Best car quirk

Oh I forgot that the revving thing stopped working towards the end. I drove around with a hammer and had to jump out a few times at stop lights to smack the thing to make it charge. I did remove the alternator and put it through the dishwasher to clean the mud out. It came out nice and clean but it still wouldn’t charge.

'64 MG 1100. Where to start. Rear wheel steering when traing arm bearings broke up and of course the lucas fuel pump which died randomly and then finally broke the crankshaft.Not to mention the rusted floor. Early CJ's had a bell crank in the steering. Bearings would go out. Much fun keep tension on the steering so it wouldn't start shimmying. good work out for the arms.

On my current e30, there is a short in the rear wiring. If you step on the brake pedal while the right turn signal is on, the blinker goes crazy, step off the brake it goes back to normal. Also when you hit the brakes the reverse lights faintly go on. A quick tug on the harness makes it go back to normal.

78 corvette - once warmed up it would turn itself off on hard left handers. All electrics would go out for 45 minutes, then it would fire up. Finally figured out the starter wire was extra long - was swinging into the heat shield and overheating the electrics.

73 bronco had a chunk of starter gear rattling around inside the bellhousing. Also had to remember to turn the key from start to run - otherwise the starter motor kept running (leaving chunks inside bellhousing if you forgot).

I've had 3 mgbs and on my second triumph. Lucas - prince of darkness at work. Lights randomly go off or on. Also have gremlins in my triumph motorcycle. Digital speedo works when it feels like it. Also needs regular ECU updates when it starts randomly throwing codes.

Theft-proof Jetta. My '97 Jetta 2.slow developed an ignition switch/wiring problem where the starter would just not crank... that is, unless I simultaneously held the key at start while slamming the tilt wheel column full up at just the right speed. I arrived at this particular technique after some backwoods mickey mouse diagnostics while I was stranded in the middle of bumberkeley nowhere, and certainly not wanting to call for a tow. After I figured it out, I never had a problem starting it.

At first, I tried to have it repaired at a shop, figuring I should do something before it gets worse. They ended up charging me $180 for "replacing some wires", but it did nothing to fix the problem, and they just ended up breaking my SIR coil when they put the steering wheel back on lopsided. I would have taken them to court if I had the time to waste, but I was stuck working 70+ hours/week at the time. Those shiny happy people can go berkeley themselves.

Anyway, if I let a friend drive the Jetta, I had to start it for them every time, which I could do easily from the passenger seat. The folks I ended up selling it to could not figure out how to start it, either. After several failed lessons on my technique, I had to start it for them and send them on their way.

A buddy of mine bought a 99 cougar (that he proceeded to completely ruin) that would occasionally have working headlights. I felt kind of bad because I looked at the car with him and never saw the problem, note: check lights before and after test drives. After a few different mechanics threw different parts at it with no change, he finally listened to me and found a wire that was shorting out.

I had a 91' Marquis that started loosing all electrical power going around left hand corners one night. No lights, no dash, no running engine. Traced it down to a bad battery cable. Made it home that night by driving like a grandma in her GMQ and not a teenager.

I've also had a few cars with sticky parking brake mechanisms, that were solved by pipe or crow bar and hoping you left the car in gear. Conveniently this would only happen on days below freezing.

For those with the E30 possessed clock, it happens with mine too. Sometimes if you hit it right it will stop.

I had an old 1991 LS Integra that would leave me stranded...once the motor got up to operating temperature if you had to for some reason turn the damn thing off ,it wouldn't start up again until it cooled down...no banging on the starter,no trick ever thought of would make that SOB crank.I too like Rooster sauce took it to a shop to get it fixed ,all they did was take $280 from my pocket

How I got it fixed Radiator ,alternator ,ignition ,coil ,sparkplugs,ground wire,spark plug wires,oil and filter,trans fluid and filter,header,thermostat ,battery,highflow cat,cat-back exhaust... That's what i did to max out my first credit card.

two days old and had to take a pair of scissors to it. but I eliminated every possible reason for the car not to start and over a 3 day weekend got it all installed, by myself and the problem never occurred again...

I drove that car for another year and decided to park it and bought a brand new truck,till one of my friends needed a car to drive i sold it to him for nothin almost on the terms i could buy it back for what he paid me...he drove it three weeks and totalled it...I puked and started smoking again...

My friend had this early 90's camry with a cracked front bumper from when he had rolled into someone.

At 75 mph a broken foot and a half flap of plastic would bend straight up and be visible over the hood.

Made a pretty convent speedo, once the bumper piece popped up you were at cruising speed.

70 Cadillac that would intermitantly stall while driving for no apparent reason then would fire right back up. Sometimes it would stall out and then refire before the engine quit spinning causing a heck of a backfire out the tail pipe. It would always start right back up and be fine again until it decided to do it again. This drove me nuts and blew up my muffler before I figured out what was causing it. I added a second ignition feed to turn on when the engine started to act up. It kept the car running but when I stopped I saw smoke under the hood. It turned out the start solenoid had a loose plate and was shorting out the wire that goes to the distrubutor to provide 12 volts while cranking. This is why it always restarted the solenoid would engage and reset the plate back to the correct position for a while.

57 Thunderbird: none of the gauge lights worked unless the highbeams were on. The tach needle would just go berserk swinging from side to side making noise, so I unplugged it. Since it's a distributor-driven tach, the cable continued to make noise when unplugged, and sounded exactly like an exhaust leak.

62 Thunderbird: I was driving it the day after I bought it and was in a pretty good storm. The wipers were such that each was mounted on the far end of the cowl and they swung in toward each other. You guessed it, at freeway speed in a big storm, the damn things met and stuck together. It took pliers to get them apart.

94 Supercoupe: name an electrical problem. Every light in the car (gauges, radio, little button indicators, headlights) all go off at once? Yup. A check engine light that would go on or off (depending on the state it was in) when you hit the power window button? Yup. Dead ignition switch with a redneck-engineered starter button installed in the ashtray that would both start the car without a key and drain the battery inside of a week? Yup.

My first car, an 83 RX-7 had a bad headlight door override switch. Headlights would go up, but getting them to go down was voodoo. Also, one of the emissions valves (I don't remember which) caused the idle to sound like a rotary engine serenading a randy moose.

My 1992 Suzuki Samurai seemed to be designed to capture a couple gallons of freezing rainwater in the top between the roll bars, then to dump it onto the crotch of the driver if he takes too much time getting in and closing the door.

My Jetta had a loose linkage that made reverse and first randomly interchangable. You never knew which you'd get. It also had a broken lock cylinder on the driver's side, so I'd lock and unlock the car (also setting the alarm in the process) from the passenger side. After a year or so of doing this, the passenger side lock cylinder broke, so I left it unlocked, until some vibration or another caused the alarm to set. I had to break in (through the trunk, pushing up through an unused rear deck speaker hole and carpeting, to unlock the back doors) and remove a door panel to jump one of the broken lock cylinder switches and make the alarm disarm. I left the door panel off and carried a paper clip for the remainder of the time I owned the car.

1986 Fiero GT with chronically loose windshield washer tubing. If you hit the washer lever while the front compartment door was open, it'd supersoaker the car parked two spots to your right.

My current DD, a Jeep Grand Cherokee seems to have a loose blinker module. I can barely reach the damn thing, so I don't want to pull it out. Every once in a while, the left rear blinker (and left light on a trailer if I'm hooked up) will stop working. I have to get out, get down on my knees next to the truck, and touch the module enclosure to get normal blinking, in the process reaching so far under the dash I almost touch headlining.

1987 Ford Ranger the windshield wipers did not work in the rain. They would come on for a few passes and then stop. But hey they worked great when in the sunshine.

irish44j wrote: I don't know that any quirk has a better name then the "Death Rattle" or "Death Shake" experienced by pretty much all solid-axle Jeep Wranglers and Cherokees when the bushings in the suspension get worn. Exacerbated if it is lifted or running oversize tires.

LOL! It is most often called "Death Wobble". You want to keep the ball joints and bushings in good shape to avoid this. It is just the Jeeps way of letting you know it needs some attention ;)

Funniest part of this was at the $2010 Challenge.

We had replaced the ball joints in the Jeep XJ-R but with CHEAP CHEAP ebay ball joints that didn't quite fit until we filed them down. Add this to very well used tie rod ends and no steering dampener and the Jeep was "interesting" under very hard braking. During testing at our local autocross the Jeep became very unstable and started wobbling like mad every time we would punch the brakes hard. Well we put a steering stabilizer back in and re-torqued the ball joints but never got to retest it before the Challenge.

So when Alan M. strapped himself into the Jeep for his first run he asked us if there was anything about the vehicle he should know...you know, other than the fact that he was about to drive 10/10ths in a budget racing Jeep Cherokee! My teammate Dave (wilberm3) in his infinite wisdom decided to tell him that under hard braking he may experience a phenomena known in the Jeep world as "DEATH WOBBLE".

You should have seen how wide Alan's eyes got...oh that was funny! Fortunately we had fixed the problem and the Jeep didn't experience any such life threatening behavior ;)

Oh...well not until Scott somehow got the rear axle to hop like it was Easter! lol

Oh good times...can't wait until next year!

Had a '72 SAAB 99e with an engine that ran backwards once in awhile. Does that qualify as quirky?

My parents had a Dodge Caravan where the dome light would come on randomly and the door chime would ding. My wife nicknamed it the "Party Van" for that one.

My first bike was a Honda CX500. It had an ignition fault that would make it randomly start running on one cylinder. You give it more throttle to keep the speed up, and then it would equally randomly start running on both cylinders again, doubling the power in an instant. Good thing a CX500 can't throttle wheelie.

On my dad's 99 Ranger which I am driving right now the e-brake light will be on if you have engaged sitting still or moving forward but not if you are reversing.

mtn wrote: For those with the E30 possessed clock, it happens with mine too. Sometimes if you hit it right it will stop.

Mine stops freaking out every time I flick it, but I never know if it's going to be a 12 hour or 24 hour clock, or celcius or farenheit.

kazoospec wrote: -My '93 Civic DX, which was the ONLY car I've ever driven, including the Camaro, that didn't have a chime to tell you if you left your headlights on. Fortunately, it was light enough I could usually push start it myself, since it had a battery that wasn't fit for a lawn mower.

I can't remember the number of time's I left the lights on after driving my gf's 93 Civic DX. Unfortunately, it was an automatic so push starting was not an option. I don't know that I would call it a quirk so much as lacking an essential feature that all other vehicle typically have! Grrrrr.

I like cars with the window buttons on the center console. Both of my last two cars have had this (92 camaro and 96 bmw).

RexSeven wrote: 98 Impreza 2.2L coupe: The only car I've owned that was neither a hatchback nor had folding rear seats. It took a lot of contorting and creative packaging and swearing to get bulky cargo to fit in that car. I think it is the reason I love hatchbacks so much.

My B14(?) 200SX was the exact same way...

16vCorey wrote: Also, on my E30 the clock was going crazy. The display would freak out randomly, almost looking like it was scrolling random characters, and if you would flick it it would stop. Also, sometimes it was on a 24 hour clock, sometimes it was on a 12 hour clock. It would also switch between farenheight and celcius. I finally changed it because the display was de-laminating, and noticed that there is a switch on the back to change it from 12hr clock to 24hr clock and F* to C*, but it had never been switched. The new one does the same thing, only less often, and the display isn't coming apart so you can still read it

my 318/325Ti was the same way!

MedicineMan wrote: 92 escort gt...was a complete basket case...I saved it from the scrap pile. 1. Previous owner installed a new fuel pump and some how ripped the rubber foot on the return line, anytime you hit a long clover leaf with less than half a tank of gas it would quit, but thankfully always restarted once on the level. 2.One morning on my way to work the rubber bushing that held the shifter wore through and the shifter fell on to the top of the catalytic converter. had to hold the shifter up in the car to drive it at all...fixed it some kind of huge industrial 1/2 inch self tapping bolt my dad had - it actually shortened the throws put 100k miles on it that way.

Both of those are actually "normal" for those cars. "Dropped shifters" happen to every single one of these ever made, i'm convinced, and the fuel pickup is NOTORIOUSLY bad on these. Driving below a half tank is just asking for it.

The poster formally known as 96DXCivic wrote: On my dad's 99 Ranger which I am driving right now the e-brake light will be on if you have engaged sitting still or moving forward but not if you are reversing.

Top off the brake fluid.

Learned to drive my dad's 5sp 89 Ranger. At redline, the washer fluid would squirt the windshield. Scared me half to death the first time it happened.

My 82 Firebird had a 20 minute starting ritual when the temp dropped. Pump the gas 7 times, turn key to get it to fire. It would run for about 5 seconds and die. Pump the gas 4 times, and repeat...2 times....1 time....1 time...etc. until it would keep running. Let it run for a couple minutes and pull out on the road. Give it more than about 1/4 throttle and it would die again. Then, once the engine was warm, no problems at all.

82 Corrolla - the starter would start going bad and you would have to thread the jack handle through the exhaust manifold and smack it a couple times, then it would crank. Usually happened if i was late or it was raining. After a while it got worse - you would have to balance the jack handle on the starter through the manifold, reach in the car with your right hand and hold the key over to start, then smack the end of the jack handle with a stick at the same time. fired right up. I went through this with three different starters. The last one's case caved in after a too-vigorous adjustment.

97 explorer - if you lock the doors with the key fob, the alarm will probably go off for no reason. If you use the button on the door you;ve got a 50/50 shot at an alarm. If you key lock it from outside - no alarm

My first car was 1968 Ford Fairlane. 200 ci 6 cyl with automatic. It seemed to be a common problem that you had to reach across the steering wheel to pull up on the gear selector (to make proper contact) to start the car. It could have been an early anti-theft provision.