What stupid, abusive things have you done to your Mustang?

[Mike429cj]

OK I will tell a stupid thing I did to my first Mach 1 in 1972. You know how the shoulder belts are fastened to the headliner. Heck, I did not need that, I just took a razor blade and cut them right out! The lap belts, never wore them at all. Drove like a bat out of hell everywhere except in front of people that might tell my folks.

It is a miracle that I never had an accident back then. I have seen so much death in my life that I don't even back out of the driveway without buckling in. Don't even think about it just instinctively do it.

So I maimed my Mach 1. Don't ever do that. This all I will confess to now.

 

[Kit Sullivan]

I think many people removed those stupid hanging shoulder straps back in the day.

In fact, I know of a few cars I've seen around here at shows, and even one in my neighbirhood that doesn't have them. That flimsy little piece of elastic gave up the ghost within the first year I think.

I think Jethro Bodine could have come up with something better using an old piece of rope.

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

I won't tell you about the 95 Mustang GTS I hopped up and got pulled over in, after passing a police officer. I won't tell you that my friend had just bought a 911 and I was in the process of passing him at extremely high speed. I won't tell you that 4th gear allowed higher top speed than 5th or that the officer was doing well over a hundred when I passed him and I didn't even have time to react when I saw the light bar. I will never tell you that my speed at the time was 80 miles an hour over the legal speed limit. I won't tell you I pulled right over and stopped, nor will I tell you that I left in my car with a ticket that never hit my record. I won't tell you any of this even though it was 18 years ago. I don't want it getting back to my kids until they are over 21 and out of the house.

I also will tell you that such behavior is horribly irresponsible and I don't condone it then or now. We do get smarter as we get older-if we survive.

 

[luxstang]

And yet, if you had the chance you'd do it again, wouldn't ya?

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

No.

well probably not . . .

Maybe-if the conditions were right . . .

I'm not saying

 

[auron73mach1]

Ive been though nash... in a crew cab dually... pegged out... so 65 + 80 = ??? your un-given number. My copless run was only 98 so you have me beat, but to be fair I was sitting at 8,700 lbs so if we base it of raw kinetic energy

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

During this mythical story . . . I was traveling back from Cookeville driving through Wilson County at the time and the road was dead straight and traffic was (I thought) non existent.

My buddy in the 911 kept goading me until I fell back and downshifted so I could show him some real speed. He was following behind the cop car and has said the cop was doing 100+.

 

[Stangace20]

nothing really, past maybe putting off washing them I've always been pretty good to my cars

 

[Kit Sullivan]

Not to my Mustang, but a friend and I were tooling down a winding, tree-lined country road in Bastrop, LA in his 73 Torino on a drizzly, cold day, only doing about 30 or so and we came around a bend and ran smack-dab into a huge cow that was sauntering across the road. Hit that sucker dead broadside, and he (she?) didn't even budge an inch. Just looked at us like it was kind of annoyed...nothing more.

I hit my face on the dashboard, he hit the steering wheel and got a bloody lip. The front end of the car was crushed, crinkled and crapped-out. Fluids pouring into the road, mixing with the rain water, making little petro-rainbows everywhere. The car was useless, the cow acted like it barely knew we hit it, and continued lazily on its way.

We pushed the car into the ditch and walked a few miles into town, bitching the whole way.

 

[kiko619]

I was out driving and decided to stop and pick up some Pizza's from Little Caesars. My car died in the parking lot and nothing worked. THe car was fairly new to me at that ime, so I popped the hood, and started it with a screwdriver across the solenoid. She was barely running (as the ignition was getting minimal voltage due to a blown fusible link) so I feathered and babied the clutch and gas in an effort to get across the street to an Auto Zone. Kerpow!

I had a backfire that split the mufflers and blew a few pipes loose in the exhaust system. I'm almost sure that crossing that 5 lane street was done on recoil as much as engine power. Once I stepped away from it long enough to consider what had happened I started tracing the fusible link til I found a soft spot in the wire, clipped it, stripped it, twisted it together and drove home with most of my exhaust system destroyed.

I've done dumber things in other cars-but I'm not in the mood to come clean right now.

all that for a box of fat for $5. lol

 

[Flatback72.]

Well, not my current Mustang, but I did mistreat the '70 Mach 1 that I had about 20 years ago.

On the spur of the moment I had decided that I would take the afternoon off work to go for a relaxing cruise in the Mach 1. I ended up in a neighbouring city called Ballarat and enjoyed some quality cruising time navigating the main strip and doing a bit of rubbernecking.

The rubbernecking was my downfall. I was heading toward the arch pictured below but not concentrating enough on what was directly in front of me. The road directly beneath the arch turned from single lane into double lane, and just through arch there was a Mitsubishi Sigma stopped dead in the centre lane waiting to turn right into the street that can be just seen on the right directly behind the arch (remember that we drive on the left side of the road in Australia).

It was at the last moment that I noticed the Sigma directly in front of me, and I must say the non-powered drum brakes did a magnificent job of locking up the front wheels after the terror in my mind finally decided to send a signal down to my brake pedal stomping leg. However, it was a case of too little too late, but at least the bone-chilling howl of my Radial T/A's may have given some warning for the poor bugger in the Sigma to brace himself in preparedness for the inertial pummeling of which he was about to unwillingly partake.....

The Sigma was drivable, but pretty much a write-off due to it's low value. The damage to my car wasn't too bad; could of been worse because the engine mounts sheared so the motor was only about an inch from dropping off the lower half of the mounts and was stopped from doing so I presume because the radiator got in the way. My insurance covered the other blokes car, but I had to pay for my own to be fixed - from memory about $3500 back then.

Ironically, the same street that the Sigma was turning in to twenty years ago contains the seatbelt factory where five years ago I went to to purchase the front retractable belts for my current Mustang.

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

all that for a box of fat for $5. lol

This is the South, we take our fat seriously!

and I was not leaving my car in their parking lot-they don't throw those buildings up on prime real estate!

 

[Boss1Ray]

OK I decided to confess a little one... Not exactly following the thread but close enough.

I was about 17 and driving the 72 CJ 4 spd convertible to school one morning.

I picked up a friend and the weather was nice so I decided to take the highway. I had just tuned it up so it was running really good. And the air outside was just a little chilly. (It always ran better with a cooler outside temp!)

Anyway I was showing off and after a quick WOT 3rd gear 'scratch' and seeing my speedometer go past 100 I noticed an OKlahoma Highway patrol car sitting just off the side of the highway.

I immediately lifted and coasted down to about 70. (Speed limit was 55) Looking back I just knew I was in for a BIG TICKET. But we noticed the patrolman was outside his car ----

CHANGING A FLAT TIRE!

Everyone in the school heard about that one! I think I parked it and rode with someone else for a week fearing the patrolman would come to the High School looking for the red Mustang convertible!

Ray

 

[Mesozoic]

This is why I love my '71 so much. It has so much hooligan history that all those around me even remember them.

I was fortunate to have my Dad buy me my '71 for my 16th birthday for $1000. 3 weeks after the purchase, my friends and I began the restoration process. Initially, this involved removing the seats, carpet, and interior. Unable to resist the temptation, we decided to drive the car around the block before calling it a night. We found some short wicker stools to use as seats for this purpose. Bad idea! One romp on the accelerator coming out of the driveway and we were both in the back seat! The car drove itself into the neighbor's wall, running over a giant prickly pear cactus in the process. Worse, the engine broke off the motor mounts upon impact with the wall. This pulled the accelerator linkage to its maximum and the 351CJ roared to 7000 RPM on the tach, digging the vehicle further into the wall and dirt! My friend literally hurled himself out of the passenger window thinking that the car was going to explode. I came to my senses and finally turned the engine off. That was the beginning.

 

[Kit Sullivan]

"Hooligan History"....I love that phrase!

 

[hyena429]

Some good stories all!!

Got a picture of one of my not so good momments with my stang..I just put a new carb and manifold on. Was out testing it and dropped my buddies off..And of course to show off i stabbed it out of there. tires spinning and laid a hell of a strip out of there. I looked back and a cop come flying up on my arse "shakes head" Smoke and tire was all over the place..And he caught me red handed. He ran up to the car just shaking with rage " my luck of the day" And he said..I do not even know what to give you!! He went back to the car and my buddies go driving by tring to take a picture with his late 90's cell phone...He runs out of the car and stops them..and cusses them out and said..you think this is ******* funny? I'm like great...I'm really going to get it now. He wrote me out a 620 dollar ticket.. a 1st degree neg!! He got me for 80 foot of rubber..lol...I was lucky i never had a ticket like that and i defurred it..which ment i had to be good all year and no tickets and pay it all off and it would not be on my record "unless i messed up" you get to use one every 7 years....So its not on my driving record thank god.

 

[CZ-75]

Shouldn't be against the law to burn rubber on a vacant street... Just sayin'

 

[hyena429]

Shouldn't be against the law to burn rubber on a vacant street... Just sayin'

Agreed...I was going to fight the ticket..But once i looked into the laws there was sidewalks and trailer park close by." Even know there was no one around".. Never burn out on a street that has sidewalks on both sides or close to a trailer park..I was in a spot that was close to both....That is instant reckless driving "if they wanna be dicks" I did not fight the ticket at all...He could of towed my car and threw me in jail...And possible the judge could of tagged on more.

Btw..The road he gots me pulled over on..is not the road he caught me burning out on...I pulled off on it once he hit the cherries..lol

 

[M Beauchamp]

Wrote my 69 coupe off when I was 17

I think that will count

 

[Mesozoic]

This is more of just a really dumb mistake than an intentionally stupid thing to have abused my car, but I once accidentally left a terry cloth rag INSIDE the engine in the lifter valley.

Another time, during my high school years, a friend of mine was throwing a big party at his parent's house. He lived in the north foothills of Tucson, which is a pretty posh part of town. The roads there are very nice and the speed limits are quite high (45 mph, so not really that high). There came a time during the party where my friend was too inhebriated to drive, so I volunteered to go pickup a ton of pizza (with him) from a little ways down the road. Of course, we fire up the '71 fastback, with it's 11.5:1 compression 408 stroker running 100LL av gas. Back then, I used to drive the car onto the tarmac at Tucson International and fill up for $2.10/gallon with 100LL. Of course, that all changed after 9/11. Anyhow, on the return trip to the house party we negotiated a 90 degree turn at 80 mph in the '71. It was a bit ridiculous, but the car negotiated extremely well and while we fishtailed for quite a while after making the turn, we definitely made it and continued to haul ass back to the house. It was a mild hair-raising experience.

Jump 5 years later when I've finished college and I've returned back to Tucson for my first fulltime job. I was then driving a '93 Mustang GT. Very similar situation where a friend and I were headed down the same road to the same friend's home who threw the big party. Thinking that the ol' '71 had no problems with the turn, I took the exact same turn at 80 mph in the 5.0. FAIL. I ended up doing a 720 in the intersection and ran over a stop sign. It removed paint from the front bumper and the impact caused the fuel system to shut off (inertia valve in the trunk). Finally got it started and then CHASED by local police down the road. Turned into the dense network of streets in the neighborhood and literally outran the police. Parked the car in my friends garage and had all the lights off and managed to escape.

Note to self: small wheelbase Mustangs DO NOT handle the same as the older, longer wheelbase classics!