I've coasted into a gas station several times when I was younger. Does that count?

I drove a Dodge for 10 years...

Oh man i got this. Coming ome from a 2 week hitch offshore and Ford Taurus idler pulley seized up, spun off the block, threw the belt, and I lost power steering and brakes just before the exit at Rayne, Louisiana. I hit the exit, made it to a gas station, and searched the yellow pages for a parts store. Parts store had the part, sold me a set of wrenches, and delivered it to the gas station 20mi away. Delivery guy wanted cash, which I didn't have, so I stuck my credit card in the gas station ATM and in that instant remembered the PIN number I had never used to pull a cash advance out of the ATM. Swapped it out and back on the road in appx 1 hour. And that's what we're gonna do to em ags...

Saved up my HS job and summer job money to buy my first car, a 1975 K5 Blazer 4x4.

A couple of my best HS friends went to that school in Austin and we got invited to the 1989 Lake Buchanan 4th of July weekend party at the lake house of the college roommate of one of my HS friends.

There were about 6 of us driving down from Waco towing a trailer that was carrying another HS friend's windsurfing board, mast, sail, etc. 5 guys had seats with seat belts, 1 guy was riding in the back.

We pulled out of Lampasas after dark headed south on 281.

We're about 2 miles outside of town and all of a sudden, I get a flat on the passenger side rear tire and it starts making a horrific noise.

I stop and walk around to inspect the flat tire and I see that the rear wheel is completely missing and the brake drum is carving into the asphalt.

One of my friends takes off running up the embankment and he's probably 100+ feet away and he says, "I found your tire".

Sure enough, the entire wheel and tire had come loose and rolled past the vehicle.

The most amazing part is what happens next.

Somebody saw it happen and called a tow truck on their CB Radio (no cell phones in 1989).

Tow truck driver shows up and surveys the situation and asks us what we want to do because it's a situation where he could tow the Blazer but not the Blazer + trailer. My HS friend who borrowed the trailer from his stepdad isn't going to abandon the trailer, or his windsurfer.

One of my HS friends worked at a mechanic shop after school and was pretty handy. He figured out that what happened was, the lug nuts had rusted through. So, he figured if he could get a hammer and some new lug nuts he could fix the problem.

The wrecker driver drove that friend and me back into town and at this point, it's about 9:30 pm.

Wrecker driver happened to know (or I think was related to) the guy who owned the Parts Plus store in Lampasas.

He calls that guy and the fellow comes down, opens up the shop for us and sells us the parts we needed - which miraculously, he had in stock (today, I'm sure it would be a situation where the parts would ship to you in a few days).

Wrecker driver takes us back to the broken Blazer, loans us a hammer and my HS buddy replaced the lugs on the side of the road and fixes up the brake drum.

After that was all said and done, we all loaded up back in the K5 and headed down to Lake Buchanan like nothing ever happened.

If any of these things didn't go right, it would have been a miserable weekend for all of us:

• Somebody called a wrecker on their CB Radio
• My HS buddy worked at a mechanic's shop - and was with us in the vehicle
• The wrecker driver was related to the auto parts shop owner
• The shop owner came down well after hours to sell us the parts

Anyway, if I was Chinese, I'd tattoo 888 across my forehead after that one.

The 1989 Lake Buchanan 4th of July weekend was one for the record books.

The college roommate guy had a slightly older sister who brought a bunch of her friends to the lake house too. And the guy's parents liked to entertain. So basically his mom and the girls made us food everyday and all we did was water ski and tan and... set off fireworks at night.

mine was an accident but it was close to some final destination sh*t

driving my elantra, i ran over a metal chunk of something on i-10. didn't see it until i was right on top of it as it was dark, so i just tried to center the car and hung on. made a huge bang and i saw it fly out the back in a shower of sparks. when i got home and looked underneath, i had a small hole in the floorboard on the drivers side and realized that the path of the chunk meant it passed only an inch or so from the fuel tank.

First flying job in New Orleans, hauling cancelled checks in a Bonanza. Clutch in my VW bug starts slipping. Chief Pilot coming down to give me a checkride happened to have been a VW mechanic back in the day. We swap the main seal and clutch out in the parking lot during lunch that day. Smoothest mechanical fix I've ever been around, most require new chapters in a manual.

Bonus: Two weeks later, a crankshaft snapped in my Bonanza as I started to descend into Lafayette and I dead stick her into an emergency crop duster strip that had never been used. There was later a recall on the crankshaft's.

2016, driving back from a plant in Victoria to the hotel (working assignment). All of the sudden, my oil pressure goes to 0 and I get the alarm lights. Pull off the side of the road of 59 before exit of Zac Lentz. So I get out, in business causal clothes, trying to look under my 97 explorer and what happened. I see oil pooling and I'm freaking out.

Random dude stops, offers to crawl under the car and then says "Only see a little oil; there's a gas station up the way". So he follows me, stop at a gas station and then, with my tools, undoes the oil pressure sensor. He shows me and I realize A) the sensor housing is plastic and B) original (21 years old at this point).

He drives to me Advanced Auto, gets the new part, puts it on and then helps me get things back up and running. Overall took about 2 hours but took the time to help out. Paid for a tank of gas for him and a case of beer.

~egon

When I was in the Army my parents gave me my mom's 1985 Buick Skylark. Yeah, I know. But I was a 20 year old soldier with a car and that's what matters at that point in life. That thing had five alternators because they were too close to the engine block and kept being destroyed by the heat or at least that's what Sears said when they refunded my money after the fifth replacement on the lifetime parts warranty.

Anyway the lucky story. When I got out I drove "home" to Dallas (dad was a Navy officer and I'd never lived in Dallas or even Texas up to that point) from Monterey, CA. The second day I'm in nowhere New Mexico on I-40, about a mile west of Newkirk which is about 30 miles west of Tucumcari. It's August 9th so it's kinda hot and the car dies.

I pull off to the shoulder and start walking the mile or so to the Newkirk exit where there's a Texaco station that's still there by the way. I tell the Hispanic/Indian kid at the counter my problem and he says his dad is a mechanic in Tucumcari and offers to call him out to see what's wrong. His dad drives to Newkirk and checks out the car then tells me "You got no fire to the plugs".

He drives me to Tucumcari and tries to buy a new distributor for $200 that I didn't have. The guy at the parts store says he was confident it was some little module inside the distributor that's only $15 and convinces my mechanic to only buy that part, advice that turns out to be spot on. Then we drive back to Newkirk and he fixes my car and we drive to the Texaco station so I can pay him. Of course my one credit card is maxed out so we call my mom and she gives him a card over the phone which he runs when he gets back to his shop. He charged me for the part and $15 for his time.

I picked up a used RV up in Alvarado TX and was driving it down I-35 a bit too fast and blew out one of the rear tires. It just so happened it was literally right in front of one of those 24 hour Tire places where the sign is crudely spray painted "24 HOUR TIRES". Suprisingly, they had the RV tire I needed and got me back on the road pretty quick.


Back in college in the early 90's I bought a nearly 20 year old Jeep CJ-5 and literally the day after buying it, with no type of professional inspection and being a car idiot myself, I took off for a drive from North Carolina back to Texas. Within 100 miles the oil pressure gauge went to zero but everything felt normal, assumed gauge failure and kept driving. Made it to A&M. 2 days later I was first in line at a red light on University and thought I'd show off the 304 V8 and tractor first gear to my passenger, revved it up to get the glass packs singing and dropped the clutch. Heard and felt and explosion of metal under the Jeep, like 20 people with bats were pounding every piece of metal under there. Turned out I below the front U-joint right there at the light, which sucked but could have happened on the 1000 mile drive just a couple days before.

Does it count if I was in a plane?

My wife and I were on a plane headed down the runway and had picked up enough speed to almost be airborne. All of a sudden there's a loud sound and the plane shakes violently. The plane slows down quickly and comes to a stop, there's a pretty good amount of smoke outside so everyone is wondering if we're on fire. Captain gets on the PA and informs us one of the tires exploded and the smoke was from that tire. We all deplane on a stair truck and wait three hours for a replacement. I call this a lucky failure because if it happened when we were landing I have a feeling it would have probably been a bigger problem.

Back in my 20's I dated this awful gal but she was good looking and had some big ol fake up tops and that was what I was in the market for at that time. Anyway, pretentious as she was, she insisted on buying this used Range Rover that I repeatedly warned her against. In the months that followed, that thing was constantly in the shop for minor, annoying things. I finally convinced her to trade it in for a new Tahoe. On the way to the dealership, the car was acting funny again, but we made it there. We find a Tahoe, the dealership test drives and examines the Range Rover and I guess didn't see anything wrong with it, so they made the deal and gave us a great trade in value.

She realized she left the garage door opener to MY house in her car, so she sends me back to the dealership three days later to get it where I promptly notice that the Range Rover still had not been moved. I asked the salesman why and he said "after yall left, we started the Range Rover and immediately had a total engine failure" (whatever that means). Looks like we barely dodged a bullet.

BenTheGoodAg said:

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I drove a Dodge for 10 years...

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The boy who lived. .

Old mustang died on the freeway in Houston during rush hour. Before I realized how hosed I was, a random guy pulled in front of me hooked up a chain and pulled me off the nearest exit into a Ford dealership. He was gone before I even knew what he looked like. Purchased an Escort for $160/month. That was the first and last car I financed. It got me through grad school and a couple of years beyond.

Thanks random Houston dude. That's the way Houston used to be and probably mostly still is.

Ran out of gas on hwy6 was able to shift into neutral before the truck turned off and coast down an exit ramp and into a gas station with enough momentum to make it right up to a pump.

'99 F-150 4x2, manual transmission driving from DFW to Odessa. This was early 2000's and the entire city was a giant sheet of ice. "Some" of the roads were fine, none of the bridges or overpasses were fine.

The bridge over a lake, I'm puttering along and this long stretch is a skating rink out over the water. All I can do is put in the clutch and coast. Then I see a giant rig behind me closing fast start to jackknife and is getting closer and closer. I can't accelerate, turn, do anything. He's blaring his horn and getting closer and closer.

I finally get to the far side and it's not icy to the point that I can't accelerate and I can pick up a little steam. He does the same and straightens out. I had to pull over as my hands were shaking so bad. I think all told, the drive was like 9 hours, and luckily I was able to get up Ranger Hill, but nobody could get down. People were sleeping in stores, gas stations, even the police station. It was wild.

My third marriage.

All of these passenger side rear wheel failures and kindness of strangers reminded me of another "lucky" one with my VMI daughter.

When the world shut down at Spring Break in 2020, my daughter had flown home from the Greenbrier Valley Airport in Lewisburg, West Virginia. Fortunately, Long-Term parking which was free at this little landing strip of an airport.

In June 2020 when Gov. Northam allowed students (cadets) back into the dorms (barracks), we had to make a rush trip to Virginia so we could hit the 2 hour time window allotted for my daughter to claim her stuff out of her room, turn in VMI uniforms, etc.

We get to the airport, the truck cranks (to my amazement - after sitting for 3 months) and we drive 70 miles to Lexington, VA where we stayed at the now renamed - Robert E Lee hotel. When we arrived, there were about 100 or so Washington & Lee students walking through the streets of Lexington chanting "Black Lives Matter".

I decide before we make the 3,000+ mile cross country trip in my 1999 Expedition, we should probably check the tires, oil, washer fluid, etc.

Tires are mismatched at this point after 7 years of both daughters driving the Expy to college. One of the tires is down to 10 psi so I get that one patched (kind of surprised we made it the 70 miles from the airport). My full size spare from the 2001 Firestone tire replacement era looks OK but I'm definitely going to need to buy new tires when I get to California.

We take off and hit super heavy rain in West Virginia to the degree where I pulled off to the side of the road and shifted into 4x4 because it was serious.

When we stopped for lunch on day two in Saginaw, Michigan, and we avoided a St. Floyd protest where they had blocked the street.

The trip was long because I wanted to hit the last 4 states I needed to hit all 50 so we went through Michgan's U.P. so I could collect OH, WI, MN and ND. Also, wanted my daughter to check out Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Sturgis and Devil's Tower. SD was tough psychologically in June 2020 because everything was "normal".

On Day 6, we left Rawlins, WY headed towards Las Vegas which was the goal for that night. We didn't make it.

My daughter did most of the driving that day and every time I'd look over, she was doing 80-85-90 mph on I-80. The Expy will do 90, no problem but it was just riskier than what we needed with her behind the wheel.

She's driving the semi-twisty stretch of Interstate between Evanston, WY to SLC doing 80 and I'm kind of worried but we do have a long way to go to get back to LA so we do need to maintain some speed.

One of the stops I wanted to show her was the Mormon Church in downtown Salt Lake.

As we're heading north on I-15 and slowing down to exit to go to the Mormon Church, I hear a super loud explosion from the right rear tire. She doesn't really know what to do but I tell her to pull over on the shoulder and stop and we'll see what happened.

Tire just exploded but, the steel belted tread is still around the wheel with essentially no sidewall left.

I can't remember where the jack is so I unload a bunch of stuff looking for it before I realize it was actually easily accessible from the rear liftgate.

My daughter happened to be wearing a skirt and she was bent over operating the jack to lift the car. We had several nice gentlemen stop and offer to help. I thought that was nice. But, since I was kind of frustrated by her not listening to me about driving too fast and ... this was a good teachable moment, I let her do the work.

So now, we're 700 miles from home on mismatched tires and a 19 y/o full size spare.

Luckily, there is a Big O Tire in downtown Salt Lake. That guy doesn't have any of my size tire in stock but he can get them from his cross town store within 2 hours.

So, we leave the Expy there, tour the Mormon Church, dodge the Homeless and Alcoholics and eat lunch.

Then we're ready to press on, hoping to make it to Provo for dinner.

I'm thankful that we had a blowout and are now rolling out of SLC on 4 new tires inside of 3 hours. I can't believe the luck.

Now I'm driving north heading back towards I-15 and my daughter says
"Hey Dad, you need to turn RIGHT NOW, there are protesters in the street ahead"

I'm like, what?

I look towards the traffic light ahead and sure enough, St. Floyd BLM protesters have blocked the street. I wheel it around immediately and head in the other direction.

We made it to Provo for dinner and back to LA the following day.

At that point, I figured our luck had run out.

jakester03 said:

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2014 F150. Lost brakes as I was pulling into a parking spot at chuys. Brake booster failure. 2 mins earlier I was going 75 down 183. Got super lucky.

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After A&M when I was working in Austin, one of my fish buddies had gotten into smoking weed and was waiting tables at Chuy's on 183. I used to have him wait on me which was both funny and sad. Took him about a decade to kick MJ and get a real job (he'll still argue for it though). Good times.

This one probably tops my list of personal auto moments that could have been worse.

High school. Driving my hand-me-down '63 Impala with a 327. Me and three friends are on Hwy 36 north of West Columbia. It's maybe 10pm?

We were on our way back from Schlitterbahn. We had been caravanning with some other classmates but had to stop and leave a wrench on a truck in a driveway further back towards Damon. We had borrowed that wrench on the way to Schlitterbahn when I had a fuel filter problem.

We are cruising along that night pretty quickly. We start to hear a noise under the hood like something flapping. We pulled over. No flashlights with us. No under hood light. Kinda going off of whatever headlight illumination we could reflect back off of ourselves into the engine compartment.

The belt had a layer that partially sheered and was flapping along before it tore the rest of the way off.

But wait! What's this liquid on the wheel well that I feel when I'm leaning into the engine compartment trying to see? It's red!

Great. Transmission line from the radiator had somehow come loose (I hope I'm remembering this all correctly). Had that belt not sheered at the same time, we burn up the transmission pretty soon.

A buddy and me walk a little ways to a bar on the side of 36. Hard Times was the name then. It's been other stuff over the years. I think it was The Branding Iron last time I looked.

We walk in wearing jams and t-shirts and ask to use the phone. A country cover band is blasting out "Paaaank Cadillac" by Springsteen.

I call home. My mom answers and asks "where are you?" I told her I was broken down on the side of 36 and to send my dad with some tools and transmission fluid.

Mom says "where on 36? It runs from Quintana to Abilene!!!!"

That's a fair point.

Dad showed up about 45 minutes later and had us back on the road in five minutes.

I have no idea how that layer of belt sheered at that moment but I've always been thankful.

Ecodiesel 100k powertrain warranty. Oil change at 99,984 showed metal fragments.