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Pick your favorite iconic car from any decade....

#2,901
hbarcat said:
It was common in the 80s and 90s for older, warn out cars with more than 150,000 miles on the clock, for wheel bearings to fail catastrophically, resulting in wheels falling off while driving (most often at high speed, when higher bearing temperatures are produced).

I personally know quite a few people who've experienced wheels falling off while driving, although none of them in the 21st century.

Vehicles are vaaaaaastly safer now than they were only a decade ago
Click to expand...
 
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#2,902
Oh, hey, we're veering off into "My car tried to murder me!" stories. Cool! I have two.
First one - I was about 23. Living in LA, driving a grey primer VW Squareback. Like this one, more or less, but way uglier.
I was in the 3rd lane (next to the fast lane) on the 101 Freeway. The hood... unlatched, blowing up into the windshield, completely obstructing my view.
This was LA. Needless to say, cars were not going to slow down to let me get to the shoulder... Head out the window so I could see, I managed to get over to the side of the road.
It was hairy.
for-sale-Vw-type-3-Squareback-69.jpg
 
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#2,904
Second one -Beautiful car. Fun to drive. Just occasional murderous intent.
This car. This road, too. Wonderful twisty mountain road that I know well. Twilight, top down, cruising down the road at a snappy rate of speed. I tap the brake to slow before a turn in the road.
Three things happen. The "check engine" light comes on. The brake pedal is throbbing/bouncing beneath my foot. And the car is swerving wildly.
I manage to slow the car down by downshifting and there just happens to be space to pull out up ahead (which is not the case on most of the road). My adrenaline and heart rate are through the roof.
An oil hose popped (hence the light), spraying oil all over the road and the wheels, which triggered the traction control and ABS circuits to begin pumping, but with oil slick wheels all that did was swerve, swerve, swerve.
I drove that car (after getting all the hoses replaced) for perhaps another year, but I never fully trusted it after that.

jag09.jpg
 
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#2,905
kesslari said:
Second one -Beautiful car. Fun to drive. Just occasional murderous intent.
This car. This road, too. Wonderful twisty mountain road that I know well. Twilight, top down, cruising down the road at a snappy rate of speed. I tap the brake to slow before a turn in the road.
Three things happen. The "check engine" light comes on. The brake pedal is throbbing/bouncing beneath my foot. And the car is swerving wildly.
I manage to slow the car down by downshifting and there just happens to be space to pull out up ahead (which is not the case on most of the road). My adrenaline and heart rate are through the roof.
An oil hose popped (hence the light), spraying oil all over the road and the wheels, which triggered the traction control and ABS circuits to begin pumping, but with oil slick wheels all that did was swerve, swerve, swerve.
I drove that car (after getting all the hoses replaced) for perhaps another year, but I never fully trusted it after that.

View attachment 4208476
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Wow.

Similarly:

I was driving in the middle of a dark night on the highway.

Suddenly: BANG! Hood flipped up and all of my pedals got sucked into the engine bay.

I did a nice riverdance while screaming.

Engine decided to self-destruct. (Connecting rods broke.)
 
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#2,906
When I was 18 or so I had a 61 Rambler American. I was driving down I-71 in Columbus on an older part of the freeway that had impossibly short exit ramps and I discovered that I had no brakes. The exit ramp was fairly flat since the freeway was an underpass at the cross street, so there was nothing going to slow me down aside from anemic engine braking and diminishing inertia. Luckily there was no traffic crossing as I whipped through the red light an made a hard right turn on 2 wheels. The street went under a RR overpass, and past the RR it started to rise which slowed me down a bit but I still went through two more traffic signals and another right turn before I came to a stop.

That car had very little power to begin with - zero to sixty in maybe 30 seconds - and awful vacuum operated wipers. I hated that stupid excuse for a car.
F1E35AA6-1A3E-4EAC-8AC0-5DDB43889ECA.jpeg
 
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#2,907
Veering off topic: but here is an anecdote about trucks and I am the idiot culprit.

When I was 21 I got my large truck license. (Trucks over 7.5 tonnes.)

My boss said: good to know, now I can send you out if I need to.

So the first time I was sent to pick up materials from a suplier not too far away.
It was a truck, single cab, windows in the back and large open bed.

Drove over there, and they loaded two pallets onto the bed. Pallet in the front had a large inox box on it, pallet in the back a stack of inox plates.
The plates were wrapped in foil.
I strapped it down, but didn't want to tention the straps hard over the plates for fear of bending them. It's a short low-speed drive anyway.

On the way back I suddenly had to break hard to give way to a car who had the right of way.

I heard some sliding and looked back. I couldn't see the pallet with the plates anymore.

Oh no, I might have killed someone. I looked around me, on the road, beside the road to see where the pallets and plates might have ended up. Couldn't see it anywhere. I didn't want to get out of the truck because there was traffic and there was no place to park. I very carefully drove back to my workplace, dreading what might have happened to the plates.

When I got back I checked the bed. The pallet had slid forward an the plates were wedged between the first pallet and the inox box.

I quickly got a forklift and carefully unloaded the cargo. Luckily no real damage. I didn't tell anyone.

Lesson learned. Since that day I became a harder strapping young lad.
 
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#2,908
D M C said:
When I was 18 or so I had a 61 Rambler American. I was driving down I-71 in Columbus on an older part of the freeway that had impossibly short exit ramps and I discovered that I had no brakes. The exit ramp was fairly flat since the freeway was an underpass at the cross street, so there was nothing going to slow me down aside from anemic engine braking and diminishing inertia. Luckily there was no traffic crossing as I whipped through the red light an made a hard right turn on 2 wheels. The street went under a RR overpass, and past the RR it started to rise which slowed me down a bit but I still went through two more traffic signals and another right turn before I came to a stop.

That car had very little power to begin with - zero to sixty in maybe 30 seconds - and awful vacuum operated wipers. I hated that stupid excuse for a car.
View attachment 4208507
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Yeah but did it have fold-down seats? :D
 
#2,916
Mike N said:
Been there, done that. Neighbor's F350 with 42" Super Swampers, he had the wrong lug nuts on the front wheels and one came off when we were doing about 45mph..... imagine being passed by a 42" tire on a main road.

Other than my neighbor's pride and a rather expensive front brake rotor, no one was hurt.
Click to expand...

hbarcat said:
It was common in the 80s and 90s for older, warn out cars with more than 150,000 miles on the clock, for wheel bearings to fail catastrophically, resulting in wheels falling off while driving (most often at high speed, when higher bearing temperatures are produced).

I personally know quite a few people who've experienced wheels falling off while driving, although none of them in the 21st century.

Vehicles are vaaaaaastly safer now than they were only a decade ago
Click to expand...

René_Julien said:
I saw that once being a passenger in a semi-truck.

One the wheels of the trailer came off. It passed us, started bouncing, and bounced over an overpass, on to the oncoming lane and into the grass.

No accidents luckily.
Click to expand...
I didn't realize it was fairly common.:oops:
 
#2,917
FilterFunk said:
I didn't realize it was fairly common.:oops:
Click to expand...

We see "wheel offs" rather often in the salt belt on cars with aluminum rims. Steel hubs, road salt and aluminum hate each other and the result is corrosion on the mounting surfaces. Couple all of that with an inexperienced tire jockey at the local tire shop and it's a recipe for disaster. You need to take the time to clean the mating surfaces of any corrosion and torque the lug nuts properly to avoid issues...... sadly the young kids play NASCAR pit stop, bang the lugs down in one swoop and ship it.

Sadly in NY you need a license to cut hair but not to work on cars.
 
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