I was going to post this trick too and I have a second part to add. After you wrap the zip tie and tighten it real good, wrap the rest of the tail around the drive shaft and tape it with a small piece of tape. The tape will come off a mile or two down the road and the zip tie will start to slap the underside of the car (or truck cab). It's much more of a surprise!
This isn't directly auto related, but you could probably catigorize this under "How I made a mess for Mom". I used to hang out with a bunch of brothers, all car guys. In between working on stuff they liked to light off acetylene ballons made with garbage bags. Their dog was the fattest Bassett hound I've ever seen ( he needed a ramp to get up the back steps so "the boys" wouldn't knock on the edges of the steps ). Every time they lit one off, no matter where the dog was ( inside, outside ), a turd would shoot right out of the south end of that pooch and he'd be shaking like a frog eat'n lightning.
Well Jason it's true,... I was a real mischievous kid growing up,.. and this stuff doesn't touch the surface of the rotten things I did in the past, But there was a really big change in my life, I think back on this stuff and some of it is funny,...... wrong ? yeah, but still funny. I guess thats why I am so grateful, only I know how rotten I was, but I was still forgiven, and trust me I don't deserve forgiveness,.... the signature is there to always remind me of that. If the stories of any of these pranks taint my testimony,... please forgive me, because thats the last thing I would ever want to do.
we had a couple of teachers at the high school that really didnt get along too well... on of the two being the auto shop teacher. he'd send students out to do all of the regulars...horn to brake switch, block up the rear wheels, etc...at one othe retaliation got fairly pointed and the shop teacher had a couple of guys sneak into the other guys classroom and fill a giant weather balloon with talcum powder and blow it up. they placed it in very close proximity to the main door and taped a pin to the door handle. needless to say when the teacher opened the door and ruptured the talcum filled orb, it was a sea of white powder. not sure they have gotten all of that stuff out of that room to this day.
Prawn heads in the hubcaps is a good one. They don't rattle or anything, but if they're not found in a couple of days you can't get within a yard of the car without gagging. Mate had a 56 Customline, beautiful car, and when he got married we were told not to touch it on pain of death. When they left the reception to go on their honeymoon, the car was pristine... Apart from the prawn heads we'd also dumped boxes of confetti into the flow through ventilation system. They opened the vents the next day and the car quite literally filled with confetti. One not so nice, when I got married the first time in 1970, some asshole neighbour obviously didn't like the noise at the reception house, so they lifted the hood on my Hillman and drove a steak knife right through both radiator hoses. No water leaked when it was cool, but the moment it started to heat up water poured out until the block was dry and the engine siezed up on us. Cheers, Glen.
Quite the opposite! Just reminded me of folks I know, and am fond of... and I'd imagine this rings true for a bunch of us. Even my hellacious streak has toned down quite a bit into just a mischievous streak nowadays... ~Jason
No car involved, in fact will probably start a whole new thing, but I had a shop teacher in high school. Was a pretty good old guy and I'd check in and then sneak out of the class and head across the street and hang out at the APCO station. Anyway he used to always tell of his WWII days and his buddies and he'd talk about them by name. My Dad had a motel right across the street from the Greyhound bus station and one night I called him on the phone and told him " I was so and so (a name he had used) and I was passing through town on the bus and would love to see him". We then sat in front of the motel watching him drive around and around the bus station, get out, go in and then come out and leave .. I was so friggin' stupid I asked him a day or two later if he saw his "war buddy" come through the bus station.... He was not amused .. !! We did all kinds of phone shit hangin' out at night at my Dads motel while he went home to supper .. Damn those were the days ... and the younger generation wonders why we miss the 50's so much ...
I dont have a lot of pranks but my friends and i do a lot of stupid crap! one night we were just driving around and one of my buddies goes to moon another car but at we start to make a right turn another guy yanked the door open (his ass was sore for weeks) another thing we do is mash up bananas and put them in lunch sacks. then we pull up to car at stop lights and say in the most proper voice possible "pardon me, do you happen to have a bag of poop?" then as soon as they look at you like your retarded you toss the bag of bananas at them!
at the last shop i worked at my boss had just finished putting an engine in a car to flip. i snuck up behind the car while he was running it the first time and stuck a big white smoke bomb in the tail-pipe and lit it. "what's with all the smoke coming out the exhaust?" "oh, that's normal" he said "just the oil in the cylinders from shipping burning off." "you sure about that, there's a TON of smoke." so he looks behind him and sees smoke just POURING out of the exhaust. he carefully gives it a little gas and it feels and sounds ok so he tries again and same thing. he's really starting to freak out by this time and keeps revving the engine a little higher and listening for some noise to tell him what is going on. finally i start laughing and pointing and he figures out it's a joke, revs the egine up a bit now and blows the smoke bomb out of the exhaust and sees it rolling away behind him. swore he was going to get me back but never did. i'm always really careful when i stop by to see what's up because i know he hasn't forgotten that one.
Not a prank but still really fun, In auto shop we were scrapping a 58 Ford 4 dr. that was donated, so We get the bright idea to hook up the arc welder to the battery cables, replace the fuses with little pieces of steel and see what would happen,........ when we turned on the lights they went off like flash bulbs ( remember those ? ) turned on the radio and it just screamed for a few seconds then buzzed really loud and that was it,... the coolest thing was the wipers,..... they took off like blue blazes,... and got faster until they flung the blades right off and finally the transmission self destructed,.... we had taken the engine out but always wondered what the started would have sounded like ,.. Then we noticed the smoke ! We got it outside and put the fire out before it got out of hand,... that was fun. Last one,.... not car related,..... When I first started in radio, we had a salesman that didn't take a joke to well,..,.... it was October and in a couple days we were going to do a live broadcast from downtown for the "October fest", The general manager was out of town, so when Bruce the salesman walks in and theres a bunch of us in the lunch room,...... I asked him if he had gone to the costume shop for his fitting yet?,...... everyone looks at me and doesn't say a word (they were all cool and knew this must be a set up) ,.... Bruce says What? I didn't hear anything about this !,..... I say yeah were all going to dress up in a traditional Bavarian costume with leaderhosen and the hat with the feather and everything,..... it was in the memo, the other guys all chimed in and said yeah ,.... didn't you get the memo ? Bruce looked concerned and said No,..... so one of the other salesman said wait and I'll get you the name of the costume shop,.... he escapes for a couple minutes and comes back with a piece of paper with the name and address of a costume shop in town and says you better get right down there,.... Bruce leaves and the other salesman (who had a friend at the shop) quick calls the costume shop and lets them in on the gag,.... The morning of October fest, were live in our booth, and the General Manager is back in town,..... through the crowd coming towards us I see a feather bouncing above the crowd,..... As Bruce comes up to the booth looking like Hansel without Gretel he says "you guys better get your costumes on before Bill (the G.M) sees you",.....were laughing hysterically,.. just then Bill comes over and asks Bruce what in the world is he wearing ?! Bruce starts explaining it, and Bill stops him and asks who told you about this memo ?,..... he points at me and says Dennis did,..... Everyone including Bill was busting a gut,.... then he told Bruce to go home and change your clothes "you look like a idiot !" Bruce rarely talked to me after that.
Do trains count? My rotten little cousin and I useta sneak up on the steam train while the crew went for coffee at the Chinese cafe in our little town, we'd each have a handful of pennies and our trusty pocketknives. A penny on front of, and behind, each big drive wheel, tapped in firmly with the knife, was all it took. When the engineer gave 'er the steam, it'd just sit there and spin like crazy. Back and forth, the wheels would go, until he gave it a blast of steam from the track cleaners. Sometimes even that didn't work, and he and the fireman would get out and look. We'd be sitting on the platform of the station, busting a gut laughing, and this was our cue to make a hasty retreat. No sense of haha, those train guys! Shoulda seen 'em when we greased a few hundred feet of track, where they were supposed to stop. Adults had short fuses back then. Never tried it on a diesel.
During high school (early 80s) I worked at a gas station and one of the mechanics was so tight he would try every gas saving device / magic potion available just to save a buck. We got so fed up with his crap we'd just walk away every time he started. The last thing he ever tried (as far as we know) was the one where you put cow magnets along the fuel line to align the molecules so the fuel burns better. He emmediately noticed a difference the first tank. And it kept getting better every week. Little did he know that every day, one of us would sneak over to his truck and add a gallon of gas to his tank. We let this go for about 3 or 4 weeks - he was preaching the magnets to everyone. Then we stopped. He proceeded to change plugs, wires, you name it, but he never got back to wonderful mileage he once got. I don't think anyone ever did tell him what we did to him. Pity
Working in a smalltown Ford garage parts dept years ago, along with another guy & the inventory gal. Look up ditz-you'll see her pic. She had an old tank of an Olds and one cool fall day she came in & said her tires looked soft. Stone faced, one of the techs asked her if she'd put "winter air" in 'em yet? She said "no". Well it happened one of the gas stations in town had a special on it today, she should take the car down there right away. Off she goes. About 15 minutes later we get a call from our bud at the station asking WTF? - the ditz stopped by, asking for 'winter air'. A few minutes later ditz returned to the shop, bigtime pissed. The same tech asked her - maybe DuPont has it in cans? Thought she was gonna kill him, thought the rest of us would die laughing. She never went back to that station, but next spring somebody scribbled a poster at the shop advertising "summer air".
my dad worked at a NAPA store in the 60s, and he was quite the prankster. I often helped put away the parts shipments on Saturdays, so I witnessed a lot of fun. I once saw my dad buy a dozen donuts and pasties on the way to work one Saturday morning, and use a needle-point grease gun to fill a "long john", knowing that Les (Dad hated him) would grab that longjohn first.
A friend of mine and I (and our friends) routinely prank each other when we get together for a few races during the year. I got six long zipties on the driveshaft and he disconnected my shifter linkage..... he won this year. Last year we filled his hubcaps with pebbles, and did the zipties. The year before he undid of a few of my spark plug wires and most of my sensors in a rental van.
One of my dads buddies was late to his wedding because they went to his house the night before and turned his vw bug sideways in his garage.
that pretty much turned me into a histerical raving lunatic... There used to be a kid in town that was the "resident horsepower expert", had a 70s Chevy truck, 400 sbc with a muncie, rolled under it one night and took the 3-4 rod off the shifter, then shifted the trans to 4th by hand att he side cover, he got in and put in first let the clutch out and it killed the engine, after a few tries he got another kid to chain tow him... course it wouldn't go into neutral either, so he pulled the drive shaft to tow it.
Back in the day, we would pull up close to a car at a stop light, stop, and then very slowly start rolling our car forward. The person in the car next to us could almost always be seen in a state of panic, looking at our moving car, but thinking their car was rolling backwards. I can still rememeber the look on their faces as they thought their brakes were not working!
in a parked car just fill the ac vents , defrosters wth confetti or tissue papershreds turn the ac or heater fan on high switch the windshield wiperson high the radio volume all the way up ... when some one starts the car the wipers start whipping the radio blares the vents empty the paper all in a fraction of a second i did put a bumper sticker on someones new cars dash cluster when they double parked me in once ... it was a foil type sticker so you know it was hard to remove ... guess they should not have left the window open i pressed it on really goodand it was a hot day too
we put my brothers 4wd on blocks so it just barely touched when he went to take off from the church it just started smoking the tires we just leaned on the lifted truck and it fell off the blocks the wedding video caught his face and the smoking tires great fun
This is called the Auto-Joker and it reads, "Fasten each wire to spark plugs; when victim steps on starter it will shoot, whistle,scream, smoke, and shoot again. Registered U.S. Patent Office No. 354,934 I really wonder how many of these were made before somebody figured out that planting fireworks under the hood of your "victims" car was a bad idea. The patent date makes no sense either as that number would date sometime between 1885-1890. I don't know maybe one of you can figure it out?
shop pranks. send the new kid to get a half a cup of thinner handing him a Styrofoam cup j/b weld a few coins to the floor around the shop scissor jacks work great to lift the tires off the ground just enough to spin a buddy of mine was working on his porsche mechanical fuel injection he has had it apart a 100 times by now and knows all the parts right ? I add a crome spacer, a ball bearing , and a bolt. on the in side of the fender lip with all the pieces and leave, laughing my ass off drove him nut`s trying to figure out where these parts he left out went. he tryed to get me back next time I had my coupe apart I just laughed and thrue the parts over my shoulder and said those must be extra hahaha
Harms Way-- I think this one will go down as an all time "CLASSIC" prank, I'm still chuckling!!!!!---------------Don
Back when I was in College we picked up a VW Beetle and put it between 2 poles next to where it was parked on campus. I wish we would have waited around for the owner to come back.
These kids are not me, but I remembered seeing the video and found it real quick of a similar prank. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_15G4Y11dY
We hung out by Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis which had some very fancy homes around it. Most of the homes were guarded by Midwest Patrol which were rent a cops to check on their houses at night. We would go into the alley and tie a rope to the handles of two garbage cans on either side of the alley. We would then go out on the side street and wait for the rent a cops to come by and throw eggs at their windshields and then run down the alley. The cops car would be flying down the alley trying to catch us and we would run between two garages just before the rope and garbage cans. The cop would hit the rope and the two cans would cave in both his doors on the rent a cop car. We never got caught.
Dad got one on me! Dad bought my '46 PU for me when I was 14. He drove it for a while, then we pulled it in the garage to put a 265/3speed in it. I drove it to high school every day, but it was never really fast. The only way I could spin the tires was in reverse! The hard (steel rod) throttle linkage started to stick several years later (after high school). I headed down to one of dad's friend's junk yards and pulled a cable throttle assembly from a 72 LeMans wagon. During the install, there was a spot-welded bracket on the floorboard that was in the way of the new gas pedal. While cold chiselling it, my dad had a huge cat-ate-the-canary grin. Come to find out, he put the bracket there to prevent full-throttle passes and keep me out of trouble. Truth be told, he probably kept me out of jail....or worse! The truck ran like a scalded dog after that! Full burnouts in three gears (oh, later I installed a Muncie 4 speed). I'll probably do the same to my daughter's car...when she gets one!
The Jalopy Journal
