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Tonight, I lost a friend of mine. My 99 Honda CR-V, of 205000 miles, decided to throw a valve (not yet confirmed) tonight and blow itself up in one last blaze of glory. An end too early for Honda, I know. Ironically, she was supposed to go in at 8:30 AM tomorrow for a full service. Instead, she's on a wrecker lot. I'd been everywhere with this car- across the country on road trips, through long frozen winters in New Hampshire's white mountains, through long New England Summers. She wasn't pretty anymore- New England gave it the classic CR-V quarter panel body rot, but I loved that car, more than anything, it was -my- beater. I'll miss it terribly, even though I could go get another one for four grand with half the miles, it wouldn't be mine. As I'm presently spending my evening depressed, I figured, why not open a thread to those vehicles we loved and lost, to time, to the elements, or just to bad luck. Post the stories of your loved and lost rides, AI.
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Jun 7, 2014 03:55
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| # ? May 11, 2024 18:05 |
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Last spring, some loving idiot in a ghetto mall parking lot blew an uncontrolled intersection, turned right super wide and continued to turn right, at parking lot speeds, all the way from my front fender to my rear bumper. This totalled out my old '97 Outback Sport, which I miss every day. Made it to about 360,000 km. Had a grand in new parts waiting for it in order to get it prepped for a happy summer full of enjoyable roadtrips which never happened.  It's hard to see it, but even the front wheel is jammed into the hub (scraped the top of the caliper with the spokes of the wheel) and both doors on that side were seized against the frame. The handle and lock on the drivers' door popped out of the door from the sheet metal bending. There's also a two inch wide strip of metal peeled out of the rear quarter panel in a pig's tail curl of rusty junk. She tried to play dumb and force the door open by kicking it to prove to me that the damage wasn't that important, and then phoned her husband to come over in order to alternately intimidate me and try to bargain me down to $500 cash to go away. Real shitbags, and I hope both of them are on facility insurance now. While it doesn't seem like a hell of a lot of damage, the adjuster her party sent to estimate damage emitted a low whistle while walking past the car and then wrote down $6000 on his estimate after taking his pictures. Last time I saw it, some other ghetto shitbag got it off Copart and then flipped it on Kijiji (while obscuring the salvage title) as an unplated project car after failing to figure out I didn't leave any gas in the tank before it went on the hook. I hope someone fixed it up and it's dutifully taking someone who needs it to their job in safety and comfort, but I have my doubts as I just transferred its old plate to another car and the registry was convinced the VIN hasn't been registered since. Seat Safety Switch fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jun 7, 2014 |
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Jun 7, 2014 05:06
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I googled the vin of my first truck a few years ago, and found it being parted out. That hurt, i spent 6 years with that truck, destroyed the front end 3 times. I never should have sold it, but had nowhere to keep it at that point. Everything else i either still own, or see driving around town from time to time. Apart from work vehicles, but i never really grew attached to those.
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Jun 7, 2014 05:08
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Mine was a Honda too.  I still regret selling it (for a pittance) but it needed a new clutch and I'd bashed the hell out of the underside (due to the lovely Jamex springs sagging and me not being the most sensible driver at the time)
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Jun 7, 2014 06:14
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I call this the trail of tears https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ftmc2atC0&feature=youtube_gdata_player  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yYhtmJWe7E&feature=youtube_gdata_player     
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Jun 7, 2014 06:50
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| # ? May 11, 2024 18:05 |
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Look at this fine example of American engineering: Wait, no, that's not the one. Ahhhh, there it is:  1991 S10 Blazer 2WD. 4-door, either the first or second year of that body style. 4.3L V6, plenty of torque but no power, mated to a 700R4 transmission. Was supposed to be the cheap beater while I fixed the Protege last year, but with all the time and money I spent just getting it safe to drive I'd have been better off just letting a shop fix the Mazda in the first place. What none of my pictures show was that the roof and D-pillars were mostly grey primer (that looked to have been sprayed over the top of the old typical 90s faded paint on the roof), covered in spots with bright red Krylon that flaked off if you breathed too hard near it. Came with 4 mismatched tires, none newer than 10 years old; I replaced them with a gently used set my coworker took off when he got more aggressive tires. Eventually I resolved to fix the leaking valve cover gaskets, which ended up being its downfall. In the process I snapped a threaded heater hose fitting in the intake manifold, rendering the truck undrivable until I pulled the manifold to tap the hole out (the metal had long since turned to cheese, it just crumbled when I tried to extract it on the car.) During this whole debacle (which took a week of driving around to find a right-sized tap) some crud apparently fell down the valley into the oil pan. All seemed fine that night, but driving to work the next morning it lost oil pressure at 75 mph, and after I pulled to the side of the road and let it cool off it would no longer run, and sounded very bad indeed while cranking.  Eventually it made its way home; I was considering replacing an engine, but even a junkyard motor was running over a grand at the time. I couldn't justify a new V6 vs a V8 conversion, and I couldn't justify either with my time constraints at the time, or taking into account the condition of the rest of the truck. So it was off to the junkyard with it.  Good loving riddance tbh.
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Jun 7, 2014 08:19
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