MaxN
Part of things
Posts: 482
|
|
|
My ex-Brother-in-Laws Opel Manta GTE.
He needed more reliable 4-door car and I owned a 4-door Cavalier CD that I no longer needed due to getting a company Alfa 156, she persuaded me to swap the Cav for the Manta, then sell the Manta. He drove it over to my place, we did the paperwork and he departed. Before I wrote the advert up for the Manta I thought it would be good to take it around the block, in the rain.
Had I looked it over before hand, I would never have attempted it, but all four tyres were down to the canvas, the throttle was really stiff and sticky which meant that there were two choices 'on' or 'off'. The brakes were almost entirely non-existent, the tracking was miles out and the front suspension super soft. That little drive was the most scary of my life. Literally barely controllable sideways moments everywhere.
Before I sold it, I fixed the suspension, brakes, throttle linkages, tracking and stuck some part-worn tyres on it - it drove pretty well after that and I had a certain reluctance to let it go
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I drove a mini home for 18 miles with no glass, no front wings, no bonnet and an orange (race edition) bucket for a seat. You needed to be Mystic Meg to drive it as you needed to know 5 minutes in advance when to pump the brakes.
Those were simpler times.
|
|
1994 S1 106 Rallyé 1996 Mini Cooper 1.3 MPI (Rust bucket, currently in for surgery/resto) 2003 Renaultsport Clio 172 (Daily beater)
|
|
vanpeebles
Part of things
I am eastbound in pursuit of a white Lamborghini, this is not a recording.
Posts: 978
|
|
|
I was a passenger in a mates 998cc with a sticky throttle and drum brakes all round, and 10" wheels. It was a completely different experience to my 1275 injection on 12" tyres. Very raw and pretty scary
|
|
|
|
retrolegends
Club Retro Rides Member
Winging it.....Since 1971.
Posts: 3,714
Club RR Member Number: 94
|
|
|
This
|
|
1974 Hillman Avenger 1500DL1992 Volvo 240SE1975 Datsun Cherry 100a flying custard1965 Hillman SuperMinx Rock N Roller1974 Austin Allegrat Mk1 1.3SDL1980 Austin Allegro Mk3 1.3L1982 Austin Allegro Mk3 on banded steels2003 Saab 9-3 Convertible 220bhp TurboNutter1966 Morris Minor 1000 (Doris) 2019 Abarth 595C Turismo (not retro but awesome fun) www.facebook.com/DatsunCherry100a
|
|
brc76
RR Helper
Posts: 1,107
|
|
|
1984 Austin Maestro.
Worn su carb, so would run out of oil in the dashpot if left more than a few weeks. Once out of oil the throttle would stick open as far as you had pressed it. I, to my discredit, learned how to drive it with various positions of stuck, using the gears / brakes / ignition to modulate my speed. I lived in southsea in Portsmouth and would regularly get to and from shirley in Southampton like that. A girl lived there. You know where my 19 year old mind was making priorities.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The most dangerous thing I've drove, golf mk2 where rear wheel cylinder popped out leaving me with no brakes, used my friends e46 as a bumper to get home late at night to ensure the smallest chance of hitting anyone else.
The most dangerous vehicle I've ever used entirely.... Honda mtx125.
Have you ever bought an old crosser from a car boot for less than £400 that apparently was taxed and MOTd? I have, the frame had been brush painted white, when they did this they moved the wiring to the headlights and gauges, when they refit them they didn't align it all properly so the forks and tank rubbed through the wires, I didn't find this out until I was following my mate down an unlit A road at past 11pm in the winter. One minute lights, next minute nothing. Being an indestructible two stroke it still ran fine. I again followed my friend home riding as close to him as I could to ensure I could see and if someone could see him then crossed fingers I wouldn't get hit by them. I did what I could with the wiring but after that it would pop bulbs, whether they were headlights, brake lights or indicators it didn't matter. It was missing panels and generally rough as old boots across the board, the chain tentsioner was cross threaded which I noticed when the bike started to crab down the road one day.
I've got a picture of this motorbike somewhere, I'll try find it. Why did I buy it in the first place? My previous motorbike which was only 3 months old had gotten stolen, you might be thinking wow insurance pay-out and get another, well, the bike I had before was one of those chinese buckets that only cost £500 new and it was a gift to me from my parents for my 18th, it wasn't cool, fast or anything really and had already started to fall apart so I was kind of glad it got stolen in one way. I went to Newark auto jumble with my dad and quite literally bought the first thing we saw that had an MOT.
|
|
|
|
vanpeebles
Part of things
I am eastbound in pursuit of a white Lamborghini, this is not a recording.
Posts: 978
|
|
Jun 10, 2019 10:42:17 GMT
|
1984 Austin Maestro. Worn su carb, so would run out of oil in the dashpot if left more than a few weeks. Once out of oil the throttle would stick open as far as you had pressed it. I, to my discredit, learned how to drive it with various positions of stuck, using the gears / brakes / ignition to modulate my speed. I lived in southsea in Portsmouth and would regularly get to and from shirley in Southampton like that. A girl lived there. You know where my 19 year old mind was making priorities. When I rebuilt the SUs on my MGB, I fitted the dashpot washers on the top, which were included but only if you had the metal top caps. I have the plastic tops. Both popped loose while I was driving home from work, and I got stuck behind a cyclist with it overfuelling like mad, I went to overtake, floored it, and there was a massive car shaking backfire. I didn't even dare look in the mirror!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jun 10, 2019 10:44:15 GMT
|
I had an old Hillman Avenger that I painted matt black - 'It needs lowering says I' so my brother and law and I got the angle grinder out and chopped 2 springs off the front - stood back - not low enough so chopped another off - looked good. Moved to the back and chopped 3 coils straight off - stood back - hmmm about 2" higher than front - chop another off - stood back - no difference! Looked underneath and exhaust was sat on rear axle hence it wouldn't go lower. Chopped off exhaust and made it side exit but of course this meant that the back was 4 coils lower than standard - I can't count on both hands how many times the exhaust got ripped off by CATS EYES! God I loved that car. It was even an automatic and because the shift cable kept getting scraped, it only had drive or reverse and neutral. No park, and the inhibitor did nothing.
|
|
96 E320 W210 Wafter - on 18" split Mono's - Sold :-( 10 Kia Ceed Sportwagon - Our new daily 03 Import Forester STi - Sold 98 W140 CL500 AMG - Brutal weekend bruiser! Sold :-( 99 E240 S210 Barge - Now sold 02 Accord 2.0SE - wife's old daily - gone in PX 88 P100 2.9efi Custom - Sold
|
|
Fossilfish
Part of things
Thank fossils for fuel!
Posts: 653
|
|
Jun 10, 2019 14:48:10 GMT
|
Hands down series 3 land rover in good road worthy condition. Was a real pig to drive, brakes were non existent, steering was very vague and gears a shot in the dark.
Felt most unsafe in a bedford rascal (was fun compared with the landy)
|
|
Last Edit: Jun 10, 2019 14:48:23 GMT by Fossilfish
Thank fossils for fuel!
1996 Jeep XJ Sport 2.5 Manual 1975 Scimitar 3.0 V6
|
|
|
|
Jun 11, 2019 17:32:28 GMT
|
My company had a Standard Pennant van ran on a shoe string / loads of steering play and a wannabee mechanic took the drums off and filled them with talcum powder to keep it going. That strange delivery van was an accident waiting to happen. Once i knew of the talcum powder trick i let other more eager workers drive it.
|
|
Started out with nothing and have most of it left.
|
|
|
|
|
Jun 11, 2019 19:42:48 GMT
|
I've driven a lot of old rubbish in my time, mechanics tend to own cars that others have thrown away, but 3 stand out in my memory as particularly unsafe, the 61 Austin Westminster with one headlight hanging out of the wing on its wires, no exhaust back of the down pipes and very little brakes, The Alfasud Sprint that had cracked across the bulkhead so completely that the only thing holding the front end on was the bonnet catch and sundry wires, finally, the TVR 3500SE that a mate still owns, ridiculously powerful, wooden steering, horrid spongy brakes that defy all attempts to improve, a handbrake that works once a year for the MOT, erratic electrics, massive scuttle shake and a bad attitude! It tells you through every manoever that any liberties taken will result in your sudden and painful death (and there is absolutely ZERO crash protection, you'd be safer on a motorcycle!)The TVR is the scariest of them all, because it was actually BUILT like this!
Steve
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jun 11, 2019 19:59:08 GMT
|
I would have to say the most dangerous car ive ever owned would have to be this one. I saw an advert in the Maxi Club magazine for a very early 1 owner from new 1750 HL with fabric (webasto) sunroof. Everything on the car that would usualy be black on the car, was brown (infills on chrome body strips, dashboard, sunroof, all brown). This made it a VERY rare car, my dad was all over it like a rash. Oh yeah, it was free. Dad gave me a set of 14in wheels (he'd never so much given me a square of chocolate from his wholenut bar before), and I lowered it, and cruised it about being cool, while getting showered by rust that kept on falling out of the sunroof every time I opened and shut it. There was the odd occasion that the car felt abit strange, but I put that down to lowering it. About a month after I bought it I wizzed all the way round to the other side of the M25 from where I am to enfield car show, took some pics for the lady (its all she asked for in return for the car), and flew back round the M25 to home. The next day I drove a short distance to drop off the photos, and on my return journey the car felt really odd, like one side of it was on casters, or made of jelly. It felt ok in a straight like and when i wobbled the steering, but going round a bend it did it again. As I aproched a set of traffic lights i braked, there was a bang, and it felt like the nsf wheel had fallen off and the car shot off to the left and parked itself between 2 parked cars, to this day I don't know how i didnt hit anything. On investigating what had happened, the bottom arm had ripped itself away from the front subframe. chek ma stance Further investigation revealed that the car had been bodged by her local garage for years, the subframe and all important places in the bodyshell had simply been welded over the top with fizzy pop can thickness metal, leaving the rust behind it. A number of things could have failed on that car at any moment, and only a day before that happened I had been tanking it around the M25. If it had happened on the M25......... Cool whilst it lasted.
|
|
Last Edit: Jun 11, 2019 20:00:25 GMT by bmcnut
|
|
|
|
Jun 11, 2019 22:41:53 GMT
|
I think most of my cars have been dangerous at one point or another. My Beetle has a stupid engine with 4 times the factory horsepower and standard drum brakes. Over the last month or so these poxy things have resisted all attempts to fix them by replacing all the fluid (it was very old), changing some of the pipes, bleeding it several times so last time I drove it I simply push the pedal three times to make it stop. I now have a new master cylinder waiting to go on next time I feel brave enough to drive it to school. My wife's type 25 camper wandered alarmingly when we drove it home from Coventry to Kingswinford - turned out one of the steering donuts (like the beetle ones, but there are three on a T25) had disintegrated. The bolts were still there, as were the steel sleeves over the bolts, but all that connected the two halves of the steering was the nylon reinforcing string that would originally have been moulded into the rubber of the donut. There was no rubber at all. My Karmann Ghia was special. First time I drove it was towing it home having just bought it. It had been sat in a damp garage for four years so the brakes didn't really inspire confidence, I couldn't engine brake because there was no engine. It had been lowered FIVE splines on the back and had worn away part of the bottom of the engine case. The front beam had been cut and turned to lower it each time the back had been lowered (so presumably five times!) and as a result had got a pretty major bend in it. I sorted it all out and drove it for a few years. I had the original toughened windscreen shatter in the fast lane of the M53 at Ellesmere Port, but it stayed in place. Cue Ace Ventura hang out the window style driving to get tpo the hard shoulder! I had to get home to Wolverhampton with no windscreenso Ijust opened the rear pop-outs, out on some sunglasses and set off. I once launched it over a humpback bridge only to find a 90 degree right hander straight after it, resulting in me fishtailing down the road - at one point I was looking out of the drivers (left hand!) door window at the lorry headed towards me! Loved that car.
|
|
1968 Cal Look Beetle - 2007cc motor - 14.45@93mph in full street trim 1970-ish Karmann Beetle cabriolet - project soon to be re-started. 1986 Scirocco - big plans, one day!
|
|
Shortcut
Posted a lot
I won't be there when you cross the road, so always use the Green Cross Code.
Posts: 3,037
|
|
Jun 12, 2019 12:21:43 GMT
|
Two widely different ones.
When I was 18 (35 years ago) I need up as an unwilling passenger in my 850cc Renault 5 mk1 (umbrella gear change, nearly 30 Bhp, comedy body roll as standard), when the brakes failed. I cruised downhill for a couple of hundred yard, yanking on the hand brake to almost zero effect, conscious that at the bottom of the hill was a set of traffic lights. So I had plenty of time to prepare as I wheeled straight through the bottom lights on red, threading straight through the crossing traffic, pulling up finally about 50 yards further on. Too inexperienced to think of any of the obvious solutions at the time.
Later on. A rather nice TVR Cerbera. 90 degree right hand bend, for some reason slippery parts of road, zero driving aides. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next and how much hedge was collected. Pretty hair raising.
|
|
This space available to rent. Reach literally dozens of people. Cheap rates!
|
|
|
|
Jun 12, 2019 12:36:13 GMT
|
I think most of my cars have been dangerous at one point or another. My Beetle has a stupid engine with 4 times the factory horsepower and standard drum brakes. Over the last month or so these poxy things have resisted all attempts to fix them by replacing all the fluid (it was very old), changing some of the pipes, bleeding it several times so last time I drove it I simply push the pedal three times to make it stop. I now have a new master cylinder waiting to go on next time I feel brave enough to drive it to school. My wife's type 25 camper wandered alarmingly when we drove it home from Coventry to Kingswinford - turned out one of the steering donuts (like the beetle ones, but there are three on a T25) had disintegrated. The bolts were still there, as were the steel sleeves over the bolts, but all that connected the two halves of the steering was the nylon reinforcing string that would originally have been moulded into the rubber of the donut. There was no rubber at all. My Karmann Ghia was special. First time I drove it was towing it home having just bought it. It had been sat in a damp garage for four years so the brakes didn't really inspire confidence, I couldn't engine brake because there was no engine. It had been lowered FIVE splines on the back and had worn away part of the bottom of the engine case. The front beam had been cut and turned to lower it each time the back had been lowered (so presumably five times!) and as a result had got a pretty major bend in it. I sorted it all out and drove it for a few years. I had the original toughened windscreen shatter in the fast lane of the M53 at Ellesmere Port, but it stayed in place. Cue Ace Ventura hang out the window style driving to get tpo the hard shoulder! I had to get home to Wolverhampton with no windscreenso Ijust opened the rear pop-outs, out on some sunglasses and set off. I once launched it over a humpback bridge only to find a 90 degree right hander straight after it, resulting in me fishtailing down the road - at one point I was looking out of the drivers (left hand!) door window at the lorry headed towards me! Loved that car. .Have you not noticed there is a 'common denominator' within your dangerous cars? Err.... Dub, that's your issue
|
|
Last Edit: Jun 12, 2019 12:37:01 GMT by rattlecan
|
|
|
|
Jun 12, 2019 19:04:54 GMT
|
I think most of my cars have been dangerous at one point or another. .Have you not noticed there is a 'common denominator' within your dangerous cars? Err.... Dub, that's your issue I never said about when the brakes on the Beetle sprung a leak and I found out that the dual circuit brakes had already failed on the other circuit. Drove home on the handbrake and dropped my girlfriend off without telling her there was anything wrong. Or when the steering box on the Ghia decided that it needed about 270 degrees of free play before changing direction, and although I'd got a spare one in Wolverhampton, I was in Loughborough. Best one was the rack and pinion steering fitted to the drag Beetle when I bought it. Launched hard on its first ever run, pulled both wheels into toe out, then as the car settled down, one wheel went to toe in before the other, so I shot toward the wall just past the start line at the Pod quite quickly! If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen...
|
|
1968 Cal Look Beetle - 2007cc motor - 14.45@93mph in full street trim 1970-ish Karmann Beetle cabriolet - project soon to be re-started. 1986 Scirocco - big plans, one day!
|
|
scimjim
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 1,503
Club RR Member Number: 8
|
|
|
Last year the Ford Motor Co. started importing the Mustang into Australia. In order to do so the Mustang had to undergo a standard safety and crash test evaluation to give it a safety rating - a rating of zero is the worst, and a rating of 5 is the best. The Mustang scored 2 out of a possible 5. Thus making the Mustang about the most unsafe new car you could buy in Australia. Most of the cheap Chinese vehicles did much better than that, and the vast majority of cars had a 4 or 5 star rating. So the Ford Mustang must rate as one of the most dangerous cars in the world, I would imagine. I cannot believe that a multinational company such as Ford would ever offer such an unsafe vehicle to the public for sale. And it is not like it is a cheap or slow car either. I found this in Quora. I have one of these and there has been a lot of discussion on the net about this. Basically, due to electronic safety aids now being taken into account for these tests and the Mustang has no emergency braking, lane assist and suchlike they were marked down considerably. Some people have also suggested that due to various European members being on the testing team and this was the first Mustang destined for the European market the testing might have been somewhat compromised. Make of that what you will. However, as I understand I don’t think there are any issues with the structural integrity of them and I would certainly rather bin mine into another car rather than be in another modern supermini or similar. Best option, don’t crash it. I certainly wouldn’t consider it “dangerous “. Slightly strange first post? I quite like the Mustang and read the mutterings online about the ANCAP (2017 was the 2 star rating, immediately improved the following year), so went browsing and found this to balance the discussion a little: “The MY2018 Mustang delivered a four-star result for Adult Occupant Protection, a five-star result in the Safety Assist pillar and a five-star result for Pedestrian Protection. However, a three-star result for Child Occupant Protection limited the overall result to a three-star rating. An important element of the Euro NCAP child safety rating includes elements such as ease of ingress and egress of the child seat, an area where two-door coupes traditionally have a disadvantage." The Mustang’s sales have been hurt exactly not at all by any ANCAP rating, with the Pony brand shifting 2285 units so far in 2018 - dominating the sports car category.”
|
|
|
|
scimjim
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 1,503
Club RR Member Number: 8
|
|
|
Back on topic, the most dangerous car I have had recently was an Escort RST. Bought for €500 when I lived in Germany, it was almost certainly two cars poorly stuck together, with a bigger turbo fitted! I used it as a daily for a year or so, including winters in a foot of snow, it was hilarious with massive lag and chassis twist a Morgan would have been embarrassed to exhibit 😂
|
|
|
|
mr
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,526
|
|
|
my ex BT montego bought from a road side seller................it was a bloody death trap. if you accelerated around a corner there was no steering centralising at all. it just kept going round the corner. then there were the self ejecting drive shafts that broke free randomly. in the end my mate got me a bag full of cv bolts and filled the glove box with them because I was going through them so fast. then there was the "that scraed ya" incident when the con rod poked its head out the sump.....the time the wipes seized solid while I was driving in the rain. add the fact I sliced the end of a finger off trying to trace a wire behind the dash and you have it. hated it, girlfriend made me buy it.......I got rid of both of em!!! bought the Granada I still have instead........and that's 26 years ago,grannys still in my garage
|
|
Got the car from 105 bhp at the crank to 152 at the wheels.nitrous going on next.....if it ain't broke,keep bolting on go faster parts until it is........ www.fordgranadaclubuk.freefo.de
|
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2019 11:32:44 GMT
|
i have never felt more vulnerable than driving through a city "5 up" in a citroen 2CV
|
|
|
|
|