We were all young once. Hell, some of us never grew up.
Assuming that you visit this site out of a life-long interest in cars, you probably spent your adolescent years pining after anything with four wheels and a working engine. Ideally, there’d be a car body, transmission, axles and suspension connecting those key components, but you’d have accepted almost anything.
Eventually, we all got our hands on something. A loaner sedan from our parents or, if we were lucky, a tired castoff from the family fleet that we could call our own. Those of us with enough cash enjoyed the thrill of spending every last cent of the cheapest roadworthy vehicle that was able to could cough to life at the back of a shady used car lot (which even moderately shady people kept their distance from).
Young and stupid, but blessed with that pre-adulthood spirit of spontaneity (remember spontaneity?), more than a few of us pulled a prank on our friends or siblings, especially if the vehicle tampering targeted us first.
The key thing that keeps a prank from becoming vandalism is the good-natured — but still unwanted — way in which it occurs. There’s no lawsuits filed after a prank. Just plans hatched — to get even.
“Yeah, thanks, guys. That’s just great. That really funny…. God!” said this writer after finding his ’93 Plymouth Sundance coupe shrink-wrapped like a shipping pallet one morning after work. Another time, it was the unsettling feeling of sinking my hand into chocolate pudding molded under the door handle. That co-worker soon found their car covered in cheap Wonderbread slices, which local seagulls quickly consumed…and digested.
The key is that the vehicle remains unscathed — after a trip to the car wash, anyway — and everyone remains friends. No sugar in gas tanks, though that prank works well on people you never want to see again. Some might get a kick out of hoisting vehicles onto gymnasium roofs, but that kind of ambition usually only crops up on film.
The closest comparison in my humble life would be the guy at high school who, like many others, drove a featherweight third-generation Toyota Tercel. Man, those cars were weak. (And lasted forever, if I recall).
In a burst of youthful spontaneity, and with the aid of a friend, I recall lifting the rear of the 78-horsepower wonder and pivoting the Tercel 90 degrees, thus placing it sideways across two parking spots. The vehicle was then blocked from leaving by vehicles parked on either end. Those black protruding bumpers helped immensely — thank you, Toyota. We then laid in wait to observe the driver’s dumbfounded and increasingly irritated reaction. Oddly enough, this Tercel-lifting tactic came in handy when, years later, a similar vehicle boxed me in while parked at university.
Small potatoes, perhaps. Maybe the Best and Brightest have a much better story to tell. So, how about it — what’s the best automotive prank you ever pulled?
Aw heck no, the statute of limitations hasn’t run out yet.
We know what you did this past summer JimC2.
Peppridge Farm remembers…
This was the 60s when cars were simple.
One of our frat bros had a Ford Falcon with a 1bbl carb.
We built and installed a “restrictor plate” with a small hole (can’t remember what size). Car ran fine but couldn’t exceed about 30 mph.
After a week or so we let him in on the secret.
Bahahahaha!
I never did this one, but when you have a friend or neighbor who won’t stop bragging about the great mileage their new econobox gets, put more gas in their tank ever couple of days. Best way to do this is if they end up going 2-3 weeks without filling up at all…
I don’t think my car would run very much further if someone tried this prank on me and put gas in my tank (it’s a diesel). But I never bragged about my car’s fuel economy, either…and good thing, too, because I’d be eating humble pie right now.
True… gas… diesel… fuel… same/same.
For fear of incrimination, I cannot say. But it involved a friend’s brand-new luxury car.
When I was in college, in the lot outside my building there was this old subaru whose owner was continually dinging, scraping, and otherwise damaging other vehicles in the lot. There were dozens of varying colors of paint on the corners of the bumpers from its previous victims. One day, I became one of its unfortunate victims, a small scrape appearing on the rear quarter panel of my princess with paint transfer suspiciously colored like that of menace of parking lot C.
I plotted my revenge.
I came across a particularly devious prank online. Unfortunately, it would require me to sink to depths to which I previously had no experience; I would have to sh!t in a bag.
After filling this plastic bag with excrement, it was sealed and flattened before being placed in the small freezer in my dorm room.
In the final few weeks of the Spring semester, I struck back against the grayish-green beast. Taking advantage of the cracked open windows, in slipped the frozen poo pancake through the space. I know not what possessed me that day, but it was surely a god of vengeance. Forevermore, the cloth drivers seat would always reek of excrement and make it appear as though the driver had at some point shat themselves while driving.
Sadly, I was pretty tame. The worst I ever did was in auto shop, we stole *one* spark plug wire from a popular teacher’s car. Turns out because the car was a six-cylinder, the effect was just to make it super-sluggish, so the guy barely noticed anything was wrong. (If it’d been a four-banger it’d have been far more noticeable).
Anyway, the joke kinda fizzled out and a few days later we fessed up to the teacher. It wasn’t fun anymore.
A few years later this trick wouldn’t have worked, a “check engine” light would have come on and spoiled the whole thing.
I didn’t do it but some friends in high school did the 90 degree car turn parking trick on someone. Except they did it in his own driveway! With a porch on one side and another house on the other side there was no way to get the car out. The car in question was Fiat X/19 so weight wasn’t a big issue.
I often thought a good prank would be to remove the drive shaft on a RWD car or truck. Its only a few bolts and the owner would be confused as to why the vehicle just revs but doesn’t move after its put in gear.
I did that to my college roommate! He could not figure it out…
If it’s got an open diff you can just use a jack. Put it under the control arm and jack the passenger side tire up just enough to lift it a half inch or so off the ground. They won’t see really see it and the car will just go through the gears without moving. Bonus — it also works on FWD cars.
We did this to my neighbor. Datsun B210.
When I was 12 years old, my dad bought a brand new Ford Galaxie 500 390 coupe. One evening I crawled under it, patched the weep holes in both mufflers with two sticks of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum and then, using s short garden hose and a funnel, proceeded to pour a gallon of Mr. Bubble and water into the mufflers. It takes about 7 or 8 feet of hose to get there on a Galaxie like that since the mufflers are in front of the differential.
When the car ran it looked like an episode of the Lawrence Welk show. That thing bubbled for thirty minutes. Dad was not amused.
I helped toilet paper a co-workers car. Then it rained and the manager DEMANDED to know who did the deed. I denied it at first. However an intense interrogation followed. Overt threats were made about my job. I was forced to clean the car off. It was not easy to do. The toilet paper had stuck to the car like glue and I spent a good deal of time scraping bits of toilet paper off the vehicle with my finger nails. The guy we did it to didn’t really care. He thought it was funny.
HaHa! I was 20 (1980)and my boss had 3 cars. One was an older VW with a sport-matic shift that Blue with white highlights. It was kind of his beater/fun car. Myself and my co-workers went and got water based art paint and did the whole car. Eyelashes over the headlights. Peace signs. Make love not war. Pot leaves.
He about killed us!
When my daughter was in high school I supplied here with a 24″x2000′ roll of Saran Wrap to wrap her principles car!
Back in high school, I had a good friend who used to sneak off with his dads car without permission. I managed to convince him that like cigarettes, you had to be 18 to buy gas. Being of age, I offered to be a good pal and help to buy gas for him… but since it was illegal to buy gas for a minor, I would need to do it for a small fee (around 5 bucks).
This went on for much much longer than it should have. Probably made about a $100 before the jig was up.
Black Magic Tire Gel + silicone sprayed into the wheel wells + gold glitter = An eye catching CX-5.
Some kids I knew at a local high school (not mine) took a teacher’s Beetle and carried it onto a stairwell landing. Everyone was hoping he would drive it down but, no, a bunch of kids carried it back down.
A couple music-camp buddies (brothers) had an ugly old Econoline camper conversion, complete with kitchen inside and awning outside. They mounted a PA system in a hidden spot and would drive around making “announcements” and scaring the crap out of pedestrians.
Back when cars had distributors and separate coils, if someone was seriously irritating, you could switch the coil wire with one of the spark plug wires at the distributor cap. Runs on only one cylinder and is often hard to figure out what’s wrong.
Another is to jack up one drive wheel about an 1/8″ and put wood blocks to hold it up. Unless car has a limited slip diff it goes nowhere.
Does this qualify?
In high school I worked at a machine shop on the weekends and summer. Across the street was a McDonald’s that would get rather busy at lunch in the drive through lane. We quickly figured out their order system. They would take an order at the menu board, then about 6 cars later they would arrive at the window to pay and collect lunch. The orders would match the cars, one for one.
So one day during lunch rush we got in line in my friend’s 4WD, places and order, then gently backed out of line and drove across the street to watch. We only have to jump a small curb to get out. The staff were too busy to notice that we have left the queue.
Sure enough, about 6 cars later, everyone’s orders where off by one order. People were coming back, refusing to leave the window, etc. It brought the whole store to a screeching halt as they tried to figure out what was going on and straighten it out.
It was hilarious for us watching across the street.
The VW beetles were even lighter than the Tercels. So five or 6 guys could actually lift one and move it several parking spaces away, and to top it off, facing in the opposite direction.
Some friends and I carried a bug about 20 feet from its parking spot to the middle of a footbridge. It was just wide enough to fit on the bridge but too narrow to open the doors.
Our youth pastor, who owned the car, was not amused even though it was a consummate practical joker.
In 1967, my college got the bright idea of providing recorded lectures. Students could go to the library, check out the tape (1/4″ reel-to-reel type), and go to a player with headphones. My job was to make the individual tapes from the master recording. This process always left us with lots of reel-ends of blank tape.
One day, our boss told us that he had found a buyer for all the reels with tiny bits of tape left on them. The catch was that they had to be empty. That’s where we came in, much to our annoyance.
We found that the fastest way to empty them was to drop several of them into a box, grab the loose ends of tape, and pull the tape into another large box. This resulted in empty reels in one box and a shitload of loose 1/4″ magnetic tape in the other. What to do with it?
By good fortune, our boss had left his brand new Firebird unlocked next to our lab. We had enough tape to completely fill his car, well packed.
When he discovered this, he was barely able to squeeze into the car to drive to the nearest dumpster. What he couldn’t remove was the smell of the tape, which lingered for a week or so.
Now that is epic!
Imagine you’ve just (finally) screwed up the courage to ask one of the hottest cheerleaders at your high school out for dinner and a movie. Amazingly, she said “yes.” Now imagine that she jumps into your car after school, and the two of you set off for Denny’s. It’s cold outside, but your car has a good heater. But ten minutes into the ride there comes this God-awful stench from the vents. Turning off the heat does not help, and rolling the windows down isn’t an option due to the afore-mentioned freezing temps outside. As the stench becomes unbearable your date rolls her eyes and sez “Just take me home!” You comply, she slams the door and stalks into her parent’s house without saying a word. Smearimg blue cheese onto the exhaust manifold is such a rotten thing to do. That poor bastard…
Zip ties on the driveshaft is always a good one. Get the Hvac sized zip ties. Makes a lot of noise.
Hummer, my old frenemie, where you been hiding?
I have the opportunity to take over the payments on a yellow Hummer H3. That’s if/when I get a more steady income.
I looked up some specs on it, it looks pretty decent on paper. This one has the I-5, so I’m sure its underpowered, but I’m not buying it to race Mustangs…unless its an off-road course lol.
It seems more of a legit SUV than the period TrailBlazer or Explorer. The Grand Cherokee was plauged by Chrysler quality (or lack thereof, to be more precise).
I’m sure a thousand people will come along to tell me the 4Runner is a more reliable choice, and the Wrangler is better off road. Those things may be true, but the Hummer is the one that is available to me.
Since John ruined what little credit I have, financing a vehicle won’t be an option for a while.
The Hummer won’t replace the Taurus as my daily driver. I would be taking too much of a hit on MPG to give it up, and I’m betting the Taurus is more friendly to my bad back.
Although its new enough, it is not something I’m considering using for the rideshare driver job I’ve been talking about. 28 is getting a migraine right now trying to calculate the cost per mile, lol. Its not even on my radar as a potential Uber car.
The H3, then, would be a spare vehicle, one that I can take “mud riding” with my cousins, tow the boat to the river, and haul stuff that won’t fit in a sedan.
Your thoughts? Am I missing some big faults?
I know it isn’t Toyota reliable, but I’m thinking it’ll be acceptable.
MPG? Handling? Comfort? That’s why I’m keeping the Taurus.
With all this in mind, is it still a bad choice?
I have not found out what the payments are, or how much is owed, yet. So, either may disqualify it before I ever have the chance to fart in the seat. This hypothesis assumes the payments are reasonable and $40k isn’t owed on it (lol).
Look up that year Hummer on Edmunds, for owner reviews and current value. Then find out the financial situation and take it from there.
In our high school parking lot we often picked-up and moved small/light vehicles from their original parking space to another space (about four to six of us worked together to accomplish this). I think I recall doing this to a Datsun 210, a couple VW bugs and maybe one or two other small vehicles which I cannot recall for sure. If it was small/light enough to pick-up and move, it was picked-up and moved. That was what was done for our friends who did not drive a so-called “real” car (or truck).
I had the wonderful privilege of working at one of finest car dealerships ever to exist..until it was bought out, turned into a lion’s den the likes of which would make a typical used car dealer blush.
But, before that happened, we had a detailer. This guy was a little weird. Okay. A lot weird. But, being weird myself, I don’t judge and we got along great. As did everyone there.
Well, he never would clean his own car. When his early J body finally gave up the ghost, he bought a 1999 Chevy Metro hatch to replace it. (A GM loyalist working for a Lincoln-Mercury dealer? Hey, I proudly drove my Ford to the GM dealer everyday.)
Me and the service guys were joking that he never even cleaned out the last owner’s junk. He just started driving it, as-is.
Well, the other service writer had this tuna salad, he said “I don’t know why I bought this, its awful.”
Well, we were not far from the employee parking lot. I was like “guys. XXXX’s car is right there.”
We knew what we had to do.
A week later, I drew the short straw and so I had to be the one to check to see if it was still under his seat. I opened the door. The smell almost knocked me on my @$$. I looked. Yep, still there, under his seat.
I swear he never even noticed.
I missed the last part of the first paragraph, should say “…until it was finally shut down in utter failure.”
But, since I don’t have permission to edit my comment, here you go.
One night when I was 16, my friend and I were out driving around in my hand-me-down ’93 Toyota Previa LE (All-Trac, mind you). I turned onto a street about 250 feet from a railroad crossing where the tracks ran through the middle of the intersection in an arc from south to west. The intersection had the typical traffic lights for cars and then the railroad crossing lights, bells and gates for when trains showed up.
Due to the shape of the intersection and the location of the tracks in relation to the road, if you happened to be traveling south, you could still make a left turn even to head east with a train crossing in front of you. The crossing gate was short enough that it only blocked the right lane and the left turn signal would show a green arrow the whole time the train was present. My friend did not know this.
As I turned south onto the street, the gates were down and the lights were flashing and the train was bearing down on the crossing, about the same distance from it as we were. I don’t know what compelled me to do this but to this day it makes me laugh. I turned to my friend and said, “Let’s try and beat it!!” And I floored it. My friend started screaming like a little girl, yelling at me to stop louder and louder as we got closer to the intersection and the locomotive which was right on it as I went sailing past the short gate and made a left turn, literally pacing the locomotive, feet away from it as it swung away from us.
I’ve known this guy for 15 years now and I’d never seen him as pissed before or since as he was with me that day. He wanted to kill me for the next week he was so angry. I think I probably gave him his first gray hair but God it was so worth it. Enough time has passed that he now laughs about it, too. It was one of those perfect chance moments that will never come again. A few years later they added a commuter line and removed the short gate and free left during train time so that chance is long gone.
That was awesome.
Years ago, I was helping my cousin’s (now late) husband haul some old cars off to the crusher. We had a 1965 F-100 step side with an Inline 6 and a 4 speed manual, the one with reverse all the way over (toward the passenger side) and up. That thing was a beast. We (seruously) used his boom to stack *three* old cars on top of each other (a 91-6 Caprice with no drivetrain or rear axle, a 66 Mustang with no drivetrain and more rust than metal, and an 80s Nissan Sentra with no engine but a bad transaxle in the trunk IIRC), and that damn Ford pulled them 45 miles to the scrap yard.
Anyway, back to the story, we always had to pass these railroad tracks way out in the country with no gate, just the bells and a flashing sign.
As we approached (the trailer was unloaded), I put my hand up in the air about where a train would be from my point of view and said “rraa raaaaaa!” (sorry, I can’t duplicate the sound using text).
He jumped on the brakes and swerved to the left and almost crashed before he realized it wasn’t a train. I was a human making a poor excuse for a train noise, but he took it like it was real for some reason.
When he told the story later, he said I yelled “train!” but I assure you, dear B&B, I only made a crude train horn noise and I wasn’t very loud with that. But, it always makes the family roar in laughter when this story is told as we reminisce about him. He was quite a character.
He got me back, though. We had dragged this rusty Rambler American station wagon out of the bushes, and he said his wife would love a few of the old-school Mason jars in the back. Well, the only way to get to them was to reach in from the rear driver-side door window. Since I was the youngest, this naturally fell to me. I had to damn near crawl up in it to get the one he wanted. Just as I did, as I was teetering on the window sill with my feet having come up off the ground, he grabbed the inside of my leg and yelled “SNAKE!”
I do use curse words, but I try not to use “G.D.”. It just doesn’t feel right. But, I said it that day.
Speaking of someone getting mad at you in a situation like that, I have told this story before but its similar to yours, so here it is again:
I worked at a Holiday Inn Express for a while some years back, and the breakfast chick and I became friends.
One morning, her dad had her vehicle (for some repair or tires or something, anyway, he had dropped her off), and she asked if I would drive her to the Chevron to get a local paper (the hotel only had USA Today). I said sure.
I was in my V-6 Ford Tempo. As we came out of the parking lot on to the service road (concrete) at about 5-15 mph, I dunno, enough for the automatic to be in 2nd, I floored it. The trans slammed into 1st, and along with some squealing front tires, we took off like a rocket.
It. P¡§§ed. Her. Off. BIG TIME. She said it scared her to death. She threatened to call someone to come and get her if I didn’t promise not to do it again. She was still p¡§§ed when we got back.
The maintenance guy thought it was hilarious.
There was a great big tree growing out of the middle of a dark road in a quiet neighborhood. My high school friends and I called it “Scary Tree.” The initiation was basically drive fast down this road with the lights off, then at the last moment turn the headlights on (high beams), swerve, and everybody in on the joke scream. One guy clipped Scary Tree in his parents car… wish I’d been along for that one.
Before every car had ABS, if one person in the car fell asleep then the driver would lock up the brakes while everybody in the car screamed at the same time. Pretty mean way to wake someone up but a lot of fun when you’re a teenager.
A friend of mine had an old Honda Civic, and one day I discovered it had a second brake on the passenger side! ( I guess it was previously a Driving school vehicle.) For weeks I was able to drive him crazy by randomly pressing on the brake (when it was safe to do so, of course).
Eventually I let him in on the secret – he was not amused.
I hit this linkage on a friends CVCC, I guess when you manufacture for RHD, you have to make some changes for the US Market.
Two come to mind.
One involved a friend that drove an early Tercel hatchback. Not sure of the year, but whenever we were all hanging out, a few of us would sneak outside, pick up the a$$ end of the tercel and set it on the curb (90 degrees to how it was parked before). We did this mercilessly for most of high school. We would have stopped, but it got such a rise out of him!
Second is more generic, find a sleeping friend at a party, aim two big flashlights at their face. Scream TRUCK!!!!! and when they open their eyes, smack them with a pillow. Minutes of fun.
Also, performed on me:
I was working building Grain Elevators and came down from lunch to see the rear of my Volvo up in the air, courtesy of the bobcat lifting my hitch. No keys inside. I eventually figured out who had done it and they promised to put it back down. I could see from the top that they had set the car down and figured it was over, until i tried to drive home. They had set it down on blocks that kept the wheels 1/8″ off the ground. I had to sign out a machine to remedy the situation before I could drive home.
Ha, that’s a good one.
[Rant deleted]
Back in the early 80’s I had a summer job working as a dishwasher at a high-end surf and turf restaurant. For some reason one of the hazing rituals was packing a newbie’s car door handles with fudge. We had these number 10 cans of spreadable fudge in the walk-in and at some point during your first shift the head waiter would gather a few co-conspirators and go out to the parking lot and conceal a little fudge in the door handle so that when you finally got off work you would end up with a big hand full of sticky go and nothing to wipe it off with. Well I didn’t have a car and everyone was too nice to mess up my BMX bike, but a guy I knew from high school starting working there as well. On his first night he managed to annoy so many people that when it came time for the fudge they didn’t just do the door handles, they skim coated the ENTIRE CAR, including the windows. I date myself here but this hapless victim drove a rusty old cream colored Datsun B210. In the next few days and months we learned that canned fudge does not wash off in a car wash, or by hand. In fact on old oxidized paint, it bonds on a molecular level. For the remaining years he owned the car this friend of mine drove around with leaves and sticks clinging to a yellowish brown car that looked to all the world like a rolling turd. It could not have happened to nicer guy.
I didn’t have any friends in high school, so I had no opportunities to pull pranks.
Jim has a sad?
We knew a fellow who reminded us of a menstrual cycle.
Maxi-pads have an adhesive strip on one side. One day, we stuck about a dozen boxes’ worth of pads to his car.
Then it rained.
At work I hated it when technicians parked their Econolines in front of the loading dock, blocking any deliveries.
When they left the keys in the truck or even left it running, it was an opportunity to borrow the van for a joy ride and park it 3 blocks away then leave the keys on their supervisor’s desk.
Did this to just about every new tech that came along. Until I was promoted to management and was told to stop it and act professional.
In 1974 my friend upon graduating from college was given a new Mercury Comet (a clone of the Ford Maverick at that time). These were fitted with an interlock that would prevent the ignition from working if the front seat stay belts were not latched. They were so annoying that the dealers would help the buyers disconnect them as a service.
My friend was proud of his new car, Jake, and showed us the plastic snap connectors under the seats. When these were disconnected the system did not work.
On a semi regular basis during a four week trip from the east to the west coast we (three buddies) would reconnect the damn things so that our friend couldn’t start the car. He never put the seat belt on before turning the key. The “key” to driving our friend insane was the timing between our reconnections. And we did drive him nuts.
My cousin does not wear his seatbelt. He had a 2006 Ford F-250 Lariat 4×4. One day we were going somewhere and the “Belt Minder” went to chiming real fast and the flashing “man in a seatbelt” icon was just a flasning in the instrument cluster.
Begrudgingly, he put on his seatbelt.
“You know a lot about Fords, how to I stop it from doing that?”
“Its really simple man, its just a quick procedure.”
Long pause.
“Well, what is it?”
Long pause.
“Put on your seatbelt.”
He was not amused, lol, but tell me where I’m wrong!
I re-wired my friend’s electrics after he’d replaced his ’67 VW Bug’s dash with lexan and toggle switches. Much hilarity ensued until I ‘fessed up and fixed it. But I was associated with a fairly good prank, one that became legend, at least with the team. A buddy and I played college football, during the 70s. There was this great looking young lady in the women’s housing who had a cat she kept in her room. Buddy had been dating her and thought he’d play a good one on her. He began cleaning the cat scat out of the cat’s litter box and then taking and leaving humongous dumps in the same box. He did this off and on for a couple weeks or so, until he realized that she’d remain vexed. She never did figure it out. It was very hard maintaining composure when she’d mention her cat’s perplexing change in bowel movements, how was it possible? etc…
Awesome
Great pranks ! .
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the guys @ Sparks Auto Parts did me with the blocks under one rear wheel in my ’55 Beetle….
.
? No one here remembers ‘T’ model Ford ignition coil (box, really) pranks ? .
.
-Nate
Hey Nate,
The T spark coil was before my time, but my dad used it when he was a kid (1927 maybe?)
He rode on a car ferry where they parked the cars literally bumper to bumper. Attaching the hot lead to the first car’s bumper and grounding the metal deck, anyone near that line of cars who leaned on their vehicles would get shocked..
My best pranks have been work related. A popular colleague of mine with a propensity for practical jokes and outrageous humour was my all time best target. She was interviewed by the local paper as part of a weekly “person on the street” segment. They had asked her and others what they thought about the lack of snow and really mild winter. Someone had photocopied the page and posted in various spots in the workplace. I saw it and collected them all and created my version of what she said. I changed it to, “This lack of snow reminds me of my sex life. Not a lot going on but I’m hoping for some major inches before Christmas.” Her reputation had everyone believing she actually said that.
Hilarious!
Let’s see…
Two large zipties on the driveshaft of a coworkers pickup near the muffler, interesting tick-tick-tick…
We added a gigantic wheel weight to the inside to the rear tire of a guys truck one time, that was hilarious since you could see the wheel hop as he went down the road.
My skinny friend crawled through the sliding rear window of a guys ranger and ratchet-strapped the doors together, worked well since the guy who owned the truck was a big fella. He had to pay a kid playing basketball to come over and undo it.
We had a tendency to tie cars to pilings at one of the boatyards I worked at, they’d attempt to pull away and get no where, typically make three or four attempts before realizing they were moored.
I taped the big plastic shipping bubbles you get from Amazon to a guys tires, several times actually, and as he pulled away *POP!* it was particularly funny since he was a jumpy guy to start.
I worked with a guy who would start his truck and let it idle for a long time to give the A/C a chance to cool off, we’d occasionally crank up the heat instead for him.
The work van at a former place of employment was always driven by the same guy, so I’d readjust all of his seat and mirrors, turn all the controls to full blast and crank the stereo… Actually I still do that even to this day since I’ll see his van parked places and I’ll give him a reminder why he should lock it.
Lol.
My first job was a dishwasher at a local diner.
Once, while it was warming up, I turned on my boss’s hazard lights on her Blazer. She said “I was 3/4 if the way home before I noticed!” I made some joke about it being a Chevy and therefore likely to break down, so I was making sure she was prepared.
I’d also go out and turn her volume up, turn on front and rear wiper, set the HVAC to max A/C (was in winter time in Washington state), etc.
She always took it in good fun. She was a wonderful first boss.
LOL! I used to do the same thing as a kid to my grandmother’s car whenever she’d visit my family… but I was also 7.
When I was in college, there weren’t enough parking places in the dorm parking lots for all of the students living in the dorms and if you didn’t get a space there, you had to park behind the field house which was like 3 blocks away. As a result, it was considered fun to create additional parking by physically having a group of people find a small car (first gen Civic, Datsun 1200, Chevette, VW Beetle) and lift it up and move it onto the lawn or sidewalk and then steal the parking space.
Furthermore, the campus police were happy to ticket the cars parked on the lawn or sidewalk.
Not surprisingly the two best involve beer but not in the way would expect. Both happened while living in the dorms at college.
We met a girl we often saw at parties who loved to tell any and everyone how great her new Mazda pickup and how proud she was of it, the special wheels the great stereo it had and how she had taped razor blades to the head unit so anyone who tried to steal it would get cut bad. I quickly got annoying to some of my dorm mates and I. So we saved a couple of Rainer 12 pack of bottles. Then walked out of the cafeteria with a couple of the trays, the good old heavy rigid fiberglass ones.
So late one night we found the truck in the parking lot, which was easy because she was always describing it and frankly it was the only brand new Mazda truck in the lot. Three of us grabbed the rear bumper lifted it up while I and another slipped the 1/2 rack of empties with the lunch tray on top under the spring plates. It worked out so that the tires were just enough off the ground to keep the truck from moving yet not make it obvious.
When we were all together at another party that she was at we finally asked her from across the room in unison how her truck was. Of course she went off and we started laughing.
The other also involves empties. The dorm we lived it consisted of stacks of suites along the hill side. Each room had its own outside entrance accessed by a stair case shared with the adjacent stack. The rooms had bay windows so it was easy to see who had their lights on even if the curtains are drawn. So one night we waited until we saw the victim’s lights go out and started adding an inch or two of water to most of the cans. When the lights had been out for about a 1/2 hour we grabbed our supplies and headed up to the top floor of the the adjacent stack. We carefully put in a couple of stacks of cans right up against the door. Once we had a couple of layers we taped a page across the opening. We repeated this until we reached near the top and put a final layer of news paper to seal it off.
Then it was back down to our rooms and a phone call was made telling the victim that there was this killer party in a room at the far end of the complex. The light went on and and about 10 min later we heard it. When the door was opened the vacuum caused all of the cans to be sucked into the room and come crashing down and start spilling their contents. You could clearly hear the F#$@!!!!, then the victim com stomping down the stairs and off to the party. Not much later the victim came back cussing and stomping up the stairs.
Back in 90’s Ukraine, we picked up my neighbor’s ZAZ-965 and moved it up the street. There were 6 or 7 teenagers with too much time on our hands. I was very surprised at how easy it was to do that; that car was light….
Not really an intentional prank, but I visited my then-girlfriend (now wife)’s parents in Orange County, CA.
That day I had driven them a couple places with their car, returned them home and put the car in their garage. So apparently her mother leaves for work super early, and woke me up the next morning at 4am. She is not a muscular person at all, and could not release the parking brake that I had set on the Camry.
I still get made fun of for that.
A buddy of mine had a 72 Camaro that he unfortunately left in the care of my roommates for about an hour or so.
Just enough time to move take a horn off a other car, mount it towards the rear of that Camaro and wire it to the brake switch.
Luckily my buddy didn’t have to hit the brakes really until he was out on a major street and that’s when he noticed somebody would blow the horn at him when he was at the light.
I always wonder what the people behind him were thinking when he was sitting there at the light as well.
His payback was swift though. One of my co-conspirators needed to replace the u-joints in his driveshaft and the buddy we played the horn prank on waited until the driveshaft job was all wrapped up and grabbed a small floor Jack and barely lifted the rear tires off the ground on the other car and when the other guy put it in gear and tried to roll away the area just sat there spinning the tires and left the driver scratching his head as to why a simple job like replacing the u-joints had left the car immobilized.
Generic things… buddy had a VW Bug, he got the obligatory change-in-the-hubcaps prank – another one was kind of a dick, so the clutch cable in his MkII Golf got disconnected while we were both in school. 3 times.
We zip tied a bunch of cowbells (fan noise makers not real ones) all over the exterior and roof mounted bike talks of our bosses car once. Those were supposed to be found. The rest were directly underneath the car which had to travel quite a distance on a lumpy dirt road. Then, while he had us remove those at our destination, we handed them back to someone who attached then in his trunk and interior while he watched us work under the car.
When I was a kid, I installed a toggle switch for my brake lights, so that when someone was tailgating, I could flip the switch and hit the gas at the same time.
That’s about it.
I did the opposite. I was being tailgated in my 1985 Sentra. I grabbed the parking brake and jerked it up for a second. Scared the §h¡t out of the guy. I was 16 and didn’t contemplate how dangerous it was. But, it worked. He backed way off.
Had a college friend who had a nack for parking tickets and getting towed. I printed up a fake parking ticket that looked like the campus police ones and left in under her wiper a few times. Another time, she was over at our apartment and left her keys on the table when she came in. I swiped them and snuck out to move her car in the parking lot. She was sure he got towed, but we were nice and only let her dangle for 30 seconds or so.
Had another friend that was super proud of his loaded Grand Cherokee. A Jeep tech friend of ours switched all the infotainment to Japanese or something like that. He was only visiting for the weekend, and he didn’t change it back before he left. The owner had a hell of a time getting it back to English. It was hilariously hard to navigate the menus.
I helped a good friend prank his wife on her birthday (still a thing they do, now 17 years later) by providing her with clues for a scavenger hunt of sorts around town. She’d arrive at the location, park the rented Ford Taurus she was driving, and call me for the next clue. This went on for about two hours until she arrived at the last stop and I told her to look in the trunk… where her hubby had been hiding the entire time.
Funny stuff!
Ugh the amount of times I’ve been cornered forced to listen to someones stories of how they “pranked” somebody by irreparably damaging their property or making their day miserable while I go “huhuhuhu” fake laughing while refraining from informing them that they are a scumbag that get off on other people’s misery. Now I have a whole thread full of these stories.
Then you shoulda spoken up, not sat there like a goof saying’ Hur, Hur Hur’ .
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Pranking is very tricky as not everyone will roll with it .
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Some folks insist on being mean spirited, that’s not nice and not in the true spirit of pranking either .
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Example : I was driving a new Ford Courier (’71 0r ’72) and the guys in the Machine Shop got a windshield washer nozzle out of stock and wired it to the brake light switch and WSW pump, tied it under the steering column ~ by the time I realized I’d been pranked it looked like I’d seriously pissed my pants =8-^ .
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So, what to do ? I was the nervous & twitchy guy who always threw punches first, doing that would make _them_ the winners so I had to make a buncha deliveries with my pants open and the vents on…….
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Somehow I managed to not get seen before the wet spot dried out and all was well, I learned a good life lesson .
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-Nate
(I see my comment is in moderation, no bad words/thoughts….)
In high school, my friend’s father kept a spare key dangling with a bread tie inside the throat of the 1 bbl carburetor of his 71 Maverick.
So one night the three of us went to the mall, and our friend decided to get a haircut. While he was at the barber, we lifted the hood of the car (no internal releases in those days), swiped the key, unlocked the doors, and moved the car to the other side of the large parking lot.
Upon leaving the mall, our friend panicked when he realized his father’s car had been ‘stolen’, but our laughter quickly gave away the truth.
That’s a bizarre place to keep an emergency spare key.
The exact words the deputy used when processing my cousin Bubba at the county jail intake station!
A female friend of mine called me and said that her boyfriend (who was a jerk anyways) ditched her because he “wasn’t feeling good.” What he was actually doing was hanging out with another girl (who knew he had a girlfriend) at a party.
So…some friends and I collected some dog poop, and put it in his door handles of his car. He had an old EG Civic (with the door handles that go sideways and flip), and stuffed them in there.
Let me tell you, you haven’t heard someone scream until their bare hands go unexpectedly into fresh dog feces. They both were screaming and SO MAD. It was great. We definitely ruined their night.
Nothing too wild, but back in high school my best friend had a pair of Honda del Sols, one of which was parked in their garage for removal of parts (it didn’t run, and the one that did had some body issues). I was pretty friendly with his parents, so one day when he was gone for a trapshooting competition, I went over and swapped the roofs (one was red, and one was green), a door handle, and some other small parts to give it a similar effect to the Harlequin edition VW Golf.
More recently, some friends and I constructed a fake boot for my roommate’s car with some leftover aluminum tubing from our college’s metal shop (spray-painted yellow and everything)- the “fee” for undoing it was a couple cases of beer.
A good one that was played on me:
As you can see from my photo, my Volvo wagon is white with black cow spots.
I was at an SCCA (Cal Club) time trials event (HPDE) at Auto Club Motor Speedway in Fontana. After the last run, I had parked outside the lounge. When I came out, I found that someone had taken a yellow rubber glove, filled it with water, and attached it under the rear bumper. My car now had a bulging udder!
A group of 20 or so people partying only 50 feet away all swore that they hadn’t seen a thing, but they were sure snickering a lot. Someday, guys, someday… :-)
My favorite form of revenge was to put a small dot of white shoe polish directly in the driver’s line of sight. Then give the windshield wipers a generous coat of Vaseline. When the driver attempts to remove the spot with the squirters and wipers,it creates one helluva of a greasy mess that is difficult to remove. It would make the Pope cuss.
I wasn’t in on pulling this prank, but was let in on the joke to enjoy watching the results. On the last day of school, a group of guys managed to move one kid’s beloved Porsche 944 out of the school parking lot, and hide it in plain sight on the road behind the chain link fence on the opposite side of the school’s field. When this kid went to go to his car at the end of the day, and found it “stolen”, he was beside himeself. So we let him go on for a while, before dropping some hints and trying to maneuver him so his car would be behind us, in his line of site. I don’t recall if he finally saw it himself or if we had to point it out, but good laughs were had by all. He took it pretty well, I think he was just glad the car wasn’t really stolen.
I found this story in a book of practical jokes. I wasn’t there, the story isn’t car-related, I don’t know anyone in the story, can’t vouch that it really happened, your mileage will be lower in California…
Decades ago (1950s), a pair of teenagers had summer jobs in Yellowstone National Park, and took a disliking to a certain Ranger. Duties of said Ranger included speaking to crowds collected around the famous geyser, Old Faithful.
The teenagers collected an old steering column and wheel from a Model T or something, and planted it in the dirt at the top of a nearby hillock. The steering wheel was just visible to the crowds listening to the Ranger, but as he was facing the crowd, he was not aware of it.
During the Ranger’s daily lectures, timed to coincide with eruptions, the boys would climb up the far side of the hillock, so their heads were just visible to the crowd. They made themselves look busy, fussing with unseen gauges, valves, switches, maybe a clipboard, whatever. Since the lectures were pretty boring, the crowd would usually focus on the boys, wondering what they were doing back there.
I gather it’s easy to tell exactly when Old Faithful is going to erupt. Accordingly, when the boys knew the time had arrived, one would make a grand gesture of grabbing the steering wheel with both hands, and with a mighty twist, laboriously turn the steering wheel poking out of the hillock. From the crowd’s perspective, it looked as if he was opening some sort of enormous valve. Then the geyser would erupt, the crowd would understand that the whole thing was a sham, and everyone went home happy. Except the Ranger, who never knew what was going on.
Tercels seem to be overrepresented in these stories…
Years ago (c 1986) I had a friend (who was a girl but not a girlfriend) who made a habit of giving me custody of her spare car keys. For some reason apparently she considered me reliable. One night, late, I was driving home and saw her car parked in front of the movie theater. I hopped in, made a u-turn, and parked it on the other side of the street.
About half an hour later, there was a loud banging on my front door. Seems she’d been out on a first date, and the guy kinda freaked out…
We still get a laugh out of that one to this day.
A lifetime ago about 10 of us got together, picked up the Ford Tempo that the manager of the area What-a-Burger drove, and moved it to an entirely different parking spot behind the store. At the end of her day she thought her car was stolen.
A few years before that, during an era where I was looking for crashed airplanes, we knew a guy who drove a Fiat 128. In New England (and other areas that get a lot of snow) during particularly snowy winters, they create huge mountains of snow in the corner of parking lots. A group of us got together and lifted his Fiat up to the top of the snow pile at Pease AFB, and left it up there somewhat balanced.
Come to think of it, I’m actually not sure how he got it down.
While nowhere near as inventive as many of the stories above, back in high school the keys to my ’64 Riviera would start my friend’s ’64 Chevy, but his keys would not start my car, so sometimes when I would find his car in front of a female friend’s house (our general gathering place), I would move his car half a block or so, and he could not retaliate in kind.
A story from my dad: he and some of the other kids in the neighborhood changed the cars around from garage to garage during the night. In the morning, chaos!
Bad enough to find your car missing when you’re ready to leave for work, but to find it switched with someone else’s car!
I guess during the 1930’s, no one locked their garages. Certainly once they got the garages open, it was easy to move the cars. Back then cars were small, light weight, and manual transmission.
BTW, the football team at my middle school put the coach’s beetle sideways in the doorway of the gym. The doors were set about 8 feet into the outer wall, and there was about a foot of space on each end of the car. I wasn’t involved, other than making a suggestion….
I was not the person to do this prank, but it was very memorable!
There was an ongoing prank feud of sorts occurring between some of the pizza delivery guys in my town. Their pizza franchise made its own dough, so they had big bags of high-gluten flour around. One time, one of the guys put a bunch of flour down the vents of another guys car while it was parked unlocked, turned the fan switch on high, directed the vents at the driver position, cleared any residual flour from the vent exteriors and waited inside the store. The next time the owner got in his car and turned the key…POOF!
It was hilarious, but the owner of the car was NOT a happy camper.