Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[baconsdozen]

Anyone whos messed about with old cars will have stories to tell of when things went wrong. Some of these stories could have had a very different outcome but for chance.
The one that I remember was taking the prop shaft off an old rover 90 at a scrap yard (back in the days when we were allowed to do such things). The car had been perched on some big empty oil drums and lorry wheels for weeks and rocking it and pushing had no effect so under I went with a handful of spanners.
I had almost got the thing off when I sensed the thing was falling and crawled out as fast as I could,it came down with a bang and as the wheels were off I doubt I would have survived,the car when it landed broke a St Christopher that I wore on a chain round my neck,I ended up with just a small scratch.
Anyone else had a near call because of an interest in old cars?.
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Thirty years selling imperial hand tools for old machinery(Now happily retired).

[Ashley]

Not old cars, but my parents bought a huge country house in the early sixties and with it came an enormous vegetable garden and an adjoining shed. In it was a large and ancient garden tractor, which we decided to start. I should think it was a good 500cc side valve that had a crank handle. I put petrol in it, flooded it and cranked it. It immediately started, the crank handle stuck on the engine and the governor jammed open. It was revving it's head off and we were in a small shed waiting for the crank handle to fly off and kill us. I've never been as scared, but in the end I decided it was safer to press the kill switch on the magneto than to walk past the crank for a second time to get to the door.

[exbmc]

At the back end of my apprenticeship, i started doing jobs with a lad from the Standard - Triumph distributors opposite. We did quite a bit for a mates bodyshop, seeing to the mechanical needs of damaged cars, while the body boys did their bit. They wanted an engine out of a A40 Farina, and we turned up with our chainblock and tripod frame. They said, you won't need the tripod, there is a heavy rope loop in the roof beams. Hung the chainblock on the loop, and got on with engine removal. I started to work the chain to lift, while my mate wriggled the engine off the gearbox. Suddenly, the rope loop parted, (it turned out to be rotten) and the chainblock whacked into the front scuttle, missing my mates head by a whisker. I was nearly sick when the realisation came in, my mate was so close to having a smashed head. Over 40 years ago now, but i still think about this incident, particularly if i have to use a crane.

[Rusty]

Ashley, I can relate to your story quite a lot and this is why.
This is the incident I still have nightmares about what may have happened, but I will only share some of the blame.

My little vintage group were involved with a vintage machinery display in my local town showing some of the districts old tractors ect, and in the display we had a Field Marshal tractor. These old 40 odd horsepower single cylinder Diesel Field Marshals can be started with a 12 gauge starting cartridge but could also be crank started with a crank handle about two and a half foot long made out of about inch and a half shaft and weighing probably 15 lbs. I had been starting it regularly with the crank handle during a 2 day show when one of our other members less familiar with it than me asked if he could start it this time. He had done it in the past a few time so I said yes it would be OK and I set up the decompressor, hot spot paper and throttle, inserted the crank in the correct position so it fires on the "up" pull as the decompressor drops out and let him crank it. He did everything right except hang onto the crank as it fired ! He let go the handle and we had this 15 lb crankhandle doing about 800 rpm held in by goodluck. There was about 60 spectators watching this and I was imagining what would happen if this thing came off and carved a 3 foot swath through the spectators. Luckily I managed to get to the throttle and shut it down before it came off. After that we made a decision that it would only ever be cartridge started at public displays.

[Ashley]

We easily forget how cranking anything could be terrifying. My mum worked on my great grandfathers estate during WWII and she often told of how they'd have to light a fire under a Fordson to get the oil thin enough to start it and then how they'd kick back viciously if you got it wrong. Once one man got hit on the head and knocked out and mum had to walk/run about a mile for help!

He was only coming round when they got back with a Doctor an hour later and still he insisted on working all day. He was quite unwell, but survived, which we now know was because he was incredibly lucky.

[baconsdozen]

I seem to remember something about the invention of the starter motor was brought about after a friend of the inventor was killed by a starting handle.
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Thirty years selling imperial hand tools for old machinery(Now happily retired).

[V8 Nutter]

[baconsdozen]

Thanks,I was sure I'd read about that somewhere.
The post above about the field marshall tractors reminded me of seeing one that had been left ticking over whilst its driver had his lunch break,when he came back it had vibrated itself into the soft ground down to its belly.
I also remember going to a scrapyard years ago near Norwich called "Dawsons" and seeing loads of them in a line all waiting to be stripped or scrapped. I wonder what they'd be worth now.
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Thirty years selling imperial hand tools for old machinery(Now happily retired).

[MikeEdwards]

Driving to a pub in my old 1600 Firenza, I saw headlights catching up with me so I decided, as you do, not to make it too easy for him to get past me. I got to quite a speed on a long straight road but he still passed as if I was stopped. Ah well, not the fastest car in the world after all, so we carried on to the pub. Once in the car park, I turned the steering wheel to back into a space only for the rubber link in the steering to break apart, leaving the steering wheel spinning freely. Obviously it was hanging by a thread and only broke because of the extra force when turning at low speed. Could have been nasty a few minutes before.

[bob2]

A similar thing to Mike's happened to me once. I had a clubman estate for a couple of years and once after a saturday night of drinking with friends at Paceville (local nightlife village) it was time up. I was together with my cousin since we lived near each other and on the way home I was feeling the steering a tad funny not responding as well as usual. I told him but we decided to carry on none the less. When we got to the street before ours we had to turn left and then right at a very low speed. We never did the first turn to the left as the steering wheel just spinned freely. I came up with an idea, we got out, I got the right wheel and he got the left wheel and turned them left by hand, drove a metre or so and turn the wheels right again by hand. Thank God there was a free parking bay and we just drove it in there and left it for the night and walked home. The next morning we met up to investigate the thing and we found out that the nut and bolt holding the steering rod to the rack had come loose and the splines slowly worked loose, simple fix, re attach everything as it should but this time I decided to put a lock nut instead of a normal nut and it never gave me any problems again.
But when we thought about it, what would have happened if it had gone on our way home whilst moving at much faster speed!

[Rick]

A rapid run back from North Wales in my 2.5 Spitfire, in convoy with my brother's modified Mini, was followed the next day by the front suspension upright shearing off at the top of our road on its next drive out. The same car also had a rear halfshaft UJ disintegrate at 50mph, that made quite a racket as the wheel flailed about within the arch.

RJ
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[BSV205F]

In 1988 with a 1600E having to cross the busy fast moving A9 just outside Perth to get to the central island to then join the other carriageway-half way across the engine started to scream and the car stopped managed to jump out and push it back in to the road I had been on (luckily nothing behind me). I then sat for about an hour trying to get calm enough to see what went wrong-the main wheel in the diff bolts had sheared as the prop was still turning when in 1st gear The best bit about all this was that the RAC lad who came and gave me a tow had a good diff in his garage he gave me

[badhuis]

Around 1986 we drove on the motorway quite fast in the Mini 1100 Special of my grirfriend when we heard a big rattling and I had the steering wheel wobbling. Managed to move into the hard shoulder and saw that the big nut of the front hub had removed itself and the wheel was completely loose
The recovery service guy said he knew a scrapyard nearby and he would be back. And he did, bringing a nut so he could repair on site.
Only after a while we realized we had been very lucky!
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a car stops being fun when it becomes an investment

[baconsdozen]

A pal of mine dropped the top of a spark plug straight down tghe plug hole when cleaning the plugs on his Mk 9 jag.
He'd rebuilt the engine a while before and didn't face the prospect of taking the head off again.Taking a calculated gamble he took all the plugs out and spun the engine on the starter.
After a couple of seconds it shot out,hit the underside of the bonner and hit him on the forehead. Although it hurt he laughed until someone pointed out it had hit a couple of inches from his eyes.
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Thirty years selling imperial hand tools for old machinery(Now happily retired).

[peter scott]

Ten or fifteen years ago I was approaching a roundabout in the old Jag and there was a car on the roundabout that required me to brake for me to give way to him.

Unfortunately braking caused my car to pull heavily to the right and there was a horrible gronshing noise from the nearside front. I managed to give way to the car on the roundabout but it was a close run thing.

I got out to inspect the nearside and found that the wheel had overrun its splined hub. When this happens the wheel rotation on braking unwinds the wheel spinner, mine was lying a few yards behind the car on the verge!

I refitted the spinner and tightened it as hard as I could but I was about 10 miles from home at this point and any time that I had to apply even the slightest braking effort I had to stop and retighten the spinner.

You be saying "why did you not just use the handbrake?" thus avoiding torque on the front hub but in the 1939 SS Jaguar the handbrake operates on all four wheels.

I bought a new wheel centre and rebuilt the stripped wheel and also replaced all four splined hubs and am happy to report no repeat of this scarey problem.

Peter
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1939 SS Jaguar 2 1/2 litre saloon