What Is The Most Beat Up Vehicle You Owned That Still Ran ?

Have you ever owned a work "beater" that looked like bad, but still ran good ? What is the most "beat up" vehicle you ever drove around ?

My first car, a 1981 Buick Skylark. Paid $100 for it.

Gas gauge never worked
All 4 tires were different brands
Floorboards were held together with scrap sheet metal, tar, and pop rivets
Windshield leaked every time it rained
Leaked oil, burned oil, and sometimes it even lubed the moving parts of the engine with oil.
A friend and I timed the 0-60 at 27 seconds.

I miss that pile of junk.

The most beat up truck i drove around was a 94 F250. It was actually pretty nice until someone decided they didnt want to pay for their Honda Fit no more and I gave her the perfect oppertunity to collect from my insurance. After that the bed was crushed in on one side, the cab crunched up so the door didnt really work right. So i took it off. The tie rods broke so i got some from a 150 and adjusted them myself. The tires i got from a junk yard were too big to fit so i put junk leafsprings in the front and wheel spacers which made the front end ride like an old 2 wheel drive tractor. Caster for days. The tow guy broke my brand new windsheild so i never cared to fix it. And then it started over heating so after replacing the entire cooling system i got pissed off and mounted an electric pusher fan on it with junk wires that had a switch i taped to the unused door hinge. Used it to haul scrap once a week while in the army as well as hauling my 50hp Kubota around to do brush hogging jobs. Talk about a sketchy ride. It also taught me first hand what happens when you put aluminum lug nuts on steel lugs. Had to drive it for ten miles in complete darkness and kept hearing the tire flapping around the next morning i went to check it and all my lugs were either stripped or broken. I hated to sell it but couldnt afford to get it back to Pa.

Not a truck, but a work car...

I had a brand new '87 Sunbird I didn't want to smoke delivering pizza, so I went looking for a $300 POS to deliver in. I found a 1980 Datsun 200SX that was owned by a kid who had the car, didn't pay the loan, had it repossessed, tore the dash apart to steal it back, no maintenance, faded paint. I took it home and started doing repairs... It needed a new clutch plate (they had somehow gotten a Toyota plate to work, gotta love Toyota parts). The rear rotors were worn to the point that they were as thin as a cracker (I am not kidding or exaggerating). The kid had ripped the key ignition switch apart and I had to screw a 1/4 20 bolt with a wingnut to turn the switch to turn the car on.

I drove it for 60K miles. I really didn't care if it got hit so if I knew the other person was in the wrong, I would take the hit (Yeah, I was an a$$hole who allowed other a$$holes to suffer the repercussions of the a$$holeness). When I got rid of it, the fingers that held the shift lever in the gear slots were gone, so you could stir the gear shift like a spoon in a cup. It still ran well, the air worked, the brakes were sound. When I went to look for another delivery car, I was asked if I had a trade. I told him it was in very poor shape, but the salesman said that if my trade in ran, he would give me $400 for it. I ran home to empty it out and drove it back to trade. The salesman had a sick look on his face when he saw the trade but honored the price. I got a 1980 Datsun 280ZX to drive to deliver. I liked the car but the injectors would go bad and it was a $1200 job to replace. I sometimes wish I had that old 200SX around just to scare expensive car owners in parking lots again.

The 1995 dodge ram in my avatar picture. No dash cover, couldn't drive it at night cause the headlight switch would get red hot and all the lights would quit working. Had a trailer hitch but had a softball sized hole from rust. Four steel wheels and no two were the same design, let alone same tires. Bed was more bondo than metal. Best of all, got title skipped and couldn't get it registered. 5.2 v8 automatic, 2wd extended cab long bed. Would back fire like a shotgun and couldn't outrun a bicycle, but that truck would run and go anywhere. Drove it through 10 inches of snow on a 25 mile emergency and it spun the whole way but got there! Mainly got it to help my mother clear out my grandfather's property when he passed, didn't think my 88 Chevy s10 2wd 2.8v6 was up to the challenge...

Drove it nearly till the wheels came off, my mechanic and I were looking underneath and the A arms were separating at the mounts from rust, we tack welded them in place and drove it another 50 miles just to get it home and parked, then prepped it to go to the yard. The 2004 f150 I have now is a STX base model. Manual locks and windows, no carpeting, no options at all except privacy glass, tow hitch and tow package. Most average people would dispise it, but after that dodge it's like being in a Rolls Royce Phantom! Plus, its just right for a work truck / weekend warrior.

That truck was a huge pile of trash (illegal trash at that), but it is one of the few vehicles that never left me stranded!

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

Amazingly it still runs and drives. It started life as a 1990 S10 with a 2.5 iron duke and a 4 speed...yes...4 because overdrive is impossible. It was also once cherry red lol. This picture is after three seasons of rubbin' is racing...and hitting each other is racing...going backwards and spinning is racing...etc. It's last duty was to face down what is called the gauntlet truck. A chevy 3/4 ton with 4x4 and a full exo cage against 5 or 6 smaller trucks like this one. The driver (not pictured) hit it four times before getting rear ended and drove into a disabled truck. She was the last truck standing and won the event. Yesterday it was on my trailer and we were able to start it and drive it off.

We got a car like that at the yard im working at. Used it as an anti-theft device using the loader to place it on top of things with high scrap value. Like every month or so we need to swap out for a new one cause the roofs rip apart and we cant pick it up any more. So we destroyed this nissan, set it on the pile to get processed, someone hooked up a battery and it fired right up. Its amazing the amount of abuse things can take when your not really trying to use it any more.