Culture|Garage

Recently, I received an E-mail from a friend of mine concerning the (now infamous) story of some guy on an Audi forum who attempted to sandblast his engine’s intake manifold by running, well, sand through the motor-while it was running. Although there was some mention of a “Honda tuner” being involved, I won’t dwell on that aspect, but rather the sheer insanity of what occurred in the story. Sand and engines don’t play well together, thus the rationale behind filters- so what was the guy thinking? That’s the spirit of this week’s question.

We want to hear your greatest tales of automotive dumbassery this week. We don’t care if it involves driving, “tuning,” repairs or other botched situations, as long as it involves wheels and some sort of engine. Did your friend use house paint on his ride? Have you seen people launch in reverse at the ’strip? What about the old chestnut of an overloaded truck dumping it’s load all over the freeway at speed?

Mine involves ignorance, an oil pan, and one very sorry fellow. In high school, there were very few gearheads. I was one of maybe three or four folks that could define ourselves as remotely “automotively inclined”- two of us lusted after American iron, while the other two thought anything with a foreign automaker’s badge was God’s gift. The other guy that was into American cars had saved enough money by working TONS of hours at REALLY crummy jobs to buy himself a ‘71 or ‘72 Buick GS. Heck, it may have been a ‘70, but I can’t quite recall. Anyhow, this thing had some sorta crusty mill in it- but it had plenty of cubage, and therefore, was cool-nevermind the fact that it would rock on corroded old motor mounts when he stomped on the loud pedal, and belched nasty black smoke out of dual exhausts past a set of ancient Gabriel hi-jackers out back. This guy took a TON of flak from the import guys at our school, and endured plenty of “less-than-kind” comments about his car- the car he literally put blood, sweat, and probably the occasional tear into. As it turned out, one of the import guys was at a get-together with the kid with the GS, and was spoiling for a race. They pulled out of the driveway that the shindig was at (kids lining the side of the street) and they squared off. The ground-pounding Buick ripped import guy’s 1.8T Jetta a new one, and had enough ground clearance to avoid the divot at the end of the street. The vee-dub didn’t, and import guy cracked his oil pan in two. Not only did import guy keep his yap shut from then on, but the kid with the Buick was good enough to give the guy a ride to and from school every day from then on. Last I saw import-guy, he was looking for something with a V8 and rear-wheel-drive.

But enough with my stupid memories and jawjacking, what say you?

Pictures “yoinked” from unwittingly donated by: encyclopediaofstupid.com, Doug’s Rockets, Anniemayhem.com

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