Following up on a cross-thread in FrankensteinZ's travel-ogue, I propose this thread.

Post your stories of what and how your Zed has left you stranded.

Humorous stories are fine, as well as gut wrenching ones. The ideal story should, hopefully, have a "I drove it home" finale, but I think you get the drift.

Dinner just got here, so I'll post mine later. There were a couple of previous posts in the originating thread, and I'll let them have first post honors.

I will say however, that I'm probably the ONLY person to have had wheels come off two different cars, with minor to no damage. One I was towed home, and the other I drove it home.

In the second instance, I drove it to a car show only 45 minutes later and took Best in my class!

E

Has your Z/Zed ever left you stranded?

Actually, no, it hasn't. Pretty boring, what?

Thanks for the lead off honors E but in the other thread I was mearly relating to being brokedown in Minnesota. I wasn't driving a Z. Now that's even more boring...:disappoin Next!

Mines not very dramatic, but could've killed most of the electrics... Drove the zed to fill up with fuel while it was cheap before the weekly-just-before-payday fuel price rise, pulled into the servo station, filled up then started the engine. Hmm..alternator light on... volts going from 11 at idle to 16 volts while at 2000rpm! Only thing to do, turn on everything to help absorb all the excess power and take it real easy getting home...and it did without any casulties..

A water pump left me walk'n once. Her Majesty was NOT in my good graces at the time. She ran a Mallory dual-point distributer and one of the point sets broke on my way to Daytona one year. I decided to limp home and missed the 24-hour race.

Fusible links gave out in Jacksnville FL, had to be towed. After a hard rain I went out to continue a road trip in Des Moines IA and cracked the distributor cap, took about 4 hours to troubleshoot/fix.

Fusible link burned on the way home from work one day. Scavenged a little speaker wire, hot wired the coil, jumped the starter solenoid and drove the rest of the way home. Fortunately it was still light out.

Steve

Good call, Enrique. That's a thread that shouldn't be allowed to drift. It's such a great story.

OK, I've moved this from the other thread, not that it's THAT interesting (Just commiserating with Frankie):

I guess I got off light. For me, it was a busted fan belt outside of Dallas/Ft. Worth on I-35. I had to park my car off of an exit ramp and walk a few miles into town to buy a fan belt and a wrench. I was back on the road a few hour later. Ever since that time, I've always carried spare belts and basic tools.

My only semi-dramatic story was with regard to my '66 Mustang (sorry for the drift). I had just upgraded from a 2 row to 3 row radiator and was taking three friends out for a drive in the country. About an hour down the road, I heard a soft "ting" from under the hood. I said, "What's that?" My friends, who were enjoying the ride said, "Ah, it's nothing. Keep driving." Then I heard another "ting" and said, "No, there's something wrong." They insisted more loudly, "It's NOTHING. Keep driving." No sooner than I had opened my mouth to say, "I think I'd better pull over," all hell broke out under the hood, and there was steam everywhere. My flex fan had ground its way into the new radiator. Grrrrrr... A cell phone would have been a great thing to have on that outing.:stupid:

Edited October 8, 200915 yr by FastWoman

Back in the early 80's, my first Z, (73'), had the points come apart once 20 miles from anywhere. I always kept an old, spare set in the car. In 15 minutes I was driving again. Same car had an alternator failure that led to low voltage and loss of power, but it got me home.

My 2nd Z, a late 71' never let me dow in 8 years. Expect the same from my current 72'. They are actually very reliable cars.

None of the three Z's that I've owned ever stranded me, believe it or not. Other than having to change a flat tire on the 78. Oh, I do have a few 'stranded' stories, a couple that even involve Datsuns, but nothing about the Z.

Edited October 8, 200915 yr by sblake01

I remember a special day - my daughter was taking a karate belt test - we were all excited to go. I took my Z to pick something up from the store...it was a beautiful day...sun shining...birds...you get the picture.

There were even comments made about the car - I parked right in front of the store I was going into. "Nice car" and "You don't see those anymore", or "that's a classic". Yup, I was real proud of her, and even more proud that my daughter was going for a new belt! I couldn't wait!

As I came out of the store, I went to start up my Z. Cranked it once...cranked it twice. That's odd - it won't start. Hmmm, I am sure it's nothing - let me open the hood and look underneath. Nothing out of the ordinary, so let me try again. NOTHING.

So I call my wife. "Honey, I am stuck". You can imagine what I got as a response. Now I am in jeopardy of missing my kids test - what a bummer. Not to mention the embarrassment of being stuck in front of a store where the workers are asking me if everything is ok, blah blah.

Lucky for me, I have AAA...and although it took awhile for them to get there, I was able to get her home, get to the karate test (yep, she passed!), and diagnose the problem (fuel pump). I replaced it, and all was well with the world!

I love it when a plan comes together...

I guess I could check the date by figuring out when the last game at Metropolitan Stadium was played. It was a game between the Vikings and the Cowboys and the Metrodome was going to be their new stadium the next year. The Cowboys won and the fans had begun dismantling the stadium for souveniers. Seats were being cut out from under people!

I had a first date with a gal and wanted to impress her. I didn't normally drive my Z in the winter at all but I had polished it all up and since the roads were clear, I thought I would drive her. It was cold that day. You Minnesota guys know what I mean but most of the rest of you cannot even imagine what -35 F is like. Especially if you are sitting still. Believe me, with the performance that Tammy Kramer was putting on that day, no one had any reason to stand up and cheer. Oh, did I say Tammy? I guess I meant Tommy. After the game, we went out to the parking lot and she started right up. But then the unexpected happened. Well, unexpected for me anyway... The defroster didn't defrost and the heater didn't heat. I was stuck in the traffic leaving the stadium trying to get on to the Crosstown and she started to overheat. The thermostat had frozen and the head warped from the heat. We managed to get to a restaurant on Lyndale just across the Freeway and we ordered food while waiting for the tow truck and my friend to come get us.

Somehow, she went out with me again. In fact we went out for more than a year... I threw the gal back but I still have the car!

Kinda, my car has terrible blow by on one cyl. (the compression in this one is 40) and the carbs are in desperate need of rebuilding so it does not run very well. I discovered just how bad one day a few years ago when I was kickin' around town and it started sputtering and loosing power. I managed to get her in to a parking lot on the side of the road and began tinkering to see what was up. After pulling a plug or two I found that they were VERY fouled. As luck would have it there was an O'Rileys walking distance, maybe 1/2 mile down the road, so I went and bought new plugs.

I replaced them and headed straight home...well wouldn't you know it, before getting home it started doing the same thing again about 20 minutes in to my trip, fortunately at that point I was only about 5-10 minutes from home and managed to make it by playing with the choke and gas pedal a bit.

Now at home I pulled the plugs and found them to be in the same fouled condition as the ones I had just replaced. It was at this point that I discovered the benefit of having a blast cabinet with glass beads, cleaned up one of the sets and put them back in the car and it ran fine. I then cleaned up the other set and put them back in the boxes and kept them as spares.

This little experience showed me that my car will not run for more than about 20 minutes before needing the plugs changed. So I quite driving her at all and allowed all the registrations to expire and removed the insurance. Since then life has been in the way until late this year when I have become serious about getting her back on the road with a rebuilt engine and carbs (not started yet, saving the money for it though and will be starting soon).

I have started her from time to time to keep things moving though and have gone through the remove, replace, clean the plugs routine a few times.