Skeets

You probably couldn't do THIS in a modern car:

I was driving down the M1 motorway at about 2am this morning.. doing about 80, when i noticed a strange smell!... i had the window open i presumed it was just someone having a bonfire near by, and thought nothing of it.
About a mile down the road i happened to glance at my temp guage to see it was practically off the scale!! .. remarkably, it took me about another mile to decide that i had really better pull over (i was very tired! :D ) ... i only got the great gush of steam from under the bonnet once i had stopped!

When i investigated, i found i had a blown heater hose and had lost all my water (oops!) ....

I'm not a member of a breakdown service and when i called the RAC they told me it would cost £180 to tow me home :mad .... so i just let her cool down for 45 minutes then drove her in short bursts/ coasting, the half mile to the next exit. (pretty stupid, but hey, drastic measures were needed!)

I parked her up, caught a taxi home... then came back the next day, fixed the pipe and drove home.

..... it is at times like this that i am VERY glad my car has a low tech, VERY forgiving, lump of GM iron under the bonnet.... i sure as hell wouldn't try this in a new car!!

God bless america :flag

Alwyn678

Yikes...I hope that you didn't do any damage.....Could you not put the hose back on and fill it with water??

Skeets

doesn't seem to be any damage at all, engine still sounds great! couldn't fix it at the time as i was on the hard shoulder of the motorway... it was dark... and i had no tools or water.

By the way, for future reference, it takes six large bottles of Evian to fill a Vette cooling system :D

zwede

Had the same thing happening to me years ago in a '75 Camaro. Lower radiator hose popped off. Temp gauge went off the scale. Pulled over in a quiet residential area (it was about midnight). Just so happened one of the residents was out taking a walk due to insomnia. He let me borrow a screwdriver and a bucket of water. Re-attached the hose and filled up the rad and drove off. That car is now owned by my dad and he has put another 7 trouble free years on it.

BUGGSY1970

Those good old cast iron American blocks can take a lot of punishment. As long as you keep an eye on the temperature and give it time to cool you can limp home from quite a distance. If it were a C5 it would shut down to protect itself. Also not such a bad idea. Eliminates risk and bad mistakes.

AGVI

...been there, done that!!! Scared the c r a p out of me!
:auto: .... :eek: ... :banghead:

LemansBlue68

There's something to be said for good ol' cast iron when it comes to a block material. You probably never would have gotten away with that with an aluminum block (or heads). I've heard stories of friends driving without coolant to the point of having the engine actually seize, letting it cool down, and still being able to drive away (although I would never attempt this myself).

Stratos

OK. you guys got me going, another story here. driving my Special Addition 69 Charger with the Magnun 383 out of Atlantic City, the heater hose let go and smoke was pouring out of the front of the hood. pulled over ,did the dumb thing and opened the hood, got hit with dragon's breath....After it cooled down, I cut the heater hose with a knive, re-directed the hose back to the water pump and bypassed the heater core. With no water in site, and a few beers in us, we had plenty of extra water to add what was needed to get to the next watering hole to fill her up.... NEVER BE CAUGHT WITHOUT A KNIFE, Great screwdriver, beer opener, adjustment tool etc.....

conway62

I dont know about you guys but I always carry the essential hand tools, gallon of water etc. just in case. You would be suprized what will fit in the storage compartment when you take out the tray.

LemansBlue68

Uuhhh......I'm afraid to ask where the water came from???

It wasn't recycled by chance was it? You didn't have any problems with block corrosion later on did you? And last but not least, did you warn your mechanic before he "flushed" your radiator???? :cheers:

Hilarious story!!! :lolg: :lolg: :lolg: :lolg: :lolg:

Alwyn678

:lolg: Classic story

Desertdawg

I lost the front wheel bearing on my 73 chevy pickup when I was in High School. Limped it home over 20 miles, stopping at every hose I could find to cool off the wheel, (it steamed everytime)
It ate almost halfway through the spindle, but it got me home. :crazy:

Maurice

Ok since we are sharing things we have done to our cars and they still ran afterwards here is my story. I just finished tech school in Biloxi Miss. for the Air Force. I set out driving my '82 Buick Regal to Arizona to go home before going to Germany for two years. The car leaked/burned a little oil and I would fill it up with oil every couple times I would fill up with gas and always had a little puddle of oil where ever I parked it. I left out of Biloxi one afternoon and drove all day till maybe 1am and spent the night at a cheapo sleepo hotel and was back up and on the road bright and early the next morning. I probably filled up 3-4 times along the way and I had actually thought about checking the oil at the gas fill ups but figured I checked it the day before and it couldn't leak out that fast (I WAS 18 AT THE TIME). Well 100 miles from El Paso in the middle of nowhere, I start losing power and the car wouldn't keep up to speed and I started slowing down gradually no matter how much I pressed the gas. I think I slowed down to about 25-30 mph and saw an exit and took it and coasted into a gas station and the engine died. I checked the oil dipstick and there wasn't a drop in site. Went and bought 3 qts and added them...oil was just on the bottom of the dip stick..1 1/2 more qts and my baby was full again. I didn't know what to do so I went and got lunch and let the car cool down for about an hour. When I got back after lunch I cranked it back up and drove for another 7 hours to get home with no other problems. I should have never sold that car!

UKPaul

Hey Skeets!
You were lucky. In this area (supposedly a well-off, "nice" place to live), any car left at the roadside is a target for vandals. They'd think Xmas had come if they saw a C3 abandoned :(
eg. Went to work one day, no broken cars around. At lunch I went out & there was a car broken down at the side of the road. On the way home from work I passed it & saw a side window had been smashed (probably had the sound system lifted). On the way to the pub that evening I passed it & all the windows were smashed. Coming back from the pub it had all the doors & hood open & the front seats & wheels were missing. Going to work the next morning I passed a burnt out shell of a car - with a "Police Aware" sign on it :lol: I dunno, the kids of today.....
:cheers:

moosie982

Hi, something similar happened to me, I was driving my 2nd ex-wifes 82 Monte Carlo ( 267 V8 ) home from the alignment shop, we were still married, but rocky, when the water pump decided not to pump any more. Being calm cool and collected, but pissed that I knew she was cheating I continued to drive home a trip of about 20 miles, well at one point the car was making so much un-godly noise that I had everyones attention at a gas station that I passed , everyone there was pointing and had huge smiles on their faces at the noise the car was making, I waved and had a smile on my face too, I wasnt about to stop and turn the car off, and call her for a ride or walk ,hitch ,so I pressed on, until it just stopped,,,,,,,about 6 miles from home , luckily a co-worker just happened by and gave me a ride home, the motor wouldnt even turn over and was still thumping and knocking and making hissing and banging noise while not running, got home and called the local tow guy he picked it up and brought it home and it still would'nt turn over when he got it home. Figured that it was a goner and decided that on my next day off I'd start taking it apart, just for sh-ts & giggles when I started to take it apart I tried starting it, and it ran, clanging and banging sounding like a few pistons were trying to swap holes, but in about 20 or 30 seconds it quieted down, smoothed out and ran well enough to be a donor for my el-Camino 6 years later, Amazing, sold the car a while back,,,,,,,,,,,,its still running. Try that "ricers" Peace,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Craig :lol: :seeya

Omega1

"...Try That Ricers..."

Ok, since i used to be an import guy before i bought my C3, i have a story...

I used to own a 1993 Eagle Talon TSi AWD Automatic that was mostly go and no show. Anyone that relaly knows these cars knows they can be made sick fast really easily. I've never had the car dyno'ed but i figured to be making about 350hp on a good day...enough to set the car into the high 12's (like 12.9). if anyone wants a mod list and photocopies of some reciepts i'll be happy to share...but anyhow...I had just put my full length 2.5" stainless exhaust on the car and i was at the Uni-mart after school one day revving the crap out of it...i heard a horrible snapping noise so i shut it down...got under the car and pulled a shredded accessory belt out that just so happened to be the one for my water pump (yay!)...so i started it up and drove it about 5-6 miles to my house with the gauge completely pegged. got it home, let her cool down, popped a belt back on it, started it up and ran just like it never skipped a beat...though it eventually died the first time due to a timing belt snapping and the second time because of a couple snapped front axles (after another 3500 invested in go fast stuff) i just got completely fed up and bought a vette...couldn't be happier now...though i still miss her on occasion...

Smokehouse69

I know that a lot of new power equipment (mowers, edgers, generatora, etc) are only considered first quality if they have a Honda engine in them, but many years ago I found out just how forgiving American Iron is.
My next door neighbor (nice guy, but didn't have a clue) had a Murray riding mower it had an 8 hp Briggs and Stratton. He'd had it a few years and started having problems with it so he came and got me to take a look at it.
He said that when he started mowing it would run fine for about 15 or 20 minutes then start loosing power and finally stall. After it stalled the electric starter wouldn't budge it, and the hand start was frozen up. He said 15 or 20 minutes later it would start and run for about another 15 minutes. He said it had been doing this every week for about 2 months.
I started looking things over and decided to check the oil, it was bone dry. He'd had the mower 3 or 4 years and never changed or even checked the oil in the damned thing.
We put a couple of quarts in it and his problem went away. About 5 years later he moved and I bought the mower from him for $50.00. I used it another for another 11 years and sold it this spring for $50.00. It was still running and cutting grass.

Arto

Well, I had the same thing happen to me a couple of weeks after I originally bought the car ('73 coupe), except I wasn't so lucky.

The previous owner had put in a 454 big block (as the car was originally equipped with one) but hadn't apparently bothered to to take of cooling. On a longer highway trip I noticed the temperature needle climbing too high and tried to slow down to get it to drop. It did a little, but there seemed to be no way to get it down sufficiently.

I was actually on my way to a local Corvette shop, and when I pulled off the highway and over to their building the steam started gushing out. Perfect timing, at least :D

We let the car cool down, filled her up again, and tried starting the engine. The engine did run, but made pretty bad clunking sounds, so that was it :( I traded the 454 in to a guy from whom I also bought the current 350 SB. He later told me that he opened the engine to find a couple pistons and cylinders were damaged.

I'm just glad the engine wasn't actually the original 454 any longer or I would have gone berserk :D

Regards,
Arto

Cookwithvette

Mark this one as a win for us Chevy guys....

Friend of mine's family has a ski boat with a 351 ford. Fairly nice boat when it runs. Anyhow, one season they chased a strange overheating problem that later turned out to be the intake water pump. (there are two, intake and engine)

Friend was driving pulling his dad while I rode shotgun. We had turned around at one of the dams and began heading back up river when we started to slow down. I began to hear a bit of a clattering sound above the roar of the engine so I looked over at the gauges to see the temp gauge pegged. I pointed it out to my friend who nodded and yelled "it does that." I turn back around to watch the skier and glanced down at the motor housing to see a small amount of smoke (turned out to be steam) coming out of it. Pointed this out and again got the response, "it does that." Immediatly afterwards started seriously losing power to the point where full throttle could barely keep the skier up. Begins to knock loudly, friend shuts it off. We open the engine shell and reel his dad back in. He keeps trying to start it but to no avail. The engine is so hot all the gas is boiling out of the carb.

After cooling for a few hours it starts and runs again but rather lousy-like and they start looking at timing and idle mixture. :confused: They take it for a test spin and it starts overheating again pretty quickly. The engine cover was off this time and I spotted steam coming out of the PCV hose. After we docked I checked the oil. Sure enough... cappuccino.

Turned out to be a cracked head.

munday

my lower radiator hose popped the first day i had the car doing 80 on the way home. the ttops were off and all this fluid rushed over my car...ack, atleast i didn't get burned. water hit distributor and shut down, BUT :U :banghead: the overheat did ruin a headgasket!!!!! :party: