what weird a$$ vehicles have you owned/driven?

[baylensman]

In my time on this rock i've driven a lot of stuff. besides cars truck and bikes. How about you all

Tractors 4 wheel and tricycle style farmalls, combines and corn huskers, skid steers (bob cats), small dozers, front end loaders, fork lifts, rubber tired boom cranes, straight truck both flat bed and box van thru 32ft, Semi's from cabover single axle thru twin screw KW's.

 

But by far the weirdest to drive was an Advent rear steer street sweeper with a Hiway gear. this thing would turn on a dime, but it was real finicky like pushing a shopping cart from the wrong end. With the brushes down it would move at around 3-4 mph. You could lift the brush and shift to "HIWAY" gear, I guess it was meant to travel at part throttle across a parking lot or back up the center of a street or road at 12-15 MPH or so. However, you could bully the throttle past the lock out and it would move out!! Oh my though, if you over corrected on the steering it would spin around so quick on that single rear tire, it would almost through you off. Needless to say a few of us, on third shift one night took turns seeing who could cross the lot fastest while going around the cones. Let's just say at one point we parked it back in the maintenance shack where we found it and let some one else explain the huge dent in the front of the dirt bin:whistling:

Edited July 11, 2017 by baylensman

[Karaboo]

My dad bought a Catterpillar dozer (small one, don't remember the size #) with a blown engine and made a Ford Model A motor fit. He wanted to use that motor in a sawmill rig, so he swapped it out for a Rambler 4-cylinder. He also made a "doodle-bug" out of several defunct chassis and parts he scrounged up. It had 2 transmissions (back to back, I believe), tall semi-sized tires, and a hand pumped hydraulic dump box trailer. I shoveled a lot of sand into that trailer. He finally found a tractor he wanted to replace it.

[Snaggletooth]

Back in the early 70's I was working as a mechanic at a MF dealer. They sold and repaired both heavy construction equipment and a wide range of commercial turf equipment as well. That brought a wide range of "Weird" toys into my life. That included those odd three wheel mowers by Yazoo I think it was, the bucking broncos of the mower world to those 9 gang reel mowers with the hydraulic arms for fairway mowing. But we handled to full Cushman line to boot. We had the contracts for the Police department for their meter maids and patrol officers down town. But onto my "Weird A$$" story.

 

One of my service calls took me a contractors home to deal with a broken down loader. Did'd take me long to fix his problem and we got talking about other things he had problems with. He asked me if I was still working on any Cushman stuff. I told him I'd just gone through the Cushman service school and he was curious if I'd seen the one that floats. I told him we had sold a couple but they weren't very popular as they had some problems. All I got was "follow me". Off to his workshop we went. He had a Cushman "Trackster" I think they were called back then. Pretty ugly thing. Green and had 8 all terrain tires. Kind of a busted up body that reminded me of a boat. He said him and his dad had flipped it a few times and sunk it once. He had nothing nice to say about the thing. At all. LOL. Said he wanted to get rid of it but he couldn't get it running. It had the components I was familiar with plus he had the set of tracks that slipped over the tires for snow operation. It had the 29 HP, 2 cylinder 2 stroke with the Hydrostatic drive. I knew that thing had power but the reason nobody was a fan of those things with the way the Hydrostat was controlled was the simple T-Bar steering.. That controlled the steering, right and left plus the forward/reverse movement along as being the speed braking control. So pretty much a direct drive with INSTANT response to the control bar. If I remember right Cushman stopped producing them for a while because of some lawsuits by people that had flipped them. Not hard to do... just keep the throttle wide open and sneeze.

 

So my first thought was "I WANT THIS!!!".

 

So we worked out an agreement. I'd maintain some of his equipment and work on his dirt bikes and chainsaws in trade the killer toy. Kept it though that summer and most the next winter until the next big blizzard. When people saw that thing blowing through the drifts it wasn't hard to sell at all.

 

Every body said it was "ugly" when they would first see it... Then it was "cute" when they would see me on the lake fishing from it. Then it was "beautiful" when the snow was up to their butts and couldn't get out of the driveway. Amazing how peoples opinions change with as their needs change.

 

Do I wish I'd hung onto it? Well yeah. I wish I'd hung onto that danged $600.00 Indian to. But who knew?

[bongobobny]

Not necessarily a weird vehicle, but I once drove my '69 Firebird home about 1 mile with 4 flat tires while stoned...

[N3FOL]

Weird? Well, I still have my most reliable 2007 Toyota Prius with 143,000 miles and climbing. Love it to death!

[CMCOFFEY]

I have driven both the M1078 and the M1083 on several occasions. I have also driven a Toyota Hilux, a Dawoo, and a funny looking Hyundai minivan.

 

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j169/coffeyR6/MISC/634735_6002_160_0001.jpg

 

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j169/coffeyR6/MISC/m1078_lmtv.jpg

[Oldodge]

Lots of old cars, a walking dragline and some odd manlifts. But, this is my favorite, fluid drive, three in the tree, flathead.

[SilvrT]

Hard to follow some of the posts above; however, weirdest car I ever drove/owned was an old Austin A40 (around 1954). The shifter on the tree was all backwards compared to American made cars. This thing would roll aling fine until you hit a pthole and then it would shimmy and shake so bad you'd almost lose control. Hammer the brake real quick and the shimmy would stop. You had to push it to get it started so one day I stopped at a corner store to get something. didn't want to shut it off so I stopped with my front wheel in a pothole in the parking lot. This place was on the corner of a street intersection 3/4 the way up a long hill. Well I lost track of time in the store as I was browsing through the Playboy mags LOL ... got my stuff, went out to get in the car ... and it was GONE!! First thought was somebody stole it. Then I saw it down the bottom of the hill sitting backwards against a fence of somebody's yard. I ran down there, car was still running, got in and hi-tailed it out of there. How that thing managed to make it down the hill without hitting anyone is beyone me!

[jakester]

In College, for a year or two I owned a 71 or72 Honda Coupe. 600cc two cylinder air cooled engine with the gear shift that came out of the dash. It was a hoot to drive, that thing would fit in the back of a half ton pickup and the tailgate would almost shut. It would park almost anywhere. I would come out and people would have picked it up and moved it around, above the back tire (fender) was always bent as that is where people would pick it up from. Yea, a very fun ride.

Bill

[M61A1MECH]

When I was in the Air Force and when I worked for McDonnell Douglas in Saudi Arabia I got to drive Jammers, officially they are called Bomb Lift Trucks. They have rear wheel steering and arms that raise and lower to lift bombs onto aircraft or take them off. They come in two flavors, a MJ-1 with fixed front wheels and a scissor type set of arms, and the MJ-4 this one has a hydraulic boom and front wheels that can be extended out board for greater lift capacity. Pretty fun to drive once you got the hang of rear wheel steering.

[djh3]

Looks like they got a gearbox for a B1 or something there Steve. I was TDY up to an ANG base in Ft Chaffee Ark, They were deploying for a couple months and we were turning C-141 for them and their equipment. They had those bomb lifter things and us 141 guys had spare time, so what could go wrong? The Security Police (base cops) were not impressed.

Weird vehicles huh? 64 VW bug with a 110 hp Corvair in it count? In the USAF fork lifts of varying size, bucket (high reach) type trucks. I have drove this We towed aircraft with one of these. http://www.jbtaerotech.com/%7E/media/JBT%20AeroTech/Images/Solutions/b450%20usaf.ashx?bc=%23FFFFFF&w=230 It sucked, no power had a Detroit 6V53. WE used these on occasion, they were actually C-5 uke's. Oh and this big ole POC Petibone crane. Ours was a 6cyl gas engine of some sort. Winter time would take a can or either to get it started and probably a jump. Really jerky controls with 12-1500 lb of engine parts hanging.

Edited July 13, 2017 by djh3