I was reflecting on all the times i have been stranded on a Sunday,late at night or out in the middle of nowhere, with either no tools,not the right tools,etc... and managed to get myself out of a major bind. The goal each time was to get the car back up and running,just enough to get me somewhere where i could do the proper repair,back home or manage to permanently fix it,etc.....
Here's an example of being stuck and my makeshift mechanic work saved the day
Got a call from my cousin that his car was broke down (although he could have paid for a mechanic to look at it, he was cheap, i mean early 20's at the time )Now he was 5 hours away in good weather, this was a bad blizzard of a night and about -40 C outside,snow being dumped big time on the ground. So me and the wife and a friend decide to go on a road trip at about 10pm in my at the time 83' Dodge Aries K car Started driving and got out of our city limits, by this time it was like 12:30 am then the car broke down on the highway, just died out.Well we had the tools and did a few quick checks and decided it was ignition related.Turns out the metal "bump" underneath where the sparkplug wire for the coil to cap goes on the distributor cap was totally gone! Where the heck are we gonna find a cap at this time of night!To make a long story longer,i found a bolt in the car that i shoved through the hole and was able to plug the wire on it and voila,the car fired up! Lucky as we would have been temporarily screwed and not good in that type of weather.So in the end we keep on driving up, defrost his cars engine (it was so cold it froze)and installed a block heater for it.I picked up a new distributor cap in the morning when we arrived and never installed it for the rest of the life i owned the car.The bolt held up and i figured it would never burn out.I have quite a few more but lets see what you all have.
We'll now any of you have any (and i know you do)stranded/stuck stories that we can read that may just help one of us here if we were ever in that same situation?

David

My wife and I were headed on vacation in Colorado several years ago--about a 10 hour drive. I had a local mechanic replace a leaky water pump in our '88 t-bird the week before in preparation for doing some mountain driving. He had just finished the job the afternoon before we left the next morning. We get about two hours from home and suddenly lots of noise starts coming from the engine compartment. I look behind us just in time to see a pulley rolling off the road into the ditch. Almost immediately the engine temperature starts to climb. Luckily, we just happened to be passing through a small town so we quickly pulled over at a restaurant to let the car cool down, see what was wrong, and figure out what to do. It seems the splendid mechanic that worked on the car had only replaced the bolts on the smog pump pulley finger-tight. After two hours of road time they worked loose and the pulley parted company with the car, taking the serpentine belt with it. We eventually went to an auto parts store and with the help of a great guy there I replaced the belt with a shorter one, bypassing the smog pump and the tensioner. I mean this belt was exactly the right size to run everything else and still be tight, even though we did have to pry it on over the last pulley--what are the odds of finding a belt that would do that. We should have gone and bought a lottery ticket. We decided to continue on the trip, and the repair worked for the whole week--probably 1500 miles of driving. I fixed it right when we got home, and of course the mechanic gave me a [censored] and bull story about what happened and how he was blameless. My shadow hasn't darkened his doorway since. Oh well, alls well that ends well.

Bruce

I carry one of those AAA membership cards and make sure it's paid in full annually ($48.00) It pays for itself the first tow. No hassles or freezing your butt off!

I carry a AAA Plus membership. 100 miles of free towing, per incident (up to 6 times/yr)! That should get me... somewhere.

I remember back in college, didn't have an old car, didn't have AAA. I was in the middle of an 8 hour trip to NJ, and was just crossing into PA, running with a few Corvettes I had found (that was some fun!), when all of a sudden I noticed the Alt gauge on my Buick sedan was dropping. I made the next exit, and as luck would have it, there was an Advance Auto right there!

This was a Saturday night, around 9pm - luckily they were still open! They tested my battery, and said it had a bad cell. Replaced it for me, and then tested the system again. Hmm - still not showing a full charge? Uh oh - it's the alternator! Now it's closer to 10pm, on a Saturday night. We were just going to NJ for a weekend trip basically. We found a hotel nearby, and somehow found a shop open on Sunday (???). We were able to make it to the repair shop on the charge the battery had (trust me, I was nervous!), and then had to wait around for 3 hours for them to replace the alternator. At that point it was around noon, so we jumped back in the car and kept heading for NJ. Got there by 4pm, and then left the following morning for the 8 hour trip back.

That was the last time I was to be without AAA!

AAA has saved me more times, it's been so worth it. Plus, I take advantage of the savings I get at hotels and rental car places. On a short vacation, the membership dues pay for themself!

In addition to AAA and a slew of tools in the trunk (including jacks, jack stands, etc) I recently bought one of those portable battery charge packs. Sure enough, a week later my wife was stuck at work due to a dead battery. I swung over there in the Bird, and the battery pack cranked her car right up. This great item was long overdue.

Great topic Nash.

Back when I had my 68 Coupe
http://firstgenfirebird.org/show/closeup.mv?CarID=85
I lived in the SF Bay Area (lots of hills) and was on my way home from my girl friends house. I was heading down this long hill into a valley so to speak, when the car just goes to idle? Dead pedal... you got it... the throttle cable broke!

I could only "coast" about an 1/8 of the way up the next hill... this is on a back road type of area in a very exclusive type of neighborhood... but the homes were quite a ways off... anyway, I thought maybe... I could slowly idle up the hill... Nice try! Not!

So, I park, open the trunk and happened to always carry some aircraft wire (bailing wire) and rigged a length of wire to the throttle linkage through the back of the hood and to the window. A hand pull, throttle if you will... well, I couldn't close the hood all the way with this method It took a little while to get a good feel for the right throttle control, I did get up the hill and was on my way! Even though it's only a 25mph, area... with the hood not properly latched... again, you guessed it, the hood fly’s open and almost smacks the windshield! (Scarred the ****e out of me) and put a nice gouge in my fresh paint on top of the fender! (I was not happy!!)

I pulled it together... the hood, and the hinges were fine (somehow?) and I was able to continue, and made it home to my driveway where I could properly replace the cable... and never had another problem... with that!

I've been called McGiver (sp?) by more than one person over the years for being able to fix or at least temp fix just about anything... But I've learned to be a little more careful! Hey, I was only 17...

Brett - 67 Drop Top 455!

Here is another classic tale. Matt, a friend of mine is hotrodding around our small town late at night in his 59 Vette. He has been laying rubber and doing spectacular burn-outs. There is only one cop car in town and he always waits until it is on the opposite end of town. Anyway, he snaps an axle. He is panicked because he has to drive 500 miles the next day to get back to his military base on time. So, he walked a few blocks to our friend, Mike's house, (who is the best Goodwrench mechanic around), and throws rocks at Mike's window until he wakes him up and explains his problem. Well, Mike the mechanic has a collection of axles from 55-64 big Chevys he has parted out and they fit the C1 Corvettes. They grab a good axle, an electric drill, a bit, some tools and a slide hammer/puller. They go back to the Vette, whick is sitting near the curb, and jack up the back end of the car. Mike tightens the bit into the drill (no electric outlet nearby) and holds it against the broken stub of the axle while Matt revs the 300 HP 327 with the four speed in reverse - and - the drill bit works its way into the axle stub - then - they can work the end of the slide hammer into place and pop out the rest of the axle. I love the cleverness of this one - no electricity nearby, but the drill does its job perfectly. We call it our 300 HP electric drill story.

This isn't to bad, I've had some good luck with my all my vehicles. Diving down the highway at 80mph in my 86 Silverado, hear a real loud thump, see something black shoot off to the side, whole truck is now vibrating like a $2000 electric massage chair. Assumed it was a tire blow out, pulled over first place I could and looked the whole thing over, little drip of antifreeze but nothing else. Home was a couple miles away, so I took it easy. Got there and immediatly popped the hood and started checking the whole truck over. Finally fter about 15 minuets I happened to bend way forward ( tall truck ) and look down through the fan, whole bottom of the fan shoud was gone, checked the fan, one blade had broke off and shot straight through the bottom. Any place else in the rotation would have sent it through some part of the hood or fender. Antifreeze leak was the water pump taking a fatal blow from vibration, it did last a few more months though.

Worst and stupidest moment of my entire life with cars:

1985 - Driving from Yorktown VA to Lexington Park MD, at night with my new wife and baby daughter. As we cross the Potomac River bridge into MD, the sun goes down and my 68 Camaro alternator goes O-U-T out!

We are an hour away from our destination, but the car starts to die and the headlights go black after 15-20 minutes. We stop along that lonely back-road towards St Marys City, get a gas station to quick-charge the battery, and find a drug store open. I buy two large flashlights (plenty of them in stores due to crabbing at night there), and I force my wife to hang out her window and I hang out mine (maybe 40 degrees out that night) with these two flashlights as we drive all the way to Lexington Park at night on that backroad, with no headlights!!!

God was watching over my idiotic and senseless desire to complete the trip that night, and we only passed 2-3 oncoming cars the final 30 minute drive. It was the most stupid thing I've ever done in my life. My wife still brings it up every chance she gets. Just ask her!

Driving an old 58 Morris Minor on the autobahn in 1969 , going to Italy....running about 85 I notice my steering wheel seem not to be straight....hmmm ,not noticed before? maybe it always was crooked? hmmm
of course the old car is shaking like crazy ,it always did... I just bought it very used for $200 the week before....
well, another 10 minutes I notce that the steering wheel now is more crooked, car still going straight...strange? I go out, feel the front wheels, hmmm they`re a little loose... I can move the upper part of the wheel back and forth about 1/2", check the other side....hmmmm about the same, "oh well, guess its ok, its old and worn , it`ll be ok", get back in , start up, drive off , as I put it into second gear ,the whole front pass side A frame assembly falls off the car!

4 bolts are supposed to hold it in plasce...I find one , stripped , see two broken off in there one more missing...

I stick the one stripped in the hole , holding the A-frame on...drive "carefully" to next town ,and as it has it ,on a sunday only one person is out...he helps me get two oversized bolts in in the empty holes, gives me two 'spares' and tell me to fix it asap.
Well, I`m on my way to Italy , so not much time...we keep going , checking the bolts tightness every 30 minutes, they are tight...then every 2 hrs , they are tight...everything seems ok , so we drive thru the Alps, down into Italy, coming into Bologna,the same darn wheel falls off again!
we fix it with the 'spares'... after that it stayed on....all the way thru Rome, back to France ,Paris , and home to Sweden!