You know you drive a junker/jalopy when...

[JRMichler]

YKYDJJW when you slam the door, and leave a car shaped pile of rust in the parking lot.

It was a 60's something Rambler rustbucket about 1980. Bought it for $60, sold it four years later for $100.

[Xist]

When I bought my first car, the speedometer worked weird. I was told the plug into the gauge cluster needed to be lubricated and when I took it apart and blew in some graphite, it did not bind up at all!

It did not do anything, it was not fully plugged in, so my speedometer did not work until I redid it. People told me to just go off my tachometer, but I think each day I drove a little faster, and when I fixed it, it appeared I had been driving 75 on city streets.

[Gasoline Fumes]

Originally Posted by Xist

...when I fixed it, it appeared I had been driving 75 on city streets.

"Why is everybody going so slow?"

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Fingie

It works most of the time.

if not, At least i know the speed from the RPM gauge.......

You've got a tach too? And you think it's a jalopy?

(Honestly, I don't consider my '88 Toyota pickup a jalopy. I think it does its job - being a pickup - better than anything built in this century.)

[freebeard]

You know it might be Spring when....

You bicycle to the pharmacy and on the outbound leg you see a white 911S (mit Fuchs) in a sea of black SUVs, and on the homebound leg you see a 1927 Franklin (prolly) touring and an HMMV in forest camo with a shark mouth behind the front wheels.

[jcp123]

Jalopy? My old Echo. All of the exterior trim and badging absconded with my sister in law's baby daddy when he left her for Mexico after promising to fix the car up. Not a single body panel was without significant damage. No passenger side sun visor, the rear carpets were moldy no matter what I did to them, and the driver's door lock was busted. The radio would bug out from time to time, and I kid you not when I say that banging the dash near the radio would fix it. That's just the headline problems. Otherwise, it was robust for the amount of abuse it had suffered.

[freebeard]

My first Beetle (a black-on-black convertible) had an AM radio that made a scratchy sound whenever you hit a bump.

On those long night-time runs , I would start hallucinating that the car was a needle playing the 'groove' in the traffic lane like a phonograph record.

(Strangely, my first Beetle was a '58, and the only one I have left is also a '58.)

[jcp123]

I actually would like to experience a Beetle someday. It's on my list of cars I'd want to own for six months and rotate out just to spend that time with it.

[freebeard]

Antifreeze is poisonous to puppies and kittens.

[jcp123]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Antifreeze is poisonous to puppies and kittens.

Ah, you think so highly of Beetles, I see!