Posted on 10/20/2017 6:23:43 AM PDT by Army Air Corps
Calling all Freeper Motorheads! Have y'all ever owned a vehicle that you could just swear was possessed on some level? Was there some puzzling quirk that vexed you, and seemed to defeat every attempt to remedy? Let's talk vehicles that seemed to be possessed.
Ping.
Christine!
Any Jaguar.
Are you speaking from personal experience?
75 Fiat X1/9................Spent more time under in than in it. Never went anywhere in it without a full tool box...............
My stove.
It burns about half the things I try to cook.
Yes, possessed by Lucas, the Prince of Darkness...
I am fortunate in that I really didn’t have a car that was “possessed”, but many of my friends and relatives have at least one car that just seemed to have a mischievous personality.
For some reason, every car I’ve ever had, used or new, has been great. (The 1963 Impala was a little cranky, but by then it was 12 years old.)
Sure, but how does it drive? :D
It drives me crazy.
;-)
It got to the point where it would stall every time it rained. Tuneups didn’t help, nothing helped. We gave it to a young man who drove it off to Pennsylvania and we never heard what happened to it. But he was very smart about cars, so who knows?
I had a 1976 Olds Cutlass with an accelerator problem. Damn thing just kept speeding.
I will say the body on frame construction made that thing just rock solid.
As for possession, it was hands down the worst winter vehicle I’ve ever owned. Traded it within a year for something that could handle snow.
had one -- Fix It Again Tony. I loved it when I didn't hate it (I don't remember the front bumper being so extended)
I’ll bite.
Years ago, as teenagers, my brother and I shared a $600 station wagon with a $99 paint job. It actually ran pretty good. But we tinkered with it constantly adding stereo systems, PA systems, etc. (usually bought at garage sales). The PA system was an AC powered system originally intended for a building, not a car.
Anyway, the car developed some “electrical problems” that could not be diagnosed. And we did spend too much money taking it to a mechanic trying to figure it out. Hit the horn and blinkers turned on but horn didn’t work. Sometimes turning the lights on would also turn the windshield wipers on. To turn them off, you would have to turn the wipers on and turn them off again. If that didn’t do it. Stop and restart the car (no kidding). The PA system and the living room speakers for the stereo worked fine though.
We didn’t tell my dad about all the problems because we figured we had somehow caused them. The first mechanic could find nothing wrong with the cars manufactured wiring (fuses and such) - $50. We took it to another mechanic and he discovered that “the polarity of the cars frame had been reversed and the grounding system in the car was no good.” He explained that he thought systems in the car were actually getting power through a now energized grounding network (through the frame of the car?). He actually showed us where he could read a current by touching a lead from his meter to the chrome bumper. We asked how to fix that. The guy said, “I have no idea. It would be a hunt and test project billed by the hour.”
We said thanks and paid the guy $100 for telling us the car was never going to work right again. I wasn’t as engineering savvy back then as I am today. But I am still stumped as to how this could happen without blowing fuses and causing significant issues for all systems. How does the battery not just drain out immediately?
BTW - I am NOT an electrical engineer and grounding is still a bit Voodoo to me.
Yes. In my experience, all German cars have some kind of demonic quirk that cannot be duplicated at the the service center (dealer), but recur the instant you pull out of or into your own driveway.
Eventually I wrote a letter to GM asking if the car had come with an optional cloaking device that was somehow being activated and whether there were any recall notices for it. They ever got back to me.
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