Your worst breakdown?

[Robert Edmonds]

Hi I'm new here! My last chase, back on the 16th, I had lots of car trouble. My A/C went and prevented my car from starting by freezing up the belts. So I was reduced to watching on the sidelines, pulling my hair, as the storms were warning about 10 miles away as I waited for the car to be repaired. So, I was wondering what were some of the worst breakdowns you have had. Perhaps you had a your car die while a hail storm went over you?

 

[John Massura]

May 28, 2001. Trinidad, CO.

We were on the main US highway east of town, that headed into the 150 miles of nothing toward Springfield. Car dies seconds before the Trinidad tornado drops. Wasn't too bad except the storms were sorta backbuilding southwesterly, and we were worried we might get munched (the tornado was only a couple miles to our north). Anyway, as the chaser caravan headed off to the east to get into better position after the funnel lifted, we sat there. Two people stopped to give us a jump (I'm not sure if they were locals, or fellow chasers. I know my chase partners remember.). We then drove and BARELY made it to Springfield to gas up (we hadn't topped off in Trinidad). Turns out it was the alternator.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

April 7th of last year I had some issues. Was driving near Tuscola, IL to intercept a storm and all kinds of alarms started going off in the car...and I noticed the engine temp guage was quickly moving towards HOT. It topped out, and I pulled over and sat there, scratching my head. Got out in the torrential rains to screw around under the hood and found nothing. Tried driving once more after the engine had cooled, and I lost power steering and the temp sky rocketed again...so I realised I was going nowhere. Luckily a farmer drove by 15 minutes later and we found that I had lost the serpentine belt. He gave me the "If this was 20 years ago, I would drive up to that auto store in town and get you a new one, and strap it on...but nowadays you cant do that" So I had to have the car towed, and have a friend pick me up out in the middle of nowhere and take me home.

 

[Shane Adams]

I just pasted this from my website, so I don't have to repeat the story:

May 22-23, 1998: This two-day chase was my last ditch effort for a decent season. Jeff and I went in his car. The first day, we drove to Emporia, KS., and got a room, then waited for storms to fire. They did, but only after dark, so we sat in our room drinking beer and watching the tornado warnings on TV. The next day we drove to SE Kansas, and this time the storms never fired at all. However, the exhaust manifold on Jeff's engine did ignite, just south of Bartlesville, OK.. We called and got the car towed back to the local Ford place, then got a ride to a local, all-night diner. We walked across the street to a mall, and saw "GODZILLA", which let us forget our troubles for a few hours. After the movie, we went back to the diner, called Greg and Brett, then had to sit in the diner all night until they arrived at around sunrise the next day. The next day 16 tornadoes struck northern Oklahoma, while we could only watch from home.

 

[Jeff Lawson]

On the Happy, TX day (May 5, 2002), Amos and I were sitting in a parking lot in Childress looking at data when, suddenly, everything went dead. The engine wouldn't even crank.

As luck would have it, we were right across the street from Wal-Mart, so we ran in, bought a new battery, and installed it right then and there (with the help of Steve Miller, who had the necessary tools). Thankfully, that got the job done, but not knowing what caused the previous battery to die in the first place, we were a little apprehensive about continuing on. Note that the windshield was in horrible shape as well, owing to an unfortunate encounter with giant hail near San Angelo the day before. We seriously considered calling it a day and returning to DFW.

Thankfully, we decided to continue the chase. The truck continued to run fine with the new battery, although we took care not shut off the engine at any point - even when gassing up.

 

[Mike Mezeul II]

...had to have been on March 17, 2003 on the way up to Oklahoma. I was chasing with partners Ken Fugate and Scott Peake and we were on I35N no more than 10 mins when Ken came over the radio and said "Tire!"... I saw him swerve in front of me and then a full tire tread laying in the road, I swerved as well, but just clipped the tire with my left side and sent it airborn behind me. Well what goes up, must come down...and it did...right into Scott's truck and the force (we were going about 55) completely ripped off his front bumper of his truck! So needless to say we had to pull over and duct tape what was left of his bumper back on and hope it stayed for the rest of the chase. Set us back a good 45 mins or so, but that was probably a good thing because our target area was about an hr north of were we ended up chasing :lol: funny how that works, it also made for quite a funny video to watch!