Legacy RallyGuy
Sunday Drivers
dossie01 said:I've the popcorn on, pull up a seat!
In the mid-west American states, there usually is not so much to do... And there, you either drink and risk deep sh*t or don't until you're 21. I was in a town of 5,500 or so people, IF you drank they knew about it and cops followed shortly.
To illustrate how seriously American cops are about under-age drinking...
We had one guy on the day before his 21st birthday, went around and bought booze from a good few of the local gas stations and convenience stores... THEN proceeded to turn each and every one in to the sheriff... INCLUDING the ones that were his friends! I dont know if he thought it'd be funny or what, but soon after people were getting arrested and businesses were losing their liquor licenses, he left town...
My brother at age 20 was semi-drunk, walking along with his 22 year old friend that was carrying a 24 pack in each hand... A cop asked for their I.D.s and ended up having both people ticketed, one for supplying to minors and the other for drunk in public AND being a minor in possession of alc... He's now 21 and STILL on probation... Where you are not allowed to drink...
Long story short... I did fun things with cars
Pretty Much our fault:
Vehicle: 1995 1/2 Ton 4x4 Ford and a grappling hook
Next Fun Thing: My best friend and I were trying to topple this 3' diameter Cotton Wood tree that had been struck by lightening, we cut through most of it with a chainsaw... But it still couldn't be felled from gravity alone... My buddy, being an avid collector on ninja/samurai stuff had a grappling hook in the back of his truck. We sent the hook up into the 'y' in the main split, hooked it to the truck's tow bar and away we went... The tree was fairly flexible, so after a few pulls that lifted the rear of the truck gently up into the air, he gave it the beans... The rope snapped... or so we thought... Turns out it was the shank part of the grappling hook that broke and came flying back at the truck at massive speed, creating a large butt-hole looking pucker mark in the tailgate.
Again my fault:
Vehicle: 1986 Chevy S10 and two cans of "fix-a-flat"
I followed the directions on the can, filled the flat tire with the repair goop... but it wasn't enough to air up my tire to drive on... I had 29" diameter tires on a truck lowered 4". Making it look like a R/C Truck by Traxxas... Anywho, I threw in another can, limped it to a gas station, aired up the tire the rest of the way and drove the prescribed miles...
On the way to work, my truck had a mild vibration between 35-45mph, but it smoothed out at 50+... I figured it was the flat repair crap, but paid no attention to it since it smoothed out. On the way home at 70mph, a friend of mine was passing me pointing, yelling and screaming... We do funny things form time to time like this, so I wave.
He called me shortly after, "Holy fu*k dude! Your left front tire is fucking HOPPING six to eight inches off the ground! I could see daylight- and a lot of it under your tire, each time it hopped. Your truck was just floating there on a black egg!"
The reason it felt smooth to me was that the hopping motion was lifting/ramming the front end into the air, by bottoming out the suspension into the chassis. Sort of like the effect of a jackhammer's weight being seemingly less as you run it. Turns out the catalyst to harden the fix-a-flat is oxygen, and with twice as much repair stuff in there, it hardened muuuch slower... So pretty much went from a cure time of a few minutes to hours... so over night curing turned it into a big 1/2 kg wad at the bottom... I threw the tire on from time to time for fun... It would leave a dotted line in the rain.
<Note: this is on a massive straight road with very few people, not like your guys' traffic here in Dublin...>