DRIVING WRITERS RECOUNT WEIRDEST ROAD REPAIRS
Mechanical troubles happen to just about everyone, but here’s what we did to get out of unexpected jams
As auto journalists and lifelong car aficionados, we at Driving have all owned more than our fair share of vehicles over the years. And, well, not all of them have been as reliable as we might have liked. Sometimes they let us down at the worst possible time: on the road. Occasionally, we’d also help out a fellow driver in need.
Here are a few of our most notable moments stranded and what we did to get going.
Sorry, Jag, my bad:
This scenario unfolded just last year when driving a 575-horsepower Jaguar FType SVR through the wilds of rural Georgia. Through no fault of my own — OK, it was totally my fault — I managed to catch the rear plastic valance of this $160,000plus roadster on an unseen railway tie while backing up, and ripped it clean off. What a sound! And what a sight, the big white cover lying on the ground, only tethered by the wires to the parking sensors. Which I apparently didn’t heed.
We tried clipping it back on, pushing the various tabs back where they belonged, but it wouldn’t take. I wedged myself underneath the arse of this Jag and spotted a couple of Torx screws that might, if removed and replaced with the cover in place, be our salvation.
Of course, the chances of finding a Torx screwdriver in this corner of the U.S. was right up the with spotting a “Trump Is An Idiot” bumper sticker. However, there was a general store at the nearby crossroads. I wandered in and asked the crusty fellow behind the counter if he had a screwdriver I could borrow. He looked at me funny and then muttered, “C’mon in the back shed.”
On reflection, this could have gone quite poorly.
Luckily, there was an assortment of tools in there (and no banjos), and while I couldn’t find any Torx, I grabbed a couple of Robertsons that I thought might work. By some miracle, I got the screws out, we snapped the cover back in place, and the screws held it.
Being a good neighbour:
We hold a big party each summer, and many years ago I was about to go out to buy the groceries for it. At the end of my driveway, a car was stopped on the side of the road.
It was a family from Brampton, some 75 kilometres away, on their way to their daughter’s dance recital at a venue out my way. Their car had suddenly started making an awful noise and running rough. The father, unfamiliar with fixing his car and in the pre-cellphone days, asked me to call a tow truck.
“That’ll cost you a fortune,” I said. “Bring it in the driveway and let me look at it.”
When I opened the hood, I found something I’d never seen before. A spark plug had somehow twisted up out of the engine and was hanging beside it, still attached to its wire. I got my tools, screwed it back in, and everyone was good to go and get to the recital.
During our party the next day, we received surprise guests. The family returned, bringing a case of wine as a thank you. Of course we made them stay for burgers — a happy ending to a roadside repair.
Cold comfort:
In the middle of winter, my girlfriend (now wife) and I hiked seven kilometres into a ranger cabin near Cranbrook, B.C., where we stayed for the weekend, leaving my 1972 Chevrolet K5 Blazer parked at the trailhead some 50 kilometres down an old logging road. The -7 C temperature walking to the cabin wasn’t an issue, but the -35 C each night was. As the cold deepened each night, so did its grip on the Blazer’s engine, so much so that by the time we left the cabin and returned to the truck, there wasn’t any hope of it starting. After a few slow whirr, whirr, whirrs, the starter only clicked. Outside it was sunny — but still -35 C. Now what? The only sound was a bit of wind. My future wife was already shivering and starting to shut down.
We began walking, in part to stay warm, in part to maybe find someone, and in part because staying put in the life-threatening cold wasn’t an option, and we weren’t really sure what else to do.
About an hour into the walk, we suddenly heard a sound — from a service truck for logging trucks — on a holiday Monday no less, coming up the road behind us. Even with the service truck’s dual batteries, it took more than an hour of boosting the old green Blazer to finally get it started. To this day, it seems like a genuine miracle the man in that truck showed up when he did.
Distributing the blame:
Ironically, for all my years driving carbureted hoopties around, I’ve never had to fix one of my own on the roadside to get home. I’ve done many repairs on them over the years, but never an emergency fix roadside. I have, however, been a passenger in my good friend Alex Reid’s 1968 Datsun roadster when the engine started backfiring and then shut off halfway through a hard righthand corner.
The motor still turned with the starter but refused to light off and run. We (mostly Alex) checked everything, looking for the cause. Fuel lines, fuel pump, carburetors, spark plugs, you name it. The sun was going down and things were looking bleak. But then Alex popped the cap off the distributor and noticed that the rotor was 180-degrees off of what it should be.
The Datsun’s battery had been secured not with bolts but with bungee cords and, on that hard right corner, it slid right into the distributor and jammed the rotor against one of the points, causing it to spin independently from the shaft.
With the rotor mounted onto the shaft the correct way, the Datsun fired to life and ran happily the rest of the day.