Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 49 total)
  • The most dangerous part of a car is the nut that holds the steering wheel
  • maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Nissan Recall 800,000 cars

    Anybody had a bit of the car come off in their hands when driving? I’ve had the accelerator in VW polo stick down in rush hour on the M8 simply because the pedal rubber had split and snagged itself on the carpet.

    In my old MGB the centre horn push could fall out of the steering wheel and land on your lap – still wired up -meaning you had to repeatedly blast the horn as you tried to shove it back in

    Also in a hired nissan vannette (with the engine under the seat) the mechanic hadn’t clipped the engine cover back on properly so as I pulled out quite sharply into traffic from the hire co forecourt me and the seat disappeared into the back of the van

    molgrips
    Free Member

    I had a wheel come loose when driving – of course, I heard the noise and pulled over to see what was going on.

    I also did a bit of hard braking approaching a roundabout (empty road, loads of braking room, I just like to test brakes every so often) and I heard a clunk and the pedal sank to the floor. However it came back on again later, so I carried on driving. Got home, couple of days later I noticed the obvious that the pad material had come off.

    I thought car brake pads were meant to be like bike ones with just a mm or two of material on them. It was only when I got the new pads I realised how worn they were!

    My dad also had the gearstick break off on our Chevette. He just about managed to get it up the narrow hill lane to our houes in 3rd, which was impressive, especially as it’s too narrow for two cars on the steepest bit.

    Trekster
    Full Member

    Brake pipe burst on a Landrover approaching traffic lights
    Clutch on a Herald went just as traffic warden decided to put his hand up to stop my lane!!
    Tyre delaminated on M6
    Broke a front spring on the above Landrover landing from a great hieght!
    Broke another Landrovers gearbox at local dump whilst doing a standing start, racing with others!

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    footflaps
    Full Member

    The clutch failed on my Golf so that it would depress and then stay there. You had to lift it up with your toe to then depress it again to change gear. Was quite scary at first as I was stuck in gear on the A14 at about 70mph until I twigged I could lift it back up….

    bails
    Full Member

    The driver’s seat in my old Peugeot used to not click into place properly when you adjusted it. So you’d accelerate (unleashing all 60 of the French stallions under the bonnet) and the seat would shoot back to the point where you couldn’t reach any pedals.

    Not quite as bad as the Nissan above though!

    hora
    Free Member

    I’ve had a Toyota that stuck in full/flat acceleration due to the mat fowling the pedal. I simply dipped the clutch and yanked that mat out but I remembered thinking that could have freaked/frozen anyone!

    A nut on the wheel though? ****. That turns you into an instant passenger in a big crash.

    andytherocketeer
    Full Member

    Gear knob came off one car. Think it was the Escort Mk1. Might have been the Maxi (would be more likely, but I don’t think it was that).

    Pug 306 had a safety recall for electrical wiring fault that could cause a fire.

    Pug 306 had lots more faults that were not safety recalls, but affected braking and lights mostly.

    Fortunately my Pug306 wasn’t one of those affected by fuel tank / fuel plumbing safety recall.

    nicko74
    Full Member

    I couldn’t work out if you meant the actual bolt, or the flesh and blood nut(ter) who holds the wheel in many cars…

    I had a driveshaft break on an old Ford E150 van on the freeway doing 70 outside San Diego. I was in the middle lane at the time; put the hazards on as I rapidly slowed down, then realised that I couldn’t actually indicate to pull over with the hazards on. Fortunately momentum kept me going until I could get to the hard shoulder.

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Was quite scary at first as I was stuck in gear on the A14 at about 70mph until I twigged I could lift it back up….

    A had a clutch cable snap on a roundabout and just had to keep driving round the roundabout a few more times trying to figure out what to do about it

    EDIT

    Ms Maccruiskeen had a set of new tyres fitted by National, next morning sets off on a journey down south and on the motorway slip road theres whirring, then rumbling then a shaking – pulls over and all the nuts on all the wheels are loose, as in undo them with your fingers loose. When she calls the headquarters of National to complain they tell her that because we live in the countryside its ‘much more likely’ that some crazed nutter is sneaking about our house at night loosening her wheel nuts to try an kill her than it being a case of the garage not tightening the wheels properly.

    klumpy
    Free Member
    meehaja
    Free Member

    went round a roundabout a bit fast. the seat in my very rusty escort tore through the apparently “more rotten that I thought” floor and lifted up on the right hand side. Mind you, this was the same car that used to entertain passengers with the strong smell of petrol and the occasional fires in the dash (“there’s an extinguisher in the glove box, just give it a blast through the hole where the stereo was”)

    I also had a gearbox seize up in an ambulance at speed once. I changed into third and it just stopped like i’d hit a wall. quite odd.

    LoCo
    Free Member

    Dad managed to pull the gear knob and whole gear stick out of the gearbox in a peugeot 305 while driving, saying that he was massive then.

    I managed to snap the driver seat clean off it’s mounts in a renault 11, there may have been a lady involved as well 😯

    molgrips
    Free Member

    A friend of mine was driving to see family in Norfolk when the clutch failed up in the Volvo, rendering her unable to change gear. Did she stop and see assistance? No, she carried on. Because it was flat open country she could see cars approaching roundabouts from some distance, so she’d slow down or speed up so she could jsut drive through the roundabout without stopping.

    Nutter.

    thegreatape
    Free Member

    Sounds like pretty good observation and planning to me, a commendable trait in a driver, certainly better than all those old dodderers that just sit in a line too frightened to overtake and so on.

    aracer
    Free Member

    After having a bit of work done on my car they didn’t do up one of the cables on my carb properly. This slipped whilst doing 70 on the motorway leaving me accelerating with my feet off the pedals. Fortunately the clutch did still work so I managed to steer it onto the hard shoulder and slowed down with the engine howling before turning it off.

    jackthedog
    Free Member

    Having only ever had French and British cars, it’d be easier to list the things that hadn’t at some point fallen off.

    However the best one was an old Peugeot. Just as I came to a gentle stop at some traffic lights, the corroded wing mirror mount sheared without warning. Each mirror had a large coil spring inside to keep tension whilst it could be manually adjusted, and the stored energy in this spring sent the mirror flying off the side of the car, landing a clear six foot into the adjacent lane.

    Once I’d retrieved it I noticed the occupants of the car behind me were in hysterics, which set me off to the point I had to pull the car off the side of the road until I’d stopped laughing.

    blurty
    Full Member

    The clutch failed on my old landrover, I then snapped the whole gearstick off after getting a bit aggressive with the clutchless gearchanges.

    (Still got home though, very slowly, using the overdrive to adjust the gearing!)

    glupton1976
    Free Member

    Clutch cable broke when I was visiting Alton Towers once – managed to get back to Dumfries without crunching the gears once.

    Murray
    Full Member

    In the back of an Austin 1100 when one of the wheels appeared bouncing down the road in front of us! Someone had nicked the wheel nuts. Recovered the wheel (it bounced about 200m down the road before falling over), took one nut from every other wheel and drove back carefully.

    khani
    Free Member

    About twenty years ago i had the brakes overheat and fail on a fully loaded 38ton Tesco fridge unit coming down death vally on the M62.. 😯
    My arse is still twitching…

    Drac
    Full Member

    Renault Masters had a great design where if the accelerator cable snapped is stayed fully on, happened to me twice just entering a busy market town.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    MG Midget, garage serviced it and didn’t put the fiddly and painfull to squeeze with bare hands clips back in place on the fuel pipe where it goes arround the air filter (stupid design), pipe came appart so engine runs on 2 cylinders (i.e. enough to rev it and assume it’s just having a senior moment) spinning the mechanical fuel pump madly, spraying petrol over the exhaust manifold and into the pedal box/footwell!

    How I didn’t die in a firey aramgeddon I don’t know! But I’ve never trusted anyone else to service my cars since!

    Had the spiggot fail on the same car, but that’s a fairly uneventfull occourance just very noisy as the gearbox tries to eat itself during each gearchange.

    LoCo
    Free Member

    That reminds me of a mate at uni who descided he needed to see inside the carbs of his GSXR 750 so used a lighter, small garage fire, bit of melted wiring and no eyebrows, everything (including him) was ok after fire put out and the rest of us had stopped laughing

    pjt201
    Free Member

    surely the most dangerous part of a car is the driver?

    aracer
    Free Member

    I also had a clutch failure – was fine in normal driving as I could do clutchless gear changes, but not so good when I hit stationary traffic on the M25.

    Drac
    Full Member

    surely the most dangerous part of a car is the driver?

    Oh dear.

    Had loads of clutch failures on the Masters and MkI Discoverys too but it’s not an issue.

    thetallpaul
    Free Member

    Modern cars are smooth….

    Driving from Leeds to Manchester on that there M62.
    Travelling along nicely for 20 miles when I had to brake for a line of traffic. Back end of car went all kind of skew-wiff (as did my arse).
    Pulled onto hard shoulder and examined rear passenger tyre. It was so hot that it was melting and I came away with a rather nasty burn.
    To top it all I drove off after changing the wheel without retrieving the security socket.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Modern cars are smooth….

    Driving from Leeds to Manchester on that there M62.
    Travelling along nicely for 20 miles when I had to brake for a line of traffic. Back end of car went all kind of skew-wiff (as did my arse).
    Pulled onto hard shoulder and examined rear passenger tyre. It was so hot that it was melting and I came away with a rather nasty burn.
    To top it all I drove off after changing the wheel without retrieving the security socket.

    What had actualy failed? Did you fix it or just put the spare on?

    thetallpaul
    Free Member

    Just fitted the spare.
    I must have had a puncture for a fair few miles, but as a Passat has all the road feel of a sponge I didn’t notice anything until I braked. I damn well noticed then!!!
    The tyre was so worn/melted that it was about ready to leave the rim.

    Stoner
    Free Member

    fitted a new bonnet release cable to the landrover.
    Didnt clip the throttle cable back in exactly the right place.
    On full lock the throttle cable would get bound up in the steering column universal joint.

    Odd sensation having it accelerate automatically around tight bends…

    greeble
    Free Member

    [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Sl8_9Ek-w[/video]

    hjghg5
    Free Member

    A clutch pedal once fell off when I was borrowing my mum’s Clio. It was parked at the time, I had been putting it into gear to move off.

    Luckily it was outside a bar on the coast in Spain (she live out there) so I had a pleasant wait for the recovery truck as I wasn’t going to be driving anywhere…

    brakes
    Free Member

    I drove from Leatherhead in Surrey to Doncaster, 200 miles, in a mk1 Freelander with no clutch. It was mostly fine – getting it moving on the starter motor a couple of times was a bit of a pain, and making the fateful mistake of parking up in a petrol station facing a wall was schoolboy error as I had to reverse it on the starter motor infront of a full service station…
    It was a company car which was going back anyway so I didn’t give a crap if I fried the starter motor or the gearbox.

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    surely the most dangerous part of a car is the driver?

    you need to re-read the title 🙂

    Anyway. The most dangerous part is always the tin of barley sugars. They’re dusted with ricin.

    cheers_drive
    Full Member

    The most dangerous part of a car is the nut(ter) that holds the steering wheel

    Drac
    Full Member

    The most dangerous part of a car is the nut(ter) that holds the steering wheel

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Tough crowd 🙂

    knightrider
    Free Member

    My car had been nicked, my brother lent me his xr3i, god it was a pos, gearbox dropped out, battery cable caught fire
    My all time worst experience was joining the m6 and the throttle sticking wide open, that was interesting

    transporter13
    Free Member

    I have a neighbour who now no longer speaks to me.

    I was working on my car (can’t remember what I was doing but it was under the bonnet). I’d just got back from a test drive and popped the bonnet to give a final visual check over and to clean the engine as it was dirty. As you do.
    Said neighbour was passing by walking his dog, we engaged in conversation( something to do about the engine) and started looking at it. Within seconds a huuuuge fireball had engulfed us.
    I ended up with no eyebrows, very little hair and most of my stubble singed off.
    He ended up with his beard on fire. Badly burnt head and his dog was a tad cooked too.

    I stank for days afterwards. No amount of showering would shift the smell.
    I still get funny looks now. This was 4 years ago now.

    Turns out it was the spray I’d used to clean the engine with.

    mrmo
    Free Member

    had the knob come off the gear stick on my driving test!!!! Peugeot 307.

    I passed so i guess i didn’t do anything wrong. Just not what you want to happen!!!!

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 49 total)

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