Strangest vehicle you ever dragged home and consequences for same?

yellerspirit's recent thread and some of the replies inspire this thread.

Every car nut, gear-head or cheapskate loses his mind occasionally.

What motorized eyesores, undesirables or oddball contraptions have you brought home? What price did you pay for these indiscretions AFTER the purchase?
My hall of shame includes a retired ambulance(still have the air horns and trying to devise a way to install them on my MG Midget), a wretched old dump truck and an elderly class A RV with a leaky roof.

When I bought the ambulance I was living in a condo with one particularly bitchy neighbor who hated me and my cars. I parked the ambulance in the driveway long enough to get her goat and then moved it to it's Prearranged storage spot. That was worth it so mitigates my otherwise suspect judgement at the municipal auction.

The dump truck broke down on the highway halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago. Managed to hop a fence, stumbled on an exceptionally nice gentleman who drove me to a parts store for a fuel pump. Had the roadside repair done before the state tow truck arrived.

I still take flak over the motor home. What was I thinking?

A friend photoshopped a picture of me proudly before a garbage truck that hangs on my office wall. Hey, if the price were right...

 

I one time drug home a '66 Impala station wagon. It was rusty and beat, but I thought I could use it for parts. The kicker was, it had no front suspension or rear axle. I got it on my trailer with my winch and old sewer pipe. When I got home, my wife asked why I wanted to start a junk yard in the back field when we just got done getting all the previous owner's clutter out? She then proceeded to tell me exactly where to stick the station wagon (hint, it's a very uncomfortable place to park a wagon).

 

well, number 1 that i got crap for....you all remember the "crappy sh!tbox" right?

my wife still likes to revisit that during arguments!

my other foray was the year between living in Ft Lauderdale and Tallahassee. i lived with my mom in west elizabeth. and i drove home a 1982 dodge van i bought for $75. i had delusions of maybe making the possum van, or a custom van. the body wasnt in bad shape. but, the power steering pump was burned up as was the rear end! i pulled up and my mom said..."get rid of it today...or live in it. ....i was bummed. i got my money back but the next week the van became farberware!

 

"Strangest" would have to be the 65 IH Metro I seen on Craigslist for $900. For some reason I saw it and said to myself I have to have it. I talked the guy down to $700 and gave a buddy of mine a minibike to tow it home for me. My guess is that it hadn't run in 10 years.






With some elbow grease, money, and time, I got it running. I drove it from CO to TN as most here were following my adventure. Unfortunately I had to sell it but did well on Ebay at $4150

 

My 1956 Porsche 356B. This was in the early 70's. What an ugly rustbucket! $50 bucks. The floor and interior were shot, except for the tunnel. Motor and trans were solid, but I rebuilt it anyway, and sold it to pay for university and buy my aunt's 1968 Impala to go to school and back.

 

Thought I'd quote the entire post just to be a a$$hat!

 

You succeeded!

 

Sorry, I resized them but they are still showing up gigantic.

 

I have had so many piles of squat, where do I begin?

1986 Chevy Sprint, red 4 door 3 banger auto. I gave $75 for it and the guy said the tranny was weak. He was not kidding, 2 days later I lost drive and reverse. I did not care, I still drove it for a few months with nothing but Park, 1st, 2nd and 3 neutrals, lol. If I needed to back it up, it was so light, I just opened the door, stuck one foot out and pushed it from the comfort of my seat, lol. I sold it to a guy who wanted it for the motor for $200. I had this during my first marriage and the wife refused to ride in the death trap, so I made sure to drive it everywhere I went, so I didn't have to deal with her b*tching! HAHAHA!

1986 Jeep Cherokee, Dark red and silver. Rotted floor boards and doors. I got it for free from a lady who bought a newer car and wanted the eyesore out of her yard. It had 140K some odd miles on it. I got 4 doors and some sheet metal from a buddy who scraps cars and metal for a living for free.(we do alot of swapping back and forth) I also got 4 aluminum wheels and decent tires for it from him as well for nothing. I spent $25 for wire for my dads mig welder and bought 6 cans of Dollar Store flat black paint. 2 days later I put it in the yard for $750 and sold it that same night for $675. I got this one early in the marriage to my current wife. She liked it when it was done, but hatted it when I got it. So I took her shopping with the money I made off it.

 

A friend's wife had a "Chevy" Sprint from new. Deathtrap it was alright.
I vividly remember being in the back seat with my wife, my 275#(that he admits to) friend at the wheel, his wife riding shotgun and the A/C on. Merging onto Chicago's Eisenhower Expressway was a hair raising experience, I thought we were going to die. I never saw so many "birds" waved in my life.
The little 3 banger used to shake the bracket for the A/c compressor to pieces with alarming regularity.


Way cool truck, Eagle Freak. Reminds me of a Divco

 

How much crap did you get for the one across the street?

 

I grew up in a rural area of KY and worked all through high school on a man's farm who really took me under his wing and taught me a lot of valuable things. I treasure my time working on Wilbur's farm.

In 2005 at his 85th birthday party, he offered to sell me the old Oliver tractor that I ran all through high school and with which he had farmed for over 53 years. He kept the old Oliver in great mechanical condition but never spent so much as a penny on anything cosmetic.

Here's the old Oliver 88 on the farm just before we loaded it up to haul it home:



In January 2006 we hauled it back to the farm for a visit:



I live in a subdivision in Lexington, KY and am the only one in this end of town with a 6 cylinder farm tractor under the back deck, but I get to brag that I've got the biggest riding mower in the subdivision. Plus, I take it to antique tractor shows and antique tractor rides too!

 

Whjco, you are a man after my own heart! I LOVE old tractors, My first farm job, other then the one I grew up on, is owned by Boyce White. He had an Oliver 70, C-70M, 77 and a 660. My dad worked for his dad and Boyce used to ride around on my dads lap when he did field work. I still go visit boyce when I get a chance. He is also a private pilot and a motor head. He has an Ultra Light, Glider, Piper Cub for a plane and is restoring a Stearman Bi-wing. He alos has a 47 Indian and a 48 Indian motorcyles and a chopped top '32 Ford with a 6-71 Blown 396 and a 383 stroker powered '55 Chevy. I will have to get some pics when I go see him next time.

 

The other weird vehicle I brought home was a bus which was a joke that got out of hand. We participate in the Grand Indiana Auto Tour (www.grandindianaautotour.com) every year and one year I had loaned out a couple of cars. We started joking that we needed to get an old bus to take on old car tours so we could all just ride together and we'd point at some rusted out school bus hulk in a hog lot and say "there's our bus!", of course never actually taking ourselves seriously.

Then along comes the dangers of surfing ebay! I ran across this tiny goofy little bus that looked like a salesman's sample for a real school bus. I made an even more stupid mistake of contacting an old car friend and sending him the link to the auction and he said "we need to make a road trip!" so I impulsively put a bid in on it and ended up being the sole bidder at the starting bid of $300. At that time, we didn't even know if it had an engine but it looked like something that would be fun if we could ever get it running. We're also railfans and it looked like something that would be fun to chase trains with.

By the time we got to Durham, NC to pick it up, they had installed a new battery, new lights and had it running and we drove it to its new home in Lexington, KY without incident.

When we got it home, my wife took one look at it and named it "Dumbo". When I asked her why, she said that it could either refer to the bus as a white elephant or the idiots chasing trains in it.

Here's how it looked the day we picked it up in Durham, NC in 2001:



A picture of "Dumbo" on the Blue Ridge Parkway when it was participating in the VMCCA Chrome Tour summer 2009:

 

Here's a neat web site I think you'd enjoy: http://www.antiquetractorsforum.com/

Blackfoot, Wilbur actually kept about 6 or 7 tractors working his farm at any give time, usually Farmall and Oliver and he also had a little Avery. The Olivers I ran on his farm were an 880 gas wide front, a Super 66 Row Crop diesel, and the 88 Row Crop gas. He would buy and sell tractors but the 88 was the one he started farming with and was the only one he kept throughout his farming career.

When I was 14, we pulled the old Oliver down and put oversized pistons and thin wall sleeves in it and milled the head so that it could pull a larger silage chopper. We took it and an M Farmall to the first tractor pull our Meade Co. Fair ever held and I won 4th place with the Oliver. Now it's grown into such a huge pulling event that I'm not even sure the old Oliver could pull the sled!

Sadly, Wilbur passed away this past October and his wonderful wife Evelyn joined him 5 days later. I really miss both of them but at least I've got a little remembrance of a very special period in my younger days.

Here's a picture of me with my buddy Wilbur when I took his old Oliver 88 back to the farm for a visit in early 2006: