Tell your horror stories of rust, rot, catastrophic part failure, etc. Photo's encouraged.

New England is the worst place to own a vehicle if you expect it to last long enough to be worth it.

'96 Dodge Ram, regular cab, long bed. I think it only had 70,000 miles on it when I bought (almost 20 years ago).

Strike 1 - fuel pump dies while I'm towing my boat to a lake in the middle of nowhere.

Strike 2 - power steering pump explodes fluid all over my parents' driveway when I was trying to back my boat in the garage to work on it.

Strike 3 - Battery dies with no warning whatsoever. Dead as doornail, wouldn't take a jump. After I installed new battery, I traded the fucking thing in that afternoon.

That was my first and last MOPAR experience.

ha, that brought a story to mind that i forgot. '98 dodge ram 1500 Sport short bed. driving on the pike, and all of a sudden i hear an explosion. call AAA, get it towed out to my friends shop. he then proceeds to show me that my water pump exploded (literally) and blew shrapnel all over the engine bay, taking chunks out of the fan shroud and actually breaking off pieces of metal that held engine components on. said he's never seen anything like that in his life. and he was the MOPAR guy that got the truck for me a year prior at auction.

addendum: i'd still pick a mopar over a ford. i know some poor bastards that drive Ford trucks that aren't even 4 years old that have their wheel wells rotted out. always preferred ford body styles as opposed to GM/Mopar but I am still shocked that Ford can operate considering their shit rots out before your very eyes.

received a beat-ass 2002 ford escape from a family member for free recently. drove it out to see me and the family and just kind of left it here and gave me the title. i accepted as it looked alright at first glance.

good lord. rotted to the core underneath- rockers/rear door seals gone, bucks like a horse in park and drive, needs FOUR new 02 sensors according to my OBD scanner, noticed the cat was installed backwards, muffler clamp has hilariously crushed the tailpipe leaking fumes all out of it, cracked windshield, cracked taillight, cruise control doesn't work, sunroof doesn't work, transmission is tired, barely moves when the A/C is on, front tires are shit and leak, 223k miles.

should have figured it sounded too good to be true. oh well, trading it to some gamer-type kid who's a decent mechanic through a barter-deal for his assistance in some work on one of my project trucks.

free vehicles aren't always worth the headache. fuck em.

odbs are a great investment, i would like a scanguage just to see what goes on under the hood.

also my vote is for any volvo. ever. especially when they used GM shitparts.

Agreed. I got my OBD scanner for around 15 USD on Amazon. Advance Auto Parts (at least in my area) had corporate swipe their scanners for who-knows-what reason so it was a purchase out of necessity. Volvo, eh? Had a 1973 P1800 ES as one of my first projects passed on from-you guessed it- another family member. Once I saw the amount of hornets nests inside the bonnet and that parts were $$$$, I Sold it on Ebay to some random dude in Denmark. Made a profit.