Faults

What the worst car breakdown you have ever had?

My boyfriend has a ford fiesta zetec s diesel to teach people to drive in (06plate). A couple of months ago we were on the way to my mums house when the engine mount broke, the engine fell down and was resting on the axel, the radiator was broken, pretty much the car needed rebuilding. Thankfully we weren't going that fast otherwise we could have been hurt? the garage were slow to try and repair, but credit to the ford chairman, he hastened the repair and gave my boyfriend 2 x free services as an apology and a hire car (unfortunately not dual controlled)

Public Comments

That would be immediately after either of the head on crashes I had. Not so much breakdowns as turned to scrap in the blink of an eye.
Worst breakdown I ever had was when my fan belt broke in the middle of a thunderstorm, somewhere in the middle of Iowa. I was driving from Chicago to Tucson. Luckily I had a spare, but I still had to change it in the pouring rain with truckers going by at 75mph. That was horrible.
i had a blowout at 70 in my citreon bx and the tyre overtook us they realy do drive on 3 wheels
My first car, was a 1985 mercedez sl 500 (i can't remember if that was it or not?) It was not anything to write home about but going about 75 the timeng chain broke. This caused the cam warp, stopping oil flow, melting two pistons to the block, pushing the other pistons into the cylinder heads, stripping the head bolts, and best of all, all of the cylinders were ovaled out. The mercedez guy said that to fix it would have been impossible. I loved that car but that was some of the scariest things i have ever heard.
I had an old Landrover 110. The prop shaft broke on it and dug into the road, throwing the back end up in the air about ten feet whilst I was driving it. When we eventually settled, I looked underneath, realised what had happened and tied it up with a piece of rope. Then I whacked it into front wheel drive and drove home... I miss her!
My cam belt (I think it was called that) broke on a tigra I had and I was in the middle lane on the motorway doing 70mph and my car just went dead - couldn't get to the hard shoulder because of lorries so had to roll to the central reservation - I absolutely sh*t (excuse my french) myself - luckily a police car pulled over and got me to safety - I had bought the car 2 days before and the cocky guy in the garage said I should have got the belt checked at X amount of miles - when I told him I bought the car from his garage 2 days before he couldn't apologise enough!!!!!!!!
When I was a teenager I was driving my moms Dodge tradesman 100 1975 van and the crankshaft broke in half, my mom never did change the oil in that van. Then a couple years later she had a Chevy Sprint 3 cylinder car and the camshaft broke when I was driving it.
I can't, but my friend was driving his Blazer down the highway at about 60 mph. He heard a bang and before he knew what was happening, he was staring at the road going by his windshield! The front U-Joint broke and the driveshaft dug into the asphalt and pitched him forward. Luckily he didn't lose total control and managed to get it to the side of the road. Every car since he gets those racing straps to secure the underside of all his front U-Joints.
Im glad to hear that neither of you got hurt in the ordeal. I had just purchased a used VW beetle a couple of days prior. So I decided to call in sick and take it for a drive down the Big Sur coast. Hadnt reached my destination and oil and smoke shoot out of my engine. The area is very isolated so I hitch hiked back home (50 miles), found a friend who would tow it for me for an ounce of shrooms.
I was hammering down the M1 at about 120, when there was an almighty bang, and the dash lit up like a xmas tree. I joined the AA by credit card (£150). The AA man came to look, and said I need it towed home. But the AA will not give me recovery until I've been a member 24 hours. Called a ecovery truck, another £320. Got the car home, having missed the wedding I was going to AND nearl £500 out of pocket! And still with an unrepaired car
I had an XR3i, it was poring down with rain and the exhaust snapped just under the manifold. On this car the only exhaust bracket was at the rear box, so the whole exhaust dragged on the ground with no way to drive the car. I had to lie on the ground in the rain and snap the exhaust in half so I could get the two half off the car. Deep joy.
i had just picked up my son from school, when ...BANG!!!! i thought it was a terrorist attack!!! the radiator blew off! i didnt know that i had to check it every now & then for water! & i had ignored the light on the dashboard showing that it was heating up!!! my son laughed his head off when he saw the state of me & it was a lesson not to forget!!! i been looking after my car ever since!thankfully its stil faithful to me!!!
Worst one... well, had just left a BMW dealership after deciding against trading in my '98 Eclipse for a 3-series (they wouldn't give me anything for my trade in as it had too many aftermarket modifications, like the door handles shaved off, that they felt it would be a liability...anyway...) Luckily we weren't on the freeway, but were on a 4 lane busy road going about 40 mph when the hood flew up! It smashed straight up into the windshield (and as you know, Eclipses have that little hump on the drivers side of the hood). My boyfriend was driving (thank god, I would have wrecked it) and managed to get the car off the road. The hump on the hood and completely broken through the glass and there were little shards everywhere, including in my boyfriend's eye. Luckily I had a bottle of water and we were able to rinse it out. Apparently, when BMW took my Eclipse to give me an appraisal on it, they didn't bother to properly close the hood! When I contacted them, they first claimed that they hadn't looked at the engine. I called them out and said that on my appraisal sheet (had gotten copy of it before I told them what happened) they gave me an estimate that was partially based on my engine.... so how did they appraise it without looking at it? THEN they changed their story to, oh well, we *tried* top open it, but there was so much paint on the hood that we couldn't.... really? Last time I checked, paint didn't stop you from opening hoods... liars. I was so pissed and had to claim it on my insurance. Also, had some CV joints go bad in a POS Saturn that I was driving around for a short time... replaced them myself and felt all proud... when I took it out for a test drive, it seemed like nothing had changed! I got it back on a lift only to discover that the boots had busted again and there was grease everywhere! Evidently, my motor mounts were broken and put too much strain on the CV joints. Yay, all that work for nothing!
When I blew the engine in a 69 Charger R/T trying to beat a 67 SS 396 Chevelle. Put a piston right trough the side of the block. Big mess. Ending up buying the Chevelle. Haven't owned a Mopar since then.
Lost an oil pump drive shaft during a winter blizzard. The engine seized up. It was a bit of a walk to the nearest house. To call for a tow truck the towing company couldn't find me on the Town line road. That they thought I was on. There was 2 Town line roads in the area. It was long before cell phones where even thought of.
How about 3 in 1 day in the desert! 1st driving back from Al Aain to Abu Dhabi in the summer (teprature around 55 Deg) about 50 klm out my car over heated luckley in a small village area. So i got a taxi, about another 50 or so klm the taxis wheel fell off whist we were now in the middle of the desert!!! Another taxi came past and i took that taxi (bering in mind i had now been on the road for some 4 and apart from my car no AC)! So in the second taxi we were going along not so bad untill he crashed into a parked truck. I have now also ran out of money and can not speak arabic, so somehow managed to convince another passing taxi to take me to my end destination without me having any money but telling him i would give him money when we get there. Anyhow got back to work after over 9 hours on the road roasting and had to go into a meeting with the MD of the company looking like i had just taken a dirty shower. Great day!!!
the most annoying break down i had was in a Honda prelude, when i brought the car there was a full tank of petrol, i thought tidy do a few miles on that, any way coming back from the beach the car started jerking and come to a standstill, i thought to my self well it cant be the petrol coz there's half a tank of fuel left, luckily there was a petrol station just down the road, i rank my step-dad to come and tow us back bearing in mind he was 45 miles away just to tow me 3 mile to home, anyway got the car home and just for curiosity i put a gallon of fuel in the Honda and it fired up straight away, the bl**dy fuel gauge was faulty, it worked out blinking expensive coz i had to cover my step-dads fuel as well,
I had a BMW 530i a few years back & put an ad in Auto Trader to sell it. A couple of days before the magazine came out, the exhaust blew. (£400 for an exhaust) The day the mag came out, I got a phone call from a guy to come & see the car, so I went to the car wash to give it a clean. On the way back, the car started to misfire badly & eventually conked out completely on a main road. I tried to restart it, but no luck. I waited a moment & tried again. After a few seconds of turning the engine over, the car backfired so loudly, I thought a bomb had gone off! When I got out, I saw that the brand new exhaust had pretty much exploded, so hard that part of the back bumper had been blown off! When I eventually got a mate to tow me home, I laid into it with a sledgehammer!! German reliability huh? I'll stick to my Alfa, thanks!