Thanks for sharing this story, Gary. Makes me glad I decided to trailer the Pacer. I too would have wired up the drive shaft rather than remove it. With me, lazy is as lazy does!
In a message dated 12/1/2006 6:34:09 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, themixtoo@xxxxxxx writes:
Ok, Here goes. On Thursday, July 27th the wife and I headed out for the AMO nationals in Dayton from Cleveland, Ohio. This should have been rather uneventful, but nothing ever goes that way around here. We had just gotten her yellow Gremmie back from the transmission repair shop ($1100 for that one) and I have the car dolley that I used to go to Doc's car show in Ardsley a while back. The Mix is a 4-speed and the yellow car is an automatic. Never had a lick of trouble towing the 'Mix'. This time I thought I would just drive the yellow car up on the dolley backwards (did it that way when we bought her in May of this year) and lock the steering wheel and away we would go. RRRIIGGHHTT!! Just as we got on the interstate here in Cleveland a really bad rain storm came out of nowhere. Traffic on the highway was down to 40 mph. At 40 the Gremlin was swaying just a little, but I thought it was ok. About three miles down the road my wife says 'Is it really that windy out or do we have a problem?' At the safest exit I got off and decided to turn the car around, disconnect the driveshaft and continue on as the rain was still coming down. In the back parking lot of a NAPA store I did this (of course this was the first time I left home without any tools and had to buy a 1/2" wrench and mechanic's wire to wire it up rather than pull the driveshaft completely and dump new ATF all over their parking lot) while the wife sat in the tow car getting madder by the minuit. Back on the road again (now 2 hours later) and everything seemed fine untill about 20 miles out of Columbus when a SUV pulled up next to me and started blowing the horn at us and waving. The rain was still coming down bad so at the first underpass I pulled off the road to see if anything was wrong. I noticed only the back window had not latched properly so I took care of that and locked the latch, off we went. About 20 miles out of Dayton (still raining) another car pulled up next to us waving and beeping and the passenger was yelling at me. Figgered I better pull off again and double check. Sure enough the mechanic's wire that was holding up the driveshaft had broken and the driveshaft had been dragging on the interstate for at least 60-70 miles (can't believe it had not got caught on something and been pulled completely out of the tranny miles ago) The ujoint was completely gone and the yoke that's welded to the driveshaft was worn about 2/3rds away. I rewired the driveshaft back up with some heaver gauge wire (I found in the tow car that had been there all along) and on to Dayton we went. Friday in Dayton was supposed to be checking out the swap meet and visiting some sites my wife had picked out ahead of time. Needless to say, I finished getting a used driveshaft, having new u-joints installed and getting the car roadworthy and off the car dolley at 4:30 in the afternoon. I proudly announced to her that "It's all done, honey. Where would you like to go?" Everything she had wanted to see closed at 5:00 pm. Boy did I look like the moreon. We went out to eat at some burger joint (not a fast food place, a real sitdown place) and after that we noticed a Goodwill store in the strip mall next to the resuraunt. So, we spent about an hour looking over other people's junk as the only place other than the show field and the hotel (oh, yea the Quaker Steak and Lube on Thursday nite in her 'tow vehicle') that we 'visited' in beautiful Dayton, Ohio. Trip home was uneventful because I pulled the driveshaft completely out so NOTHING could fall off the car this time. LOL Gary
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