Embarrassing College Car Lesson #1: Drifting a Vintage Ford Taurus

The year was 2003.  I was a sophomore in college, had just gotten my first car, and just started dating my first girlfriend.  Not popular by any means, I had developed a nice group of quality friends.  I was finally starting to emerge from my painfully awkward middle/high school stage of life and feeling rather good about myself.  I lived in the "cool" dorm, with all the athletes and popular guys.  I was starting to feel a bit of pride as an engineering student.  Like any other guy, too much confidence can get the best of me.

That brings me back to my first car... In the summer before my sophomore year, my great aunts were generous enough to hand down one of their cars to me.  It was a 1993 Ford Taurus GL - about as plain as they come.  It had air conditioning and cruise control, and that's about it.  Until I installed an aftermarket head unit, I was stuck with just an AM/FM radio.  It didn't even have a cassette player!  Despite the rather basic nature of the Taurus, I decided to play "stunt driver" in the snow one afternoon.

On the way to the parking lot behind my dorm, I picked up a little extra speed, gave the e-brake a nice tap with my foot, while holding the release with my left hand and performed a pretty wicked drift around the corner.  WHACK!  "Oh boy... that's not good."  A bit too confident for my actual driving skills, I slammed right into the curb.  I quickly surveyed my surroundings for witnesses and gunned it towards the parking lot behind my dorm.  "I don't think anyone saw that, gosh I hope no one saw that," I thought to myself. By this time I realized the damage was done.  Right turns came unusually easy.  Left turns, not so much.

I sheepishly maneuvered it into a parking spot and got out to assess the damage.  Unfortunately I had put a nice bend in two of the suspension arms at the rear end, when my rim made contact with the curb.

Over the next couple of days, I scrounged around the dorm for some tools and WD-40 to get the old bolts out.  After several sessions of wrenching, pulling, banging, frozen fingers, and probably swearing, I had removed the busted parts and was ready to seek replacements.  A few weeks (or maybe even months) passed, a couple of warnings from campus saftey made their way to my inbox, and I finally had things put back together.  Once again, I was rather proud of myself.  I had found a good deal on some salvage parts, did all the work myself, and was back in business.  Well, almost.

I began a gentle test drive out of the parking lot just to make sure things felt alright.  I applied the brakes as I was turning to head back to the main road, and the pedal went to the floor.  WHAT?  What happened!?  I'll tell you exactly what happened.  I left out one important component during reassembly - the brake drum.  Resting comfortably inside my trunk, it did nothing to keep the rear brake pistons from overextending themselves and releasing a puddle of brake fluid.  By this point, my self esteem had been knocked back down to an appropriate level.  The Taurus and I limped a few blocks down the road to the local mechanic.  An $80 loan from mom (yes I was that poor in college) took care of the brake fix and I was (finally) back in business.

I will note that, since this infamous incident, I have executed many more snow drift maneuvers and have yet to suffer the same embarrassment.  That doesn't mean it will never happen again, but I do think I'm a little better at it now!  Moral of the story: no matter how good of a driver you may think you are, don't get too cocky!
 
[Image Credit: ericcastro, creative commons]