70 Roadrunner 440-6 4 speed totalled

[hemi71]

I talked with the owner, what happened was he turned the key off, but went too far and locked the column. As he was heading for a utility pole, he turned the key back to unlock the wheel, but went too far and the car restarted at full throttle and shot past the pole and into the ditch, then the front corner of the car dug in and the car flipped end over end. In the heat of the moment, with 2 tons of high horsepower Mopar on the loose, it's a tough thing to react correctly.

He has insurance, but here's a good lesson for all of us; make sure the value on your insurance is up to date! I wont say how much coverage he had, but it's not enough by far. He's probably going to find a donor body and transplant the drivetrain. The car is totalled, not a body panel saveable and the frame is badly bent.

[Rev-It-Up]

    I can only imagine what that feels like, but in this situation, it could have been worse than just sad...it could have been absolutely tragic!  I'm so glad everyone walked away from that one!  Wow!

[Plum6Pak]

Ditto, glad they are okay, that's a heartbreaker for sure. Do they have any before pictures? That's almost a cc of how my car will look when completed, (minus the dents I hope). Thanks for posting this hemi, good reminder of what can happen.

[Bullitt-]

Glad your friends were not hurt any worse than they were.
 

Anybody got a good set of plans for a KILL SWITCH? 

[whitesatinmopar]

  Now there is a great idea, a dash mounted kill switch, that would still give you the wheel control. What a sad and terrible sight, just makes you take a very deep breath, and boy it's great news to know they are OK.

[Super Blue 72]

Wow, real sorry to hear what happened to your friend, hemi71.  Thanks God thety came out of it ok.

Sad sight that car is.  Hope they find another car that they can start woking on. That'll help to heal the pain.

The throttle stuck on me one time when I was a teenager when I tried to convert a vacuum secondary Holley carb to mechanical secondaries buy making a throttle linkage out of a coat hanger.  Stuck at wide open throttle.  I was fortunate to pop it into neutral then turn it off before I blew the engine!

[Mopar73340]

Wow!!!  I'm glad they were ok. To bad about the car but I agree with the insurance. Had the throttle hang on me  several years ago and since the later model challengers and cuda's had the ring on the column to push down and turn the key, it was easy to just turn the key off without locking the steering column.

[R/T]

Glad your friends were not hurt any worse than they were.
 

Anybody got a good set of plans for a KILL SWITCH? 

Thats a great idea . I will start getting a plan together soon and hopefully have a parts list to go with it.

Glad they are OK,

Lesson to everybody though is to train yourself to shut the key off without locking the steering column.

 I had just gotten my car back from the shop and had a clutch put in when I had my throttle sticking accident. Guess what they had forgot to reattach??? My duster had to be in reverse before the  key would go all of the way to lock but when I turned the key back to shut it down it locked the wheel as I was going in to a curve, I ran into a ditch and as it came out of the ditch I impacted a tree about 10 feet off of the ground.