ITT: post your "wew we made it" -stories

Post your breakdown-stories that didn't end with tears / tow truck ride. Also best MacGyver -fixes appreciated.

Drove 320 km / 200 miles with my W123 without driveshaft boot / completely dry cv-joint.

Boot suddenly disintegrated & went missing en route. Decided to try to make it home or at least somewhere semi-near because towing costs like fuck in here.

Sound was fucking terrible, it was like someone on meth was banging the rear axle with huge ass sledgehammer.

Made it home, put on new CV boot and grease, was prepared for new axle but it was not too work intensive task to try.

CV-joint is still fine 4 months after this incident, only needed new boot & grease.

Bump this thread has potential

>brake lines are rusty on car
>find out there's a brake line rust recall
>call dealer
>"only covered if they're leaking, otherwise we undercoat"
>ok no problem
>brake break lines with hammer and prybar
>30 mile trail of brake fluid to dealer
>get new brake lines and airbag recall done
>no bill, drive home with brakes working again

no regrets, would do again

...

Worst I've ever had was a leaky valve cover gasket that let in oil to the sparks plugs and killed two coil packs. I had to limp home for 20 miles. Not a very interesting story but at the time I was white-kunckling the steering wheel while I tried to putter home.

>Driving 30ft box truck, loaded with about 5 tons on pipe and water
(Pic related, the exact truck)
>Driving on Galveston Seawall
(Speed limit is like 40mph, tourist whi cant drive like to go 20mph and randomly brake/pullout etc)
>Due to living on an island, rust is crazy.
>Saturday day, tourist season in full bloom
>approaching stoplight when suddenly brake pedal goes to floor and windshield becomes covered in brake fluid.
>Brake lines rusted out, fluid broke through
>Have to down shift Auto 3speed to engine brake and use parking brake to completely stop huge truck while jack ass tourist cut me off and brake check
>Proceed to drive another 5 miles down heavy traffic/stop lights seawall and back roads to get back to warehouse.

Its a wonder i didnt run any of those cars off the road. Had some dumbass try to walk out in front of truck randomly.

>Car full of really heavy PA equipment.
>Clutch slave on the brink.
>1 am in morning
>Lookslikecrime.png
>Lost as fuck down rabbit warren of small lanes.
>Stop to ask for directions
>Cunt ignores me and drives off
>Begin to pull off
>Stall
>Turn key
>Nothing
>Open hood, battery very dead making a fizz
>Check passenger footwell for starting handle but its gone missing
>Lights dead, beginnings of horror movie and of course no phone coverage
>Check surroundings and there's fuck all, just trees
>Could a starting handle be made from a stick?
>Unlikely, could probably sell it to hipsters tho
>call it something like the 'start stik' on Kick Starter and use that font everyone is using nowadays
>The road is very very slightly downhill with two massive ditches on each side.
>Decide to go for it and bump start otherwise I'll be left in donkeyrapeville forever living as a hermit
>Roll the car, backwards in the pitch dark with no lights.
>Takes 5 attempts to bump start it.
>Get the fuck out.

Why wouldnt you wait until you were close to the dealership?

I've driven my car with a bad clutch slave cylinder. It would work normally for maybe 10 miles and then there would be no resistance at all in the pedal and the clutch only worked when it was an inch off the floor. So I had to launch the car really fast with a lot of gas or it would stall. Probably really bad for clutch but oh well it works fine now

I work for a company that does the same thing. Owner makes bank but is too cheap to fix anything. The 1997 F250 we use died on us on the freeway while loaded with tarps and a loading trailer for pipes and barrels. Had to drag out the son's Ram 2500 to finish the trip back to the warehouse and ended up renting a Penske truck like yours.

The truck is toast (at 280k miles) and we're left with one 02 F250. Yay,

I once drove a 2000 VW Beetle 30 miles home with a nasty knock in the engine. Upon further examination it turned out one of the valves snapped and lodged itself into the piston, smashing into the cylinder head. To top it off it was an unregistered car and I miraculously made it through undetected that night

>>Takes 5 attempts to bump start it.
Why did it take 5 tries? Bump starting a car is the easiest thing

Im going to be honest... idk what a start stick is?

You're talking about your steering rack boot, right?
W123s are RWD...

I left 6 months ago, but last i knew this was the "Fleet"

The big box truck that was always running on one battery, loading gate was always fucking up. and the top of the box had been ripped off by other driver, and the truck was mostly rust. But damn, I could drive that thing like it was a metro.

Had a crappy GMC smaller box truck that hadnt been legal in years; A/C and radio did not work at all. Smelled like piss. Made the bitchy driver take it,

late 90's F250 that ran nice, and was kinda nice to ride in once i fixed the radio. But the A/C only worked on full blast, there was a hole through the roof due to rust, and the lift gate was hanging on by a thread.

They never did an oil change on one of them in the year i was there. Very nice owner though.

because my shop with a lift is 30 miles away

>broken cv boot
>replacing just the boot and not entire axle

did you re-line your brake shoes while you had it apart? or top up the battery water?

Happen just friday

>changing out left front bearing
>non drive bearing so super easy
>Get it changed out
>Took 45 minutes
>Time to change spark plugs
>Super bad feeling. Bearing was too easy.
>First fucking spark plug snaps in the head
>feel sick
>OOOOH NOOOO.tiff
>Panic mode
>Remember I have an extractor set
>Doesn't reach the plug while chucked in a drill
>fuuuuuuuuuuu
>Crisis mode
>eureka moment
>Bench grind the end square so that it fits in a 3/8 extension
>Attach to breaker bar
>Bites, breaks loose, and starts to come out
>YES

Got a new plug in there, threads are definitely fucked up but it's a little more than hand tight and the coil bolts over it soooooo I'm hoping it doesn't catastrophically fail.

>lifted '98 Wrangler
>35" tires
>175k miles
>notoriously unreliable
>decide what the hell
>pull a 1,500 lb pop up camper over the rockies for a week of wheeling in Utah and Colorado
>about 2,300 miles round trip
>average 8 mpg
>not a single issue the whole trip
>driving back home on the last day
>13 hours in, less than 30 min from home
>torrential downpour, we're talking rainfall of biblical proportions
>suddenly check engine light comes on
>engine bucking and sputtering something horrible
>never actually dies
>roll into driveway and almost cry with relief
>check it out the next day
>engine code comes back as TPS voltage too high
>have to replace TPS sensor
Not sure what started causing it, but I had to replace that sensor about 4 times over the next 15k miles. I was getting Oreilly's sensors that were warrantied each time, but I don't know if it was just shitty sensors or if something else was frying them.

Couple

1985 Nissan Sentra
>Clutch cable broke coming back from my girlfriends
>Got pulled over for rolling a stop sign
>Explained the situation to the officer and he told me no exceptions, I have to stop
>Let me go with a warning

1985 Nissan Sentra
>Fuel pump has been on the fritz
>About 7 miles from the house
>Car keeps cutting out and acting like it's starved for fuel
>Ended up having my brother ride on the hood pouring gas into the carb to get us home

Buddies 1994 S10
>Upper ball joint separated
>Rubber snuggy wrapped around the UCA over the BJ and the knuckle till we got home

Buddies S10 Blazer
>Out trail riding
>4x4 vacuum actuator boot ripped
>Stuck and need the front end to lock in
>Sat on the hood using a pair of vice grips to pull on the cable to keep the front end locked in
>Road up there until we managed to pull the other blazer out

How we ended up fixing the 4x4 actuator
>Bought a couple cable clamps
>Ran the front axle cable to the remainder of the hood latch cable
>Had a pedal bike cable for the rear brakes attached somewhere to make use of the hood latch
>Front end locked in when the hood release tab was pulled up from the inside
>He eventually turned the hood latch into a locking hood latch

>Ended up having my brother ride on the hood pouring gas into the carb to get us home

Just little things, nothing crazy:

>driving to West Virginia
>get most of the way there
>go over a bump in the road
>engine dies, no power, everything is dead
>coast over to the shoulder
>fucking battery bracket came loose and shorted out the whole electrical system

Last week:
>Driving 1500 miles to move to Colorado
>Last stretch of road is 80 miles with no services
>About 40 miles in, back end kicks out, Mt. Akina style
>ohshittakumi.avi
>Slow down, hear the dreaded thumping
>Rear passenger tire is exploded
>Have to remove all my worldly possessions from the trunk on the side of the road, and put the temporary spare on
>Limp the remaining 40 miles into colorado springs at 35mph

Honestly the worst part unpacking all my shit and re packing it on the side of the road.

>>Ended up having my brother ride on the hood pouring gas into the carb to get us home
WITNESS!

>hooning around the city in my S10 blazer with no air filter
>decide to go mudding
>wot through a deep ass mud pit
>hydrolock, oh fuck
>crank her till the battery dies and the rods presumably bend
>come back the next day with a jump pack
>drain water from cylinders, oil still full of sand and grit
>knock, knock, knockin' on heavens door
>drive back on main road with 140km/h speeds and nowhere to pull over
>still got another couple thousands km's out of her

Was it the vortec? Those things are pretty darn bulletproof.

Also, the rods bent the second that water got in the cylinders. My buddy did the same thing to his G6, attempting to cruise through a puddle during a tropical depression.