Whats the worst thing you ran over with a Hot rod

How about a near miss. I was commuting to work with my ex wife in an ot truck caught in bumper to bumper traffic in the center of 3 lanes, the traffic the other way was clear. An 80's gm mid size comes flying down the left lane, hits a pot hole and the front wheel, brake assembly and spindle comes off, it hits the guard rail , goes air borne. I see it coming, threw her down on the floor and ducked. It skimmed my roof and hit the hood and windshield of the car to my right rear. Got to love Connecticut roads.

 

A family of possums.

 

I-64 in Louisville

 

I nailed my neighbor's puppy on the road, coming home from work, [1965] driving my 56 Olds convertible. We were dating and that was the end of that relationship....and the dog.
Cruising old roads, listening to an 8 track tape in my 66 Lincoln coupe [1973] I hammered a small deer, ripping it in two pieces. Broke my headlight and park light, bent the fender. Never fight with a 60s Lincoln.
Coming home from work in my O/T van in Omaha.....a full grown doe leaps out of the trees onto the street and I nailed her flat-on. She skidded on her side across oncoming traffic, up over the sidewalk and onto the grass...dead. I was able to limp my steaming Aerostar home....a buddy bought it from me the next day.

 

I was cruising down the highway about 70 mph one early evening when a pheasant decided it was a good time to fly across the highway. We met each other at the edge of the windshield frame on the passenger side. Fortunately the windshield didn't break, but there was a dent in the door post and the entire wiper arm assembly on that side was gone. I had to stop and clean the windshield off so I could continue on my way.

Then there was the time I hit a really big pot hole on the side of a street. I was only driving about 5mph, but the hole broke the threaded end with the nut still attached off the ball joint. Besides the ball joint, the tow home, and the crumpled up running board, I guess it could have been much worse.

Then there was the time I was at a local cruise night. I was pulling out to leave and someone called me that I hadn't seen for a while, so I stopped to talk with him. About that time, someone told me fire was coming from under my hood. I shut the car off, put it in gear so it wouldn't roll down the driveway, and reached for the hood release to open the hood. Nothing happened except the hood release handle pulled out in my hand. There was a pretty good fire going by that time, and hitting it with the fire extinguisher didn't help. I laid under the car so I could reach up under the grill to open the hood, but about the time I reached the lever, the motor started cranking over, moving the car towards me laying under the front end. A guy can't move sideways very well laying under a car. The front tire had my left knee trapped between the tire and the ground and the motor was still cranking the car forward. Pressure was building on my knee. About that time someone jumped into the car pulled it out of gear hand held the brake and at the same time, someone else grabbed my legs and pulled my legs forward, out from under the car's tire. I was able to get the hood open and get the battery cable off. Someone put the fire out with the small fire extinguisher I carried in my car. All this took less time to happen then it did for you to read it! When the guy pulled my legs out from under the car, the weight of the car had my leg pinned. the process took the skin off both sides of my jean covered leg. The fire started because when the wheels were turned as sharply as they could to the right, the tire was pushing the inner fender up and pinching the positive battery cable against the bottom of the battery box. It apparently had been doing that for the 5 years I'd been driving the car and that last time, when I pulled out of the parking place, it finally broke through the battery cable insulation and shorted the cable to ground. That repair cost me a battery, about 12" of 4 different wires, a replacement battery cable, the hood release cable, a minor paint touch up, the tow home, and a very sore knee for several months. It still hurts after a day of driving the 5 speed car, or a long day of walking, or cold weather. The car has been working well since then. Gene

 

I ran over a 1969 Z/28 back when they were just used cars. I was not in a HOT ROD, but a muscle car. never hit anything in my "old" cars.

 

Had a friend in High School,,,, cruisin' on Sat.nite in his 52 Chevy w/straight 307 6, 3 duces , headers, etc...… carb spit back and caught fire,,,, stopped right across from the local drive in, threw open the hood,,,, motor still running,,,,, peed on the carb,,, ( wouldn't let me throw dirt on his engine,,,,) he got a gooooood ground across the battery post with his stream !!!!!!!!! He did a complete one and a half back flip,,,, landed in the street spraddel legged with his "kanuten valve" in his hand,,,, which had already turned a darrrrrrk shade of purple,,, and had grown to an admirable size by then with the swelling !!!!!! Later he told me to throw dirt on his engine any time I wanted to ! Still laugh hard when I picture the whole scene in my mind 50 some years later !!!!!!!!!!

 

Cow shit in my fenderless 32' roadster. Crap was coming from all directions. I topped a hill on a two lane and hit an area where a herd had just been moved down the road to another field.

 

Someones foot.

Sent from my SM-G965U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Isn't it nice when your former friends come over to pick a side. Fortunately, I have never been divorced, but I have a couple of friends that were spined. (That is when the x-wife takes up with the divorce lawyer, and the pair spend the rest of their life plotting and scheming on how to remove you from the rest of your pension. In one case, the lawyer filed a case because he got a slight increase in his pension because of inflation. It amounted to pennies, and wasn't worth hiring a lawyer to defend against it, but he did anyway just because). I wouldn't want to live my life like that, but I can certainly understand it.
Bob

 

A racoon,,, and my wife wouldn't let me go back and get the tail.

 

Grandma, last x-mas eve

 

Does this count ?

 

Oh yeah......forgot I ran over my own dog one day coming home from work. She was running toward the car and slid while trying to dodge the car. Knocked her out cold, broke her tail in 8 places when I slid over it and knocked a tooth out when she hit the front bumper. Her tail survived but it was crooked as a cork screw. She lived on to celebrate her 16th birthday.

 

Following my friend, when his Model A horn came loose & I crunched it!!!!!

 

Been there, those damn car fires are scary.
Bob

 

My own foot

 

A poodle puppy that belonged to my friend Buck James' mother. He and I, along with his brother and his nephew, had just finished burying it at the end of the driveway when his parents returned home. His mom went into the house completely uanaware, but his dad took one look at our funeral faces, with shovel in hand, and knew something was up. When his mother realized that everyone was outside, she came out also, to see what was up. Our silence, and the look on our faces once again gave us away. I could have died right then and there, as she had named the pup "Precious", and absolutely loved her dogs, having bred and raised them for several years. When she found out that Buck's brother Bill had accidentally let the puppy outside while working on the house, he almost died also.

 

Cans of salmon and tuna from an overturned truck. Drivers were running over them, squirting the contents all over the road which then attracted the seagulls. So your weaving your way through 1000 cans of fish strewn over the road trying not to get crapped on from frenzied seagulls. Did I mention the smell? It was in the middle of summer.

 

dove to the front grill.....and a coyote ( got him with rear tire)

 

My stater bolt came out and the transmission pan pole vaulted on it and punched a hole in the pan. A bunch of fluid poured out but, fortunately I got stopped before I did any other damage to the transmission.

I ran over a curb one time and bent a front wheel and axle.

I ran into but not over the guardrail at the Fontana drags in the second R&C Ego-Rama that I was in.

The worst has to be on the first R&C Ego-Rama that I participated in. My Model A ran over me and broke my back.

Shit happens when you drive 'em a lot.

 

Some kid was playing with a radio controlled car with a air foil over the rear end.He managed to run it out in to the street as I went by in my 32 PU with 4 inch dropped front axle.I sheered the foil off,and the car made it under the axle,and shot out the back still running.

 

Hit a dead dear at night in my roadster coming over a hill. Put the car on two wheels. $17000 and ins. paid.

 

Armadillo, in Ocala Nat Forest , headed to Ocala , from Daytona , to see the Big Daddy’s place . On a hand jammer . Rough ride , but really couldn’t over come the smell of poop for a few hours ! Covered up with guts , poop , and what ever the beast had eaten for two days . I didn’t go down but man what a ride . I was way to cool to ride with a brain bucket in those days also . Scary stuff when I think back at the close calls . You have to take one hand off the bars to gear down , what the hell were they thinkin when building such a suicide machine ? I want to convert my old Shovel to a hand jammer now . Can you say NUTS !

 

We were on a poker run in the 48 when the kids were young and running down the highway I was behind a Semi carrying apple bins. They had plastic liners in them to put grapes in and one of the liners Blew out and hit the right front corner of my roof. After a heated discussion with the truck driver (after I chased him down and stopped him) where he didn't end up with any bruises we went back on to the car show that the poker run was part of. A day or so later I drove past the same place and the bin liner was still there on the side of the road and not damaged and I put it in the back of the truck and tied it down and hauled it home. The kids used if for a play pool to get wet in for a long time.
Coming back from Texas in 1981 we were in west Texas and had passed a painted up Ford sedan that had had a sign on it asking folks to vote for my wife's great uncle who was sheriff there for a lot of years. The left rear tire blew with a big bang and we got over to the side of the road in what was about 105 degrees. I tossed a piece of carpet I had in the camper shell on the shoulder of the road to lay on to jack it up and the road tar melted to the carpet. Got the tire off and it had a big hole in it and taking a look at the fender there was a piece of metal folded over like a tab where a piece of scrap metal had flown though it.
Got to Pueblo to buy another tire and they found a good size piece of metal in the tire.

When I had my T bucket in Texas I hit the speed bump at McClennan community college with the oil pan causing it to leak oil all the way to the shop where I worked and then a few weeks later I caught the drain plug on a raised manhole cover when they were getting ready to pave the street. That cost a new oil pan.
The drain ditch that runs in front of my place across the road and then up the side on the other side of the gravel road next to the place is a pathway for water living animals including beaver and for a while they were getting hit pretty regular where they had to cross the road because the culvert was too high off the water to get into. A few years ago I helped the highway worker load up a lama that someone had hit in front of my place totaling a suburban but no one in the area has lamas. Never did figure out where it came from.

 

Hello,

This being the Christmas holiday season, brings up an odd occurrence in the 58 Impala. In 1961-62 we were going up to Big Bear Lake and City for the annual high school “Gathering of The Tribes.” (It is a modern name I used to describe this huge gathering of teenagers from all of the Long Beach High Schools over the Christmas Vacation.) This event was not a planned event, but as the word spread over the local high school communication lines, it just grew and grew. It was not something our high school classes started. It was something that had been created and started when we were little kids, still in elementary school.

Teenagers getting into all kinds of shenanigans, some with and without chaperones. Yes, parents would not let teenagers go for several days up in a rented cabin without proper chaperones. For us, we always selected this cool dad that disappeared during the day and stayed out late in the evening. So, the cabin was almost empty for teenage get-togethers and snacks.

The incident caused bad feelings about little animals and death. While I was driving up the hilly, winding road with three other guys, it was smooth sailing with that 280 hp 348 motor pumping. We had taken off the air cleaner and set the carbs to run differently than at lower elevations like our sea level tuning. So, the Impala was going well up the hill. Rounding a curve, a small size animal ran across the road in front of us. Instead of swerving to the side, I kept going straight. A plop, a noise and bump was under our car.

I kept driving up the hills and a guy in the back wanted to turn around. He said to go back to see what it was on the road. The others said why…he said we needed to give “it” a proper burial. That got a ton of laughs. The guy was now a little mad and said I should have swerved to avoid the animal. Now, that got me started and I ripped into the guy, despite him being a friend.

Why would I damage a cool hot rod sedan and the lives of the occupants just to save a wild animal? He said we had a responsibility. I told him to forget it and we drove on towards the cabin. He insisted at random times as we got nearer the cabin and I finally told him that he was walking back to Bixby Knolls for being such an @$$&*#@.

Jnaki

Despite the argument and friendships, that conflict created a rift that was never solved or mediated. The odd thing was everyone in the cabin heard the story and all sided with me. Our lives were more important than some wild animal. Plus, the possible damage to my 58 Impala and what ever could have happened if I had panicked and swerved. Needless to say, that guy never got a ride in my car(s) during high school, again.

As sympathetic as high school girls were and are these days, they, too were on my side for keeping all of us safe and sound. Since I did not drink/drive, that problem was never an issue, but things happen. One of those $.25 cent spray wash places took care of anything underneath and made it spic and span again.

 

Coming home from a cruise-in night a few years back I hit a deer ...well actually he ran into the front left corner of my '32 coupe.Took out a headlight and then got fried with my headers as I ran over him with my rear whee, car jumped quite a bit...checked the guages and pretty much kept going.
Almost did the repeat performance this past summer at 50 mph on a pretty dark back road, but locked up the brakes(same '32 coupe) and it turn sideways and a 10 (maybe 8,whose counting ) pointer was eyeball to eyeball with my drivers door...I didn't even graze him but we both pretty much shit our pants. Well him the road and me my pants.

 

Every time I drive, I hit the accelerator and then I hit the brakes and then the accelerator again
I hit a tumbleweed once with the '31 Roadster.... I won't tell you if I was or wasn't in the highway at the time

 

My own rear wheel and tire after I pulled out and realized that I forgot to put the lug nuts on while doing a hurried 4 wheel and tire swap. This was my 64 falcon sprint and I was just out of High School.

 

Didn't run it over...but ran into it. Had a nice old refrigerator in the shop '50s vintage that worked great. I came pulling into the bay, foot slipped off the brake and crash! Caved the door in and ruined it. Went right into the scrap pile after that.