Merritt Parkway toll booth – clutch throw bearing, I think. Paid the toll, tried to move and the same kind of “Ping!” that other manual transmission owners in this thread have reported.
To tell you the truth, this was long enough ago so that I don’t even remember how inconvenient it was. I assume a tow truck was involved, as well as some irritated honking from the people behind me at the toll, but it’s all a blur.
Last winter my car died suddenly on Route 128 around Boston. In a snowstorm. At rush hour. In the Fast lane.
Fortunately, a police car showed up almost immediately, before I’d even finished dialing AAA on my cell phone.
*timing belt, again. Not the same car.
How long has it been since there were toll booths on the Merritt Parkway? Gotta be over 30 years.
Jeez, I had no idea some of my own disasters were so common!
Pregnant? Check. Me, about 7 months along with my first, and my then-husband. Just east of Cullman, Alabama. Middle of the night (of course!) on a weekend (of course!) The clutch went out on the Nissan, and my husband made me get out of the car and push while he steered to the shoulder. (There’s a reason he’s my EX husband!) Tow truck turned out to be an old F100 with some logging chains. (After spending most of Sunday learning that no one in or near Cullman had parts to repair it, a very nice tow truck driver - who happened to be from Crane Hill, Alabama - towed us home to Rome, Georgia, for $125. And he even let us go to the ATM in Rome before being paid, because we didn’t have the cash with us. As it happens, I have family friends in Crane Hill, Alabama, so “old home week” ensued during the drive.)
Out of gas? Around 2004 or 2005, I had to go to the bank before I could afford to put gas in the car. I had just cashed that check, and was driving the three blocks to the nearest gas station. Naturally, I hit a red light next to the court house… and the car died. I could see the gas station right across the intersection, for pity’s sake! (Gas was $4.289 per gallon that day.) And I had my kids with me - ages ~ six and three at the time. Happily, a nice deputy pulled up behind me and made his two prisoner transportees push the car into a parking space, and then he went and brought me a gallon of gas. Thanks deputy! (And prisoners!)
On a date? My first story happened on a first date. It was his car. I was driving it to get my own car, after he had been arrested for a bench warrant for a traffic violation! So there I was, trying to go get him out of jail, and I wreck his car, then I got arrested on suspicion of DUI (I was hyperventilating after the wreck - couldn’t blow the breathalyzer. Of course, I had just lived one of my worst nightmares, and, when the car hit the bridge abutment, I was glad to be wearing my seatbelt - I hit the door hard enough to open the door, plus open up a nice gash on my ankle, and bruise my face, hip, and shoulder quite beautifully.) Eventually, my mother came to get me at one police station, at which point I asked whether we could go pick up my date at the county jail! It was epic! (And, it was a first date. We went out for several months after that. I figured he must be insane!)
Anyone familiar with Philadelphia area roads will understand how bad these were:
My POS '74 Subaru stalled while I was in the left lane of the Schuylkill Expressway, tail end of rush hour. I was, fortunately, able to merge all the way to the right before running out of momentum.
Same car, on my way to a concert, stalled in the middle of the old Airport Circle in Camden. My very stoned passenger and I had to jump out of the car and push it into the parking lot of The Pub.
I-29 in northern Missouri in January at night. It was 9 degrees F. Whatever it was that broke took the power with it, so no heat. My girlfriend got it to a weigh station where we called AAA on the pay phone, but since we didn’t know where we were, the AAA person couldn’t send anyone. After about 3 hours of waiting I called the nearest sheriff’s department and they got the AAA to the right location. It was cold and the worst night of my life.
Our family of four had one of those! An orange one with the back windows that flipped open a little. My brother had a lot of fun folding his 6-foot self into the back seat of that thing.
Anyhoo, I’ve always wanted to explore national parks throughout this great country but these stories are making me think twice! The worst I’ve been through was tearing a hole in my tire during the coldest part of winter, but I was in town where I could get help. Not even worth mentioning!
I ran out of gas on Boston’s Tobin Bridge (inbound) during morning rush hour. I was lucky enough to roll all the way down the bridge to the bottom into an Exit split. There was a gas station less than half a mile away and I was on my way 30 minutes later.
When I was a kid my dad used to buy cars, repair them and sell them. It soon became apparent that if anything was ever going to go wrong on a car, it would do it while I was driving, so it became his routine to send me out in a car for a couple of day before he called it finished and put it up for sale.
I lived in a fairly small town with a lot of country around it and most of my friends lived outside of town. This was definitely pre cellphone era and I quickly learned to tell Dad my route and expected check in time because I had to be rescued from many dark quiet (scary) roads. I think I’d have preferred an extremely busy highway at rush hour.
On one of our many improbable trips across the northern tier of the US in winter, I passed on stopping in Fargo (it was -30F) and managed to run the car down to under an eighth of a tank, thinking I would be able to gas up in Detroit Lakes, MN. The only gas station I could find there was closed, and we - wife, 3 kids, dog and cat - faced the prospect of sleeping in the car for the night in subzero weather. I stayed parked under the gas station canopy, near the pumps, as I felt I couldn’t risk driving around looking for a motel. This was in the late 70s, so of course no cell phones.
As we sat there trying to keep warm, I saw lights in the mirror, and then the red lights of a cop car came on. The guy walked up to the car cautiously (can’t blame him), and I kept my hands on the wheel. He asked for ID and I opened my wallet, which exposed the small badge that, as an auxiliary police officer, we all carried. He asked if I was a cop, and I explained my volunteer status. He got on the radio, called the cop shop and told them to phone another local gas station and ask them to stay open an extra 15 minutes so I could get over there. Then he guided me to the place. Nice guy who really saved our bacon.
Lincoln tunnel (NYC) inbound, no breakdown lane, morning rush, wanna say sometime in 2000, I think. Transmission died and I just slowly lost power. Was amazed at how quickly they got a wrecker in to push me out to a spot where I could call triple A, though. I guess they must monitor the cameras pretty well.
Compared to those whose cars have broken down on congested roads or dangerous neighborhoods, mine is almost the exact opposite situation. My old VW bus died on I-80 about 10 miles west of Elko Nevada at 2 a.m. This was pre-cell days, so there was nothing for it but to start walking/hitching to Elko, where I lived at the time. For an interstate highway, there was a surprising lack of traffic at that hour. Almost none. And boy was it dark. And lonely feeling. The coyotes started to howl all around me. Mournful and eerie. And dark. And lonely.
Ditto. Under the overhang, or whatever it’s called, near the UN area. Mine stopped completely, but I was able to get it going again in a minute or two.
Bay Area drivers may recognize the Mazeas a bad place to break down, but sure enough, that’s where we snapped a clutch cable on a Saturday evening. Right about at the tip of that “A” flag, with no breakdown lane or any semblance of a place to get out of there until a Caltrans tow truck could get to us through the resulting backup.
Then there was the time the engine expired with a blown head gasket in the Bay Bridge toll plaza during morning rush, which usually looks like thiseven without a stalled car or transit strike. Trust me, I made it worse. :eek: :smack:
Years ago I owned a Pontiac minivan. The transmission was almost shot. It would not go in reverse at all anymore, but I had no problems in other gears. I parked in the drop off/pick up horseshoe area of my daughter’s elementary school to drop something off during school hours. The spot I parked on was on a hill - nose down. When I came back to my car, someone had parked directly in front of me and incredibly close to the front of my car. I could not get out, or go in reverse, so I was stuck! I went into the office and they paged the owner of the vehicle in front of me so she could move and let me out. :smack: So, it didn’t really die, but boy was it embarrasing.
I broke down in a pretty bad area of Detroit. There was a sketchy homeless guy standing nearby.
I gave him five bucks to keep an eye on my car and told him I’d give him five more when I returned from my walkabout to find a pay phone.
He did a good job.
mmm
I was traveling to KC with some friends late one night, and we were probably ten miles from the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, when we ran out of gas. At about 11:30 PM. Before cell phones.
Kansas cops don’t take kindly to hitch-hikers in the dead of night, ten miles from a federal prison.
In the drive-thru at a local ice cream place. Cars in front of me, cars behind me, the building to my left and a fence to my right. No way out. I had to get out and push it as the line advanced, making a hard right turn at the end. Not ONE person offered to help me.
My (now ex) boyfriend and I were leaving Cape Hatteras one night to drive back to Greenville (NC) where he lived at the time. We both said, “Maybe we should gas up before we leave the island. Naaaah, we’ll find a gas station on 64” not realizing two things:
We also didn’t know the most important part:
So there we were, running out of gas on Highway 64 while all the gas station owners slept comfortably in their beds. Then we saw an orange light off to the right. We headed towards the light, as one is supposed to do.
The light was the Hyde County Jail. The car died as soon as we pulled into the parking lot.
One of the guards was getting off duty when we arrived. He ran home to get a gas can and gave us a couple of gallons. That’s when my fuel line got clogged with the crud and we were well and truly stuck. We called AAA and got them to send out a tow truck driver–from Greenville, which was still about an hour and a half away.
The prison guards were glad to see us because they had someone to talk to. They have a very boring job, we discovered. Well, it’s one of those jobs you want to be boring, but still.
The tow truck finally came at about 2 a.m. and took us home before dropping the car off at the local Nissan place. The next morning I called my dad to let him know I’d be a couple of days late coming home while my car was being worked on. He didn’t care–my oldest sister had just gone to the hospital to have her second son.
And that’s why I remember that the day I broke down was July 20, 2003.
This was the mid-80’s, so yeah.