[dan000892]

In 2004, I found myself breaking waves at the helm of my land yacht of a 1991 Crown Victoria LTD on the rolling hills of an upstate New York forest road when I came upon an inferior vehicle which required overtaking. Alas, once a rare passing zone appeared and I positioned to overtake and put my foot down, the pedal limply dropped to the floor and I began to slow. (Of course it was once I was right next to the guy who rightfully gave me a WTF look but I digress.)

After finding a good shoulder on which to beach my LTD and popping the hood, I found the problem: the socket side of the ball-and-socket throttle cable linkage had broken and would no longer hold together. Looking in my (voluminous undergrad compsci-student) trunk for a solution, my eyes landed on the -shiny- beigy PC tower, specifically the floppy drive. A couple strands of the disused 34-pin floppy cable well tied proved to be strong but flexible enough to hold that joint together and get me back to school.

Despite my college having a robust automotive program (which I even had a suitemate in), I never replaced the part and that hack held until I got rid of the car 10 years later (though I kept the other 30-odd strands of the cable in the glove box just in case).

While nostalgic, don’t read this as supportive because today I’m far more likely to find a CANBUS interface in my trunk than a floppy cable.

[abruzzi]

reminds me of my 1963 VW Bus. The throttle pedal pressed down on a 90 degree arm/bellcrank which pulled on the throttle cable that ran to the rear engine. Because the throttle cable was old it had more friction internally, and the undercarriage of the vehicle wasn't in the best of shape. So the flat piece of metal on the body that the bellcrank attached to started to rip, so when I pressed the pedal down, the assembly would deflect and very little motion would be transferred to the cable. I took a small needlenose nose vise grip and clamped it over the rip in the metal, and then continued to drive it like that for the next 5 years.

[lisper]

My 1970-somthing VW Dasher wagon wouldn't go into gear one day. Turned out that the metal lever that the clutch pedal was connected to had developed a fatigue fracture and broken and could no longer disengage the clutch to get it into gear. But it was easily replaced (it was, after all, just a hunk of metal with some holes in it).

Good times.

[aunty_helen]

Reminds me of my 2008 bmw 3 series, one night in the hills, taking the twistes at speed, I hit a pothole in the road. This mechanical force caused a misread on one of the two redundant throttle position sensors in the accelerator pedal.

As a safety feature the car went into limp mode, limited it’s rpm and performance to less than about 40% of power and threw all the Christmas lights it could at the dash, error codes and idrive warnings.

I limped the car home and did a fault code reset from my laptop with the pirated bmw dealer software via a bluetooth-obdc2 dongle and it was fine after that.

Of course the problem continued under strenuous driving conditions. I could’ve replaced the pedal assembly but meh, it was always a good reminder to back off a bit in my 1800kg car.

[bsagdiyev]

Fairly common issue. My (same year) 335 pops for knock sensor a couple times a year. Turn the car off, tap the sensors on the side of the block with a screwdriver a few times, clear the code and you're good to go.

It's a running joke on BMW forums, if someone throws that code most responses ask if they were driving fast and hit a pothole since that's a pretty consistent trigger.

[aunty_helen]

Heh this was the 335d, so a nock sensor would’ve definitely been throwing fault codes if it had one ;)

There was often a combination of about 3-4 errors that would occur when it went into limp mode. To this day I’m not actually sure if replacing the pedal would’ve fixed it and I think off memory, it was a 220$ experiment to find out.

(On another note, make sure you’ve got the gearbox upgrade software if you haven’t already)

[chunky1994]

I'm not being facetious at all when I say, if you have more stories like this, please consider making a podcast.

[jonstewart]

Ah, the Panther. I bought a beautiful ‘84 LTD two-door “coupe” in 1998, had only had one owner, an old lady. God I loved that car.

Fun to drive! But it required a lot more maintenance than new cars today.

[datavirtue]

Yeah, that particular vehicle was designed in the 1950s and merely had slight engine, transmission, and sheet metal tweaks up until that point.