I was driving my 14 year old car down the main street of Champaign, IL, when suddenly the chassis broke and left the engine lying on the street. The engine was still attached to the drive train, however and I was able to pull into a parking place which was fortunately right there. I left a noticeable rut in the road. I just called a wrecker and wrote the car off.
Every light in my car went out, at 85 MPH at midnight, on I-96 going through Detroit last fall. I smote the fusebox and body control module with a hammer for a few minutes and they came back on.
It’s amazing how many cars seem to run out of petrol on such a relatively short stretch of road.
My car broke down in the middle of I-64 in St. Louis (one of the main arteries to and from downtown) as half the town was apparently going to a baseball game. I was six months pregnant, desperately had to pee and had to push the damn thing to the shoulder, after which I was given a stern talking to by the cop who at last arrived (he took a while in part because I was blocking a lane) for having pushed my car while pregnant. What the hell was I supposed to do? Pregnant or not, no one was helping, everyone was pissed and screaming and I was causing a huge traffic jam. At least I was in the right-hand lane.
One high school summer I caught a ride with a co-worker’s non-English speaking cousin from McAllen to Presidio to follow the cantelope packing season. We were somewhere between Del Rio and Marathon in arguably the most remote, desolate part of Texas about 2:00 am with him driving and me snoozing when I awake to the sound of tires squealing and see we’re doing circles, then plowing through a fence and then into a large mesquite tree.
We get out to assess the damage and one of the A frames for a front wheel is pointed off at some impossible angle. Fortunately there was one other car on the road, miles behind us, who’d seen us spin and pulled over to help. He gave my driver a ride to the next town to get a wrecker while I tried to drive real slow toward town. I got about 50 yards before the wheel literally fell off. I didn’t see any other car until hours later when the wrecker arrived.
Most of the next day we were in some god forsaken little hellhole of a town in a mechanic’s un-airconditioned shop, hotter 'n hell during the day, couldn’t hardly understand each other’s language and we still had hundreds of miles to go to reach Presidio. It was the very definition of suck.
I had an old Suburban that I drove up what is a notoriously steep and winding hill in Clark County Forest (Indiana). I got maybe 20 feet from the top and my radio started going in and out. At 10 feet my Suburban died and started rolling backward down the hill. My power brakes wouldn’t work and the e-brake wasn’t very good. I contemplated bailing and letting it go but quickly realized that it could hurt someone coming up the hill (though nobody was at the moment). So, I threw it in park and my newly rebuilt tranny made all kinds of wonderful noises.
I opened the hook after getting it stopped, and then I realized that my battery was the culprit, or rather the lack of tie downs. It tipped over because it wasn’t secured and grounded out on the horn. I ended up with battery acid on me and it was eating my clothes. Thus started what could have been a very long and horrible walk home, and after a mile or two someone picked me up and took me all of the way home. I had no cell phone back then, so some random stranger helped me after seeing my Suburban stranded up there and me walking.
That would be Cimarron Canyon in northern NM. It was a winding mountain road with very little shoulder and our lemon–I mean, Citation, developed an airlock. It stopped in the middle of the road right around a blind curve and I realized anyone coming around that curve wouldn’t see us until they hit us. By a combination of pulling and dragging, my mother, brother, sister, and I got the car to what passed for a shoulder and back to a “scenic view” spot while my father tried to start the thing in vain. He then hitched to a (very) small town to look for a tow; when he didn’t come back my mother floored the pedal a few times and got the car going again. We met my father returning from the small town, which did not have a mechanic, and took off for further adventures.
The other was back in ‘81 on a highway in Lumberton, NC–our Volare wore out a bearing on a Sunday which also happened to be the 4th of July. Fortunately there was a mom n’ pop garage nearby and pop fixed the problem.
Not me, but my mother-- major intersection near our house.
What made it bad/funny was that the car in question was on it’s way home from the mechanic. I think it had just gotten an oil change-- and the mechanic was horribly embarassed that he hadn’t realized that the alternator was dying.
That was actually the second alternator to fail in that car-- a Suburu. The first one had failed at actually a good point on my dad’s commute. Close enough to town that there were actual side roads to drive down, not so close to town as to be in major traffic.
I ran out of gas in the snow in Northern Virginia’s Route 50 / Arlington Blvd near Carlin Springs road back in the early 80s. I had no money for gas, and of course no cell phone because early 80s, and only a light coat. I did have AAA, though, so after walking through the snowstorm to a home nearby I found someone who let me use their phone, and made me a cup of coffee as well. When I got back to the car an Arlington County officer was behind it and we had a brief discussion about the fact that he had called a wrecker and AAA was sending help. He advised me that the county would tow my car and store it until I could get it back at some ungodly amount of money. It’s been years but I recall $50 for the tow and $10/day storage, and this was in 81 or 82, and the whole reason I was in this mess is I didn’t have 50 cents for gas, much less $50 for a tow.
Luckily the AAA folks won the race, got there first, and I was able to go.
I later learned that the AAA driver was supposed to charge me for the gas but went into his own pocket and never said a thing to me about doing that.
My wife? Inside the Lincoln Tunnel.
Me? In a parking garage by the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.
That one sucked because I was just a kid and was at a concert with my brother. It was one in the morning and we couldn’t get the car to start. We abandoned it and thankfully saw a friend of his driving out from the same concert, so we hopped in their pickup. Five minutes later the cops pulled us over and ticketed the friend for having six people in the cab. My brother and I rode back home in the pickup truck bed in the freezing Michigan winter air.
Mom went back to the scary city the next day with my brother to retrieve the clunker. I was happy to be sitting in class when that part happened.
My car died halfway down the mountain pass in one of the Cottonwood Canyons in Utah. I later learned it was a broken timing belt.
Nobody around. Almost no traffic that day. No homes or businesses within walking distance. This was pre-cellphone.
Added bonus: I had my date with me.
Plus sides: it was during the day, during mild weather. Coulda been worse. We got a ride down to the canyon mouth and called AAA.
Also bad: Driving across country with all my belongings in a trailer I just bought. I had six flat tires on the trailer along the way, and finally the trailer spring broke, rendering it unusable. The flat tires tended to come in inconvenient places, like between exits out on the plains of Iowa (where the exits are FAR apart). I would unstrap my bike and ride to the nearest exit. One time, as I did this, it rained. Fortunately, when the trailer spring broke, I was near a motel, so I pulled right in. I was able to sell the trailer (!!) and transfer my stuff to a U-Haul (which everyone told me my car would never be able to haul). Fortunately, they were wrong, although, crossing the continental divide, I was already in first, and thought I’d have to shift lower, and didn’t know how to do it. I thought I’d have to get out and push. But I was able to edge it over.
The Broadway Curve in Phoenix, I-10 during rush. I had told my hubby that the car was weird, he said I was weird. Suddenly nothing-a rear tire had left the axle I guess, car stopped moving forward. Car guys, I have no idea how to really say it, or what actually happened. It was a big old El Dorado with deep fenders (god-I dunno, the skirt over the wheels) and I had a full tank of gas, so the tire didn’t go anywhere. But neither did I. So stuck on the side of the road, pre-cell phone. Cops just blew by me like I was invisible. Finally a guy stopped and I asked him to call said dumb ass husband. More standing there. Husband shows up, tries to jack up rear of car to see what’s wrong, and I swear to og, he told me the tire just fell off. Wrecker came.
I broke down near Detroit as well. 1990: Cruising along on the freeway south of the city in a minivan with wife and four kids, when the damn thing just quit running. Heavy traffic, but I somehow managed to coast across two lanes to get to a patch of shoulder. No cell phones back then, of course (not common, anyway). I sat there for a few minutes, hoping a cop would come by, then decided to see if the thing would start again. To my surprise, it did. I was able to limp along to our destination in Great Lakes, and got it in to a mechanic. Turns out, the fuel pump (which was located inside the gas tank on that model) was failing.
In the Ted Williams Tunnel between Logan Airport and downtown Boston. At rush hour. In the fast lane. Fortunately I was able to drift powerlessly to the right and get stopped. Apparently it happens a lot, because there are procedures in place. A state police car gave me a push to the tunnel exit, then a Massport tow truck (they keep one on alert) to a parking area for just such occurrences, then an AAA truck back home. Turned out to be a mass airflow sensor, something which really has no right to cause a full breakdown - it wouldn’t have been a problem with a carburetor. Massport invoices AAA monthly for breakdown removals, the driver told me.
The Ted Williams Tunnel is well-named, btw - you’re stuck inside a cold steel tube there 
In the middle of the main drag in town, Sunday afternoon, smack in the middle of an intersection. The worst thing was that I was returning from judging homebrew at the local Renaissance Faire, and was in full costume. Nobody will stop and help someone like that, trust me. Eventually a couple of guys from the gas station on the corner stopped laughing enough to help me push the car into the station and out of traffic.
About 20 years ago, I was visiting some friends in the Phoenix area (they lived in Eloy). On my last night before flying home I got a room near the airport and we had a night on the town. The plan was for all of us to crash in my room and in the morning they would drop me off at the airport before driving back to Eloy.
We used my rental car for the evening’s festivities. Eventually, near midnight, we found ourselves at the entrance to South Mountain Park. We wanted to drive up and look at the city lights and they were supposedly open until midnight, but the gate was closed.
The exit was still open and we decided to drive in that way. The worst they could do was ask us to leave, and it wasn’t midnight yet so through the exit we went- the wrong way.
As we did so we all heard “Pop! Pop!”
We instantly looked at each other with a :eek: expression on our faces. It turns out there was a sign at the exit saying “Warning: Do not enter. Severe tire damage may result” which none of us had seen.
If you ever wondered, they aren’t kidding when they say “Severe tire damage”. The two tires on the passenger side went flat in seconds. We decided to forgo the trip up South Mountain and concentrate instead on getting back to the motel room.
As I mentioned, it was about midnight when all this happened. Did I mention that my plane left at 7 am? Oh, and none of us had a cell phone at the time. There was a country/western bar a short distance down the road from the park entrance so we drove there on two flat tires and used their pay phone to call a tow truck and a taxi.
Eventually the tow truck showed up and I asked the driver to take the car to the rental agency. Then the taxi showed up and we went back to the motel room.
A few hours later it was time to head for the airport. I woke up one of my friends and asked him to drive me to the car rental agency. When I got there the agent said “Oh, you’re the guy who had the car towed in last night!” He looked at my paper work and said “I have to remind you that you did not purchase the insurance and you are responsible for any damage to the vehicle.” I said “Yes, I know.”
A few weeks later I got a letter from the car rental agency saying they were investigating the incident and reminding me that I did not purchase the insurance and I was responsible for any damage to the vehicle. They said I would here from them again in the near future.
And that was the end of it. I never heard another word about it. No charges on my credit card or anything.
I Blew up the engine on my 4Runner in a canyon outside of Moab. It wasn’t all that far from town but I ended up having to get it towed to a Toyota dealer in Grand Junction to get it fixed. The repairs were going to take a couple of weeks so I took the train home and then flew back later to pick it up.
I had the same thing (broken clutch pedal) happen - also in a Mazda. I was approaching a red light at a very busy intersection during rush hour. I depressed the clutch pedal to down shift and - PING! - it sheared at the attachment point and fell into the floorboard. I put the car in neutral and coasted into the left turn lane. Here is how I got through the intersection and off the road:
- Turned off the engine
- Positioned myself so that my right big toe foot could manually depress the neutral safety switch (normally this is done by a tab on the clutch pedal assembly)
- Put the car in 1st gear
- When the car in front of me started moving, I turned the key to crank the car while depressing the neutral saftey switch with my toe (real life Twister, it was!)
- The engine lurched the car forward a few times, then cranked. I was able to drive the car in 1st gear to a nearby parking lot. In effect, I used the engine to push start the car.
It was a risky, dangerous plan but it worked. There was no way I would be able to drive it home in that condition. There are probably 20 stop lights along the way. I was not going to attempt that maneuver at potentially every one! That, plus the fact that the car, a 626, was virtually impossible to synchronized shift made towing the only real option.
If you can synchronize the speed of the engine to the speed of the trans it will shift smoothly with no clutch but it takes a bit of practice. A very low speeds it is not possible and you either have to jam it in gear ( causing damage) or crank the car while it is in gear.
I took the whole family to London (from Frankfurt) in the ol’ family Truxter, an '85 Ford LTD wagon. On the way back, we had gotten as far as Belgium, when the tailpipe rusted through behind the muffler and I was showering sparks for a mile before pulling over. Nothing I could do about it. I tried to get the detached piece out of there, but the pipe traveled over the rear axle at that point, and was still attached by a bracket hanger in the rear. I had no tools with me, and no way to tie the damn thing up so it wouldn’t drag the pavement. And it was getting dark and cold.
Just swell. Then along came a small yellow mini-wagon, who pulled in behind me and turned on a yellow warning flasher. On the side, it said “Wagon-Hulp” (Flemish). A cheerful man hopped out and said something in Flemish that I couldn’t understand, but I assumed he was saying “Problem?” I knew about seven words of German, so I said “Auspuffen ist kaput!” He actually understood me and peered under the car, laughed and said “Ja, ja, auspuffen kaput!” Then he asked me something that sounded like “Ah day ah say?” I was completely flummoxed. He repeated it, but I couldn’t make any sense of it. Suddenly, my wife says “Oh! ADAC!”, which is the European version of AAA, only much cheaper. I hauled out the paperwork and he set to work putting a sleeve on the tailpipe, no charge. Huge relief.