What catastrophic failures have you had?

[Urban Sports]

Thankfully I've not had that many, the cambelt did snap on my Renault 19 16v but that car was a fail anyway.

Today I jumped in the wife's focus drove about 200 yards only to have the gearbox and diff literally blow to pieces, this on a 2009 model 34,000 mile car!

Jeez

Can you help ease my pain by telling me of your borkages?

[Fleckers]

MK1 Ford Escort rear axle and prop shaft divorced about 50 mph once
Opel Kaddet clutch exploded and took gearbox and engine with it
Opel Monza put a piston through the side of a block
Opel Manta had a piston seize in the bore and conrod rip out and then make a mess inside the engine for a while
Ford Orion water pump on a ford cvh engine failed once
MG ZT-T petrol pump failed on M25 once

all in all, nothing major

[mighty kitten]

That's the view through the block of my old Saab 9000 after a mapping session on the road burst the head gasket followed by hydraulic lock and a rod through the block .

[mini1380cc]

Exploded diff which locked the car in the middle of the road in rush hour. I wasn't popular.

[LordHaveMurci]

Diff blew on the Clio, was hillclimbing it at the time though

Clutch went on the 996, no warning

Turbo went on the 330D but got it to a garage 1st, had only done 30k miles & just had BMW MD service.

Also blew a turbo on a Fiat 20VT, that was fun driving that home belching blue smoke!

Had brake failure on a few different cars, front wheel came off my Mini, thankfully at slow speed!

Edited by LordHaveMurci on Saturday 23 March 17:30

[Rammy76]

Fiat UNO Turbo ie : Diff fell to pieces and blew a hole on the side of the gearbox

VW Passat PD TDi 130: turbo seal let go and revved itself stupid.

Luckily all my other cars have been fine apart from some niggles

[Hugo a Gogo]

tyre disintegrated at 200kmh on the autobahn

wasn't nearly as dramatic as you might think

[Vince70]

Put a crankshaft through an engine block at about 50mph on a 1981 XR3 once.
That could have been the reason it had extremely thick oil in the car to hide the knocks when I bought it lol.

[KelWedge]

Cam belt on ford sierra
3 turbo's on a fairly new VW Sharon ( under guarantee)
Gearbox on my Audi 100 auto when I did a manual change at 70 into second, oops

The best one I done was driving a year old Jeep Cherokee 4.0 ltd (my bosses car at the time) engine explodes bits of which hit the road and take the exhaust off the ford escort behind. My boss returns from holiday 2 weeks later to be picked up by me in a Volvo estate the garage loaned us, him not happy.

[Dave_]

In my youth i attempted a "burnout" in my mums Fiat Brava.

The diff didnt like it. Bits of it bounced around the bellhousing tearing half the bolts off the clutch cover and half the actual bellhousing bolts. The starter motor was hanging off and the radiator was peppered with bits of bellhousing.

From under the car it looked like an exploded diagram from the fiat parts department.

Replaced it all in a weekend on axle stands with my dad who didnt believe my story of it happening pulling out of a junction one bit

[eltax91]

I've been somewhat lucky to be honest. Snapped Cambelt on my old disco about 10 miles from home. For towed back, new belt and tensioner, replace some bent push rods and away it went

[mike9009]

Biggest catastrophic failure I have had was not in a car, but a formula 3 racing hovercraft.

Fan blades broke in a racing incident.
Engine revved upto a huge RPM. Dead mans switch did nothing, removal of spark leads did nothing, cut fuel line off - did nothing, ripped carbs off and eventually it stopped......

Damage was a hole through the top of one of the pistons and resultant debris in the bottom end. Obviously complete rebuild required.....

Engine was from an RD250E.

Next time we made sure the clearance between the duct and the fan blades was a little bigger!

Oooopppsss ... took a long time to save up again to go racing at 17 years old and only part time work...

Mike

[RizzoTheRat]

Diesel leak from the filter housing, contaminated the auxiliary belt which came off, jammed the bottom pulley, threw the timing and not only bent the valves but managed to damage the valve guides. Luckily the manufacturers agreed that it shouldn't happen on a 3 year old car and I only ended up paying 10% of the £4500 it cost to fix.

[JREwing]

A clutch entirely failed once, so nothing too interesting.

I haven't really had much bad luck. Other malfunctions were similarly unspectacular.

[Negative Creep]

I'm not sure if I really want to tempt fate - but across c.30 cars I've never had a major failure

[anonymous-user]

Head gasket going on my old Chimaera which actually turned out to be a slipped liner. The bill to fix that still makes me shudder!

[fjord]

My girlfriend.

[m44kts]

I managed to blow the gearbox in my Mini due to playing about in the snow when I was 17.

Gearbox locked in reverse, luckily I was less than a mile from home so had a mate follow me as I reversed all the way back.

[SWoll]

Clutch on 205 GTi. Pedal went flat to the floor and stayed there.

Driveshaft on Audi A4. Biblical noise when being towed to the local dealer.

Cambelt on Golf GTi. I didn't realise valves could be that shape...

Auto gearbox tore itself apart on E60 5 Series. Gearbox plug hadn't been correctly replaced after service and transmission fluid was pissing out. Came to a stop at a junction and when the gearbox changed down to 1st it felt like I'd been rear-ended. New gearbox fitted by BMW under warranty.

[williredale]

Brake servo on my MGB. No brakes at all!
Luckily I had just started it and was reversing out of the garage. Unluckily the garage is at the top of a hill. Just stopped with the handbrake before I ended up in a garden...