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In my last post ( The Inglorious Cars of My Past ) you may remember my mentioning of Rot Pie, my 1978 F250 which, among many other redneck-inspired downgrades (like an exhaust made of galvanized fence posts), had the spider gears all welded together creating a poor man's spool. This was merely one of many horrors I have uncovered while ironing out the squeaks, rattles, fires, and gremlins in used cars I have purchased or worked on for friends or customers. Here are a few of my favorite preowned horror stories.
The Telephone Pole Panhard Rod.
Anyone who knows good suspension knows the value of a panhard rod in keeping a differential seated. Anyone who buys a 1970 Chevy Nova should check to make sure the differential isn't held in place by something that was once a billboard for weekly garage sales . Yep, the poor guy who came in my shop complaining about the hard ride on his newly acquired muscle-car wasn't ready for the cellulose horror of a chopped piece of telephone pole stuck between the top of the differential and the trunk floor.
It was quite a feat of back-woods engineering. The skill of the lumberjack who meticulously carved this tar-addled wood to the contours beneath the Nova was impressive. He drilled a hole all the way through it, inserted a steel rod, put some U-bolts around the steel rod and the axle tubes then drive about 20 nails and screws through the trunk floor into the top of the post. The leaf spring mounts had long ago turned into iron ore, so simply removing the post wouldn't solve the problem. After I quoted the customer for some extensive welding work, new springs and a new rear brake hose, (which had been removed and blocked off with brass fittings rendering the rear brakes inoperable) the owner declined. Thankfully, I never saw this car again.
Nothing is much worse than having your car overheat, leaving you stranded on the first really hot day of a muggy Chicago summer. Nothing except finding out the reason the car overheated that is. When the Camaro came into the shop, it seemed like a pretty standard affair. Bad thermostat? Nope. Leaky hose? Nope. How about a radiator that had completely rotted out and was bypassed so the A.C. condenser could be used to cool the engine? Yep, that's right. Some aspiring plumber -through the use of dozens of brass and galvanized fittings- managed to reduce the radiator hoses sufficiently to connect them to the inlet and outlet of the defunct A/C condenser. Apparently this little trick provided enough cooling to get the owner through spring. A new radiator and a couple of hoses later and I had them back in business. After contemplating how R12 freon would react when exposed to antifreeze, the A.C. was not returned to an operational state.
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