The wildest near wreck you didn't have.

[Lonestar]

I dunno if anyone has done this one yet but how about some stories of the most memorable moment where you thought you were about to wreck but didn't or walked away from, here's mine.

 

Back when I was 18, me and my best friend Jarod were cruising on the back roads in Texas, heading back home in my most loved 1965 chevy SWB pickup. Now before I get any futher, I got to clear up a few things about the truck I drove, it was a good truck but half the stuff didn't work....the horn, most of the gagues, had no selt belts, four wheel non power drum brakes (but had powersteering, go figure) and old ass tires! (what did ya expect, I was teen with his first truck)

 

Anywho, as me and my bud are cruising along when the mother of all thunder storms catch us on the back roads and starts dumping heavy ass rain on us. It's so bad my wipers on full are not helping at all it was that heavy. So right it starts to rain, we're coming up on a part of the road that drops down rather steep into a four way crossing where I have the stop. I have no clue how fast I'm going and figure out, "Hey, it's raining pretty f'ing hard, I better start slowing down right after I hit the crest." and right as my truck clears the top of the road and starts heading down, I tap on my brakes....nothing happened...in my head I'm thinking, "Ok...that was odd...let's try that again"

 

I gently apply the brake again and that is when it hits me...all four of my wheels are locking up because my tires have zero traction on the wet roads. I'm trying not to panic because I know that is the last thing I wanna do. "Ok...I've got no brakes....no big deal, I'll try to slow down the best I can and if I can't stop, I'll just go on through......oh.....fuck.....me...."

was the thoughts running through my head as we kept barrelling towards the four way intersection when I see them...not one but TWO 1970's model F-100s,(One has a pale yellow the other was black...that is all I fucking rememeber seeing...not really paying attention to detail at this point!) heading right for the intersection and for the life of me I don't know how I knew BUT I knew that all three trucks were going to meet right at the center of the intersection.

 

At this point, I go blank, we're going hit one if not both of these trucks and we are going to die. My bud Jarod is laughing, he thinking I'm playing a joke on him.

 

Jarod "Hahaha, ok man very funny, you can stop now."

 

Me "......"

 

Jarod "Hey man...your not playing are you?"

 

Me (I just look at him white as a ghost and shake my head)

 

Jarod "Oh shit!!!!"

 

So now were going oh shit and while my bud Jarod is trying to grab an imaginary oh shit bar and I get an idea to put two tries onto the dirt shoulder and make one last ditch effort to stop...BAD IDEA!!! I counldn't just pull the whole truck off into the grass, there was a 3 foot by 2 foot deep ditch that ran down along side the road, I had just enough shoulder to get two tires off the the road.

 

As soon I feel the two tries leave the road and into the dirt, I hit the brakes....now, to this day I'm still not sure just how in the hell it happened but it did I got a witness but when I hit the brakes, the truck's rear end pulls out hard to left and throws the into a 360 spin on the right rear tire! We miss both fords that are white smoking there tires to get the hell out of the way, I could see all this out the little bit of window that seemed to like a target scope at the time, as we going flying through the inetersection screaming like little girls before the truck comes to a stop, on all four tires, in the grass on the side of the road pointing at the road we just came off.

 

No sooner had the truck came to a stop, I look over and my friend is gone, I look out the window and see him jumping all about in front of my truck whooping and going "YEAH!" Me, I couldn't let go of the steering wheel...when I did mange, I melt out of the driver seat onto the ground. Niether drive of either ford turned around to see if we were alright....Assholes...we sat for there for a mintue before I got my never back to get back into the truck and drove home....very,very slowly!

 

The only thing I had to fix on my truck after that was the backplate on the right tire. It got bent and would lock my rear wheel up after a few days but that's my story, hope you all liked it. Now, let's hear some from you all out in Ratsun land!

[Xander_42]

Wow, mine's not nearly that dramatic.

 

I was driving into town in my 510 back when I was probably 17. Driving through an intersection that I had driven through many times already in my short driving history. It was midday and there was some traffic, not heavy, but some cars around. I was driving 5 over in a 35, and I decided to not slow down for a T-intersection.

 

It turned out I was going a little too fast, so I started to gently slow the car, so as to not upset it. At the apex of the corner, I downshifted to second, but being that I was still a pretty new (bad) driver, I didn't rev match, and the back end stepped out. I think this may have been the first time I really experienced oversteer in that car. Luckily, I knew how to handle it, I counter-steered and caught the car just as it started to slide. The scary part was that I ended up in the lane to my left, with a bumper directly in front of mine. When I looked in my rear view, there was another bumper directly behind mine. The gap I ended up in was barely big enough for a 510.

 

Now there definitely was no fear of death, but damn if I wasn't scared of losing my 510, which I was already really attached to.

[LeviGideon]

I was cruising through Madison/Huntsville a while back on my way back from Arkansas and I stopped to get gas right before the traffic started building up, as it was 7 in the morning and all the NASA employees and weapons engineers were starting their work day. I stopped to get gas, let the car cool down a little, stock up on red bull and donuts, etc. As I was leaving I noticed that building of traffic had made its way to where I was, and being in a datsun loaded down with as much as I could pile in there, it may be a while before I could make it out unless I just jumped on out there, hoping for the best. So I finally got across the first lane and into the median. Awesome. Now in the other lane it seems everyone is feeling rather speedy. I wait about 2 or 3 minutes then get impatient and decide that the next break that I can almost make, I'm jumping into traffic. Maybe the adrenaline will keep me from shitting my pants if something goes wrong.

 

As I started pulling into the lane with the supposed break in traffic, I notice a Charger running at least 90 changing into my lane. Oh shit. I'm a gonner. I'm in a tin can, slowly getting up to my max speed of 65, but only going about 40 now. By the time I had one wheel off the shoulder, scrambling to save my precious wagon, he was not even 15 feet behind me. Then, on some crazy stroke of luck the lane next to me opens up and the charger has just enough room to squeeze between me and the lexus or whatever luxury vehicle it was next to me. He got close enough to where the wind off his car shook my car pretty violently. Kept scooting along, took a deep breath and opened another red bull. One more hour til I was home.

 

Lesson learned: Being 13 hours into a journey and jacked up on red bull doesn't make my car any faster.

[Syncro]

since the right side of the truckj caught, you other end was still sliding,that what tossed you into a 360.

[RATDAT3]

One evening in 1982, my best friend and I were racing around in his 1200 in s.e. Portland. We were jacked cus we had just dusted a mopar on 82nd from one light to aother----he was pissed! Came to 82nd and King rd, he was next to us and revvin it up--light goes green and he launches like a rocket only to get pulled over. We busted up laughing until WE got pulled over. Cop said the dude told him he was racing us. Mark says "Yeah, right, he was showing off and wanted to race us--do you think this little car could race a Mopar?" Cop said, naw, and let us go.........so we headed up to 92nd by Johnson creek down to flavel. Pull up next to a Celica......boom, its on! we are in the right lane and its even--except there is a parked truck in our lane! Mark is nuts and thinks he can make it---all the way up to about 40 feet away. We were doing well over 80 and I thought, "Oh shit, were gonna die"........Nope, he pulled the ebrake, spun us around and put it in reverse and tucked us into a side driveway.......I had balled up into the floor board and when I realised we werent dead or even scratched, I almost pissed myself!..............he should have been a race car driver............

[Ooph!]

In 1984 I was returning back to the Santa Cruz area from a camping trip with my 73 620 in the north east part of California when I stopped for fuel in McCloud. After a few miles the engine sputtered but kept going then a few minutes later did the same thing so I thought maybe I had water in the fuel, I stopped and checked it out but didn’t find anything. The sputtering would happen randomly and was getting longer in duration but it kept running. A few miles later I decided to stop and check the truck out but could find nothing amiss with electric or fuel.

Believing it was something about fuel I made the decision to drain the tank and buy fresh, well it was better but was still having a problem only when it did happen it would die but I could get it started again and not stop.

When I got to the Shasta Bridge the damned thing does it again, there was no shoulder so I took it out of gear and was coasting but wasn’t going to make it. I was on the starter trying to get it going and hugging the rail still moving at 5 mph or so when I see this person in a VW bug pull up and block my lane and part of the other. Cars had already passed by there was more than enough room for 3 small cars side by side but they were fixed on getting me to move out of her way instead of just going around. I had already waved to her to go around and was concentrating on getting the truck started as she continued her bitch fest when I heard it, the life ending fear inducing scream of tractor trailer tires locked up hopping and screeching in a panic stop. She had decided to go around me just in front of the big rigs bumper and the trucker had narrowly avoided using her as a pool ball as she pulled further into his lane. She could have stayed in my lane and eased by or waited till it was clear but noooo. I was nearly in a panic and was hoping someone would come along and push me off the bridge before that could happen again but I wasn’t waiting. I put the truck in 2^nd gear cranked on the starter and let the clutch out some, it was moving and you know what? I made it off the bridge and pulled to the side into the dirt and it started up like nothing had ever happened. As I got out to clean my pants a ranger in a light green power wagon pulled up, he had seen me from the other direction and had come to push. We had a talk and a good laugh, I thanked him and was on my way again. It did that sputter a few more times on the trip home but never stalled out. The next week it died in the driveway completely and would not start, it had lost some water, a compression test showed a blown head gasket. I repaired that but found nothing else wrong and it has never done that since. I also thought over the years I could have been wrong about the person in the VW they were yelling but what I don’t know, they could have been offering me a push and in my own panic I ignored them. I’m glad I lived and had the time to learn from it.

[yenpit]

Mid 90's, hanging out with my buddy at his restoration shop, helping him work on something (likely British!). Around 8pm, we're cleaning up washing our hands, and he says "We should go for a ride in something cool!" Ummmmm, OK!! (that's why I hung out there!). He goes to the front desk, comes back with some keys, and points to a really nice blue with white stripes, AC Cobra kit car, and says "Let's go!". We pull out of the parking lot real slow, cuz the county had JUST scuffed the top layer of the road off to re-pave, so there was lots of loose gravel. He's just "idling" it along, rumble rumble blurp blurp rumble, watching for the end of the construction. As soon as he goes "bump bump" up over the lip of scraped asphalt vs good asphalt, he stomps on it! Bwaaaaaa (1st), boowaaaaaaaaa (2nd), boowaaaaaaaaa (3rd)!!!! As we crest a small rise, then dive down to the right a l'il, under an overpass, full throttle, the next thing I know we are spinning around! We had to be doing 70-80+ mph, in a CUSTOMER CAR, and I'm holding on to the dash with my left hand, over the top of the right door with my right hand, mouth wide open (although silent), we come around 360 degrees, and he saves it going straight in the same direction we were originally going. He stops the car in the middle of the road, hands tight on the Nardi steering wheel, and lets out a gasp. He looks over at me with a grin, my mouth still hanging wide open, and says "Sooooooo, wanna go back to the shop now?". Ummmmm OK.

[moparvwfreak]

Saturday September 10th, 2000. my family walked away from this one thank god. my 1984 GMC Sierra Classic SUBURBAN did not. let me tell ya its hard to total a beast that size. i did!!!!! i was heading down 405 southbound in Kirkland Wa, going to a freinds house. doing 65 or so and i see something black and yellow in the road, in MY lane! so i hit the shoulder to go around it but when i go to get back onto the freeway, and the ass kicks out. in a suburban, thats a BAD thing. i crossed all 4 lanes of traffic which it seemed that EVERYONE disappeared. i smacked the wall at 60 ish and then got Tboned by a subaru in the carpool lane. it was a lady and her 7 KITTENS. the cool part is only 2 lenses broke on the truck, and NO broken glass. but the body was creased up and over the top right behind the drivers rear window. :( my poor burban. 3 months of ownership and it was gone.

[71Stroker]

Ok, well this is back around 1989 - 1990 or so, I'm driving in my just barely finished gold 71 240Z, fresh paint, fresh L28 cammed, new Ztherapy carbs, new 5 speed, lightened flywheel, center force clutch, etc etc...point is the Z is in its prime...fast...smooth as silk just about perfect as she could be...just finished everything ...so Im heading up to Melrose Hollywood area to meet up w/ some friends at a new club on a Friday night from Torrance up the 405 fwy, and the smart shortcut thing to do is jump off the freeway at la Cienega blvd...a big main road at some parts its 3 lanes on each side, i'm still going thru where its mostly commercial / industrial buildings, somewhere close to Pico Blvd...heading north at a high rate of speed...say 50 or so...there's a red light coming up ahead, I can see the lights about to go green any second, and there's no traffic crossing the street in front of me, so I look over and the far right lane is wide open...I drop a gear, slide to the right lane and figure i'll do a curbside pass of all the traffic...

here's where the problem starts...just prior to the intersection, there's one of those long storm drains...like 5- 6 feet long...and for some reason this one is sunk down low into the ground...making for a sort of double inverted set of speed bumps...well shit...I hit this thing at 60+ or so in my Z and sent me off the ground slightly and I landed in a sort of diagonal slide going from the south east corner of the street thru the intersection, heading towards the north west corner which happened to have a solid concrete building on the corner....like one of those phone company switching station buildings...all concrete no windows...and its the drivers side ( my side! ) heading right for it....lucky for me everyone is still basically stopped at the intersection...anyways suddenly as i'm about 1 lane away from the building and im trying to correct the slide, the tires grabbed and somehow I whipped back across to the fast lane of my side of the street....hitting NOTHING....I couldn't believe it...I just kept going like I knew what i was doing...

a couple guys pulled up alongside and gave me a thumbs up , I just smiled...knowing how close I just came to dying...

 

here's the Z ...not a scratch on her...

 

[dennis]

I have so many I wouldnt know where to start.

 

I have a 80's Mazda 626 with lowering springs, koni shocks, weber 32/36, headers, Enkei 92's, 195/50/15's. I was going snowboarding in Tahoe and was on I80 near Nyack CA. I go over the hill and snow was everywhere and around 1000 yards ahead of me was a chain install area with both lanes at a complete stop. I was going around 60mph. I hit the brakes and they locked up and i cruised right into a snow bank in the large grassy median. A cop comes over and asks if I am ok and I tell him were fine. We get pulled out by a tow truck for 75.00 and i put my chains on and were good to go.

 

Were trucking along and my battery light popped up. My lights started to dim so I pulled over. I popped the hood and the entire engine bay was packed with snow. I do my best to remove it and everything starts spinning again, properly this time. I make it over to Truckie to get some gas and then it wont start up. My friend who was in another car gave me a jump and it didnt do squat. So we mess with it and couldnt figure out what was wrong with it so I ask the attendant if I can leave the car on the side of the garage and come back and fix it. he agreed and said he wasnt responsible for it. No problem, nothing is screwing up my snowboarding. So we had four people in a Suzuki Samurai with 4 snowboards and everyones gear. We snowboard at Squaw Valley and then say fuck it this is too unconfortable to go back to NAS Alameda. So we drop down into Reno and rent a car and go home. Well two weeks pass and its time to go boarding again. We cruise on up and my 626 is still there but it is covered in snow, I cant even see it and had to partially dig it out to see it. I was like screw this car it is here for a couple of months because that snow wasnt going anywhere.

 

I bought a VW Jetta within the next few days and decided to go up and remove all of my stereo equipment and go snowboarding again. I brought a small shovel with me as well. I dig out enough snow to get all of my equipment out and that car was partially crushed and the rear end was all bashed in. Turn out that is where the plows were shooting the snow onto. LOL, I just left it there. It wasnt registered in my name and I didnt even have a title for it since it was a military shady deal where cars are bought and sold on base for a couple of hundred bucks.

[AtomChurch]

I had this insulation job once in Lake Oswego back in 07. I was just doing some tear out that day and I talked a buddy into tagging along for the ride and help the job get done more quickly. As I pull of 205 onto highway 43 in my 71 510 my brakes feel a little spongy. I had just picked this car up a week before. I had a 70 4 door before this one with no suspension and I was looking for something that wasn't slammed on bumpstops and would be a little more comfortable as a daily driver. The 71 was all stock. White with red interior. It had the factory 1600 in it with a four speed. Not a thing on the car had been touched in 5 years. I had just gotten back from a Seattle trip the day I bought the car, where I spent 3 days being homeless in Seattle. I would just park the car and skate around the city and meet people who would more often then not give me a warm meal and a place to stay. On the way to Seattle I managed to get that little motor to push 115 mph going slightly downhill. Haha anyways that is another story all together.

 

When my brakes started feeling spongey as I pulled onto highway 43 I just assumed they needed to be bled and I made a quick decision to just "look into it later". I get up to speed, about 45 miles an hour, and shortly there after the light changes to red. I hit my brakes to slow down and my foot goes to the floor on an empty pedal. I knew that if I even mentioned this to my buddy he would flip, he kinda gets stressed easily, so I kept my mouth shut. The line of cars in front of me can slow down at a much higher rate of speed then I can with their working brakes, so my next few decisions needed to be quick. I decided to just blow around everyone on the right shoulder into the oncoming left turn lanes traffic that was moving along nicely. Luckily the 510 is a small little car and I squeezed right in between a full sized ford and a 90's subaru. The entire time I am down shifting with my e-brake (not adjusted very well) pulled all the way out. At this time my buddy has an apiphany and relizes I have no brakes and starts screaming for me to stop. I look over and him and tell him to open his door and put his feet down. His eyes go huge and he considers it before deciding it most likely will not help the situation.

The turn I made was another downhill road toward a Grocery, Market of choice. I was able to keep the vehicle at the speed of traffic for the most part until they turned off the road to find a place to park. I continually gained speed and made a few slightly too fast turns to go around the outside of the market and pull it around bringing me ever so slightly uphill, none the less, up hill into a parking spot. I cut the ignition and droped the clutch in first and skid to a stop using the parking block to assist me. Upon inspection of the car I realized i had a huge crack in my master cylinder. My fluid would litteraly squirt out of the side. I had never heard of this happening. I assume it had been cloged or some other blockage had built up somewhere and the pressure releaved itself from the master instead of a line somewhere else. My friend and I hitched a ride back to my house grabbed his truck, a used master I had laying around and headed back out to the 510. It took about 25 minutes to replace and bleed the brakes. That master was in that car until the kid I sold it too wrecked it about 6 months ago. Its a good thing this didn't happen at 115.

[Figbuck]

I have so many I wouldnt know where to start.

 

Really. I guess I'll just start at the beginning...

 

1968, i just got my drivers license. My Dad bought my Mom a red '67 Mustang, 289, four speed with a four barrel. She didn't like it so much. They bought a full size Mercury and I bought the Mustang off the parents. The second time I drove it, I was just cruising El Camino Real like any red blooded American boy. There was a brand new cross town elevated freeway that crossed over El Caminio, the main drag connected with typical California clover-leaf ramps. They became the new way to make a U-turn and low-ride back through town the other way.

 

I go flying into the clover leaf, pull on the wheel and get the car to take a 'set' before I start rolling on the throttle. I get most of the way around the on ramp when I see a big landscaping sprinkler spraying the asphalt. I did what every novice driver does.. the completely wrong thing... in panic I stomped on the brakes.

 

The car hydroplaned a complete seven-twenty spin, meanwhile shooting me out across two lanes of freeway traffic!

 

I never hit anything and nobody hit me!

 

That cooled my jets for a minute...

 

well maybe only a few seconds...

[Jimmyray73]

Late 91 or early 92, senior year of High School and I find myself in an 87 Mercury Topaz "GS" with a sporty looking trunk rack/spoiler and (most importantly) a 5 speed manual gearbox. It's just past midnight into a new day and I'm not so much driving home after dropping off several of my friends after a party (hosted by an exchange student living with a cop going through a divorce... License for mayhem!), what I'm really doing is more like flying "Nap of the Earth" along back roads a lane and a half wide and paved with tar and gravel (we call it chip 'n' tar here). After hanging that Topaz out at the ragged edge through a river gorge turned into a park and then driving the road that follows the cliff over said park like I was trying out for WRC competition I'm less than a mile from home but I'm approaching a stop sign at an intersection with a busy road that car haulers from a (now defunct) Ford plant used as their main artery to much of the country. I've seen people get clobbered there, I've seen people die there, I don't want to screw around there.

 

I ease off the throttle a bit early and ease onto the brakes to make a leisurely and safe stop, but the results aren't what I expect. I feel resistance on the pedal, the calipers are trying, but the car iion isn't slowing appreciably. The intersection looms ahead as I'm now stomping on the brake pedal to no avail. My best friend is riding shotgun, and he shakes off his boozer-induced stupor log enough to ask "Hey, are you gonna stop there?"

 

Clutch-foot and pull her down to 4th, then 3rd in quick succession; right foot pumping the brake pedal like it's a 2 dollar whore on judgement day and I know it won't make a difference. Only chance we have is to get through the intersection as fast as we can and hope nothing else comes through at the same time. I ask my old buddy Luke "You feelin' lucky?" and just stand on the throttle. Ford's 2.5 is a boat anchor, but I'm in 3rd and running as hard as that car ever will. We flash across the intersection about a second ahead of a Kenworth crossing the other axis and I can feel the suspension going from full compression to full extension s we catch air, then full compression again in a hurry.

 

A mile or so later I'm still pumping the brake pedal and I end up pulling the parking brake as I cut across the yard to stop the car in my parents' driveway. How I didn't end up grounded forever as we sat in the front yard laughing at the steam coming off the brakes after sliding through Dad's yard and leaving ruts that by all rights should have flipped that shitbox Topaz, I'll never know.

 

A few months later I got my first Datsun, and it only got crazier...

[DAT510]

Your guys' stories make me not want to drive at all..

Seems like things are good for one sec then out of a stroke of bad luck everything goes to shit quick..

I hope this never happens in my 510, I'd be devastated.

[jputz]

Let me give you mine... 2002 or 2003 was driving my 1979 Chevy El Camino home after dropping my girlfriend off at work, it was raining slightly and the roads were a little damp. I was coming down a slight hill, approaching a stop light, when a dog ran out in front of me!! Well I tapped the brakes and nothing happened. Stomped on the brake pedal and still nothing. Stomped again and this time all 4 wheels locked up and I was sliding. At this time the light had changed and there was now a stopped car in front of me and I was sliding towards it at a high rate of speed. Snatched the wheel to the left into the turning lane, now with a 4 wheel slid, snatching the wheel like that might not have been the recommended thing to do. I slide through the intersection backwards continuing around two more times and ended up facing the oncoming traffic. Luckly there was no one coming the other way and when the mullet of a car stopped spinning I had crossed a turning lane and two lanes of on coming traffic and not hit a single thing. Well the engine had died sometime during the spin, so after catching my breath for a min, I fired her back up and creeped over to the gas station to get out and check my shorts. Everything was ok and I drove home saying my prayers. The fucked up thing is that about two weeks later my girlfriend did the exact same thing in the exact same spot. Needless to say the brakes and steering were overhauled and the tires were replaced. Drove it for about 5 more years and never had another incident like that.

[that one guy]

The wildest near wreck? I start my car every morning :rofl:

It runs and drives, but everytime the motor turns over it for some reason revs to 6500 rpm before coming back down. It'll blow one of these days..

[moparvwfreak]

The wildest near wreck? I start my car every morning :rofl:

It runs and drives, but everytime the motor turns over it for some reason revs to 6500 rpm before coming back down. It'll blow one of these days..

 

my truck does that, but to 4k and then drops. no idea why either.

[bonvo]

anyone who has been on ratsun since 09 knows mine but here we go

 

when i originally joined ratsun i had a yellow 76 610

 

one day im hanging out with a friend and giving him a ride to his karate class. my light turns green i start to go. as i shift to second a 2002 tahoe drives threw my passenger door

 

i was covered in blood after my glass shower but alive the part i cant believe is my friend survived the tahoe parking in his lap he had a brused lung a concussion fractured pelvis in 3 places and cracked ribs he is fine now and has no ill effects of the accident the bitch who hit us fled to mexico we think considering she didn't speak English and had no license the thing that pissed me off the most is i was covered in blood there taking my friend away on a strecher and all she was worried about was her truck

[AtomChurch]

Oh highway 43 again.. Bad luck highway. I used to clean carpets for a guy in 05 and I had a little 521 that I picked up from a guy in SE Portland. It had etremely bald tires on it that I decided were still good.

After I finished working for the day, I jumped in my truck and I started him up. (I give my cars guys names so they don't act up once a month, though I assume since I am posting this it doesn't work very well.) I realized that I had a flat tire and I didn't have a tire iron. I borrowed one from my boss, jack my truck up and replaced the tire. I got them as tight as I could with the e-brake on. I set the tire iron down and started lowering my truck to the ground when my boss walks out and tells me he was leaving for the evening and I could finish up at his house and leave when I was ready. As he was driving down the driveway I realized he had grabbed his iron and taken it with him. I was just going to les schwab witch was on the way to my house and not really that far. Since I had tightened them with my e-brake on I figured I could make it, and if not I assumed I could feel the wheel wabble when it was getting loose.

I get back in my truck and start him up again, shift into first, and I am on my way. I pull out onto Highway 43 and quickly speed up to 45 miles an hour. Traffic is moving along pretty well and I kinda just zone out like I do when I am on my way home from work.

All of a sudden the back drivers side of my truck gets really low, and I see a tire roll past me. The wheel starts pulling to the left really hard, and then I realize what has happened. When the truck slammed to the ground my drum popped off. When I hit the brakes the slave cylinder expanded all the way out. And because 521's have a single res master cylinder I was once again on the same highway traveling at 45mph with no brakes in traffic. There were no stop lights ahead of me so I knew traffic would keep going, however there was also no place to pull over. So my truck skidded down the road for a bit.

With all this free time I began to feel a bit comfortable with the pull and decided to try something out. I forced the truck to the right a little bit and jerked the wheel back to the left and pulled the dragging bare hub off of the pavement, leveling the truck back out.

Then SLAM! The hub went back down. After a few moments my speed had slowed down to a crawl (or slide) and a spot to my right opened up and I pulled over into it. Not a single person stopped to lend a hand.

I looked around hoping I hadn't just shot a drum into someones vehicle. Then I saw a white ford f250 pulled over to the side on the opposite side of the highway a ways back. I take a quick walk over there trying to think of what I am going to say.

It was a AAA truck. They took the full force of my wheel to the front bumper smashing it in. My wheel was dented and smashed up but the tire still help air. The man was more then forgiving and even reported it to his insurance as a complete faultless incident. I searched for an hour or so for my hub while I waited for my friend to show up with a trailer. I to this day have never found it, I have looked several times. I have also never heard of anyone finding such and item in their yard or flower garden. I still have this truck today.

[DREWSDIME]

Im not sure of exact year I think it was 2000 or 2001 I had a 2000 Ford Ranger xtra cab that was lifted about 4 inches with 33 inch tires and me a 2 friends were driving one night up to Big Bear where my parents had a cabin and we were gonna snow board the next day. It was my first time really driving up to the mountains during winter and it was around 10-10:30 pm and we had just passed Running Springs and started climbing the mountain roads just cruising along about 45 MPH everything seems OK not snowing or anything I go to change songs on CD player next thing I know we are sideways on a 2 lane road (1 in each direction) we are facing the side of the mountain I try to correct but we must have hit black ice we spin around across both lanes ( no traffic though ) no we are sideways sliding towards opposite side and there is no gaurd rail and drops off about 20 + feet I manage to get truck turned so we are now just gonna go off cliff ( better than hitting dirt bump/ hill on side of road sideways and rolling down cliff ) we hit on side off road not sure how fast we were going we launched off bump front end went straight up for a second and I dont know if I was hitting brakes or what but as we were in the air front end dropped and hit the ground first I think the 33 inch tires must have hit the ground first, because we landed and trucked bouinced and landed on drivers side my buddy fell on top of me. The air bags did not go off, none of us were wearing seatbelts , my buddy in rear cut his head on dome light somehow luckily. We kicked out passenger window and climbed out, when we got out we thought we heard the gas draining from tank scared the shit out of us (probably to many movies) turns out it was just small creek nearby. We were down on the side of the road about 20-25 feet down no one could see us so we had to climb up to raod and try to wave someone down no of us had cell phone range, It was late it was dark we were just 3 dudes on the side of a mountain road as far as anyone knew several cars passed not to mention the black ice on the road we finally get one guy to slow down and he almost wrecks from the black ice. He picked up up and took us to nearest plac open to use phone which was a gas station/ covinience store. I fucking only had this truck 1 month just had sent out my first payment and first insurance payment. Truck was totaled the roof was smashed to the to of the seats from the boulder we ended up on top of. I dont know how we were not hurt , just a little sore for a while.

[Ranman72]

anyone who has been on ratsun since 09 knows mine but here we go

 

when i originally joined ratsun i had a yellow 76 610

 

one day im hanging out with a friend and giving him a ride to his karate class. my light turns green i start to go. as i shift to second a 2002 tahoe drives threw my passenger door

 

i was covered in blood after my glass shower but alive the part i cant believe is my friend survived the tahoe parking in his lap he had a brused lung a concussion fractured pelvis in 3 places and cracked ribs he is fine now and has no ill effects of the accident the bitch who hit us fled to mexico we think considering she didn't speak English and had no license the thing that pissed me off the most is i was covered in blood there taking my friend away on a strecher and all she was worried about was her truck

 

holy fuckballs I knew about this wreck but never saw pics WOW YOU ARE LUCKY AS WELL AS YOUR FRIEND

[AtomChurch]

bonvo cheated! That was an actual wreck not a near wreck!

[Uber Deaf One]

bonvo cheated! That was an actual wreck not a near wreck!

 

 

True but I hadn't heard this story.. glad he posted it. That's actually my worst fear when daily driving my 510... :( If that happened to me the other driver had better hope I'm too injured to get out of the car on my own....

[darrel]

15 yrs ago driving at night going east on I-70 somewhere in Kansas. Slush piled up on the road except for the tracks. I was in my DD at the time a honda accord. An Impala ss RWD was passing me and I was thinking that car has wide tires. He was ahead of me a few car lengths when he decided to change lanes as we went over a bridge. I slowed just as he started to move over(don't like wide tires), while going over the bridge he did a 360 on the bridge, not hitting anything and going into the median. I'm sure his seat needed cleaned after.

 

 

btw, we were doing about 60mph.

[Jimmyray73]

Damn Bonvo, those pics are scary! Good reminder how things can go pear-shaped in a hurry no matter how good we are behind the wheel.

 

Back to topic: I hinted at craziness to come when I got my Datsun, so here it comes...

 

I picked up the Piewagon on St. Patty's Day 1992, a 1982 280ZX with darn near every option except t-tops and slushbox. She had 89K on the odo, I was the second owner (the dealer had sold it to a Doctor in 82 and taken it back in trade for a Maxima in 92) and it only took me a moment to fall for her. I had owned her for a week when I woke up to an ice-storm that left my whole county looking like a glazed donut. I was rolling south on an arrow straight road that served as the main artery for the local Ford plant, dodging snowdrifts and creeping along in 4th gear trying to keep the wheels from spinning on black ice. I spot some jagoff in an ugly beige brick of a Crown Vic coming straight at me since my lane is marginally clearer than his and I start to worry. To my left (where he belongs) I see snowdrifts. To my right there's a deep ditch (that I've been in on a BMX a few years prior). I make a few quick calculations and ease onto the right shoulder. I look at that square POS coming right at me and pop it down to 2nd without rev-matching and pop the clutch. When I feel the rear end start to get frisky I crank the wheel left and punch the throttle, just long enough to set up a slide that'll back me into the ditch and out of that Ford's path. I feather the throttle enough to stop the spin at the right angle then punch it as I feel things get bumpy. The drive wheels dig me in and stop me before I end up with the rear end underwater and I jump out when I feel the floor bump up as I grounded out.

 

Looking back I don't feel too bad about backing into that ditch. 3 more feet and I'd have dropped into frigid water, glad that I didn't. AAA towed me out for free, and I got a day off school for it. The experience taught me a lot about how my car would react in adverse conditions (which helped save my ass later). I lost a good ice scraper when I threw it at the Crown Vic. He lost a back window when my aim was better than I expected. Little did I know that the next near-wreck would come about 12 hours later...