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Do you feel like you're taking your life into your hands every time you get behind the wheel? Do you regularly see a tall boney fellow with a scythe pointing at you ominously by the side of the road? We've got a marvelous variety of vehicles in AI. Some fast, some slow, many falling apart. I'd like to know which of them is the scariest to drive. This can be because it's got 500hp and bottle caps for brakes, or because the frame is approaching a 3 on the sockington scale and you like to rallycross. You can nominate your own car, or any other poster's car. This topic was inspired by a misread of the 'rarest car in AI' thread title. Disgruntled Bovine fucked around with this message at 14:16 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 14:13
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I'd like to nominate my old DSM. No bumper supports, no air bags, no power steering, no interior, solid motor & transmission mounts to shake every mirror loose. All with 350+hp.  
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May 20, 2014 17:26
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13 Inch Dick's car(s) have to qualify. My old Miata was pretty bad. It was a '91, C-package, salvage title that I bought for $1050 in 2007. It had damage on almost every panel, tons of bondo, and lots of rather hosed problems due to deferred maintenance. The biggest were the "drift switches" - the camber adjustment cams in the rear suspension were rounded off to the point that they would rotate (suddenly changing suspension geometry) when heavily loaded. This led to some interesting adventures, including the slide into an embankment that punctured my gas tank. Really, if it weren't for DJ Commie, I'd be dead by now.
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May 20, 2014 17:43
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I'm sure Revelations' cammed LS3 powered Lotus 7 kit car will qualify once he's installed the engine, and unlike most projects here he's most of the way done with it now. Another poster here "bowling 4 buttcoins" installed a supercharger on his 5.0 Mustang, which already had screwed up suspension, and now puts down 700 RWHP. I probably drive the least scary car here. I can vouch for Krakkles' drift switches though 
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May 20, 2014 17:50
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My cars are all boring, but my father-in-law drives a 2GR-powered MR2 Spyder that is terrifyingly fast. It has the S54 gearbox instead of the E153, so the short gearing makes it that much faster off the line. With the LSD, it will roast the tires (Toyo R1Rs) in 3rd on the highway. The intake is roughly 12 nanometers from your head, so it is extraordinarily loud at WOT in the cockpit. Edit: but I'm sure it won't hold a candle to Revelations' wheeled cruise missile, which basically seems like a machine designed to destroy tires and murder the occupants. bandman fucked around with this message at 18:10 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 18:08
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All my Scouts have been scary. Driving any Scout can best be described more as herding a collection of loosely connected parts in a general direction. Add years of PO botch jobs, questionable maintenance, rust, and outright abuse most Scouts experienced and you really have a driving event served up well into the scary spectrum. Off-road they are beasts, but don't get one sideways on a hill. Those IH lumps are heavy and mounted high, and forget about roll protection. The windshield frame might as well be made of tin, and the factory show bars (if you even have one) are ready to punch right through the floorpans (which are likely to be rusty as well) when all 5,500 pounds of Scout come to press on them as the greasier side faces the sky.
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May 20, 2014 18:20
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It's me I'm the guy in the OP Lotta people here are posting about overpowered cars but mine are the kind of 'if I get hit in this thing I'm being buried in what's left of it. Taking my old Fastback over 100mph was one of the scariest things I've ever done, aside from simply driving my Civic at freeway speeds through Seattle in the rain. I've actually white knuckled so hard just getting to where I'm going that my hands have locked into claws around the wheel I have to pry off, and they remain curled for ten minutes afterward.
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May 20, 2014 18:58
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What about Blood Magnet's VW? Surely any collision with that car involved would leave the occupants resembling the set dressing of a GWAR concert.
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May 20, 2014 19:04
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Oh, with the Miata, there was the time I figured out why it squeaked so much when you turned the steering wheel. The front passenger lower balljoint failed. Luckily in a parking lot.
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May 20, 2014 19:07
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I'd say anyone with a VW Beetle. Those crush like aluminum cans. Or HybriDSM, who doesn't post very often. He has an e-rod LS3 in his '93 RX-7 and it scares the living poo poo out of me.
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May 20, 2014 19:23
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There was that guy who posted about taking delivery of a repro GT40 (possibly with a 427, even?) and then disappeared, or maybe I just missed the him coming back from his first drive alive. Edit: Also that early-'70s Nova with a turbo that looks like a third headlight bucket. That reminds me, my '71 Nova was pretty terrifying. Unassisted steering and brakes, with a bad front wheel cylinder that occasionally dumped all the brake fluid into the drum. Not like there was anything left to work the other brake when that happened; y'know how a car that needs an alignment job drifts to the right? Yeah, it was like that when the brake pedal was pressed to the floor. Good thing it had a two-speed Powerglide -- engine braking saved my rear end a couple of times. Boaz MacPhereson posted:What about Blood Magnet's VW? Surely any collision with that car involved would leave the occupants resembling the set dressing of a GWAR concert. Seconded. Not only is it a VW Beetle, it's spiky. My car only scares other drivers (all-black Crown Vic Interceptor). Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 20:53 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 20:43
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Are you thinking of the guy who's boss/company gave him a Cobra? I don't remember a GT40.
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May 20, 2014 20:55
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Not to whore out this picture yet again but this car was pretty scary: Unibody car designed in the 50's, with the roof hacksawed off and held in place by 4 hardware store latches. I tested the strength of the car by cutting the roof off a parts car and having 4 of my friends get in with me. The doors still opened so I declared it solid. My dad said that some 60's factory convertibles wouldn't pass that test, and actually encouraged me to do this. The car was so flexible that if I high centered it on a driveway or speed bump (which I did all the time because it was riding on bumpstops) the doors would fly open. The door jambs had marks in them where all the screws on the door had hammered into the metal just from normal bumps in the road. And I routinely drove in it with too many people, sharing seatbelts. For example, this picture was taken by the 6th passenger, not a timer. The only reason I grew up not paralyzed or decapitated is that I never crashed it or had anyone crash into me.
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May 20, 2014 21:31
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my truck is pretty scary, so much so that I am putting the motor in something else.
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May 20, 2014 23:36
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My Commodore in the wet. It is genuinely scary how much it wants to swap ends when the road is damp
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May 20, 2014 23:42
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My hat - It wasn't my car, but I did drive it very briefly - my father's late 50's Ford Fairlane which had the storied existence of being converted from a beater to a street legal drag car (and still a beater) which had a stroked, cammed and bored home-built 427 SOHC in it. His attempts to 'teach me how to drive something powerful first so you don't learn bad driving habits' rapidly turned into a wiggly wheelstand and screaming, which in retrospect, probably achieved the goal he had in mind.
Spades fucked around with this message at 23:51 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 23:48
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Corolla? Truck is pretty dicey but at least I have some sort of crumple zones/air bags to save me. I'm lucky the Corolla has a shoulder belt and not just a lap belt. Manual steering, manual brakes, factory 1770lb curb weight, leaf springs, ~300hp
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May 21, 2014 00:11
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Krakkles posted:Are you thinking of the guy who's boss/company gave him a Cobra? This was the first thought I had too. I wonder what happened to him  My Trans Am might qualify. ~450 (expected) HP, stock 3rd gen F-body brakes, no airbags, no ABS, no traction control, no crumple zones that I know of - probably on the tail end of the "keep the chassis stiff so the car doesn't get too hosed up in an accident and the squishy person inside absorbs all of the impact force mindset  . Wet noodle chassis standard (although that should be improved, at least). I was reluctant to drive it in the rain even with the wheezy stock motor in it.
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May 21, 2014 02:32
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Yup, Blood Magnet's.. Awww crap, I'll be back in a bit, I just got tetanus.
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May 21, 2014 02:33
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No swaybars soft springs COG a few feet above the ground soft tires steering by committee lovely brakes that wouldnt stop a 1930s farm implement. ~98" wheelbase 5,000lb ability to run 120mph with out effort. Nah. Not that scary. but a BP powered festiva with power steering? Oh gently caress yes.
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May 21, 2014 02:34
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cursedshitbox posted:
gently caress P/S on a Festiva. Rio struts and hats (because the hats are ball bearing, rather than the stock washer-and-grease hats) bolt right in and you can steer any drat tire you can cram into those tiny arches. My Festiva probably scores pretty high on the suicide machine scale, it has a BP and ridiculous rust- I recently removed the rear bumper with a broom. Turbo Fondant fucked around with this message at 02:41 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 02:38
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I had one with ps/ac. then sold it to a buddy that added a BP from another one that I owned. thing was a loving scary rear end death trap.
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May 21, 2014 02:59
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I no longer have it, but my '63 Impala had two catastrophic brake failures, one of which occurred at 80 MPH going downhill on an overpass during a red light. Turns out if you try to stop in that situation with 4 wheel drum brakes and 1 master cylinder, you simply won't have brakes. I also regularly slid in the rain even at speeds below 20 mph. Or the time I was driving through a flooded street and the water shorted out my starter and got into my intake, bringing my car to a dead halt in conditions not unlike a tropical storm. Or the realization upon getting into a minor accident in it that in the event of a crash, no amount of precaution was going to save my life as the car turned into a soda can. I miss my Impala. The Cougar is much safer... except for the sliding in water part. All the weigh is up front, and the driver's seat is actually closer to the rear wheels than the front. So awkward steering+ Poor weight balance+ high torque smog engine = at least one powerslide a day. 11BulletCatcher fucked around with this message at 04:19 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 04:13
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Delivery McGee posted:
Oh, this one?  Yeah, it's pretty scary.
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May 21, 2014 04:54
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Devyl posted:Oh, this one? Also not an AI poster, but a good friend of B4CTom1. For my own contribution: my Impala makes upwards of 350HP, has a pretty hosed up alignment, the balljoints creak, and all the bushings are original. I'm also fairly certain I'm only getting front brakes. Manual drums all around. It doesn't take well to any kind of spirited driving.
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May 21, 2014 05:50
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1984 Volvo 240 Turbo. No ABS. Completely blown shocks. Completely blown struts. Blown ball joints. Blown tie rods. Cut springs. Blown trailing arm bushings. Blown control arm bushings. Blown panhard bar bushings. Blown sway bar bushings. Strut tower plates about to burst through my hood. Dry power steering. Exhaust leak with no firewall plug. (icepick headaches before I realized what was going on) I couldn't select gears because the transmission shifter bushings were disintegrated. If you hit a bump, it would pop out because of how violently the transmission would shake. Blown tranny mount didn't help this much. Also every time first gear was selected, an unknown relay would click.  For about 100k miles. It wasn't so much driving as it was living every moment on the edge.
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May 21, 2014 06:15
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LloydDobler posted:Not to whore out this picture yet again but this car was pretty scary: So what was it like hanging with the kids from The Breakfast Club? Anyway, the Studebaker is pretty spooky once you get up to speed on the freeway. lovely narrow bias-ply tires that jerk the car around pretty good on the California freeway's copious grooves and holes. No collapsible steering column, no shoulder belt, no airbag, so I'm probably losing teeth *at the least* in an accident. Visibility is amazing because the roof wasn't designed with rollovers in mind, and there's no B pillar. And loving Amazon still hasn't shipped my replacement master cylinder, so when I sit at a light the brake pedal gradually softens and I have to keep pushing further down lest I start rolling. My very first car was a 1990-ish Crown Victoria, and it burned both oil and ATF enough that 1) I had to add ATF every other week, and 2) I had to drive with the window partly opened or else the fumes would overwhelm me.
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May 21, 2014 06:40
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oval office piece of poo poo ill never drive again
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May 21, 2014 10:15
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LloydDobler posted:Not to whore out this picture yet again but this car was pretty scary: On the other hand, this is the best car I've ever seen
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May 21, 2014 11:24
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Not technically my car but I'm fairly certain I ended up putting twice as many miles on it as the actual owner so... Anyway it was an '84 RX-7 GSL with everything stripped from the interior but seats and the dashboard (all told we managed to remove almost 100lbs from this car). The exhaust consisted of a Racing Beat header with a foot of pipe attached to it and a turn-down exiting somewhere just under the passenger seat. We deleted the rats-nest in the engine bay. It had a 2 inch drop and the rear shocks were blown making the rear end-end even twitchier than it already is, which was great because the steering had about 180 degrees of play in it. You had to start counter-steering just before the rear actually broke loose. The front tires were perpetually going bald on the inside edge because the ball-joints had collapsed sometime during the Clinton administration. Heat was provided solely by the exhaust and transmission, meaning winter was just as awful as summertime when it would do its best to roast you alive. I lost count of how many times that car tried to murder us. Goddamn I miss the poo poo out of that thing. Terrible Robot fucked around with this message at 11:56 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 11:54
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The real winner of this thread is dead, upside down in a ditch yet to be discovered by highway patrol. Everyone else can go back to driving their LS460's and shut up. E: Also 
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May 21, 2014 14:30
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My shitheap MJ, soon to be scrapped. No rockers remaining. They were rotted off and then I rammed them into rocks until what was left caved in. No floors. If I drive over a stick in the woods it smacks my foot through the carpet. The hole on the passenger side is so large my 10lb fire extinguisher is nearly falling through the structural carpet. It got deathwobble so bad that it tore the passenger motor bracket off the block, snapping two grade 8 bolts and tearing a chunk of cast iron off in the process. the passenger front tire has 7 ounces of lead on it because I did a few thousand miles with a balljoint so loose it slid out of the axle (they are pressfit) and the nut almost fell off in my hand. Not sure how that one got past the inspector... the upper control arm bushings are so shot that the auto locker nearly put me in a ditch the one time I tried to drive it in the snow last winter. it has a hosed up alignment issue and sloppy steering, so it constantly wants to deathwobble at speeds as low as 45mph. I have developed a sixth sense for deathwobble and can ward it off with very careful steering input, and make the wobble stop in a fraction of a second if it starts. This is why no one else is allowed to drive it, the engine will fall out again if it is allowed to wobble seriously and you aren't going to learn how to stop it in time. the windshield cracked last summer from unibody flex. I had another put in it. The drivers door has gone "inverse lambo", that is, the upper hinge tore off the A-pillar and you have to lift it into place when closing it. the cab flexes so much from rust and cracking that the fixed panes of rear cab glass slowly inch over and have to be pushed back into place. the rear driveshaft is entirely unbalanced and somewhat banana shaped from rock crawling. no airbags. no crumple zones. no swaybars. barely functional shocks. The front lighting/grill/nosepiece is held in with 4 bolts and a prodigious quantity of speed tape. the tail lights are marginally attached with more speed tape. I've done 103mph in it (2 years ago when it was in slightly better shape...) and slide it around corners on back roads late at night with one inside tire off the ground and the outside front tire rolled onto the sidewall  it jumps pretty nicely too but getting deathwobble the second you land is a bit disconcerting.
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May 21, 2014 14:37
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The thread title seems rhetorical and should just be a link to kastein's thread. He has absolutely no fear.
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May 21, 2014 14:49
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May 21, 2014 16:24
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'82 911SC. The combination of how it begs to be driven hard with its insatiable desire to see me dead scares the daylights out of me.
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May 21, 2014 17:26
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Uhm I think kastein wins this one, hands down.  I got nervous just reading that.
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May 21, 2014 17:37
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 Oh boy, where to start? When I got it, it one working brake- the passengers side disk, which worked so well in fact that it never stopped engaging at all. Hard braking (or any sort of braking at all really) would cause the car to violently pull to the right. The passenger rear drum was also stuck engaged, but the previous owner had decided that instead of fixing it, he should pack the drum with grease so the wheel would spin freely. This had the side effect of making the parking brake worthless. The fuel line had been replaced with a braided steel line at some point, which was not anchored to anything. If you looked under the car you could see it swaying happily about an inch from the ground. The aftermarket steering wheel had been mounted incorrectly so that you could do a full quarter turn of wheel in either direction without turning the car. The steering was further compromised by the skinny drag wheels mounted by the PO. It simply could not go around a corner. The Mustang started life as an EFI car, but was converted to a carb at some point. The EFI wiring harness wasn't removed or disconnected in any way, leaving a bunch of live uninsulated wires dangling in the engine bay shorting on anything they came in contact with. If you made the mistake of driving in the rain, onlookers could watch sparks fly out the bottom of the car. The distributor had a cast iron gear against a steel roller cam. When the cam gear finally ate the distributor, the engine backfired through the carb, setting the air cleaner on fire. The suspension was completely blown. The rear shocks could be easily compressed by hand, and wouldn't return even under no load at all. The control arms were the original stamped steel ones and were badly worn. The lowers had one poly bushing in them and one rubber bushing (???). The rubber bushings were so rotted all that was left was a little slip of rubber surrounding the sleeve. The sway bar was missing two of its four bolts. One lug nut was missing, and all of the lug nuts were mismatched. It leaked oil from the valve covers and ran so rich if you stood behind it you could feel flecks of unburnt gas on your ankles being spit out the exhaust. It would also belch flames from the exhaust pretty regularly (which I actually kind of miss, to be honest). The seat belts did not work, and there are no safety features of any kind anywhere- no air bags, no crumple zones, and no ABS. It also has solid motor mounts so the engine will shake loose every bolt on the car not loctited in (and some that are, given time). And it makes about 400 rwhp. Propaganda Bob fucked around with this message at 20:44 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 20:42
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Jesus christ, at least my shitpile isn't an electrical fire/electrocution hazard and makes a hell of a lot less power than that  and my seatbelts work.Oh yeah, my fuel tank is held in by a ratchet strap and the battery is also held down by a ratchet strap... the battery got shaken so violently by rally raiding and catching air repeatedly on back roads that it shattered the bracket it was bolted securely to. The fuel tank is actually technically held up by the OEM style metal straps, but it's caved in a bit from rock crawling and the straps would spread apart and drop it on the ground if they weren't ratchet strapped together. (this thread is about the car, not the driver... so whether or not I have any fear is, in my opinion, a moot point. I'm terrified of my dad's driving.)
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May 21, 2014 20:48
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My T-Bird has no seatbelts, a steel dashboard, solid steering column, weighs in at nearly 5,000lbs, the steering is mostly a suggestion, and it has single channel drum brakes all 'round. Stopping is always an adventure. Ok, they are 'power-assisted' brakes but, really, it's more placebo than anything else.
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May 21, 2014 21:08
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kastein posted:(this thread is about the car, not the driver... so whether or not I have any fear is, in my opinion, a moot point. I'm terrified of my dad's driving.) A deathtrap car that sits in a driveway doesn't scare anybody. It's all about having the right person behind the wheel that makes it that much more terrifying. You are definitely that person. In the most AI way possible.
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May 21, 2014 22:44
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