I "inherited" a 1974 Volvo station wagon from my uncle back when I lived in 7D. It ran and moved....he felt sorry for us because we were really poor at the time...figured that old wagon with 400,000 miles on it would get us by for a few months until our finances improved. Well..I drove that damned thing for four years after that and still had it when I got divorced ( and thus again real poor) and moved to SGI. I was coming home one day when the old girl started making a horrible racket racket as I started slowing down to the Piney Point speed limit. I reached for the gear shift to downshift and...it was gone. I looked down and saw it...the entire trans crossmember had rotted out and dropped the ass-end of the tranmission on the pavement. I reached down, and with a mighty heave on the gear shift, brought the trans back up off the pavement and limped the rest of the way home on the island in that gear. A quick trip to Lowes for some shelving metal, and a few dozen self-tapping screws, and she was good as new. Drove that thing for 2 more years....what I did with it then is another story.I had a few cars like that. Bald tires, bad brakes, but a killer stereo. I would check the gas, fill with oil, and pray like crazy that I made it to where I was going and back. In my '69 Opel Kadett, I had one side of my rear axle start sliding out on my way to Charles County Community College. I hitch-hiked home, pulled one from a parts car, and swapped it out on the side of Rt 234 almost at the Rt 301 intersection. I should've heard the bearing screaming, but I had RUSH in my 8-track cranked to 11.
