Lucky Escape

[Saabnut]

Today, I decided to make a start on my Chevrolet Astro Starcraft day van. It had advisories for the rear brake pipes across the axle when tested in 2016 and when I gave it a pre test looking at in August, it was obvious it would not pass, so it was put aside in the "to do" pile. Since then it sat until a couple of days ago I jump started it and moved it to the shed door, where a battery conditioner/charger was connected. This morning, showing fully charged, I decided a quick test run was in order before starting work. Connected the battery, started first turn and off up the track.

 

Now, my track is about a mile long, the first 3/4 being a bit rough, pot holed and full of standing water, but the final 1/4 is nice smooth tarmac down to the public road. I took my time on the rough bit, at the end of which the heater was starting to heat and slowly dispelling some of the condensation caused by 6 months sitting. Foot down on the tarmac, and it became obvious the brakes were binding, but otherwise all seemed OK. At the end of the drive, it is just about possible to turn around without going on the public highway, but the newly formed condensation on the rear windows was going to make it tricky.

 

As the van has no MOT and is sorned, what follows is a figment of my imagination, as there is no way* I would knowingly break the law, officer. I decided to nip down and use my neighbours drive entrance to turn around, a distance of about 250 yards (the kids here can substitute meters for yards if it helps! ). Turned right out of my drive, after 50 yards or so there is a 90 degree left, about  100 yards there is a 90 right, over a bridge over the river then another 100 yards to the turning point. So far, so good. Turned around, no other vehicles seen, so retraced my steps over the bridge at which point the damn thing cut out. The instant heavy steering meant I just made it around the first 90 before coming to a halt completely blocking the road. Tried a re-start and just got a clunk, so decided to push it down the hill and out of the way before another vehicle arrived. This was where I discovered the brake binding was sufficient to mean I could not move it. AAAAAARGH! Illegal van, completely blocking the road, looks like a dead battery, no phone with me, and nearest jump leads a mile away! My only hope being the next vehicle along would not be BIB and that they would be sufficiently helpful to help push it out of the way, if it would move with 2 people, Panic almost set in, despair being slightly ahead of the panic!

 

At this point, I had a brainwave, and a quick check under the bonnet revealed the truth. I had forgotten to tighten up the battery terminal and it had jumped off, resting on the top of the terminal sufficiently to light the dash lights. Pushed it back on, it started and I promptly headed home. Moral of the story? Remember to take a spare battery and jump leads. Oh, no other vehicles passed during all this time, another benefit of living up here!

 

Van is now in the shed, back end on ramps, with penetrating oil soaking into the brake pipe unions. Tomorrow, hopefully they will come off.

 

[mercrocker]

"Thank goodness you came along, officer....Somebody seems to have stolen this old van from my yard but luckily they didn't get far before my immobiliser kicked in"

[mrcitroen]

Been there! Once decided to give my BX a quick run to blow the cobwebs off. Just cut out and would not re start. Like yourself, car with no nothing to make it legal. Big flashing beacon to the rozzers. Luckily a passer by offered to help push it into a side road out the way. Phew, lucky escape. Like you it was a loose battery terminal as it had been on the charger prior to this.

[Skizzer]

Yup, I brought a multi-storey car park to a standstill for a while when a batttery terminal popped off my Discovery. I was popular that day, oh yes. Still, the miracle instant fix was quite impressive when it eventually came.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Yup, I brought a multi-storey car park to a standstill for a while when a batttery terminal popped off my Discovery. I was popular that day, oh yes. Still, the miracle instant fix was quite impressive when it eventually came.

Not the worse thing a dodgy old Land Rover has done in a multi-storey, recently...

[Exiled_Tat_Gatherer]

I did actually bump into the local patrol bobby (remember them!) when I did use my old mans car for a 'practice' run (15 at the time) after I'd just done the brakes and a service on his Cortina Carousel. Went around the block and up the back lanes to stay out of the way..... all good.

Outside the garage to reverse back in..... jumped out, hadn't taken it out of gear properly, and stalled the fecker. Trying to  get it going around the corner comes plod - 'Oh shit' says I. I popped the bonnet and sure enough the jump from stalling had the battery lead off. He was looking over my shoulder by now but as I was 'putting it away instead of leaving it out here in the back lane which was decidedly dodgy officer' and he was a bit of a car nut, he let me get it moved and didn't check that my dad was, in fact, in the house as I had fibbed............

[D Spares & Tyres]

When I bought my Merc W123 it was not road legal and looked it. Had to park around 30 feet from the sellers garden with the trailer. Was just nosing out of his drive in the Merc and a police traffic car came by. I saw him look at me as he went by. Once he was out of sight I carried on and drove it onto the trailer. Had just got it on when he came back the other way. He slowed down to look but carried on.

 

That was a close one!

[Split_Pin]

Nothing like a 'Bandit run' to hone the senses!

[fordperv]

When i built the engine for the mrs escort rs turbo about 10 years ago i may have taken it for a run when it was all running, bear in mind this car hadn't been on road for a good few years at the time she purchased it from a guy who stripped it in his garage then forgot about it, so it was an unknown quantity, I took it around the block and the alternator was buggered so I ended up killing the battery on the test run, luckily there was no officers around at the time mrs fp popped around to me and dragged me back home

[Guest Hooli]

I never ever got a totally illegal XR4i totally sideways around a roundabout in the middle of town before spotting the marked plod waiting at said roundabout....

 

A quick backdating of the V5 into my then gf's name got me insurance on the 'any other car' cover and a mate at a MOT station produced a booking in their diary for a reason to drive it. Must have been good as it worked in court.

[cpjitservices]

Lucky escape or blatant stupidity? 

 

I was 16, when I borrowed my best mates mums Cav SRI and drove to croft at around 85MPH. Proceeded back to his house when I lost control and smashed the drivers side wheel into an island with a street lamp on it (no damage to the island or street lamp) - what a racket that made on the way home..

 

What a stupid day that was.

 

Little to my information also, my best mates mum didnt have a drivers license, nor was she insured. Oh dear.

 

I would of gotten into some serious trouble.

 

Car was nice though, 2.0 Cav Redtop. Tasty.

[MOD500]

I was driving an Audi 100 one day with (#Ahem) very little in the way of automotive insurance. Car was due to be sold and it was raining, because that makes it ok. 

 

I was leaving work and in our car park a plod bike was chatting to a car driver.

 

As I approached the junction  -

To my left there was an ANPR van and 2 plod bikes

To my right there was an ANPR van and 1 plod bike

Ahead of me there was a staggered junction with 1 plod bike waiting at the junction.

 

I took option 3 to avoid the 2 camera vans. Somehow this worked I made it home placed the keys on the mantle piece and never started the engine again until the new owner came to collect it!

[Talbot]

In quite the opposite to some of the stories above:

 

Many years ago, a housemate of a friend was driving about in a completely unlawful metro.  Not only was there no Rent, Ticket or Insurance on it, It had failed it's last MOT quite spectacularly, and was on 4 utterly bald tyres.  I think he only had a provisional license too, but can't remember clearly.  He'd been told not to drive it on several occasions by many people, but he kept doing so.  How he never got caught, or didn't kill someone with that deathtrap was amazing.

 

So one evening it had a ball-bearing shoved into the fuel line on the suction side of the fuel pump.  Completely invisible, and completely unable to run.  Apparently it started up, used all the fuel in the float chamber quite quickly, and then died at the roadside, never to run again.  What happened to it is anyone's guess.  He couldn't afford to buy another car, which we all though was probably for the best.

[beko1987]

I had my Landrover with my fail... Utterly un-roadworthy. I used to idle it on the drive and pretend I could fix it... One day, moving it backwards and forwards, I slipped off the clutch and it shot forward off the drive and onto the road... Oh yea, there were no brakes because I was cleaning them up in the garage...

 

At the time, it didn't enter my head (at age 16) what a lucky twat I was. Shot out of mums drive, which is blind unless you nose out, hoiked the steering and turned up the road, then coasted/handbraked to a halt a few yards up. Utterly shitting myself, I called a mate who could drive who came, ripped the piss out of me and put it on the drive again...

 

Nowadays I remember this and think 'Fuck, if someone was coming up the road they would have had a lump of pig iron hit them, uninsured driver, untaxed, no MOT...' I always wondered why my stepdad bollocked me so much, now I know!

 

Got a picture of it on the road somewhere, will find it later

[bezzabsa]

back in the 80's a local 'yoof' had a tatty MK1 escort..dulux paint job, no licence, tax and ins or mot (for quite a few years).

Local Plod were onto him, so sat up on local pub car park.. spots him, pulls him over - hands over ticket..'get it home - if i see u again i'll do u again'.... so off he potters...

plod didnt move, stayed in same spot - 30 mins later..Gotcha #2..same convo as above...

 

AGAIN plod didn't move..time for ticket #3

 

he did this 6 times..eventually called for recovery,and had the car crushed...guy was in the local paper fined £1500 banned 10 years and 12 points to be added to his licence when and if he ever got one.. 3 weeks later....enter a MK2 escort, and above was repeated , but only 3 times......last i knew he was STILL banned due to clocking up gawd knows how many point and bans..... he did learn tho, and didn't drive again

[Datsuncog]

One day, moving it backwards and forwards, I slipped off the clutch and it shot forward off the drive and onto the road...

 

Arf, I almost did that as well at the age of 16, trying to move my Cortina out of the garage. I slewed it sideways into the flowerbed and had to wait until my dad came home to find a rotten green Ford at a 45-degree angle in the middle of the daffodils... luckily he saw the funny side, rather than bollocking me.

 

Plod used to stop me all the time in England, as ANPR would flag me as having been untaxed and unMOTd for years - then looked all disappointed when I produced a valid MOT cert, insurance and point at the valid tax disc on the screen.

 

For some weird reason, although my permanent address was in Northern Ireland, nearly all the cars I was driving backwards and forwards across the Irish sea while my girlfriend was at uni in Sussex happened to still be wearing their GB plates (XRR689M, A798UHX, C408VPM). So even though they were all properly registered with DVLNI, they were still flagged as illegal since GB plod didn't have access to the separate Northern Ireland database. Seems DVLA had no marker for a vehicle registered in NI - one or two uniforms got a bit shirty and seemed to imply I was doing something wrong, but I wasn't.

 

I drove this one (legally) until 2004 - but still shown as untaxed since 1995, even though that was simply the date it was brought over to N. Ireland and put onto the DVLNI system, while keeping its original registration.

 

[Slartibartfast]

A quick backdating of the V5 into my then gf's name got me insurance on the 'any other car' cover and a mate at a MOT station produced a booking in their diary for a reason to drive it. Must have been good as it worked in court.

You're lucky to get away with that, doesn't "any other car" cover require the other car to be insured by its owner?

[0ldCh0d]

When I was 15 (1995).....One of my friends Dad, bought him a Nissan Micra mk1 (Square shape one) so that they could fix it up & then my friend would have it as his first car when he had passed his test at 17......He was 16 when his Dad bought him it.

 

His Mum & Dad used to go to work during the week, so during the summer holidays, when they were at work, We all talked my friend into driving it up & down his street, with all of us in the car. x3 people in the back & one of us in the passenger seat.

 

Now, this worked well for around a week.... All of us down to his house,  drive up & down the street, then, at around 3pm, park the car exactly as it was on the drive, before his Mum & Dad returned home.

Weirdly, Not one of the neighbours said anything to his Mum or Dad about this.

 

Anyway, one fine hot August day, we, as normal went to my friends house, he got the key for the Nissan & we proceeded to drive up & down the street. It was this, that I will never forget....

 

As it was coming up to 3pm & the car had to be back on the drive, My friend was slowly creeping forward onto the driveway, when one of my other friends said for a laugh "Shit...there is your Dad!"...At which point, My friend driving, panicked & his foot slipped off the clutch...Well, the car launched forward & as it did so, my friend steered to the right & the car proceeded to go straight through the wooden driveway boundary fence.....It was like something out of a cartoon, all the fence planks shooting up in the air, as it hit each one....then it stopped dead when it hit the thick support post....

 

My friend sat there, his head in his hands...."what the fuck have I done?".....Needless to say, we all bailed out the car, Left him & ran away....Went back about 30 mins later & the traffic police were there, along with his Mum & Dad......Friends eh?...lol.

 

It taught me to wait until I had passed my test, before driving...

[mercrocker]

You're lucky to get away with that, doesn't "any other car" cover require the other car to be insured by its owner?

 

Its alright until somebody gets hurt.    You find nobody willing to distort the truth, then....

[dollywobbler]

You're lucky to get away with that, doesn't "any other car" cover require the other car to be insured by its owner?

 

I believe this has been proven to be a myth, or at least isn't consistent across the board.

[Saabnut]

Just to add, my insurance covers any car fully comp, and the dayvan is correctly listed on MID. My friend is an MOT tester, so I could have covered the BIB. The lucky escape was not blocking the road for an hour whilst I went and fetched the trailer...

[Louise2cv]

OT.

 

Everytime I scroll down the main board I click this thread because I think it says Lucky Espace.

 

Just me then?