What's your most embarrassing breakdown story?

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What's your most embarrassing breakdown story?

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If you've been following the project thread for Yellow you'll know that Stuart tried to get it up to Huntly to a nice MOT station. Unfortunately Yellow embarrassingly didn't want to go and dug its heels/brakes in 2 miles from the shed meaning it had to be abandoned in Tyrebagger woods for 24 hrs. Not an ideal situation when you don't have a test certificate or tax and the boys in blue are in the area due to an accident on the road :ph34r:


For those who don't know about project FS, Yellow has been previously stored at my work and they knew we'd booked Yellow in for a test as I'd been in early to fetch it from the shed. I therefore had to 'fess up that the wee horror hadn't even made it over the hill when they asked how it got on. They all laughed at this but it also produced a number of stories of red-faced inducing breakdowns/car incidents. My favourite was my boss confessing that on trying to jump-start his son's polo he discovered he didn't know where the battery was in his merc and had to use google to eventually locate it underneath the rear seat :laugh:


My embarrassing car incident is that after vigorously defending my choice of car to friends and neighbours the punto was taken home on the back of a truck within 8 months of ownership. It was a bust wheel from hitting a pothole at speed rather than a proper breakdown but still I had to go back to defending my car choice for a while.

So over to you to relate your most embarrassing breakdown/incident :D
 
My first cinquecento, my first breakdown (of sorts) and still the most public stoppage.

Had a run up to Forfar, got there perfectly fine. On the way back there had been an accident on a roundabout and there was a 4 mile tailback up the a90, and sat in that, the cinq decided was the perfect time for the cooling fan to die, steam pouring out the bonnet in the tailback, got to a hard shoulder, pulled over and let it cool, but not without about 300 cars passing me at slower than a crawl, offering me bottles of water etc.

On the bright side it did no lasting damage and i pulled out of the tailback at the next junction and blasted through the back roads all the way home :D
 
Most embarrassing for me, was running out of fuel in the Sei.

Knew it was a bit low, but as the fuel gauge didn't work I had to guess how much fuel was in it.. & err got it a bit wrong.

Ran out of fuel about 3miles from Kilmarnock just outside Gatehead as I'd decided to take the back roads.

Had a nice walk in the pitch black to Tesco Petrol Station, to buy a plastic fuel can & then had to walk back to the car in the rain...

Learnt my lesson, always carry a fuel can in the boot.
 
Had to get towed home in my cav (when it was road worthy and looking very tidy) by my dad who drove a clapped out 1.4 renault 19 i think it was... anyway, as my dad isnt from the city, i had to direct him the easiest way to my house, which involved going up the beach bouley.... at 10pm.... on a friday night...

i was so glad for tinted windows that night, not that it mattered as all my mates were hanging out the car waving at people....
 
To be fair he did say easiest way rather than the most direct way but if you've more to add to the story...

Time for a proper I-****ed-up story

As a teenager I was fortunate that my parents provided a banger (maestro) for my sister and I to have as a car to learn to drive in and share. However as my sister is 2 years older than me and was working in the middle of nowhere when I started lessons the truth was I didn't see much of it at all. However after I past my test I was able to run off with the car on one of her days off and take it to school.

The first time I did this was cringe-worthy embarrassing.

At the end of the day a few of us headed out to the car park full of self importance that we were travelling home in a car driven by someone who wasn't a parent and convinced that that the usual 20 minute walk would only take 5 minutes. Yeah right!

We all piled in and the car started no problems which to be fair it always did. Put it in gear and did the usual of releasing the clutch and pressing down on the accelerator


Stalled!

Tried it again

Stalled!

tried it again but increased revs

Stalled

Tried it again with engine revving and trying to find the bite point

Lots of smoke

At which point we abandoned the car and walked home. My dad later recovered the car with our local mechanic and that's when they came to the conclusion that I'd been trying to get it going in 3rd gear [attachment=1:b98kh2sj]redface.gif[/attachment:b98kh2sj]
 
Andi_F said:
Most embarrassing for me, was running out of fuel in the Sei.

Knew it was a bit low, but as the fuel gauge didn't work I had to guess how much fuel was in it.. & err got it a bit wrong.

Ran out of fuel about 3miles from Kilmarnock just outside Gatehead as I'd decided to take the back roads.

Had a nice walk in the pitch black to Tesco Petrol Station, to buy a plastic fuel can & then had to walk back to the car in the rain...

Learnt my lesson, always carry a fuel can in the boot.

Forgot, i did that too in my sei! maybe the fuel gauges in them are just rubbish, not done it in any other car!








well, technically i have on other cars, except i've always ran out pulling into the petrol station and managed to stutter and cough my way to the pump

Fuel roulette champion :D
 
Mrcento said:
Forgot, i did that too in my sei! maybe the fuel gauges in them are just rubbish, not done it in any other car!
well, technically i have on other cars, except i've always ran out pulling into the petrol station and managed to stutter and cough my way to the pump

Fuel roulette champion :D

Well after I replaced the Fuel Tank, the fuel Gauge didn't work, so it was 100% Guess Work.
 
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