Pratical Jokes and Cars

Duke said: Our hero just smiled, dangled the gas cap key for a second, then threw it as hard as he could into the middle of the construction site.

That's my favorite so far . The clever ones are always the best.

Duke wrote: Our hero just smiled, dangled the gas cap key for a second, then threw it as hard as he could into the middle of the construction site.

That story made me smile. I think I'm going to go buy a locking gas cap for the next time that happens to me.

Man... so many of these are way across the line.

Kind of surprised to see so many people with these stories. Cars don't get messed with... they get wrenched on.

rocks inside the center caps of mid-'70s chevy rally wheels make a really bad noise.

A guy I used to work with would leave his keys in his desk drawer at work. One day, while he was out at lunch with someone else, another guy and I "borrowed" them and got copies made. After that, we'd periodically go out to his car and adjust something like the seats, mirrors, steering wheel, etc.

This went on for a while until the car owner realized what was going on. After that, a big glob of grease under the door handle (discovered by my co-conspirator) took most of the fun out of the game.

Those two guys used to occasionally move my Miata if I left the top down in the parking garage. Because they didn't have a key they'd just put it in neutral, release the brake, and roll it to the other side of the aisle.

We drive impalas at work, and cars of the same year all have the same lock cylinders and ignitions. So one day at the chow hall i moved my Ssgts car around back. We had him convinced that his car must have been stolen, and boy was he panicked! We all thought it was hilarious.

Had a shop foreman that I worked with, he used to sneak up while you were working, spray Gum Cutter on your tools & light them. He had to drive a customer's car home for a noise complaint. I took the distributor cap off, replaced the button with a wet cigarette filter. Car ran great 'til the filter dried out.

tuna55 wrote: My best was retaliation, sorta. Friend and I with a bunch of people in each car, through a drive-thru. We were throwing snowballs at each other. I totally accidentally hit is open sunroof (seriously, a sunroof when it's 10 out?).

I drive with my sunroof open all year.. even when it is 10 degrees out.

On that segue... a girl at the one place I worked at bought a brand new nissan SUV... she rolled up the windows and locked the doors but would leave the sunroof open.. until a coupld of guys brought out all the packing peanuts we had and filled the interior with them

Back in the day (before locking gas tank covers and caps became near universal) one instrument of car vendetta was the old "sugar in the gas tank" trick.

I didn't know anyone vandal enough for that one... but I did have a friend who took a nearly empty five pound bag of sugar, scattered some sugar on the ground under the gas tank, and then threw down the empty bag beside the car.

Would you drive your car if you found it like that? Neither would I. Beauty part is that he didn't even touch the car involved.

I'm not really this big a heathen, most of this stuff goes back to high school or just after.

Duke wrote: Our hero just smiled, dangled the gas cap key for a second, then threw it as hard as he could into the middle of the construction site.

I lived in Atlanta in the 70's, and traveled I-75/85 into downtown often. As you drove north toward town in heavy traffic, the left lane was always open because it was an exit only lane which put you on I-20 West toward Birmingham.

Inevitably, there were yammerheads who would run the left lane up almost to the exit and then force their way over, because their time was far more valuable then the little people who got in line in traffic.

Thus was born the game of "Going to Birmingham", where one of these guys would run the left lane nearly to the exit only to find that the car beside him matched his speed and prevented him from breaking right into line. Eventually the lane would diverge, taking the yammerhead onto I-20. The best part of this game was that if they got onto 20-West, it was several miles before an exit allowed them to turn around and start back to town, in worse traffic than they were in to begin with.

In high school, I delivered pizza's. All of the delivery drivers would sabotage each others cars. The one I hated the most was when I found hot dog grease all over my steering wheel. Revenge involved 4 scissor jacks, jacking up the car, and removing all jack handles from the car. Took the guy an hour to find something suitable to work as a jack handle. Of course putting something smelly in the car is a tried and true favorite.

Carson wrote: My favourite pranks isn't one I did, it's one I heard here. Someone worked at a SAAB garage and they push started a good customer's 2-stroke 96 in reverse so the car had 4 reverse gears and one forward. The customer came to pick up the car so the tech pulled it around front (driving forward in "reverse"), left it idling in neutral. The customer gets in puts it in "first" and speeds off, backwards! Hahaha. No harm no foul, turning the car off and restarting it has the engine turning the correct direction.

Now you know I just have to go try that with the Wartburg now.

I'm surprised nobody has bothered with an exhaust whistle.

The gas cap one has to be my favorite. Lucky some idiot didn't shoot him though.

[Vincent Vega] You don't mess with a man's vehicle. You just don't do it. It'd be worth you doing it just so I could catch you doing it. [/Vincent Vega]

Seriously, I would not react well at all to some of these things if done to one of my cars. But the gas cap one is funny.

Dorsai wrote: Thus was born the game of "Going to Birmingham"...

I like this game a lot. Awesome.

I wish I could claim to have coined the phrase. I remember it from a newspaper column on the practice.

Just remembered my favorite! Lets just say retaliation was perfectly justified and the statute of limitations has expired and I will leave out the actionable parts.

I removed the window lift knobs and inside door handles from my soon to be ex-wifes 1982 Mustang. Being a carb car I also crimped the steel fuel line shut.

This resulted in her car stalling in an intersection with no means of exiting the car. I just happen to drive by at the time (go figure) and I just smiles and made the "roll down the window" gesture as she realized who had done this evil deed.

Good times folks!

Bruce

I played a rather epic version of Going to Birmingham once. Scenario was the Mazda club was going to Duluth MN for a camping trip. In the interest of getting there as quickly as possible, we took I35 straight north. About 15 minutes past Forest Lake, a woman in a tan J-body comes careening across our little group (there was approx 7 cars in line) cutting at least 3 of us off. It was visibly obvious that the woman was headed the same direction we were, for about the same reason ( As it turns out, there was some sort of giant dog show in Duluth that weekend). What she failed to realize was that the 4 Mazdaspeed3's, 1 Mazdaspeed hatch, 1 Mazdaspeed Protege and Mini Cooper S were all together, and carrying walkies as a result. What ensued was a 45 minute seven car blockade of this woman, resulting in her quite literally pulling her hair out. CHP wouldn't have run a better roadblock than we did.

Now that had to be fun...

I could barely control my laughter after that. It was epic.

I may be helping a friend with his exhaust in a couple weeks. Part of me wants to try filling the cat with unpopped popcorn.

Some of the mechanics at work get into some brutal arguments and take it out on each others cars. One night these two were arguing, one of them got into his car, a four door Buick, and took off in a hurry. Unfortunatly his right side door handles had been chained to the fence he was parked next too, and both door skins were ripped open.

A guy at work had just bought a brand new truck.

The first day he drove it to work, he tossed his keys onto a desk. One of the fat guys grabbed his keys when he wasn't looking, got into the driver's seat, locked the doors, removed ALL of his clothes and started honking the horn until the owner went out to see what all the noise was about.

He sold the truck less than a year later.