I had a bit of an eye-opening experience yesterday.
The previous owner of my car had been messing with the wiring under the dash in the 80s custom stereo craze. Then my car was converted from auto to manual resulting in more changes to the factory wiring. As a result there were several wires under my dash which were disconnected. Also the warning flasher relay was dangling, unattached. But, as always with an old car, there were so many other issues to deal with that this one got pushed to the back burner. Big mistake.
Yesterday I had to drive it from Los Angeles to north of San Francisco. About 9 hours drive. For the most part, everything everything went well. But at some point while stuck in the Friday afternoon SF Bay area rush-hour traffic, as I pressed on the clutch, I noticed the pedal wasn’t going all the way to the floor. Immediately I noticed it was because of the damn flasher relay which had gotten out and was stuck behind the pedal. Worried that it might get caught under the brake pedal, I quickly opened the hood release door so I could try and shove that relay in there so it would stay out of the way. But all of a sudden, the car completely dies! I tried to restart it, it was cranking fine but the motor wouldn’t fire. Emergency, emergency, emergency! I am now stopped in the middle of the freeway with 1 million cars all around me. I turn the flashers on and try to crank it again. Nothing is firing. So I reach for my AAA card and call them while people are honking behind and flying by on each side of me. Then AAA tells me that I’ve already used my four emergency calls this year and they need to bill me $100 to tow. Baffled, I tried to think of how that would be possible and realized that my son had had a few issues with his car and I had called AAA for that. Just for battery charges and that sort of thing, no towing. But evidently each of those counts against you. So here I am, stopped on the freeway and the guy wants me to give him a credit card number to which to bill the tow. I’m telling him to get his butt in gear and send a tow ASAP because I’m in a dangerous situation. But nothing doing. He has to get that credit card number. So I gave it to him and then he says OK we will contact you when we find a towing company. In the meantime we will notify the CHP ( California Highway patrol) to let them know. At that point, I was genuinely concerned that someone might rear end me at any moment. I felt like a sitting duck on opening day of hunting season. A most unpleasant feeling.
10 minutes later I get a callback. AAA says “oh your membership is through AAA Southern California but you are now in Northern California so we can’t help you anymore”. What??? I’m going a little frantic at this point because people are screaming at me from behind and flying past me on the side. But nothing doing. They tell me “If you want we can give you the phone number of a local tow company”. No amount of explaining to them that I could be rear ended at high speed any second helped. So I hang up the phone and called sfDon who was about 30 miles away. Together we try to figure out what could’ve caused the problem. But it’s too dangerous to get out of the car to go under the dash because of the traffic. Fortunately, soon after that, I see a CHP car arrive behind me. Even more fortunately, he kindly offers to block the traffic lanes so we can push the car by hand instead of him using his bumpers to push my car with his. With those flimsy early bumpers, that would almost guarantee that my brand new rear tail panel which was installed just last week would get all banged up. This guy was a real guardian angel!
OK, we got it off to the side of the freeway . He offers to call one of the CHP authorized tow companies to come and get me. Great!. While we wait, I tell him that I might want to look under the dash and see if I can figure out what happened. So he puts his car behind mine with his emergency lights on so I can open the drivers door and crawl under there. I get Don back on the phone. After evaluating the symptoms, he tells me to follow the green wire from the ignition switch to the fuse box. I do and it seems securely fastened. But then I notice that the fuse connected to the green wire, which is fuse 8 in my 74, is blown! Fortunately, I had purchased some extra fuses before the trip. So I replace the fuse and sure enough… the car starts right up!
I run back to the CHP guy and tell him that I got it fixed. And he kindly offers to call off the tow truck. A few minutes later, I am back on my way!
Needless to say, this was a bit of a harrowing experience. What probably happened is that, when I was fumbling down there to get the flasher relay out of the way while still trying to keep an eye on the road, one of the dangling wires must have shorted something which caused that fuse to blow. And that fuse kills the ignition which kills the whole car.
Moral of the story:
One. Even if the car seems to run fine, never leave any wires or relays hanging. At the very least, insulate all of them and tie wrap them securely out of the way.
Two. Always make sure your emergency flashers work brightly and, even better would be to have the emergency triangle like we are supposed to have in Europe. Even if you can’t get out of the car, if you can reach it from inside you might be able to put it on the roof.
Three: Check your AAA (or whatever road assistance you have) status before going on any long trip.
Four: Always carry spare fuses.
Five: Always carry a few phone numbers from helpful forum members on the way who can help you in a pinch.
Six: Never try to fix something in the car while you’re driving!
Among the bad luck of this happening in the first place, I was really lucky on several counts. This could have ended much worse.
You learn a little every day...
Last but not least, I couldn’t thank our buddy sfDon enough for his help. Without him it could have been a far different outcome.
Flying down the freeway at... 0 mph.
The previous owner of my car had been messing with the wiring under the dash in the 80s custom stereo craze. Then my car was converted from auto to manual resulting in more changes to the factory wiring. As a result there were several wires under my dash which were disconnected. Also the warning flasher relay was dangling, unattached. But, as always with an old car, there were so many other issues to deal with that this one got pushed to the back burner. Big mistake.
Yesterday I had to drive it from Los Angeles to north of San Francisco. About 9 hours drive. For the most part, everything everything went well. But at some point while stuck in the Friday afternoon SF Bay area rush-hour traffic, as I pressed on the clutch, I noticed the pedal wasn’t going all the way to the floor. Immediately I noticed it was because of the damn flasher relay which had gotten out and was stuck behind the pedal. Worried that it might get caught under the brake pedal, I quickly opened the hood release door so I could try and shove that relay in there so it would stay out of the way. But all of a sudden, the car completely dies! I tried to restart it, it was cranking fine but the motor wouldn’t fire. Emergency, emergency, emergency! I am now stopped in the middle of the freeway with 1 million cars all around me. I turn the flashers on and try to crank it again. Nothing is firing. So I reach for my AAA card and call them while people are honking behind and flying by on each side of me. Then AAA tells me that I’ve already used my four emergency calls this year and they need to bill me $100 to tow. Baffled, I tried to think of how that would be possible and realized that my son had had a few issues with his car and I had called AAA for that. Just for battery charges and that sort of thing, no towing. But evidently each of those counts against you. So here I am, stopped on the freeway and the guy wants me to give him a credit card number to which to bill the tow. I’m telling him to get his butt in gear and send a tow ASAP because I’m in a dangerous situation. But nothing doing. He has to get that credit card number. So I gave it to him and then he says OK we will contact you when we find a towing company. In the meantime we will notify the CHP ( California Highway patrol) to let them know. At that point, I was genuinely concerned that someone might rear end me at any moment. I felt like a sitting duck on opening day of hunting season. A most unpleasant feeling.
10 minutes later I get a callback. AAA says “oh your membership is through AAA Southern California but you are now in Northern California so we can’t help you anymore”. What??? I’m going a little frantic at this point because people are screaming at me from behind and flying past me on the side. But nothing doing. They tell me “If you want we can give you the phone number of a local tow company”. No amount of explaining to them that I could be rear ended at high speed any second helped. So I hang up the phone and called sfDon who was about 30 miles away. Together we try to figure out what could’ve caused the problem. But it’s too dangerous to get out of the car to go under the dash because of the traffic. Fortunately, soon after that, I see a CHP car arrive behind me. Even more fortunately, he kindly offers to block the traffic lanes so we can push the car by hand instead of him using his bumpers to push my car with his. With those flimsy early bumpers, that would almost guarantee that my brand new rear tail panel which was installed just last week would get all banged up. This guy was a real guardian angel!
OK, we got it off to the side of the freeway . He offers to call one of the CHP authorized tow companies to come and get me. Great!. While we wait, I tell him that I might want to look under the dash and see if I can figure out what happened. So he puts his car behind mine with his emergency lights on so I can open the drivers door and crawl under there. I get Don back on the phone. After evaluating the symptoms, he tells me to follow the green wire from the ignition switch to the fuse box. I do and it seems securely fastened. But then I notice that the fuse connected to the green wire, which is fuse 8 in my 74, is blown! Fortunately, I had purchased some extra fuses before the trip. So I replace the fuse and sure enough… the car starts right up!
I run back to the CHP guy and tell him that I got it fixed. And he kindly offers to call off the tow truck. A few minutes later, I am back on my way!
Needless to say, this was a bit of a harrowing experience. What probably happened is that, when I was fumbling down there to get the flasher relay out of the way while still trying to keep an eye on the road, one of the dangling wires must have shorted something which caused that fuse to blow. And that fuse kills the ignition which kills the whole car.
Moral of the story:
One. Even if the car seems to run fine, never leave any wires or relays hanging. At the very least, insulate all of them and tie wrap them securely out of the way.
Two. Always make sure your emergency flashers work brightly and, even better would be to have the emergency triangle like we are supposed to have in Europe. Even if you can’t get out of the car, if you can reach it from inside you might be able to put it on the roof.
Three: Check your AAA (or whatever road assistance you have) status before going on any long trip.
Four: Always carry spare fuses.
Five: Always carry a few phone numbers from helpful forum members on the way who can help you in a pinch.
Six: Never try to fix something in the car while you’re driving!
Among the bad luck of this happening in the first place, I was really lucky on several counts. This could have ended much worse.
You learn a little every day...
Last but not least, I couldn’t thank our buddy sfDon enough for his help. Without him it could have been a far different outcome.
Flying down the freeway at... 0 mph.
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