That warning label above is attached to a bit of glass. It used to be a lot more glass all working together to be a window. I didn’t heed the warning, as I just tried to open the window normally. It exploded outward, leaving a healthy hole in the side of a borrowed Airstream Classic trailer.
I’m writing this story up now, and was hoping to have it done for today but that didn’t happen. So in its place I’m asking a question.
Have you ever broken a part on a vehicle simply by trying… to use it?
Answer below, let’s get this broken part party rolling.
Hooniverse Asks: Have you ever broken a part simply by trying to use it?
By Jeff Glucker
Aug 24, 2017
By Jeff Glucker
Jeff Glucker is the co-founder and Executive Editor of Hooniverse.com. He’s often seen getting passed as he hustles a 1991 Mitsubishi Montero up the 405 Freeway. IG: @HooniverseJeff
I had an 84 Chevy K-10, Craigslist trade special (built as a diesel, had a gas 350 in it, only one gauge on the dash worked, no heat or a/c, hole in the bed from a 5th wheel installation), looked like the Fall Guy truck though. I found out the hard way not to slam the door with the window down. Apparently the window mechanism was rather loose. Slammed door=busted window.
I have seen that happen!
I’ve done that on a honda! windows was partly up, hit my shoulder and shattered.
Not sure I grasp the concept here. In my experience, mechanical failures generally don’t occur when something isn’t being used.
Great point. Every engine that’s ever blown up was simply just being used.
Well, seals drying up and such, but yes…
You own an Alfa and you say that? Seriously though, the vent wing window latches on an Alfa Spider are glued to the glass… at least until you try to use one the first time. After that you can carry the latch in a pants pocket so you don’t lose it
Yes, I’ve reglued both sides at least once … but they didn’t fall off until I tried to use them. I found the little door pockets to be the best place to store them until they were fixed.
Same on my first gen German Capri 2600. Rear pop-open window latches only came off when used. Glued on. My Karmann Ghia had bolted on latches – never broke.
Mk1 VWs were notorious for this. Vent windows and rear view mirror.
And the rear side glass on Fiat 124 Coupes and 128 Coupes.
I’ve had the windshield wiper motor on my Corvair rust to the point where it won’t work anymore, from lack of use…
Cupholders can be so overengineered. My SO’s Saab 9-3 inverse rotating cupholder broke, and I knew I would, it was just a matter of time. Also I broke the cupholder cover on a friend’s Chrysler Crossfire the first time we went on a drive.
I’d never reset the trip odometer on the 944… well hidden button.
Once I found it, I pressed it and cause it to FAIL.
The gears for the odo turn to goo in time.
The fix was to replace the gear ($3) which meant taking the gauge cluster out (PITA).
A progression I’ve gone through more than once…
Gas gauge fails, revert to trip odo.
Speedo/Trip odo fails, revert to GPS odo.
Repair and repeat
Or you could do what the local taxi drivers do when their lpg gauges fail, top it up twice a day. Mind you unless they are having a slower day that is not far off filling up anyway.
The first thing that comes to mind for me is years ago trying to undo a bolt in a contorted position… gee this is really stiff… now it is getting easier… snap! As I couldn’t fit a ratchet on, I didn’t realise I was tightening the bolt, and twisting it until it broke. Not sure if this counts as using though
The phone app is actually a pretty elegant solution. One free app provides speedometer and odometer functions. I use an old smartphone that doesn’t have service – only a GPS signal is required. I’ve been driving this way for a couple of years and haven’t been bothered by my car’s non-functioning speedometer, odometer and gas gauge.
Thanks, will look into that for my old car – they are pretty brutal on speeding here, can get a ticket for less than 3 mph over.
Is your car Italian?
The one I’m using a GPS speedometer for is a 50’s Ford. The Alfa has a tach, so I have a little table that translates RPM to MPH taped to the visor for when the speedo cable fails.
The gearing on my 2000TC was 20mph/1000RPM in top, whish was very handy.
A common misconception is that you must not reset it while rolling, but actually the pairing of that particular plastic (ABS?) and lubricant (dinosaur gravy?) implies that you must not reset it at all, indeed.
Exactly.
Forums said not to reset when moving. Didn’t matter… it was goo in any case.
When I replaced the dissolved cog, I could see that the reset mechanism doesn’t couple to the driving mechanism at all – no extra forces exerted, no torque suffered.
My theory about what happens is: the cog falls apart due to 30+ years in the wrong lubricant, so the counter freezes at 0392.5 or something, and you don’t realize. At the next filling some time later, you reset it to 0000.0, and drive off. Only then, a few miles later you realize that it’s still all-zero, that’s easy to see. I’ll put my theory to the test after 2043 (another 30 years for the new cog).
The common sign of broken odo gears on an E28/E24 and I think E30 is the trip odo at zero, as the goo’ed gears give up the ghost upon reset.
I’ve broken one exterior door handle (’90’s Honda Accord), and one interior window handle (’89 Pontiac Grand Am).
Both of these were on high-mileage cars, that had spent a lot of time in the Southern sun. Those plastics get brittle, eventually, and the handles in both cases just snapped.
I ordered a tool for fixing my mountain bike, by removing the cranks to replace the bottom bracket.
It was a cheap piece of metal from china and on first use stripped the crank, then itself
that is amazing
That China experience…my favorite is when I ordered a mini welding tool to fix a torch. It broke one minute into the procedure. Seller says: “That never happens!”, sends a new one, same procedure. Yes, I followed the directions.
Was it from Harbor Freight? “Pittsburgh…For When it Only Needs to Work Once!”
lol, came here to say, “yes, i have bought tools from Harbor Freight.” they didn’t even work once.
An Pittsburgh’s sister Chicago Electric … “The brand more three fingered mechanics prefer.”
By putting the windows down and then up on our E46 in sub 32 degree weather the plastic nylon window piece inside the door sheared off. I was literally told by the warranty claims person that they were not to operated under 32 degrees, warranty claim DENIED. I still don’t understand the logic of that and still haven’t bought another BMW.
If you have owned a K-5 Blazer with the manual rear window, you have broken the tiny little pin that holds on half the window crank while trying to roll down the rear window. Makes it a pain to roll down the rear window. Rear window must be down to open tailgate.
How about damaging your outside door handle by trying to open the door?
(80s & 90s VW/Audi/Porsche, I’m looking at you)
Actually happened on my 5000, GTI and 944.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/df3xSfDk4ag/maxresdefault.jpg
Yup, my neighbor bought a Golf 4 for the son, very cheap since you had to slip in from the passenger side (among other issues). I hear there is a curvy push/pullrod between outer handle and inner mechanism that deforms over the years, and (point of honor for any car maker) plastic bits that decay. Since it’s a theft-relevant element, the part is 10 dollars and 8 hours to replace, or such.
https://rennlist.com/upload/handle_linkage_2.jpg
I did this on a VW 412 once…
I broke the A/C on my Neon the first time I tried to use it. I had only owned the cars about two weeks and it had just gotten hot and humid enough to use it. I had started the car and turned on the A/C, then ran back into the house to pick up something I had forgotten. I was just opening my front door when I heard a series of loud bangs and saw a bunch of steam coming out of the car. What happened was the radiator fan had quit working, which meant there was no airflow going through the condenser, causing it to over pressurize and release all the refrigerant.
The clamshell doors on a 2001 GMC Sonoma extended cab came directly from the factory with plastic handles specifically designed to break in your hands after a year of ownership. The problem is so prevalent that there are Ebay companies that sell an aluminum handle set to fix it. Great truck let down by a death of a thousand cuts by costcutting
The window in the passenger side sliding door on our Odyssey had some gunk build up between the glass and the rubber seal. That gunk held on hard enough that the window motor arm came unglued from the bottom of the window, and the arm moved freely down while the window stayed in place.
I had to take the door panel off (RIP plastic inner door liner) and re-glue the thing into place. I used what I had on hand — original gorilla glue, and shut the window while it cured.
Bonus: the original ungluing of the window happened during a test drive while we were trying to sell the van, at the busy hands of the eventual buyer who wanted to push ever button on a 12-yo, 180k van to make sure everything worked.
I fixed the window and documented it in photos to prove to the guy what I’d done, and it worked to his satisfaction the next day. I was begging every automotive deity for success because this was winter and glue doesn’t always cure as well as one would like when it’s that cold.
Double bonus: I held firm to my asking price and he capitulated, after admitting he couldn’t tell that the window had ever been off.
Putting the electric windows down in a ’99 Jetta VR6. Crunch time then broken. Known problem/recall by dealer no charge.
Also, flipped day/night switch on rearview mirror in an old Audi. It breaks and leaves crumbled plastic in my hand.
The Jeep now sports hood pins (like a race car!) because when trying to open the hood to jump start it the hood failed to open. While yanking on the hood release to get it to open, the hand broke off in my hand. Once I finally got the hood open (thanks to some Google-fu), I found the latch mechanism riveted to the underside of the hood had been de-riveted thanks to our good friend oxidation.
Rather than buy an entire new hood latch system and mess with getting it installed, I drilled some holes and put in hood pins. Like a race car!
One of the reasons I got he Vic cheap was the salesmen couldn’t get the hood open.
The hood wouldn’t pop when the latch was pulled.
Someone pulled too hard, latch in pieces. Then tried to jimmy the hood open and scratched the paint.
Undercar with a stick, pushed the hood up. New latch and cable. I replaced the struts, that didn’t fix. The hood stop adjusters were too low. Raised them up, perfect. The Vic uses these in tension to push the hood up when the latch is released.
I’m glad to figure that out. Else I was going to add a hood ornament to grab.
The root cause of my scrapping the motorcycle was a cheap part failing, wrecking a more expensive part that made it not worth fixing to me.
The KLR650 has a single cylinder, so to offset all the shaking it has a set of balancing shafts. The balancer shaft drive system is a chain with a tensioner, that is ordinarily fixed in position by a quadrant (known in the KLR community as the doohickey) but at intervals it’s supposed to be adjusted by loosening the bolt that holds the quadrant and letting a tension spring pull the tensioner to the next position. The spring and quadrant are both known to be failure-prone so I’d replaced both with an aftermarket solution that was an improved-quality version of the production system.
However, I didn’t take into account that the aftermarket spring might eventually fail too. When the spring fails the tensioner backs off and decreases the chain tension, instead of increasing it; the “detection” of the failure is for the operator to somehow notice increased noise from the left end of the engine. (Someone at Kawasaki missed a day of design failure mode effects analysis class, methinks.) So I did the adjustment procedure, didn’t notice any difference in how the engine sounded, put a few thousand more miles on the bike and wore the crankshaft sprocket that drives the balancer chain to having shark fin shaped teeth.
Now, the crankshaft sprocket is theoretically a separate piece, but it’s heat-shrunk onto the left end of the crankshaft and has to be perfectly indexed, so it’s sold as part of the complete left end crank part; Kawasaki wants $300 for that. Or one can buy a crank, ~$600; or a complete engine for $1200-$1800. I didn’t see the bike as being able to fetch much over $1000 and at the time I was having more fun with the first of my Challenger R/T’s, so the bike lingered in the garage till I got to the point I was tired of looking at it.
For some reason cam chain tensioners are the weak link on many of the Japanese bikes I’ve owned in the past starting with the 72 Honda CL350. I have a theory that as Japanese bikes age, no matter how advanced the design, they turn into old British bikes. However, old British bikes can be infinitley rebuilt. Of course, cam chain tensioner problems aren’t just bike problems. A friend of mine bought a low mileage Jaguar XK8 and the first thing he had to do was to replace the stock cam chain tensioners with improved ones. He paid more for the fixes than he did for the car,
About a week after I bought my new 1984 Honda CRX, I managed to snap off the little piece of hinged smoked plastic covering the controls of the digital clock. Never bothered to replace it, but I was a little crushed that my beloved new car was no longer pristine. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1d4325030e562440a2fd7cd45f9fea2b58d64123eba721a08dee7d94fa2525fc.jpg