Eagle Adventures and Mishaps

Tree Jumping

My dad told me this happened on his way back from work in about November of '96 so if you doubt the authenticity i won't blame you. The story starts out as my dad cruising down a highway doing probably 5 over the limit or so which would make him going about 75 mph when this happened. Who really knows. My dad drives like a terrorist as do I. Anyway, he is toolin along the highway and kinda racing this older couple in a Buick or something when the highway hits a bend. My dad sees the car in front of him, which was about 5 or 6 car lengths ahead, slow down and change lanes. When the car clears the lane he saw why they did so, a pretty good size tree was down in the lane. Remember that dad claims the tree was probably about a foot in diameter with tons of branches. Kinda like a Pin Oak or something. Rather than slow down and admit defeat to the couple in the Buick my dad slams the pedal to the floor and continues on. The Eagle rams the tree and is ramped up over the tree. The tree explodes throwing branches and leaves in every direction then the back tires hit and the front end comes back down hard on the payment. The back end comes back down and my psychopath dad looks over at the Buick to see their reaction. According to him, they were staring in amazement at him and damn near ran off the road as the highway hit a another bend. Of course I didn't believe this story to much when he told me the only thing wrong with the car was a busted muffler clamp. But i did survey the damage my self and sure enough the clamp was busted and there were branches, twigs, and leaves tucked in about every nook and cranny of the lower half of the car.

The Fire!

Ok I saw this one. I was pretty cool. I'm standing in the kitchen of my house one morning watching for the school bus. This happened in probably January of '96 (eventful year). I was probably in about 6th grade. So i am just standing there when I see my dad, who had left in the Eagle about a half hour earlier, racing toward the house doing probably about 45 at least. He turns into the driveway like a terrorist and runs inside. He doesn't say anything to me as he runs past the kitchen. He grabs something out of the closet and races back outside. I follow him out and see that he grabbed the fire extinguisher. He throws the hood up and I finally understood what was going on. The Eagle was on fire! The flames shot up as he opened the hood and my dad quickly blows the fire extinguisher over them. It takes about 1 or 2 minutes but my dad puts out the fire. I stare at the smoking mess that used to look like a engine as my dad walks past me, again not saying anything, and tells my mom who is now outside to see whats going on that he needs to borrow the car. My dad rolls off in the Wagoneer as my mom, my sister, and I stare in aw at the Eagle. This only lasted about about 30 seconds when my sister and I realized that we might be able to get out of school for this. Mom still made us go though and when we got home we learned about what happened. Apparently my dad was about 1/4 of the way to work when he started smelling oil burning. He didn't think much of it and continued on. About 1/2 of the way to work now he starts seeing smoke from under the hood. Little trails at first, then tons pouring out, then little tips of flames shooting out in a few places. My dad makes a U-turn and heads back home. doing about 90. So he drove all the way back home with the engine on fire. Over the next month or so the Eagle was out of commission. Thats how long it took us to find parts. Apparently the valve cover leaked oil pretty bad. Which is a common problem that ails 258 I-6's made in the '80s. My dad didn't notice a good amount of oil had made it way to the exhaust manifold and that is what started the blaze. Amazingly only the valvecover and choke had to be replaces. Everything else still works as it should today. So the Eagle survived probably its darkest day and now today has become the scourge of the High School Parking lot.

The Tempo!?

Ok. This story is about me being stupid in the Eagle. Its a half-day from school which usually are the days teenagers lose it and do dumb things. I am at a friend's house being camera man to a "milk challenge" and every one loses interest and decides to go look at a Ford Tempo in some guys back yard. We heard about it at school and figured that if we pooled our money together we could get for $75. So 4 guys over at my friends house jump in his Mustang and i jump in the Eagle and we head to this place with the Tempo. The trip is uneventful except for the couple of times I almost rear-ended the Mustang because my friend drives like a moron. Not a psychopath like me but a moron. There is a difference. Anyway. We get there and see the car. I doesn't look that bad. We look all over it and all we can see is that it needs a battery which we swipe out of another small car, gas, and a serious vacuuming of the interior. One thing stands in our way. It won't start. We put gas in it and it turns over but just won't fire. So we decide that because it is a stick we could get away with push starting it. So we spend about 15 minutes pushing this car up and down this hill trying to start it without any luck. This we later found out was because the guy in the car didn't know how to pop the clutch. Anyway. We finally get a little winded and decided to rethink our stategy. One of the other guys there pulls out a rope and says we all need to pull this car by the rope. Thats when it hits me. The Eagle can pull this Tempo much more effectively than 3 teenage morons. So that started it. I backed the Eagle into position and secured the rope. One guy jumped in the driver seat of the Tempo to pop the clutch repeatedly until it started and another sat in the passenger seat for a ride in the Tempo. I hop in the Eagle and the first thing i do is mash the pedal to the floor. This i quickly learned was the wrong thing to do. Although nothing happened to the Eagle, I saw the front end of the Tempo lurch up and rope snapped sending the Eagle screaming for about 10 feet before i found the brake. So we tried this again. We reattached the rope and I gave the Eagle just enough gas to get rolling. To my surprise, the Eagle seemed not to be bogged down by the Tempo at all. I pulled the car around the neighborhood for about 10 minutes the guy in the car is constantly popping the clutch with no effect. Finally we turn around in this circle and head up a hill we had just come down. I forgot about the Tempo and mashed it to the floor as i do with most hills (not that the Eagle needs that much gas to get up a hill. i just like doing that.). The Tempo got another hard tug and the rope snapped again. This pissed me off. I quickly threw the Eagle in reverse and manuever around the Tempo in one quick motion so the I was directly behind the Tempo. i creep up slowly until our bumpers touch then i hang out the window and tell someone else to get in the Tempo. The guy that was in the Tempo, which i should probably tell you is the same friend with the Mustang, hops in to the Eagle for the ride. With the bumpers touching i give the Eagle a little gas and we are rolling. We get to about 15 mph and mash the pedal to the ground. Pretty quickly, even while pushing the Tempo, the speedo says i am pushing the Tempo at 45 mph. Apparently the guy in the Tempo notices too and he wildly flails his arms to wave me off. I let off the gas and give the Eagle some brake so the Tempo is rolling away from me at 45 mph. i see the back end bounce as he pops the clutch and black smoke pours from the tailpipe. The Tempo runs! The guys in the Tempo speeds away like a terrorist and does a donut in another circle. He comes back around and shuts the Tempo off. The other guys freak out but he turns the key again and it starts right up like nothing was wrong. This time with out the smoke! That is basically the extent of this story. The rest of it is just the other guys negotiating the price of this Tempo. They end up buying it for $70 which I did not contribute to. Other than the starting i really didn't want anything to do with this shit box. They thank me and the Eagle and i head home for lunch.

See the Eagle keep running. If you want to know how, ask me.