To ask for your car breakdown stories

[constantlyseekinghappiness]

Currently in the bath trying to heat myself up having spent 2 hours sitting in my freezing car (whilst blocking an entire lane of traffic) waiting for vehicle recovery. Then had to walk to nearest train station and get a train home.

This comes only 2 weeks since another car incident where I had to drive it precariously to nearest garage and pay £££ for a new part.

I’m grumpy.

Please cheer me up.

Went over a pothole with a grid in in. It was a big one surrounded by little ones on a busy road so I couldn't avoid it. I didn't realise the damage at first and was only 5 mins from my destination (20 from home) with both kids in the car (5&2). Got there and the whole tyre was knackered. Spent 2 hours stranded with the 2 kids until we could be rescued. Luckily we were on a retail park so it could have been worse. The wheel cost £220 to replace- we billed the council!

Engine failure on the motorway on the way to a picnic concert with fireworks, organised with 7 friends.

In the morning we found the car sounded Ott, so arranged an appointment with the garage the following week. Well, it was a total engine exchange...

On the other note, thanks to a migraine attack, food poisoning and our car breakdown only 2 out of the 7 actually made it to the picnic.

Heading off on holiday, driving down the m6 at 6.30am, road getting really busy, me in the outside lane of 4 lanes of traffic, hear a twang, and lose everything.
Managed (somehow) to get to the hard shoulder, wake up the dc and get them out and up the banking, at which point torrential rain starts, all our coats are in the boot. Call out the aa, who take almost an hour to get to us, to discover that the timing belt had snapped, and the engine was a write off.
At the time, I was a single mum, on benefits, and I'd saved for almost a year to buy the car, which I'd bought 6 weeks beforehand.
I cried. Lots.
Luckily, my dad lent me money to buy a car to get home in (it was a £250 rustbucket with 3 months mot, which was cheaper than hiring a car and leaving it at the other end of the country).
That rustbucket lasted me 3 years, and never cost me a penny in repairs, until it totally died on my drive one day and never started again. I still miss it. Best car I've ever owned!

Yes, over a decade ago I broke down on the side the state highway in my shitty honda with DD (who was about 6) in the car, I stupidly thought I could keep driving it even though the mechanic told me the week before that the can belt was on its way out

My British made mini that I had in the 80s kept breaking down all the bloody time (in the middle of roads etc), that was a tad embarrassing but lucky I always had my friends in the car that could push. Once it broke down in the middle of nowhere and some dodgy looking blokes tried to help us. Thank fuck for the only time we got it started

I broke down in the worst possible area of my city. A true ghetto with weekly shootings and stabbings.

Broke down at midnight on a school night somewhere I really should not have been.

I also ran out of petrol at midnight on snake pass.

I’m an idiot.

Electrics totally failed in the most popular lane turning right onto a motorway roundabout, so no hazard lights available.

Toddler son in back of car and boot full of food shopping.

Got out to try and alert other road users to not bother with my lane and faced barrage of abuse and helpful heckles like "put yer fucking hazards on!"

Rang breakdown for assistance who then told me to also dial 999 because of where I was. Did that and two police officers came to stop traffic and push me over three lanes of angry motorists.

Eventually breakdown came to sort me out with a temporary fix so I could be escorted to a garage for a permanent one.

I broke down 40 miles from home in the middle of no where with a flat tyre. A lovely gentleman pulled over after half hour and changed it for me. Before he packed it all up AND CLOSED MY KEYS IN THE BOOT. My car at the time didn't have a way of opening the boot without the key and the back seats didn't come down to reach through. I had to sit and wait a further 3 hours and pay for breakdown. For a separate issue than the one I originally had and had fixed.

A few years ago I was driving back from taking my DS to his northern university, I was in an absolute lemon of a Peugeot which everything basically fell off or broke, God I hated that car. It was a dark. cold Sunday evening just to make it even better.

Anyway, on this occasion the exhaust started dragging on the ground so I pulled over into a lay-by and with no real idea of where exactly I was I phoned recovery.

There were literally no landmarks apart from a garage on the other side of the road with one of those very weirdly named Pulse and Cocktails 'Adult Shops'.

Cue me trying to explain to the man on the phone that I didn't know where exactly I was but I was opposite a sex shop which clearly everyone at the breakdown company found hysterically funny

They found me eventually, tied up my exhaust and I got home at some ridiculous bloody hour of the night.

Ok this has worked!

I definitely didn’t have the worst time of it!

Luckily no DC in the car, so I suppose I only had to worry about myself.

I also had to call 101 to get the police out to block the lane behind me - drivers getting very pissed off and a very lovely chap who came over to tell me the light was at green and I could go he must have thought I had my hazards on for additional disco lights....

Loaded up the car to go on holiday, super excited and.. it wouldn't move off the drive jump started it, got to holiday and it broke down again! Spent two full days trying to get it fixed as it wasn't just the battery it was fully damaged :( completely ruined the holiday

I was driving DH and the children home during rush hour when my automatic gear box failed completely when I reached the roundabout trying to turn right.

I couldn't restart the engine and the stupid thing locked into gear.

The first few arseholes men behind just beeped and hurled insults despite me putting my hazards on immediately.

Then a true samaritan realised we were completely stuck with children in the car. He pulled up to block the lane next to me to effectively hold up all the traffic and popped his hazards on too. DH got the girls to safety with the traffic stopped and samaritan bloke recruited a few more drivers to help us bounce the car to the side so traffic could get around us safely.

The fact we couldn't get the car in neutral to roll it out of the way made it 100% harder...although it did stop the grumbles when people saw we were trying to get it out of the way and that it wasn't easy.

After 10 very stressful minutes my car was out of the flow of traffic. I sadly was still there 3 hours later waiting for breakdown service. Fortunately we were only a 30 minute walk from home so DH walked the girls home whilst I kept the car company.

Last time I'll buy an automatic until I'm forced to by electric cars becoming standard. I hate the 'intelligence' of cars now. A little sensor goes haywire and you're stuck in a bloody dangerous position. At least in an old banger you can pop it in neutral to roll away. These modern crappy things won't even release the handbrake if the computer says no because it's having a hissy fit then costs a fortune to fix because a normal mechanic that can fix stuff needs a computer programmer to sort out the glitch instead of elbow grease and technical knowhow.

Sorry somehow ended up ranting

I was heading over to mum & dad’s one Christmas. Set off, thought the car was pulling to one side slightly so pulled up in the next lane, just off the main road. Completely flat tyre. Me in my Sunday best, it’s getting dark and I’m about a mile from home down a country lane. Suddenly a breakdown van came round the corner, pulled up beside me and this lovely man stuck his head out of the window and asked me if I needed a hand. Jumped out, had my flat tyre off and spare one on in about two minutes and said he was just on his way home but saw me sitting there and couldn’t not stop. Absolute bloody star. Couldn’t believe it.

I knew which garage he’d come from so I dropped a bottle of whisky in the next day. Was so utterly grateful!

I was 8.5 years months pregnant and it was over 40 degrees with 100% humidity. On the way home from dropping DH off somewhere I decided to go through town rather than the motorway. My car broke down in peak hour traffic outside the city fire station.

The only person who stopped to help me was a young man on a bicycle. Eventually the firemen noticed my plight and came out and lifted/carried my little hatchback off the road and onto the footpath. They then invited me inside the fire station to have a cold drink and wait for the road assistance people in the blissfully cold air conditioning. I think the car was carried home on the back of a tow truck whilst I must've sat up with the tow driver.

(Dychmygol Electric cars don't have gears, it's ok! They're about 5% of the engineering complexity of a petrochemical engine, basically just a battery and a very simple sealed electric motor or four)

I set off on my usual trip to see mum, three hours away. Half an hour inn I stopped at a dodgy Spar type place in a rough area, needed something to drink for the trip and not realising how rough it was.

When I came back out of the shop and got in the car, the next door car wound its window down and a dubious looking bloke starting waving and gesticulating at me. Oh god... But I wound mine down, and he very kindly let me know my back tyre was flat. Yay.

So, I go to change the tyre, no problem. Turns out the car only has one of those shitty "50mph max" skinny spares, and it's a little bit low on pressure. But I carry an electric pump for just this sort of thing! Five minutes later I've got a nice workable tyre, ready to drive back home and swap cars with my DP and then set off again.

Except my car doesn't start. I'd not had the engine running while running the pump, and it had flattened the battery.

So call up DP, who half an hour later turns up with jumper leads and we get mine going again. At this point I really should have given up the whole thing as a bad job, but instead we switch cars, DP takes mine home (and during the week gets the tyre replaced), and I set off again. Only five hours for a three hour journey, that's fiiiine. I've had worse on that trip from diversions around roadworks...

Oh, then there's the one where my motorbike puttered to a halt and I spent four hours waiting for the AA on a dual carriageway leaving north London, surrounded by (I later learned) three major road accidents and a closed road due to flooding. When the chap finally got to me he took one sniff and told me that I had a tank full of diesel.

I'd just filled up from an unleaded pump, and had the receipt - for £6.66, numerology fans! - to prove it. Bastard bloody petrol station supplier had misfilled its tanks.

Ex and I were travelling overnight , out in the middle of nowhere. We broke down and managed to push the car until we were near a town which had a service station. Everything was closed so we sat and froze in the broken down car, waiting for morning to come.

Suddenly, out of the darkness came an old man carrying a tool box. He asked Ex to open the bonnet, and worked away at the engine. After about 15 minutes he said "that's OK now" and put the bonnet down, and walked off into the darkness again. Ex ran after him trying to pay / thank him but he simply walked off and ignored Ex.

The car started and off we went - always wondered about that man ! How did he know we were there ? Why did he come over to us and fix the car ? It was like something out of the Twilight Zone.

@spoonblender

This is what they told me when they arrived, said that the car smelled like it had diesal in it. I filled up with unleaded on Sunday afternoon, definitely didn’t mistake the pumps. The guys seemed certain that I’d filled with diesal. Does it happen often that petrol stations mis-fill their tanks???!!!!

Only once ever to me!

My 'favourite' breakdown story happened a couple of summers ago. Me and the 3 DSs were visiting friends who were camping on the Suffolk coast. Car wouldn't start when we tried to go home around 9pm. So we called the AA. The guy couldn't get it started, so called for a pickup to take us home (a couple of hours away). Waited until maybe midnight when we got loaded up and headed off home. But on the way, the driver got a call to say his truck was needed for a more urgent recovery (somebody blocking a slip road) so he dumped us in the car park of Tesco and left us there waiting for a second truck to collect us! It arrived within an hour, and fortunately Tesco was open, but I could still have done without being dumped on a retail park with 3 kids in the middle of the night...

My dad is a delivery driver for a supermarket. He got stuck for over 5 hours in snow. They shouldn't have been sent out in the first place! He eventually got home at about 11pm.

He was on a country lane, right next to Monastery and the nuns that lived there looked after him.

Having had a few breakdowns with our current car, I was happy to be driving the hire van with my husband following behind in that bastard car when we moved house this summer. Absolutely loaded to the roof on the first of 3 cross country trips when in the outside lane of a 60 mph dual carriageway everything failed, including the brakes - half an hour from our new house. God knows how but managed to get across to the edge of the road, still partially blocking the inside lane with my husband in our car parked behind me. We all (2 teenage DC) got out and sat on the grass waiting for the recovery truck as the jams built up and the only thing to do was to apologise individually to every passenger who glared at us. Then we saw cars with roof boxes on so we wished them a happy holiday, admired dogs in cars, basically anything to make a bad situation a bit better. Got the van repaired eventually and managed to do the rest of the trips in that without incident. BUT.... the final trip I did on my own in the bastardcar with a roof box on to cram everything in. Yep, youve guessed it - the front roof box catch burst an hour from home. Ah but I carry bungee straps and ratchet wotsits. I keep them in a pocket underneath the rear set which was currently under a third of the contents of my old house.

(Changing the bastardcar in 6 weeks, still got a light on the dash now waiting to be fixed)

Gosh I remember I was due to collect DD after school and I knew the petrol was low but had planned to stop after work as there was enough. Busy, my boss asked to borrow my car I completely forgot the petrol was low and told him he could (in fairness to me he should have realised to...!) it ran out on a frigging roundabout on a dual carriageway. My ex had installed Bluetooth which had never worked and it meant the phone was connecting but there was no sound (I thought there was something wrong with the phone...!) there was a Ford garage a couple minutes walk away who I knew would have petrol and in my panic decided to walk and ask if they could help. They couldn't (something about insurance if anything went wrong). I'm walking back to the car and there's two police officers (it gets better!) next thing I know another ex from 10 years ago turns up... Considering he lives 30 minutes away, has only ever seen my car once and I was 20 minutes from home and still in the garage (he must have a great memory for number plates), it was a complete fluke. He got petrol. Oh, and we got back together...

We had a lovely Saturday morning at Yorvik, done by lunchtime and a lovely late summer day so decided to go to Scarborough for the afternoon. As soon as we hit the A64 the engine management system went kaput! Bit of a pisser but hey ho.. rang breakdown who said 1/2-1hr then there was an accident back up the rd resulting in the air ambulance arriving and blocking the A64 both ways! Recovery vehicle arrived 3hrs later and we got home at 7 🙄

My tyre blew on the motorway in the drivers side. Managed to get onto the hard shoulder and get me and my baby dd out. Called recovery who were 45 mins. Recovery come but can’t get the wheel off so I have to be towed to a garage. Police turn up with sirens on as there has been a report that someone with my car has been tampering with cables at the side of the motorway. I explain to the police that I’ve been on the verge with baby dd in her car seat crouched down trying to comfort her!

Technically would have been a breakdown. Drove in the middle of a desert area, rescuing a dog abroad many years ago in an older car. There was suddenly a stone on the road and it ended up breaking the suspension of this car. It was the weekend and the only service station was shut and vultures circling above. I had no choice but to continue driving. Eventually, realised that with that model of car that meant no breaks either. No phone reception and then run out of charge. So, ended up driving with no breaks over a steep mountain pass, using just the handbrake and gears. I literally fell out of the car when I finally got back, crying with exhaustion and nerves. The dog was happily snoring and farting all the way and loved travelling in cars afterwards

DS2 broke his leg this summer and I had a tyre blow on the way home from a local farm after we'd hobbled about trying to stop him going entirely mad (he's usually very active). We were down a country lane in the absolute middle of nowhere, so I phoned DH to let him know we'd be late and he said he'd head over in case I needed him to bring DS2 home.

It was early evening time, I'd got a spare tyre in the boot and knew how to jack it up and switch it myself easily enough, so got going. DS2 sat under a tree nearby as there was no path or verge to use, I chucked my hazards on and a few minutes in, I felt the ground sort of 'rumble' but couldn't hear anything. I moved back from the car and looked around and coming around the corner towards us was the most enormous combine harvester I'd ever seen. He was on the other side of the road to us and I thought it was fine so crouched back down to undo the last few nuts, then an almighty bang shunted the car backwards and towards me. I managed to jump out of the way, shouted DS2 to move further back, stood silently staring and realised that an absolute bellend in an F-Pace had tried to overtake the harvester on a blind bend and smashed straight into my car. The only reason I'd not been killed was because of the size of my own car taking the brunt of the impact. It sort of toppled where it had been jacked up and lay sadly on it's side blocking everything in the road.

Both cars were written off, we spent hours sat by the side of that road waiting for police, ambulances and various others to come and get involved and I'm now terrified of that stretch of road ever since and won't drive down there. I've been a confident, happy driver all my life, changing tyres and taking care of myself, but since then it's knocked all the wind from my sails.