Folks Of Interest Tricks played on friends.

A thread here reminded me of a trick some Airmen played on a fellow serviceman , my friend told me about. Back in the sixties an Airman bought a Volkswagen, they were fairly new to this country at this time and were know for their fuel mileage. Well, some of the guys would sneak out and add gas to his car while he was working, a little more each day, until his fuel mileage reached somewhere in the 80-90 mpg range. He was elated with his new car, bragging all over the base. After a while they just stopped , cold turkey........ he thought something broke on his car and actually took it back to the dealer, complaining about the fuel mileage!
I sure there are some others out there!



Bones

 

There's this little "whistle" thing, that can be bought off various online sites, including that auction site we all know and love. It goes into the end of the tailpipe, and makes a whistling sound when the engine is running. I've wanted to buy one just to prank a friend with it. I first became aware of Muriatic acid from a guy I knew, who had a "bad reputation" (he died a few years ago). He said he'd put a quart of the stuff into someone's gas tank that he had some issue with. Dissolves all the galvanization and rust from a gas tank and fuel lines, and destroys the aluminum in carburetors. It really destroys anything it comes into contact with. No way would I do that to a friend however. I use it for rust removal; can't imagine what it would do to a carburetor or engine. I've heard of guys wrapping a large Zip Tie around a drive shaft, and leaving the long "end" intact to flop around. Smacks against the driveline tunnel/floorboards, and makes it sound like something's coming apart. We use shoe polish (the kind with a little sponge on the end) to write our dial ins on the windows at the drag strip; it washes off with water. I've seen it used on the newlyweds car, along with the various other things that get done to them (how did this ritual start with newlyweds?). Moving wheel weights around to cause a bad vibration in the tires. Dish soap in the windshield washer bottle. The potato, apple, banana, whatever, in the tail pipe (Beverly Hill's Cop movie). Used to be a guy that was with the Handler's Racing Association (operators of Bremerton Raceway since 1959), back when I was a member; a couple of his "buddies" gave him a rainbow decal that he put on this rear window/backlight (the universal "Gay" flag thing) He got all kinds of comments and ridicule from it, before someone clued him in; he promptly removed it. Those are really the only things/"pranks" that I'm familiar with. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

They way I heard it they then started draining some out each day. HRP

 

I remember being told of the VW gas trick some guys played on a co-worker who bragged of his good gas mileage all day long and the guys were tried of it, so they started adding gas and after he had bragged about his "great" gas mileage for a couple of weeks the guys started drawing gas back out of the VW and got the mileage down about the same as his old car had gotten and done this for a couple of weeks and after he quit bragging of gas mileage they quit messing with his gas. Next big thing was turning his VW side-ways in his parking slot so that the cars on the left and right had to move first so he could drive home. Oh Yes----the good old days !!

 

rocks in the hubcaps

 

A few mates and me went out drinking one night, we went on motorcycles,
One mate was so drunk we took him home and put him on the bed,
Went back and got his bike from the pub.
We carried his bike up the stairs and put it in his flat,
I only wish we could have seen his face in the morning.
He did laugh about...eventually...lol

 

I guess my guys were too lazy to siphon it out. I’m sure this simple trick happened a lot of times over the US.
We had a firefighter buy a new(OT) Chevy pickup, the fanciest one they had , brought to the fire station to show it off. While he was in the station some of the firefighters got a quart of oil and poured a puddle under his engine. When he came out, someone pointed it out, he looked under his truck and was pissed! He took it back to the dealer, they fill out a warranty claim, put it on the lift, and looked for that leak for a while! Told him they fixed it! About a week later.... they did it again..... back to the dealer..... new warranty claim.... this time they said they couldn’t find a leak! He gave them Hell about his new truck leaking oil. It was probably a week later before the light build clicked on over his head! And, he was a 15 year firefighter..... shouldn’t have taken that long!!




Bones

 

I don't know how true this was, but legend has it that one year for a senior prank they connected the bible teachers horn to the brakes.
I heard this one about a million times too, guys working the line at GM would attach some kind of noise maker to the inside of the quarter panel.

 

Guys where I work used to always prank each other; never-seize on the door handles, crib up the rear end so there was about 1/4" clearance between the rear tires and ground, etc. The best one I ever heard though was played on one of the road service crew guys whose service truck was about a '70 era F-500. They ran a wire from the coil, thru the firewall, under the floor mat, stripped the end and poked it up thru the seat cover where the driver sits and bent it over 90 degrees. Apparently when he fired it up it was biting him good! I asked him about it one day and he laughed and said "the hell of it was everything in that cab is metal and when I went to reach down to shut it off, fire would fly from my fingers to the dash!". Funny now but probably a little over the top.

 

i worked in a school supply warehouse in the mid 80's , when i got promoted to warehouse supervisor a few guys in shipping wrapped my DD in pallett shrink wrap.

 

My favorite was a payback prank I read about here. Guy ran a straightened out paper clip from the spark plug cap straight down to the engine on a chronic ass-hole's single cylinder kick-start motorcycle one summer day. Let Mr. A-hole kick until he pretty much melted out in the parking lot. Then he walked over, pulled the wire out, and all the crap stopped.

 

^^^^That's a goodun^^^^

 

This wasn’t a friend, but bike post reminded me of an event that happened to me at a campground in Sturgis a few years back. I picked a nice spot for my tent , with a view, in a crowded campground. Then an asshat pulls a large camper trailer in blocking my view. But I don’t own the campground or view so ..ok. He’s close to my tent and drags a Briggs and Stration powered generator out behind his camper and actually points the exhaust right toward my tent. I protest, he says his wife HAS to have it for air conditioning and this is the quietest place for it, so it doesn’t disturb her! I ask if that included killing me? He doesn’t move it and fires it up and takes off for a ride with his buddies. The little generator is working it’s ass off trying to cool that big old trailer and I kinda begin to feel sorry for it.

So..... I give it a drink of Miller Lite.......

He makes it back... hot trailer......mad wife....... he tries and tries to start it ,to shut up his wife.... I begin to worry... I think he’s fixing to have a heart attack!!

I offer some advise.... try choking it.....

I got to watch and listen to his wife bitch and whine for three days.





Bones

 

A cop friend of mine would put pepper spray on door handles at bars.

 

We had a new guy on the job and he had a carry type craftsman tool box and every day he would carry it back to his car. We all told him he could leave it but he was concerned someone would steel it and told us that it wasn't heavy. We got the apprentice to measure the inside of the toolbox and shear a couple sheets of 19 gauge sheetmetal to that size. Every couple of days we would empty the box and place three or four pieces in the bottom of his box. After a week or two he finally gave up caring it to his car every day. I could go on and on with some crazy stuff we did.

 

Pretty hard to go anywhere in my club without someone pouring oil on the ground under your engine.

 

We had a friend that wanted to be a hotrodder back in the eighths he was book smart but didn't have any street smarts, he bought himself a 68 mustang. We would pull the coil wire off and he would crank it until the battery would just about go dead and then we would go over and open the hood fiddle around and put the wire back on and it would start right up. I don't remember if he ever figured out what we were doing.

 

First time on a vintage motorcycle rally, my seasoned pal told me to pack a dress shirt and tie for the big dinner on Saturday night. So on top of my spare chain, oil, tools etc. I put a nice white dress shirt and tie. Saturday night rolls around and I'm walking around going "Why isn't everyone wearing their shirts and ties?" Shit. So after he went to bed I wrapped that dress shirt through every spoke in his rear wheel and around the chain, tied in knots, and stuffed the tie down his gas tank.

 

Did the whistle in the exhaust pipe trick to a buddy when a bunch of us were staying at a resort.
The guy was super anal about his. Everything had to be 'just right'. If he gave you a ride out came the white paper foot pad from a car dealership.No hanging your arm out the window...might leave a sweat stain.
You get the picture.
So in goes the whistle and 5 of us are in on the joke. Car starts the whistle starts and he goes ballistic.Not at us...he had no clue it was us. Shuts off car and the scrutiny begins.Belt inspection,alternator inspection,water pump inspection.All belts removed,carb bolts tightened.It was funny as he tried to pinpoint the problem.
When he wanted to use the resort phone to call a tow truck(this was pre-cell phone days) we finally fessed up.
After we removed the whistle and were standing around laughing about it he got madder and madder until he fired up his car and left. Lacked a sense of humor.
We were going to tell him about the dead fish we zip tied to his exhaust but he left before we could.

 

One of the guys in my car club does security work for various local entities. His 'work car' is a black Explorer with a big 'security' on the sides. About a month ago he got clipped in the drivers rear, took it in to get repaired. Gets it back, and gets clipped again (front driver side this time) two days after he gets it back. Gets it back again, a few days later I see him and ask 'Hey John, I thought you got your car fixed?'.... He sprints out to the parking lot to check... LOL

 

A jumbo zip tie on the driveshaft is my go to prank...

 

Worked at a Shell station right after High School , A bunch of us were sittin behind the shop drinking beer one night and I snuck over to my buddies 55 chevy PU and jacked up the right rear tire so it was just off the ground ....So awhile later he gets in the truck to leave and nothing, no forward no reverse nada...he starts and stops it several times opening the hood etc, by now we are pissing ourselves laughing

 

A copy of the Vanity Fair with Katlin Jenner on the cover made the rounds from car to car among our group at the Street Machine Nationals, without the car owner's knowledge or consent. Folks reactions were pretty entertaining...

 

Went to the summer nationals one year with a good friend. His pain in the posterior brother invited himself and brought his bigger pain of a wife. She bent down to pick up something , I immediately said
You were not kidding about her were you. She gave him hell for the rest of the weekend.

 

Applied E brake on buddies 64 chev 4x4. Crawled under bug zip ties to hold cable once ebrake released. He could not figure out why e brake would not release.
.

 

This reminds me of an old neighbor couple when I was a kid at home. They bought a new 1961 Rambler American, about as close to the bottom of the heap as you could get as far as I was concerned. The man drove about 60 miles a day to work and was a real tight wad. They bragged every day what wonderful gas mileage it got and how my Dad was nuts for driving those big gas hog Buicks. So I got the idea to dump a gallon of gas in the Rambler every night for a week, they went to bed about 8 o'clock so I never got caught. The old man said it was getting broke in and got even better mileage all the time. The next week I would sneek off to the store and buy two gallons (it was only 26 cents a gallon then), the old man was really giving Dad some shit then about his mileage then. Then it stopped, after we stopped hearing about the wonderful Rambler I asked him one day how was the mileage going, he just looked at me and went in the house. Dad just thought he was a BS artist until I finally told him what I had done. He said I was a dumb ass for buying that old bastard gas and I almost got my ass beat. I have to admit, I didn't feel to bad when a couple years later a front wheel folded up under the Rambler and the old fart traded it in on a used Olds 98. We never did hear how great the mileage was on the Olds.!!

 

A few years back at the Republic of Texas Bike Rally in Austin someone placed a piece of black plexiglass cut to look like an oil spill under a new Road King, before the day was over that thing had been kicked from one end of the parking lot to the other

 

I had a fake bird turd, that I would leave on a friends trunk lid at a cruise night we attended. He was very anal about his car's appearance and this would set him off!
By the second or third time he finally got it!
KK

 

Way back when I was in the 11th grade, we had an English teacher that was a total bitch. Everybody hated her. One Friday night at a football game, I watched a younger classmate take a raw Irish potato and shove it up the tailpipe of the AMC Hornet wagon she drove. I mean he shoved it up in there so far you couldn't see it unless you got down and looked up the tail pipe. After the game, a few of us were standing around BSing when she got in the car and started to leave. She didn't much more than get out on the road good, when she mashed down on it it sounded like a bomb went off! The muffler exploded down the seam, dust and dirt went everywhere! She slammed on the brakes and I swear I think she jumped out before the car ever stopped rolling and ran about 1000 foot before she stopped, which was a mean feat in itself since she was only about 5' tall but weighed about 300lbs! We about died laughing! We had to get out of there pretty quick, but she never did find out who did it!

 

Mid eighties a fellow club member brought his fresh built car out to club run. He was proud of the build and it was very nice ride. Couple club members poured a little trans fluid under the transmission and a little oil under front of the motor. The owner saw the leaks and spent two days trying to figure out why it was leaking. Before anyone came clean he took the car home and tore it down and put in new seals. He was a little pissed when he found out what had happened.