In all of our adventures, how many of us have had breakdowns or something out of the ordinary happen on our drives? Do you have any stories that truly stand out from the rest? Were there any times you became a MacGyver, fixing something with a rubber band and some chewing gum to get you going again? Perhaps something odd happened and had you stumped? Did you find yourself putting on your Sherlock Holmes cap and deduce what was happening and figure out the best course of action to correct the issue and get you back on the road?
I will start with something that happened many, many years ago. It was probably almost thirty years ago, so this story might be off a bit, please bear with me. It was when I was stationed out in Vandenberg AFB, California and a few of us decided to go down to Los Angeles to just get away. For that distance, I would think it was a three-day weekend.
The vehicle in question was my 1958 Chevy Apache pick-up. I don’t recall how many miles there were on it, but it had been around. It had a 283, four speed with the granny gear and a 4:11 rear end. The color was kind of a light yellow.
If memory serves me right, there were four of us, on this adventure. Yes, it was a single cab, bench seat truck. How did we all fit, well; one steered, another worked the pedals, the next one shifted and the fourth one prayed. It seemed to work, for the most part. We threw our bags in the back of the truck and we were off. Come to think of it, I am sure one of us had a car that was built for four or five people, but we thought it would be cool to drive the old truck down the Pacific Coast Highway. Plus, I was willing to drive.
With such a low geared rear-end, the top speed was slow, I could have sworn a turtle passed us, twice. Granted I could have probably pulled out a building with that ratio, but it was not good for top end speed. Knowing this, we had to drive a bit more slowly than the rest of the traffic. We figured we could see the sites better, the girls on the beaches and such.
Our stray from our decided adventure occurred just south of Santa Barbara, near Ventura where we heard a huge slamming noise and shuttering of the truck. It was like there was an earthquake in the truck. We stopped pretty quickly and we were “lucky” enough to be in the slow lane at the time. We all got out and looked the truck over and just could not figure out what happened. After checking out the truck, we decided we must have hit something and decided to push on for the weekend.
That decision was changed pretty quickly, as the noise appeared again, this time with a vengeance. We pulled over again and conducted a more thorough search and found the problem. The u-joint had gone bad. The drive shaft just hung to the differential, barely holding on. Our biggest thought was our weekend had just ended, oh, and we had to fix the truck to get back home.
My friends and I figured we couldn’t just sit around and wait on a tow truck to come by. This was well before my friends or I had a cell phone, this was the late 80’s. The decision was made to drive on the side of the road and find the nearest gas station or auto part store. The truck must have only moved at about 25 miles per hour. It was agonizing.
We finally got off on the next exit and found an old gas station. Amazingly they had a hydraulic press, but no u-joints. Again, if I recall correctly, they allowed us to use the press after we walked to the nearest auto parts store to get the u-joint. The truck was finally fixed with the help of some friends and a great hometown auto shop.
Our adventure continued with only a few hours of delay and gave us a story we would not completely forget. Now, with that said, if any of my old friends read this and can fill in any of the gaps or make corrections, I would be happy to readjust the story.
So, what is your story of a memorable breakdown?
Thanks.
Darren Rayborn