Keeping your head down - what have you done? - oilrag
Topic,

What have you done regarding cars that required keeping your head down for a while after?

We were having a meal once in a camp-site restaurant just North of Grasse, pretending we could only speak English and listening to the Proprietor having a laugh about our car to a French couple.. anyway..

Walking back to the tent and car on this rather overgrown site we saw a family coming towards us with black grease on their lower legs. Sure enough it was all over the long late summer dried grass in the centre of the track leading to our tent at the far end of the site.

I must admit, my first concern was for my beauty having its belly wiped clean, but a quick head under revealed lots of black grease and semi-liquid ooze from the chassis.

1987 and Blue Citroen 2CV, D908 GWX (Is it still around) had received waxoil and full underbody grease slather + rag bungs into chassis end rails and several litres of engine oil mixed with waxoil into the chassis.

A trail of which now coated the wild flowers and grasses of fragrant Provence..

We saw more people with black lower legs in the morning at the shower block and shortly after moved on.

At least we thought, the proprietor would not be laughing at our 2CV and calling us "Greens and who would travel in such a thing in modern times?" (Burst of laughter to French families present)

Perhaps he would also cut the grass on the sites roadways too...

oilrag
Keeping your head down - what have you done? - Pugugly
I have some vague recollection of a similar incident during the battle of Crecy - or possibly a Goon show plot !
Keeping your head down - what have you done? - craig-pd130
I should think with THAT much grease on it, that 2CV will still be around :¬)

Me and a mate had to invent a tale of a mythical smoking hitchhiker who'd burnt a hole in the lovely upholstery of mate's dad's Citroen GS semi-auto ... remarkably, car privileges were not witthdrawn ...
Keeping your head down - what have you done? - Alby Back
Once parked my Landy outside a very large house belonging to an aquaintance. The sort of place which had "grounds" as opposed to a garden. A feature close to the house was a large and clearly gardener tended ornamental rose garden. It lay to the front of the house beyond the parking area and at the foot of a grassy bank. Having visited my friend who was at the back of the property and alone it being a weekend, I returned to the Land Rover to find that I had failed to pull the handbrake on fully and also uncharacteristically not left it in gear. It had rolled backwards down the bank and was now at rest in the middle of the ornamental garden, Its progress had been halted by a fake Venus de Milo statue which was now set at a jaunty angle.

Highly embarrassed but knowing that my friend was highly unlikely to come round that way for a bit I foxtrot whatsited sharpish. I relied on the premise that because his wife ran a horse riding school which would fill that parking area later in the morning that the culprit would not be easily identifiable.

In fact, it was exactly those visitors he blamed the next time I saw him when I remarked on the drunken Venus.

:-(
Keeping your head down - what have you done? - craig-pd130
Ha, that's excellent, HB

Reminds me of the motoring story told by CC DeVille, guitarist of hair metal band Poison. Apparently, with his first big royalty cheque, he'd bought himself an AC Cobra and was driving round Hollywood.

He overcooked it on a bend, went off the road, through a fence and hedge and came to rest in a fountain in the middle of a large lawn.

He was just about to Scapa Flow / Foxtrot Oscar when Johnny Mathis came out of the house and started shouting at him :)
Keeping your head down - what have you done? - Tron
I had been pushed to the point of exhaustion on a military exercise.

3 long weeks (exercise Dragons Eye 1981) in the field with an average of no more than 3 to 4 hours sleep in 24 hours and very little food or water. Refuelling NATO heavy armour et al from Bedford MK UBRE's.

I had had enough....

....so as I reversed my truck in to its hidey hole for the night and started scrimming (camouflaged) it up to hide it from our imaginary enemy, I noticed I had reversed over a quite thick sapling.

Two & two went together and for once I came up with four...

...when darkness fell, I got the sapling and rammed it up against the radiator of my vehicle, knowing, hoping, praying that when it came to us 'crashing out' (being attacked and running away basically) that sapling would damage the radiator enough to put me and my vehicle off the road.

I had a lovely rest :) and because I had been left to be recovered (huge forested area so it was dead quiet too) I was given 2 x 1 man 24 hour ration packs and enough water to rehydrate the thirstiest of animals - and no one until now was any of the wiser.

Of course I moved my vehicle a good 1/4 of a mile deeper it to the wooded area, covered the tracks just to ensure I was just as difficult to find too - I was having the rest and I damned the consequences of going against orders.

Got away with that :-) with just a 'good ticking off' too. Well worth the 24+ hours break!

2 years later - oh dear me, the same thing happened...

...not so lucky this time, the recovery truck belonged to our unit but I still got off the exercise early!
Keeping your head down - what have you done? - doctorchris
Well in my case I kept my head down out of embarrassment but I couldn't conceal my car!
I decided to camp on the cliff top at a secluded Welsh bay, Ceibwr near Cardigan. Probably not meant to camp there but there was nobody around. I drove my Panda 4x4 off the road to pitch the tent then decided to park it back on the road so as not to annoy the locals.
Due to extreme fatigue after a long hard day and working in the darkness, I took what looked like an easier route off the cliff top and drove into a bog, stranded.
The following morning I was amazed at how many walkers, horse riders and drivers passed this secluded spot. All stared at the bright blue Panda at a jaunty angle stuck in a bog by the roadside. I hid in my tent until I summonsed up the courage to ask a local farmer for a recovery.
Actually, he was absolutely fantastic and didn't want a penny from me for his help.