What is the most unreliable vehicle you have experienced?

I have been looking for one of these for a while. I have an idea to swap a zx14 engine into one....

 

Broncos or stuck up chicks?

 

Oops

 

Broncos.... turns out, I wasn’t on the right team to date her anyway. I never pushed it and we stayed friends after school. She has a nice wife and I went to their engagement party many years ago now before it was a “real” marriage in Kansas.

 

Recent disaster story. 2013 Mercedes diesel suv, ML350. Car fax checked out great, 100,000 miles, one owner, serviced at dealer, no accidents etc. I thought it would be a 500,000 mile diesel. It was so smooth and quiet For about 2 months. It started making a lot of noise at startup. Stretched timing chain. $3,800. I picked it up and it ran great again. For about an hour. Then sputtering and check engine light. Back to mechanic. Of course it’s unrelated. Diesel Particulate Filter is plugged. It’s not regenerating and it’s cracked. How much could a filter cost? $3,100 for the part only. I couldn’t live with that so I traded it off that day. I told the dealer everything. But if you see it on the lot, don’t buy it..

 

German whats more to say they suck! BMW too!

 

Most unreliable vehicle I have was a 1997 Chevy s10 with the 2.2l 4banger motor.

Head gasket failed at 80 000km
Blew a spark plug out of the head @85000
Then the head cracked at 90 000

 

$3,100 " Diesel Particulate Filter"- ouch!

 

Especially the lack of loaner, a little surprising to me.

Start that post and I'm in, I have a couple of good cheapo stories..and yes, sometimes the car isn't a piece itself as it is someone makes it one.

My father had a 84 Citation back in the day. Bought cheap with 40K and ran to almost 200K, still purred except needed a head gasket.

My wife had one before I met her and gave it to my nephew. All but one of the body mounts rotted (left front) and the body came off when he was driving one night, picture that..the one mount still held though, looked like it was doing 3 wheel motion sitting still.

Yup sounds very particular to me

 

The worst era for British cars were those built by British Leyland.

 

1977 CJ7 Levi edition with a 304 V8 and 3spd manual. It literally broke almost every time I drove it.

Most notable moments:

• Leaving work late one day around 5:30, the electronic ignition unit went out. Luckily one of my friends at work helped me figure it out and took me to Autozone
• Stop to get my haircut, the starter all the sudden started turning when I shut the motor off. Good thing it quit after about 30 secs
• At gas station. The Jeep wouldnt start. Found the distributor came loose
• Went up a dirt hill and over some whoops. Nothing crazy-broke the steering box off the frame and support bracket

 

AGREED!!! Their cvt system was/is a raging dumpster fire! 2008 Nissan Altima.

 

I’ve had several Audis over the years, so I’ve got plenty of “reliability” stories! Don’t get me started on Fiat...So my first, a 1974 Audi 100ls, top of the line, set the standard for all to come. On the way home from the dealer, brand new, I stopped at a light and when the light turned green, I was off to a juttering start as one of the rear Ebrake had fallen apart and locked the wheel. So I turned around and dragged the right rear wheel, with skidmark, back to the dealer. First time I opened the sunroof, the headliner rolled up in a ball. It blew the head gasket almost immediately, fan relay issue, several other 100s lined up in the service bays, heads removed. Rear seal leaked and oiled the clutch after that. Took it to Yellowstone Park, hit a bump, and the drivers window fell down into the bottom of the door. Brake pads lasted about 10k mi, and you had to drop the exhaust system to access them (innovative inboard brakes). Dash cracked less than a year old. Such a bad car, I bought another one from my parents. This one, an automatic just simply leaked everything. My son had an s5, 45yrs newer, leaks just everything, just like our old 1974, oil, coolant, brake fluid, rear end, fuel, air.... Engineering!

 

LOL we had an "uniformed" person from out of town stop by the shop one day in a Nissan Murano with a 15ft boat in tow wondering why their CVT transmission was throwing codes and in limp mode and if they would make it back home.

 

haha we've got a ML350 dsl at the shop right now that the guy doesn't want to fix. The turbo is inhaling oil about as fast as you put it in, the pcv system is all screwed up, there's so much piston ring blow-by it likes to blast the oil cap off!

It needs a motor and a turbo

we're trying to get the customer to get it off the lot but he won't even answer his phone

 

1997 Dodge Dakota. Both window motors, radio, seat bracket, ball joints, rear end, transmission, and more I'm sure I'm forgetting. Bought it with 85K miles and sold it with 98K miles.

 

Ford Probe! Needed regular applications of money to keep it going!

 

My worst was a Mazda 626 (don't remember what year). After long battles with squealing belts and oil leaks, it was determined that the crankshaft was slightly bent off the production line.

As an aside, my absolute fav was my 1970 340 Cuda. I had to work on it a lot, but most of it was just me tinkering and "hot rodding" it. I eventually sold it to my cousin, who cracked the block within a year (I don't know how). Had I only known how much it would have been worth now...

I also had a 1969 396 Camaro. Overbored, cc'd heads, etc. Got that down to 10.25 quarter times (street legal), then inexplicably decided to get a Cutlass Salon with T-top. To this date, I don't know why...I think it was because the girls I was interested in at the time thought rods were noisy sh!tboxes, whereas the Cutlass was "classy." Stup!d hormones...

 

I only skimmed through the previous replies, so maybe it was mentioned, but mine was a 1988 Mitsubishi Starion/Chrysler Conquest. For anyone not familiar with them, they're a 2.6L turbo 4 cylinder, RWD "Sportscar" with a remarkably big intercooler that was designed to look like it was from the future. Problem is, it was built around an outdated truck engine with a horrific cylinder head and a tragically bad fuel injection system. BUT, they're BEAUTIFUL cars, in my opinion. Mine blew up on the way home from buying it on Alligator Alley. It basically melted a hole in the head, one on each cylinder, connecting the exhaust ports to the water jacket, thus ejecting every bit of coolant out of the exhaust pipe. Granted, I was going 140mph, but still. I replaced the cylinder head, turbo, and a bunch of other stuff, and it never was totally right until I swapped in a 4G63 from a Mitsu Eclipse/Talon/Laser.

It was nothing but trouble, and if I had the opportunity, I'd buy another one.

 

My brother's 1977 MGB.
Loads of problems. (duh, British)
My favorite was the under dash smoke generator. That's why Lucas electrical is the Prince of Darkness.