Best dead on the road saves, Getting home stories Options

[r_towle]

What are some of your best “getting it home” repairs?
Those side of the road breakdowns you will never forget?

I have a few…
One of the best was when a buddy and I were heading up north to ski country and the throttle cable broke on my vw beetle. I got out, sat sideways on the rear bumper and I was the accelerator while he drove us up off the highway to a gas station….then bike cable and some clamps, fixed.

914 broke the cable at the local autox , about 10-15 miles away.
I tied that sucker off at 3500 rpm’s with my shoelace and drove home
I was given some wide eyes at a few lights and stop signs….but it worked.

[DBF]

In high school, my girlfriend and I were heading to a movie in my 1960 Karmann Ghia when the car quits running. I coasted off the highway into a subdivision. She is very concerned and keeps asking what are we going to do. I tell her don't worry, put the car in neutral, put on the parking brake, get out of the car and tell her to slide over into the driver's seat so she could turn the key when I told her to (it's on the left). I always kept a toolbox, spare 009 distributer (points set, new capacitor, with the mounting bracket so pre-timed), carb, coil and fuel pump in the trunk. In just a few minutes, I diagnosed no spark, put in the new distributer and we're back on the road. We made the movie in plenty of time.

Another time we were swimming in a quarry and there were a lot of people around so there wasn't a safe place to leave the key. I tied it to my wrist with a piece of leather bootlace, but you know what happened. She is panicky - she wasn't supposed to be swimming there even though this was her idea. I keep telling her to calm down. I knew how to slide the rear quarter window out to gain access to the inside of the car, used a stick to move the door handle and I unlocked the door. What 17-year-old VW mechanic didn't know how to hot wire their car!! I'm her hero!

I taught her how to drive a manual transmission in that car, and sometimes when she was driving it at night, when going through the huge park near our village, the car would occasionally start bucking and coast to a stop. That was a diagnosis of vapor lock which would fix itself "if we waited a bit". When it started happening with some regularity and she started wondering about the reliability of my 14-year-old Ghia, I showed her how I moved the fuel lever to the 45-degree position to shut off the fuel. After that, she would occasionally shut the fuel off when I was driving!

The only car I ever regretted selling.