it work?” It was a tampon with a plastic outer sleeve. I slid it onto the wiper arm….perfect fit. Although it only provided about a 4″ window of vision, it performed flawlessly all the way home. We were back on the road again. Windshield saved. Home by curfew……..I married her 46 years ago in 1977!
1979 I’m driving my 55 Chevy to work. I had just bought this Tennessee car that needed much mechanical restoration. On the way to work I stopped to get a new set of vise grips. This car had the 3 speed muncie with a homemade shifter sticking through the floor. As I down shifted to take my exit on route 93 in Massachusetts, the bottom end of the shifter broke off. I stepped on the clutch pedal and pulled over to a stop and shut it down. I pulled back the boot and saw it broke off just above the nut. I opened the trunk to get my brand new pair of vise grips and secured it to the shifter rod nut and it was bail out city. So now my car had one more option to go with the plastic milk crate I was using as my front seat. I still have the car now fully restored and the vise grips too. That’s the reason Hurst coined their slogan, “Shift as hard as you want but don’t break your arm!”
This must have happened about 1974. We were heading up to New Hampshire from Eastern Connecticut in a 1966 Pontiac Tempest LeMans convertible that ran well but was plagued with more than enough rust. Most of our stuff was in the back seat because the floor of the truck was full of holes and filthy inside. Full tank of gas, oil checked, tires were round, we were looking forward to a couple of summer days on the Connecticut River with old friends. About 10 miles from home, rolling along on a typically bumpy back road, I hear a loud bunch of clattering and scraping from the back of the car, look in the mirror and there’s our gas tank sliding along behind us, headed for the weeds. So, I stopped and backed up to it before the engine shut down, and got out to survey the calamity. The tank had fallen because the straps that held it up disconnected when the attachments gave up being attached. The tank was not leaking! We opened the trunk and picked up the tank and put it in the trunk (it was the kind with the filler behind a hinged license plate, so the filler was OK and fit under the trunk lid). I crawled under the car, found the fuel hose, ran it in through a convenient hole in the trunk floor and shoved it back on the nipple on the tank. Start the engine, watch it run for a few minutes, everything seems fine, slam the trunk and off to New Hampshire. I left the tank there for the rest of the car’s life, just watched the odometer for when I would need gas. A year later the car kind of started to break in half as the frame caved in and the doors wouldn’t open any more, so I junked it.
When I buy fuel pumps for my ‘66 VW Type 3, I look for ones with captive rocker shafts. A lot of them have shafts with exposed ends and no means of retention. I was fortunate that the last time I lost a shaft, I was within walking distance from home. A 1/4” pegboard hook from my garage got me on the road until I could get another pump, although it the bent end of the hook looked pretty comical wiggling back and forth with the engine runnning.
Was on our way to the airport the morning after our wedding to fly to our honeymoon in a 1985 190D Mercedes when the accelerator dropped to the floor. Limped off the highway and saw the clip that holds the accelerator cable to the throttle body had broken off . It’s Sunday all the dealers are closed and western auto wouldn’t have anything like that and we had 1 hour to get to the airport . Now there were no cell phones around then so I needed to do some quick thinking .So,I asked my wife if she had anything in her purse other than the airline tickets and she found 1 bobby pin . Put the cable in the throttle twisted the pin around and made it to the airport with 30 minutes to spare for our beautiful honeymoon in Cancun. Wife says see I knew there was a reason I married you.
Carb Overhaul on the (dirt) Al-Can Highway
In 1976 I left my job at a san Diego Datsun parts department and with a friend, drove his recently rebuilt Datsun 520 with a slide-in sleeper camper pickup from San Diego to Kenai Alaska. We made the trip in July and by taking turns at the wheel, we literally drove 24 hours a day. We left on a Sunday and arrived days later on Wednesday. The Al-Can was still dirt in those days and the road took quite a toll on the truck. It rained steadily from Seattle into Anchorage. Between pot holes the size of a Buick and debris being thrown by 18 wheelers we discovered windshield washers were a matter of life & death. We wore out four new tires, lost the windshield and the radiator. The exhaust system fell off at the manifold. We lost the gas cap somewhere along the way and used the old Molotov cocktail rag in the filler neck trick. Three headlights also bit the dust. In Whitehorse, capitol of Yukon Territory, there was a Datsun agency. We picked up a new exhaust pipe but no muffler. A perforated beer can and wire worked wonders. The truck was a CA vehicle and no gas cap was to be had anywhere outside the state so the rag continued to carry out its duties but a case of fuel filters was purchased due to the rag being a poor performance product as an alternate gas cap. The brakes had become so clogged with dirt and mud it took several pumps of the brake pedal to engage the shoes. If you turned the steering wheel either way, no matter how far, it would stay in that position. It had to be pulled back to center. This made for some really white knuckled driving. All this on the trip to Alaska. We still has to face the trip home. We went there for some summer construction work but the Union went on strike the day we arrived. Three days later, the decision to go back to San Diego was made. My friend flew home and left me to drive the truck back. On the way home, the rain had stopped and dust had taken the place of mud. In July, the sun never sets above a certain parallel so I had twilight all the way to Seattle. Somewhere between Anchorage and Whitehorse, the truck started running poorly. I had exhausted the supply of fuel filters and I suspected dirt in the carburetor. I pulled over to the side of the road to investigate. We had seen plenty of bears on the trip up so I kept a rifle at the ready just in case. It was eerily quiet as I opened the hood. I had not seen another vehicle on the road in either direction since leaving Anchorage. I tore down the carb on the truck, removed the accumulated dirt from the bowl as well as the needle & seat. It took awhile as I was constantly looking over my shoulder for wildlife. It was the longest 45 minutes I had spent up to that point in my 27 year old life span. Amazingly, the truck started and ran quite well. With no mud to worry about I made the full trip back San Diego with amazing stories to tell and memories to save.