Reminiscing: Stupid Things you did to/with your Car when You were Young

[strickland]

Lots of snow driving / drifting in my RWD Volvo 940.

Had to call AAA to pull me out of a snow drift on several occasions, alone in the back of some parking lot.

Got pulled over at like 2am one night, fishtailing around a college campus nearby. The campus cop definitely thought I was intoxicated. I explained I was completely sober, I just like driving in the snow. He laughed & told me to be careful.

[BadDays]

When I was 17-18, I somehow managed to waste 4,000 dollars and in return I had a hard lesson on why you should be careful when buying a beater vehicle of any choice. It begins with facebook marketplace as one does, I buy myself a 1994 Chevrolet S10 because I needed a simple beater truck while I worked my butt off to get through sophmore year and find the E30 I currently own right now. However there's a reason why I strongly perfer to buy Ford's over any GM product from the 1990's.

(There are execptions but this is the turd in question)

The reason is because I know the OBS platform more than what this truck was to me, Hell when I got this truck for 2,800 and didn't bother to inspect the body because I didn't know any better. Both rockers had a lot of rust forming from underneath but this was the least of my concerns, The frame was cooked from the salty winters up here but it was still solid enough to drive okayish, There was a bed cap that revealed the bed had a pool of water with moldy clothing so that was cleaned out after I got the truck. Finally the interior smelled musty but atleast the cassette deck worked! Okay Let's get to the fun part of my stupidity, This truck had some "minor" overheating issues from the 2nd week onward of my ownership...

How bad are we discussing? Well she didn't seem to enjoy I95 or anywhere that forced her to idle for more than 5 minutes, Someone had shoved a cold air intake along with a terrible electrical fan conversion but the real disaster was getting started, Changing the coolant reveals a nasty waterfall of dark and stained coolant that told me that this engine had internal damage from unchanged coolant + lack of service. No amount of repairs could save this engine but this was my second manual transmission and I nearly shook the entire truck apart from learning how to engage the clutch properly. Seriously the truck felt like a rollercoaster whenever the transmission wasn't used properly. Coupled with the coolant always seemed to go missing after a few days, This truck was a complete piece of shit.

I dailied this truck for a few weeks before I eventually decided to visit my friends in new jersey, Long story short she nearly blew a head gasket trying to get across the george washington bridge as the temps outside reached 102 on this day. Having to pull over and let the truck cool down, I find out that the engine was giving me warning signs of a potential lockup. By this point i had spent nearly 600 bucks on parts to get the truck to run correctly but I slammed the hood down and fully sent this thing to my friend's house before I hung out with my old friend group, Strangely the truck behaved normally when I got it home but after this trip, Things got worse, A whole lot worse as the truck tried to kill itself every single time I drove it. Whenever that was people intentionally side swiping it or the temp gauge shooting new high records, Eventually it finally dies on the side of I-495 with my father in the passenger seat. Dead because I tried to trade it for a E46 sedan XD.

I scrapped the truck on the same day, This taught me three things:

You inspect and make sure the vehicle isn't a total rot box including the engine's health and components. (The E30 has good bones but it's getting rust repairs soon)

You always make sure the coolant system is serviced, There is no but's and If's, Make sure that system is performing well because it's the one thing preventing your engine from a warped block or cylinder head nightmare.

Never buy a chevy, Just don't...

This has been my regrets, There are more but this one is notable. Thank you.

[2mAn]

I put the tools down, jumped on craigslist, and found my first E30.

Smartest thing you've ever done.

[patrick88m3]

Lots of snow driving / drifting in my RWD Volvo 940.

Had to call AAA to pull me out of a snow drift on several occasions, alone in the back of some parking lot.

Got pulled over at like 2am one night, fishtailing around a college campus nearby. The campus cop definitely thought I was intoxicated. I explained I was completely sober, I just like driving in the snow. He laughed & told me to be careful.

Some guy would camp out overnight at the country club by my moms house every time it snowed to run off anyone out of their road and parking lot. Many fun nights doing donuts around his truck or making him chase us off.

[patrick88m3]

I should organize all of the automotive stupidity onto a flashdrive to show the grandkids in the future.
Here's a free Z31 with revolutionary springless coilovers. I wouldn't mind another slammed shitpile, it was kind of fun.

[zinc]

Lots of snow driving / drifting in my RWD Volvo 940.

Had to call AAA to pull me out of a snow drift on several occasions, alone in the back of some parking lot.

Got pulled over at like 2am one night, fishtailing around a college campus nearby. The campus cop definitely thought I was intoxicated. I explained I was completely sober, I just like driving in the snow. He laughed & told me to be careful.

I tried that once in a FWD hatchback. Crashed immediately. On the very first turn I turned the steering wheel and nothing, the car slid straight forward into a curb. Bent all my steering arms and had to drive to a garage with my steering wheel upside down.

I also overtightened a caliper bolt on that car to the point it just kept spinning instead of getting tight so loaded it up with blue Loctite which is all I had and drove it like that for 75k miles.

Another time I undertightened control arm bolts and my wheel damn near fell off (luckily) in a car park. One of three bolts was completely missing, one was on the ground and the remaining one was hanging on with no nut.

I own a torque wrench now.