Car Love: Sleds That I've Owned

[whipski]

54 Dodge pickup, left it parked in the alley in CB while I worked as an EMT in Denver and the city came through crushed all the "abandoned" cars. Heart broken

[Ted Striker]

^^^ ouch

[Danno]

This thread is a phishers wet dream!

[mcphee]

Oh shit. Hahahahaha


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[BmillsSkier]

Good thing the security here is top shelf!

[gravitylover]

lol

From the beginning:
The first few were my parents cars but I put thousands of miles on each of the ones after I had my license so they count for my lifetime list :shrug:

67 Olds F85 post sedan with factory heavy duty suspension and tow package, TH350 and 330 V8 with a radical cam as part of the tow package. This car fuck'n raged! Of course dad got rid of it 2 years before I got my license but I did a few miles in it when they were out of town starting when I was 13 because I just had to drive that car.

79 Olds Cutlass Cruiser (wagon) again with the HD suspension and 3spd auto with shift kit but it had the gutless wonder - 260cid V8. This had the coolest interior with sand colored velour bench seats with a Mexican blanket weave panel in each of the 5 seating positions. The weave was real wool and weird rough fibers and was very colorful. This car did dozens of day trips from LI to the ski zones while my dad was at work and I was supposed to be in school, it transported the entire golf team to practices a few times and it went on Dead tour twice. I was so bummed when dad traded it instead of offering it to me

80 Pontiac Phoenix 4 dr hatch - I took my drivers test in this car then drove it everywhere for a few months until dad changed his work schedule and the wagon effectively became mine. This stupid car kicked ass for a high school kid that didn't know any better. It had a screamin' little V6 that made good noises and it was easy to drive. It also was powder blue with poverty caps so it reinforced my inherent nerdiness and didn't help with the girls at all.

84 Mercury Marquis (Fox platform) - The Phoenix turned out to be unreliable and unsafe so mom traded it. Whoda thunk, an unreliable X car, haha. This was a sleeper with a shiny silver vinyl roof that would dust half the cars it went up against.

1981 Datsun 200SX 5spd hatch - My first car and it was a beaut, I should have chosen something with less potential to get me in trouble.. When I got it it was suburban (ab)used so the body was already dinged up which was perfect for a kid a month from HS graduation that drove like a moron I taught myself how to drive a manual tranny valet parking so I got this thinking I had a clue. I was wrong. I went through a clutch and full round of brakes in the first few months but I got it figured out. That car went places and did things it definitely wasn't supposed to, it spent time raging dirt roads in NESCC rallies, got worked over and tuned by a Nissan GTP tech that worked at the dealer in Rutland so I was easily destroying mid 80s Vettes on the open road while getting 35mpg. It also got me countless tickets and caused me to have to get licenses in three states so I could give them the one that didn't have reciprocity with where the ticket was being issued. Moral of the story is don't let your 18 year old sell a bunch of weed, have a pocket full of cash and build himself a race car

Sold that and got a Ford E200 Custom camper conversion with an 18" Turtle Top. Unfortunately it was saddled with a thoroughly anemic 302 and 3 speed auto but it did 40k miles around the country, went to over 3 dozen Dead shows, drove through snow nearly up to the windows with chains on all 4 and 10 people with ski gear inside, went to countless concerts with lots people and even more beer and assorted goodies, camped at a bunch of cliff dwellings, enabled vision quests on the Hopi, Apache and Navajo reservations and, well, you get the idea. I miss that thing.

Traded even for a 79 Ford Fiesta Sport that was more fun than it should have been and was as unreliable as expected but still managed to go to a dozen states around the west and only left me stranded once. The best part was it really had to be flogged to get under 30mpg which made Dead tour less expensive. I bent the shift rod so badly that the only way to shift ias to turn it off, shift, then turn the key back on. I drove it 300 miles home from Park West to Steamboat that way, never stopped the whole way, went through every red light and never looked back. This was the first car I drove to a junkyard and left it there for $50.

1970 FJ55 3spd. An absolute tank that ran enough to drive it home even after sucking the valves on 3, 5 and 6 and throwing the rod through the block on 2. The front bumper was an amalgam of plow frames all welded to the previous one so it stuck out a good 16" and would punch holes in things it contacted and would go through brick walls like a hot knife through butter. The back bumper was a C-beam welded to the frame at 4 points with a big sticker that said "Don't rear end me - You'll be sorry". The back window was a faded piece of plexiglass screwed into roof so it wouldn't fall down, the doors were held closed by brass cabinet door sliders, it could be shifted without using the clutch and it could chug through snow up to the hood at whatever speed I told it to.

1976 FJ55 with a Chevy small block and a 4spd. Blew the 327 motor and put another one in, a 350 that time, then blew that up so put in a junkyard 396 out of a 71 Chevelle SS and the thing turned into a sport truck haha. It rode awesome with 33's and did some huge road trips in some very questionable conditions. Great truck that I never should have let go.

82 Celica GT 5spd - I put good tires on it and beat the tar out of it delivering pizzas but two of the crank bearings melted while working one night. This was the first car I left on the side of the road with the signed title on the dashboard.

81 Prelude - Fun but was always kinda squirrely. A few weeks after I got it I was driving in the rain and water started bubbling up around the drivers side of the hood, about a half hour later the front end collapsed as the drivers side strut top popped through the upper mount and punched a hole in the hood. This was the second car left with a signed title on the dash.

72 Chevy Luv 4spd - the only car I've ever owned that I sold for as much as I bought it for, $300. This was the single most unpleasant vehicle ever but the damn thing just kept going and going. Even my statuesque 5'6" self couldn't stretch my legs in the cab and that aluminum engine with paper thin firewall made it a rather warm place to be. I don't know why I thought road tripping in it would be a good idea but I had places to go ya know so I did. It left us stranded on the exit ramp off I84 in Ontario Oregon at 5pm on a Friday night when the throwout bearing carrier melted. That was fun.

80something CRX HF 5spd that rust got the better of also. Left on side of road with signed title.

82 Olds Cutlass Supreme used Avis rental that I got because I helped grandma buy it so they gave it to me when she passed. 3.8 V6, 3 spd auto, vinyl top and an AM radio. Another huge road trip car that delivered lots and lots of pizzas. Traded for a

1960 Willys CJ5. This thing was incredible, Buick 225 odd fire bored and milled with 11:1 compression, a 450cfm progressive 2 barrel carb, alloy intake manifold, headers, Muncie M22 rock crusher 4spd, NP transfer case, Warn 27% Overdrive, Warn hubs, Dana 30frt and Dana 44rr with 5.38's, 3" Softride springs with Rancho 5000 adjustable shocks and 235/85/16 10 plays. I did two laps of the country with it, went to over 40 states and a lot of that was not on pavement. The 10 gallon gas tank under the drivers seat would get pretty hot because there was a muffler an inch below it but it never blew up Sometimes I wished it was bigger than 10 gallons but it got 22mpg if I kept it under 55 which wasn't too hard considering the low gearing lol. This is the one I miss the most out of everything I owned and all I have left of it is a picture and a scar on my forehead from the wreck that should have killed me.

81 Honda Civic 5spd - bought it with a salvage title and a cracked head. A little aluminum epoxy and it was good to go for another 20k as long as I kept a box of spark plugs with me because the #3 plug would foul out about every 150-250 miles. I could change that thing in 2 minutes after the first few times. I got a $10 ski rack for the roof and made a bike rack for the back and lived out of that thing for a while in and around Steamboat and Jackson Hole. It spent many miles and hours bouncing off snow banks on the Targhee road and going over the pass. After a while you could open the doors from the inside while standing outside with the windows closed because the rear quarters were so bashed you could reach right inside. Another one that had to be flogged to get under 35mpg. Traded for

[gravitylover]

81 Ford Courier - used Moab city truck that I got with over 200k. It had an 11 gauge diamond tread steel bed liner that weighed over 500 pounds in the bed, had HD springs with helper wedges, a completely worn out steering box, no inside door cards because you had to use a pliers to grab the rod to open the doors and it came with a vice grip clamped on the window regulator stud to open the windows with. You didn't need to use the clutch to shift, the starter wires just hung down so you could touch them together to start it. a smack on the top of the gauge cluster would turn the headlights on but I had to undo the negative battery cable to turn them off and the heat adjustment worked when it wanted to. That thing was good for a Dead tour, a winter in Steamboat, a buncha road trips and eventually made its way from CO to NY before I parked it and everything seized up. This had to get towed to a junkyard but they paid me $50.

Dad got a new car so I got his 88 Plymouth Colt. What a great little car (until it wasn't). It was way more comfy than an econobox of the day deserved to be with plush, dark red plush deep velour seats and it got awesome mpg's and was better in the snow than it should have been. Unfortunately I couldn't put two kid seats in it so it was no good with infant twins so when the tranny gave up I threw it out. That was a fun ride having to be pushed up the hills driving it to the junkyard late at night. I left it with the signed title by the office door and never heard from them.

91 4Runner SR5 5spd with the 3.slow. Surprisingly nice but slow truck that was a very pleasant rig but rust... I gave up maintaining it after a while because taking parts off meant replacing entire assemblies as things would just crumble into red dust. My mechanic at the time gave me $300, he sold it to a kid that drove it for 8 months until the passenger side front strut lower mount fell apart and almost killed the kid.

97 Outback Limited that I took over when the wife didn't trust it with 160k and toddler twins in the back seat. Things were starting to go wrong and she was afraid of being stranded while I was working 60 miles away so it turned into my commuter beater. It served that purpose as well as it served the family while the kids were little. At 186k it was still on the original head gaskets and suspension.

08 Volvo C30 - The only front wheel drive car I would ever buy again. Supremely comfy for a car so small, the ride was wonderful, the handling was better than FWD deserves to be, the drivers seat was outrageously comfortable (best ever?) and it was deceptively quick. It saved my life when a whacked out Russian t-boned me on the drivers door at 30mph.

12 Dodge Challenger SXT. I wanted an RT but the price difference wasn't happening right after the Volvo got wrecked. That Pentastar 3.6 is a REALLY nice motor with gobs of power and it could comfortably cruise at 80mph while getting 35mpg. The car was way more comfy than a pony car is supposed to be but it had NO sporting intentions or capabilities although it was a great grand tourer with that spacious, 2-body trunk. This one also saved lives when it was 9 months old and a woman in a 2 week old CRV ran a stop sign at about 50mph and took us out, I didn't even have time to touch the brakes it happened so fast.

13 Crosstrek that I ordered and waited almost 2 months for. It was great for a few weeks until I was fed up with the dumbass CVT tranny, the least comfortable drivers seat in history, the useless lump under the hood that looked like an engine and an oil consumption issue that Subaru said couldn't exist. It did it's duty for 2 years until it was telling me that there were rear hub bearing problems so I traded it before they went bad. The salesman told me they lasted a week and when one seized on I95 at 70mph the rear diff blew up and the driver smacked the wall.

14 BRZ 6spd - Fucking awesome little car that left my driveway on a flatbed because Subaru ruined the motor and wouldn't stand behind their fuck up. Fuck SOA and the people that work for them. Fuck them all.

06 Durango with the AMC 4.7 that really didn't deserve to be put into modern vehicles. ChryCo should be embarrassed but they won't be because that rusty, gutless, wonderlump made them a boatload of $$. It was driven away from my house but probably shouldn't have been. I sorta feel bad for unloading it on the guy but not really.

06 Subaru Outback 2.5i 5spd, first car I/we bought new, it was a Mothers Day present and how I ended up with the 97 OB. This was a good car but never lived up to my expectations after how good the 97 was. It rusted quickly and that caused more problems and I should have unloaded it but she loved it. When the rear brakes went bad because of a shitty recall solution and the first time Subaru fucked me I lost all enthusiasm for the thing and let it fade as I got tired of breaking rusty things when I tried to remove them for replacement. Threw it away with 93k miles on it and watched it get towed away on a flatbed. This was the second car to get towed out of the driveway during Covid times.

Current rigs in the driveway are my super reliable Range Rover (that I really enjoy in a masochistic kind of way), Volvo XC60 T6 R Design and a 12 Forester. There are a few that I missed but the details are fuzzy so I'll have to come back to this and add them later.