Problems you have had while 500 miles from home

I saw on here the other day about the Buick that got hit while leaving the car show. It got me to thinking about problems that I have had with my car while I was far from home. The car is a 28 Model A sedan and I made a trip last year to KY to meet up with a bunch of Hot Rods and drive to a show. Total trip was 1100 miles. While at the hotel it started raining real hard and the next day when I hit the key, the engine was locked. Enough water had got in the air filter that it was locked. After pulling the plugs and spinning it over, all was well. For those few minutes, I was trying to figure out how to get this broken down Model A home. I also lost a fan belt on the FL Turnpike during Hot Rod Power Tour. That was no problem as long as you kept the car going 50 mph, but the minute you had to sit at a toll booth the thing would get hot. I was able to get a new belt after just a few miles of running it like this and no harm was done, but now I carry a spare belt. So have you had problems when too far away from home? What were they and how did you solve it?

 

I bought a 98,000 mile '73 Duster in California last summer and drove it home. While going through the Mojave desert, I wounded the head gasket. A little oil in the radiator, but no coolant in the crank case. Since it's a Slant 6, I ignored it and drove the rest of the way back to Atlanta.
Several problems on that trip,but nothing a tool box and some MacGyvering couldn't cure. (including getting the car running again with a pair of nail clippers).

-Brad

 

We made the trip from Houston to St.Paul MN in 1990 for the 20th Anniversary NSRA Nationals. Burl was driving his Track Car and I my Old Roadster towing my glass Mullins.
An exhaust bracket broke on the Track Car so we stopped at a truck stop which had a welder on duty. He was a kid who just didn't understand hot rods at all. He did get the bracket welded after much ado. Before we got to St. Paul the bracket failed again as well as the one on the other side. The bracket material was at fault not the welding. A couple wire coathangers got us through the trip and we remade the brackets when we got home.
The only other problem with his car was failure to start in a heavy downpour in NE Oklahoma after we stopped for breakfast. My car started right up because it is hoodless, but he had condensation in the distributor cap because of his hood. A little WD-40 and we were on the road again, heading for Walmart to buy some rainsuits.

 

Since both our cars had no gas gauges we carried 2 5-gallon plastic cans in the Mullins with our other stuff. The Track Car had a bigger tank than my 28 Chevy tank in the abbreciated pickup bed so I always ran out of gas first. We pulled over, poured 5 gallons(1/2 tank for me) in the tank and went on down the road to the next station where we filled up both cars and the empty can. This got us to NM without any hassle.
BUT...on the fairgrounds I began to have trouble with fuel delivery. Periodically the car would stop, I would pull the line from the pump and a bunch of sand and other crap poured out, then the gas would flow. Sometimes it wouldn't unplug without a hearty blow into the fuel tank. What a pain. We had put in gas at a new station down the road and figured the new tanks had the stuff in them but Burl never had the problem so it must have been in my tank or...
The problem was solved on the way home on Sunday evening south of MN in Iowa. Just before dark my car stopped running.
I had replaced the fuel pump just before leaving since it had been on the car since 1969 and it wasn't working. We pulled into a truck stop, jacked up the engine after removing the motor support bolt, and removed the pump. When I dismantled it it had red plastic shards and "threads" sticking in the valves and the entry and exit pipes. I drained the tank into one of our cans and plenty of plastic dripped and dropped out of there too.I also pulled the inlet line from the carb(Old Rochester 4Throat)and found the red death in there too. So I pulled the stone filter and cleaned the cavity, then blew out the lines.
We hadn't washed out the cans before using them, never dreamed a fuel can factory would machine the holes of flash and not clean the cans before selling them. Believe me, I've found enough red and yellow plastic shavings in new cans to fill a teacup once and maybe twice since then.
You see, only my car ever got gas from the cans in the trailer, so I got it all.
Well, the pump was history, so we slept in the cars under our tarps until morning then ran into the nearest town in the Track Car to the CarQuest store. Bought a fuel pump blockoff plate, an electric fuel pump(tiny little thing only as big as 3 cigars held together), a roll of wire, some hose, some terminals and in an hour we were on the road again.

 

You mean like tailgating semis thru 3 states in the middle of the night cause all the lights are smashed off the front of the car?

 

I have been driving my 39 Ford pickup daily thru 4 states for 16 years, 8 months without breaking down ...except once...300 miles from home.
When the truck stopped rolling, I was in a friends driveway. Pretty good.
Turned out the input shaft broke out of the clutch drum in my turbo 350.
There have been lots of minor problems that I fixed and kept going, and the time a hole developed in a brake line-----I let the trailer brakes drag me to a stop until I got the 300 miles home that time and welded up the hole in the brake line.
That doesnt count as a breakdown since I drove it home.

 

The time when my headlites quit working, I turned on the headlites of the car on the trailer

 

Oh, I think it counts........anyone that can weld up a brake line, has my respect for sure.

 

Drove to a show a couple of years ago with no problems. Woke up the next morning with a flat front tire. I thought maybe it was just a slow leak. A friend had a portable air compressor, so I filled it up an hour later its flat again. I pulled the tire off and checked it and found the valve stem had a small cut in it from where it goes through the rim. Still thinking its no big deal since I was at a big show with lots of vendors including Coker Tires and swap stuff. Guess what nobody had a tube for a 16" bias ply anywhere to be found, I had the announcer ask for help still no luck. None of the local tire places even handled tubes. It took two cans of fix-a-flat and a NAPA air tank to get me home. I now carry spare tubes for all my rides that use them and make sure if your running different sizes to carry one for each size.

 

MSD electronic dizzy went in the tank. No one sells parts......... Solution, back to good old points dizzy that can be easily maintained and fixed on the road. Gary

 

Well,there was the time when my wife called the cell number about 3am and it was a female voice that answered it.
Car trouble?....no
But remember...if it's got *&%^ or wheels,your gonna have trouble

 

I had a shock mount break on my Caddy on the way to the Hunnert year before last.
Lost a fuel pump on the same car on the way to James Dean/Gas City last year.

If you drive 'em enough, stuff's gonna break.

 

Nothing exciting here, a couple flat tires, had to pick up a muffler off the side of the interstate once and rig it back on before I came home. Was getting better MPG with it on than with it off.

 

We had a few issues with our '48 Chevy p/u when we drove it to BTTF in 2002. Had a power steering hose blow apart in Winnipeg but I managed to get it fixed. Then at the show the alternator went south on Friday night. No problem...just grab a new one from one of the vendors, right? Well, the alt was the right one, but being in the US it had SAE threads for the mount. My old one was metric. By this time all the vendors were shut down for the night, so I sat on the grass very slowly re-threading the new alt with the metric bolt. Took almost an hour to do it without damaging anything, partly due to not having anything to clamp the thing in while I worked. Doing it on the ground was a little awkward. Luckily the rest of the trip went problem-free.

 

The ol 500 miles from home song. Had the electrical system fail on a triumph bonny and had to run behind cars and trucks till I got home. scared.

 

ahh, Lucas, Prince of Darkness.
I bought a new starter for my Ford backhoe today and was very disappointed to learn that it is a Lucas

 

I smoked a TH350 on I-57 in southern Illinois on Saturday morning while coming back to Arkansas on military leave. Only one shop in town and he only had one transmisson that was the same as mine. We gambled on a installed price with no warranty and I won. The transmission lasted three years of fairly hard driving in my 65 Chevy 1/2 ton truck.
On another trip, I scattered the worn 327 that was in the same truck. Luckily I was at my Dad's. We exchanged for a reman 350 in Effingham.

 

On our 5000 mile Lake Area Roadster Club round trip drive to the LA Roadster Show in 2005, my Deuce roadster discharged a bunch of anti-freeze from a leaking heater core into my carpet just outside of Santa Rosa, Cal. Easy fix, pull the heater hose off and bypass the heater. Damage was carpet soaked in anti-freeze and slightly scalded hands. We stopped by Vern Tardel's shop and had a great time visiting with Vern till dark. A little later in the parking lot of the Flamingo Motel in Santa Rosa, I hit one of their damn speed bumps a little too fast and put a big crack in my aluminum oil pan and started gushing oil. Quickly got a drain pan under it I brought to do my own oil changes on the road, and then jacked it up and pulled the pan for a look. Vern was coming over for a late dinner with us so after dinner we got back over to his shop about 11 PM and my friend Randy G. (Lake City R&C). tigged it back together with Vern's welder. Back to the motel at 1 AM and back together by 2 AM. Back on the road the next day to LA. Then on Sunday after the show the wife and I buzzed down to Huntington Beach for great burgers at Ruby's out on the pier. On the way back up to Pomona I had a lifter get really noisy and it was really knocking by the time I pulled into the motel parking lot. A quick pull of the valve cover showed that one of my aluminum rockers had broke in the pivot area. Since it was after 8 PM nothing was open to get another stock rocker. There was probably a couple million of them sitting around in LA and I couldn't find just one. Everyone else pulled out at 5 AM to beat the traffic and heat through the desert so we slept in and got a rocker when the parts stores opened. Put it on and hit the road out of LA at 11 AM. Stopped for gas at Needles, Cal and it was 115 degrees in the shade! Got a tank of really shitty gas and pinged all the way to Oatman on the oldest part of Route 66. I thought I'd blow it up for sure since my luck wasn't very good the last few days. We caught up with the rest of the group in Winslow, Az that night and made it the rest of the way home with a side trip through the Rockies for a few days. In 2007 I made the trip to LA and took the drive all the way up the coast to Coo's Bay, OR and then up through Seattle and back home without missing a beat! You just never know what will happen on the road.

 

Had the starter bendix break between Texas and California on my '57 Ford. No big thing except I was towing a trailer with all my belongings and had a wife, 2 year old and a 2 month old with me on my way home to ship out for Viet Nam. Luckily I had a little down hill to coast on. The Y-block fired and never got shut off again until we were in the pop's drive way.

 

Pinion bearing froze up in Holland MI, in my rad '57 Chevy...swapped the third member in the parking lot of an auto parts store in a pouring rain on a Monday morning. Was going to go to local junk yard and pull one, but one of the store's machinests had a spare already out at home...happened to be same gear ratio...my bro and I used the store's jack and jack stands, and purchased the needed items from them...took us about three hours in the rain. Headed for home and have never had a problem with it since then.

R-

 

62 Chevy Panel truck w/235 and 3 speed. I rebuilt the motor--store bought short block--and since I was in a big hurry to get out of LA (never mind), I loaded up the beast and lit out for Florida. That first nite I stopped at the California border to go back and piss on the Golden State. Byebye. A few hours later, we stopped for dinner in East Jabib, Arizona. Some little pucker of a town. Decent truck stop food.

I go out, hit the key, and there's an awful grinding noise from my fresh motor. Oh shit. It is Saturday nite and this was years ago, before parts houses were open until 10--they all closed at five back then. I started doing elimination work to see where the noise was. With the fanbelt off, no noise. Generator felt okay. The problem was a grinding water pump.

Somehow, inside at the truck stop a guy gave me the home phone number of the parts house owner. I called him and he said he'd come down with the pump. Great! I said bring some Permatex gasket tar too.

He showed up in a sacked station wagon with his huge family, a wife and about 20 kids. By then I had the pump off. Turned out it was an old piece of radiator hose support wire that I guess had come loose from inside the short block's water jacket. It was caught in the impeller and making a terrible but harmless noise. With the wire out, the pump was jake again.

Good thing because my delivery service had brought every Chevy water pump he owned, he said, and none was even remotely right. I bought the Permatex and gave him $20 for coming out. I figured that'd keep him from getting soured on helping the next one of you guys who broke down late at night in his town. Or me, if I passed that way again. That was 1977 and as far as I know, I have not been back there.

I reassembled the heap and drove east.

I could also have mentioned the time my upper A-arm bush hopped out of my old Ford on I-70 and a cowboy with a crow bar helped me jam it back into place, or when my Indian coughed it's headlight on Pacific Coast Hiway at midnight and I had to sneak into Santa Barbara like an oily vampire. Or another Indian developed a front flat on a blue-law everything's-closed Sunday in Pennsy farm country and I rode about 50 miles on that front flat. It was that or push. How about complete charging system failure in the lonesome West Virginny hills the night before Easter--that one taught me never to travel without some food, at least snacks. I'd have literally killed somebody for a bag of Fritos for a while there. I ended up buying fresh batteries at every place I could, and running along until the lights started to go brown, then getting another one. Expensive as hell. But I got home, and had plenty extra new batteries when I did.

Not too dramatic I guess. I been luckier than I knew.

 

My 37 Chevy pu when I had a 261 Chevy 6. Coming back from a road trip and got caught in a torrential rain.The engine was misfing so I figured it got wet and pulled over under a bridge.The distributor didn't look wet,a HEI from a later 6,so when the rain let up we continued.The misfiring got a little worse but still able to maintain speed.Finally got home,parked the truck in the garage.
The very next day I went out and the engine refused to start,nothing ,no spark.I pulled the cap and inside was a rats nest of tiny wires.I pulled the distributor and on the bench it was obivious the top bushing had broken,the shaft dropped down and devoured the pick up coil.
Amazing I made it home and the damn thing quit right in my garage.

 

Same problem. I bought a '36 3 window in Longville Texas about 15 years ago, and drove it back to Minnesota. I tried not to run at night, but the second night (through Kansas), I tried to get to Pittsburgh, Kansas because it was the only big town on that stretch of highway. It got dark, and I couldn't see the instrument lights, so I turned on the dome light (I had never used it before). It had a dead short, and blew out the single fuse in the car. Like you, I tailgated a semi the last 30 miles into town. The worst thing is, when I got there and all setled into my motel, I discovered it was cruise night there. I had had a "few" beers after the travails of the day, so I decided not to participate. Luckily, the end of the cruise was at my motel, and anybody who knew anything saw the '36 and stopped to talk. Turned out to be a wonderful night.

Tubman

 

In my '64 Econoline I wore out a front hub while my wife and I were in vacationing Nashville, TN. The wheel bearing race would wobble around and not seat. You think any junkyard in the area had one of those?! I pulled it apart in the Hotel parking lot. Washed out the hub in the hotel room sink. JB welded the race in, let it sit overnight, and drove it home!

 

Made it all the way down to Paso a few years back. Car ran great on the way down and during the cruise.... Next morning would not start. couldnt figure it out. Not quit 500 miles from home but a hefty $500 to get it back. Turned out it was a bad ballast resister. Atleast thats what the shop told me.

 

...does "explosive-diarrheh" count? (bad burrito)

 

Wasn't 500 miles but just last Saturday coming back home from Billitproof stopped at a rest area about 60 miles from home on I-10 and when we got ready to go the starter just clicked. I had just had a dead battery before I went down there. After sittin' there awhile the little woman said "well, get out and wiggle something" .. "Yeah, right, what do you think that's gonna do"? (I thought). I sat a little longer, "well" ? Said she... So just to shut her up I got out and wiggled the battery wires, took the wire off the solenoid and put it back on and wiggled the wire to the starter. Got back in and hit the starter and Varrooommmm .. Don't that just piss ya off? Yep, it does! I'd have about as soon it wouldn't have started and I'd have had to push it or jump it off ... damn !!! Of course I heard about that for the next 30 miles .. !!

 

I ran a 6 volt Pan on a Burgess lantern battery. Ignition only, it got me home. I was young and stupid, now I'm old and stupid.

 

On the way to Joplin for the H.A.M.B.drags in 2006, lost part of the input and cluster gear 60 miles south of OKC. Drove it to Joplin with 4th gear only. Got lucky and found a replacement at the Springfield and got to drive it back home. 1300 miles.



jerry

 

Last year on the run to Fall Wildwood I hit a missing bridge plate at about 70. Friends in front said the roadster was about 18" off the road, all four wheels! When gravity took over I broke both front headlight stands, that was all. Another guy on the way to the show helped me duct tape the headlights to the shell. My wife found a guy, who knew a guy, who's brother had a welder while we were waiting in a chinese restaurant. We made arrangements and the next day this guy let me weld up the stands in his bike shop and we were cool for the weekend. I sold the car this winter with the stands still welded up. If thats the worst that ever happens I'll take it. So to push my luck my new roadster is running a banjo and early toploader, so I'm sure I'll have a new story soon.