The copper tubing broke just behind the compression fitting for my hydraulic clutch. I crushed and worked the tubing out from the fitting so I could reuse it. Since I was in the middle of nowhere, I had to use antifreeze for the hydraulic fluid.

It got me home, where I could replace the seals and flush the system.

BTW: Love that Pringles can fix!

Once my car broke down in the Sumner Tunnel, (in Boston). The fuel filter was plugged. I replaced it with the outside tube of a Bic pen, and went on my way. Of course, the traffic was backed up for miles and hours, even though the repair took about 10 min.

Its not really a repair as much as a "camping attachment", but while camping a good distance from any civilization a few years back I made a trailer hitch on the back of a quad from a shovel handle a Lag bolt and a small chunk of 2X4.

We hooked our trailer up to the Grizzly Via the Cut-off shovel handle hitch, ratchet strapped some lawn chairs(4) to the flatbed trailer, strapped some coolers full of beer on between the chairs, and took off up a beautiful Western Oregon mountain, hooting hollering and shooting as we went up on our "Redneck hay ride". Looking back... Riding up narrow gravel roads attached to a quad by a wooden shovel handle probably wasn't the brightest idea, but we all lived through it, and the "hitch" worked beautifully.

Ahhh... Pretending to be a hillbilly is fun on occasion.

"Ahhh... Pretending to be a hillbilly is fun on occasion."
My next door neighbor calls it "hillbilly quantum physics". They're real good at it. One saturday last year he was at work and she was home with the two kids, subteens. They had the job of hauling about a quarter cord of firewood up the hill to their driveway. He said it wouldn't work; but she went ahead and with the kids they moved all the wood by using their old pickup truck and 75 feet of rope pulling the kids' old toy wagon up with loads 50 or so pounds of wood at a time. Real piece of work, that Mom.

One of my best was the way I used the self tapping screws that held the door frame for the race car trailer, a piece of sheet metal and some JBweld to repair a cracked weld seam on an aluminum cooling water tank in my friend's modified roadster during Bonneville Speed Week. The next day he set a class record with it.

Ed Weldon

There was a program on TV in OZ several years ago called "Bush Mechanics" about the things Aborigines did for vehicle maintenance. Lets say they shifted the make shift quite a ways. Strips of blanket for windscreen wipers, roofing screws for battery terminals, spinifex for tyre tubes etc etc.

Hi Emjay4119

That was a hilarious program.

I was about to suggest it but you beat me to it.

It should be available at:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/documentaries/stories/s359476.htm It was screened 24 Oct 2002. I think there were several episodes.

If you want to see real makeshift repairs and mods, this is well worth it.

I particularly liked the part where the door kept coming open, so they took it off, then used a grinder to transform their sedan into a convertible.

I can't come near some of the exploits these fellows pulled off.

3: 00 Am and late getting the girlfriend home, my car died. Traced it to the rubbing block worn away enough that the points weren't opening enought to make a spark.

All I could find in the trunk was a short piece of shafting. No jack or tire iron of course.

By penlight, using the shaft and a rock, I picked up beside the road, I managed to hammer on the points enough to get them working.

Did get the girl home and had a good enough excuse for her mother.

G'day, how about putting a rally car into the bush (in competition) and using a large screwdriver from the toolbox to relocate the lower front control arm, fence wire to keep it together, fence wire to hold the doors shut, the bonnet (hood) and boot (trunk) lids within 6 inches of their openings, depressurise the radiator by removing the cap so the radiator didn't leak too fast then limping into control out of late time to have the crew do a more reliable repair. This occurred in August 1973 in the Murrundindi forest area in Victoria, Australia.

good day,

Ever repair a bike ciggarette lighter?

100km between towns, stopped for a smoke break, sh1t!, no ciggarette lighter on this machine. Remove spark plug, get deodorant can from luggage, depress starter knob, hold deo can in correct position and voila, GSX 1100 now has flame lighter.

And they looked back as you went and asked 'who was that masked man?'
Great one.. I felt I was almost there.

I han't got any great tales, but I remember one night a bunch of us driving home with one guy leaning out of the passenger window working the cable to the carburettor whilst listening to the driver shouting 'change' to change gear....
Police stopped used to stop us regularly...
'Excuse me sir, does your handbrake (parking brake for US) work?'
'Errr, no officer, sorry, how do you know?'
'We could see it dragging along behind you'

Oh, and I've patched up an exhaust with a cat food tin and copper wire.

Copper wire and ty-wraps are always v usefull. This creates a sub-thread of 'what do you carry for repairs?'
Del

• Three foot breaker bar. Makes removing hub caps REAL easy.
• Chassis and wheel bearing grease. On the one trip when I left the wheel bearing grease at home for the first time, I needed to buy some. Never again.
• Brake spring tools.
• Two cans of Brake cleaner, of course.
• Four grades of Loctite.
• Anti-seize.
• Two grades of silicone seal.
• Various sizes of Ty-raps.
• A drain pan that was originally a year 2000 cake pan (It was christened the Millennium Drain Pan at a VIR vintage race).
• Bucket, sponges, towels
• Waterless hand cleaner, water.
• Water and antifreeze, two liters of each.
• Air pump.
• Small battery charger.
• Small floor jack with oak planks for the inevitable sandy/muddy roadside.
• Jack stand and 12"X12"X1/4" aluminum plate.
• Two spark plugs, distributor cap with coil, used but good electronic module, one long plug wire, all neatly packaged.
• Various radiator sealers. I particularly like the "dog turd" tablets still available at your local N**A store. My father, at Mack Truck many years ago, would put two in the radiator of each truck. The particals are light enough to stay suspended in coolant.
• At least 200# of normal and strange tools. Had to buy the farmers pliers.
• 3'X3' heavy cardboard. Good to lay on as well as keeping all the crap from bouncing up and denting the trunk lid.
• VEERY powerful magnets, in case of broken window or for screwing up your credit card by mistake.
• Full set of new and used belts, set of used hoses (one is a silicone top hose salvaged at a junk yard from a cop car), clamps and plastic repair tubes.
• Gorilla brand duct tape.
• A can of tuna.
• The usual jumper cables, oils, funnel, rope and bungees, paper towels and baby wipes(side of the road "emergencies"), and four way tire iron.
• "Other" stuff.

I leave the oil filters at home. That would be crazy.

Ok this is just the ignorance in me coming out buuut

"VEERY powerful magnets, in case of broken window or for screwing up your credit card by mistake."

what do magnets have to do with a broken window?

Oh and is the tuna to entice Del into helping out when your having problems?

The magnets hold the trash bag in place at 65 MPH.

The tuna is in case I run off the road on the New Jersey Turnpike and no one, not even the State Troopers, care to check out the skid marks for days.

I love the Sebring race. Where else does the fire dept sell beer to drunks that are driving.

Watkins Glenn.

My last trip there was in Oct 74 or 75. I hope to do the NASCAR race there next year. We went tenting in the valley below the circuit. Froze my nutzoff. Great trip though. We slept through a short running of the Can-Am cars that year.

Years ago when I was in school married with a child and making only $2000 a year. I had an exhaust problem. I poked holes in the bottom of a beer can, stuffed it with an old brillo (steel wool) pad and clamped it on the end of where the muffler use to be. It worked great but I had to replace it about every 6 weeks or so.

I had a heater hose blow out on my way home. In the trunk of my car I had a broken golf club and an old rusty coat hanger.

Using my trusty leatherman tool I scored the tube after cutting off the grip and broke it on the score line. I then took this short section and spread the ends out by sticking the needle nose pliers into it and twisted it back and forth to make a flare.

I cut the hose on the break and cut out the bad portion, stuck the now flared tube made from the golf club handle, into the hose. Wrapped a couple of cut sections from the hangar around the hose and tube combination and twisted it until it was a tight seal.

I Reinstalled the hose and drove it leak free for a couple of months before I remembered I had to replace it. I kept the patched up hose in my trunk until I sold the car.

I never go any where without my leatherman tool and Recommend it as a vital piece of travel gear.

I too had a British car(1952 MG) that had the same Lucas points problem you had and was solved the same way. When I got home, I replaced the pump with a Bendix. Also I had a diesel that ran dry outside a grocery store. A quart of cooking oil got me to the nearest gas station.

We had an old Volkswagen Beetle and the accelerator cable broke when we were out in the middle of nowhere. The cable goes from the gas pedal in the front of the car through a tube to the back where the engine was located. We had no tools and no new cable. We removed the speaker wire from a rear set of speakers and ran the wire out the sun roof and down the back in to the engine compartment. As one one of us drove the other person pulled on the cable. We drove for about 20 miles this way laughing all the time.

Well, of course there's the vise grip pliers holding one side of the thermostat housing on the '75 Chevy pickup's straight 6 motor, but I think my personal best is the wooden brake shoe.

Living in northern California where there wasn't much work if you weren't into logging, my little Ford pickup threw the disc brake pads from the left front wheel. Twenty plus miles from the nearest parts house and no money til payday, I rumaged around under and behind the seat and came up with some hardwood molding left over from a small project I'd done for one of the locals. If it's good enough for San Francisco cable cars, who am I to say it won't work. Having the presence of mind never to waste anything even remotely useful, I whipped out one of the sad old pads from the last brake job, and screwed some of the molding onto the backings. It worked for a week and a half until the next payday. While there were no fires, for the first few days there was a wonderful aroma of wood smoke at each stop.

for the first few days there was a wonderful aroma of wood smoke at each stop.

Excellent .
An old boy I once worked with told me he cut a few inches off his leather belt to use as a big end shell.
Del

Del wrote: "Excellent .
An old boy I once worked with told me he cut a few inches off his leather belt to use as a big end shell.

In his autobiography the late indy 500 champion Wilbur Shaw told of how a rod bearing went sour on the car used to tow his race car. He explained how he pulled the big end cap off the rod, measured the bearing and fabricated a crude "insert" from the leather in the tongue of one of his shoes. He then reassembled the cap, oil pan and poured the oil back into the engine. All this while on the side of the road with just a handful of tools. He then drove the rest of the trip at reduced speed, which by itself is uncharacteristic of such heavy footed race drivers.

Immagine Formula One team Mclaren doing such a thing on one of their trucks!

L.J.

One time on a hunting trip one of the battery cables broke on our Baja Bug, so we used a wire clothes hanger to replace the battery cable. It did the trick for the remainder of the hunting trip.

One fine summer day, when I was about 10, my family was travelling back from a roadtrip, back to the city, when the care overheated. My father let it cool down... patched the radiator split seam with a giant wad of wrigleys spearmint chewing gum.. (we all had to chew a piece) and put water in from a nearby swamp, using an empty windshield washer jug... and we carried an extra jug of swamp water and topped up on the way home.. another 35 miles.. and we did get home...

Chris

Not really a repair, but it made a good impression. The scene...

In my late teens; girl in my father's car; country lane late at night,
I backed the car close in to a thick hedge. Completing the best part,
(happy days) I tried to drive off, - and the car couldn't move!

It's now well after midnight and she is expected home, like now!....
Upon inspection the end of the rear bumper, (fender) a pressed steel
bar, had, on my reversing, "sprung" itself around a thick hedge root.
The car couldn't go forward, held by the hedge root, and couldn't go
backwards, blocked by the hedge bank, and with no tool to cut the root.

In desperation, I revved the engine and let out the clutch with a bang!
Fiercely the car "snatched" forward, freeing itself of the hedge, Free!

Stopped now, free of the hedge, we both looked to see what had
happened; the end of the bumper, about 9 inches of it, had bent right
back at 90 degrees to free the car from the hedge. (dad would go crazy!)

I bent down and, grasping the end of the bumper in both hands, bent it
back, in to its original position; and then, looking up, saw my girl's face
with her mouth wide open in absolute astonishment and disbelief!

The bumper was probably weakened by the original bend, or it was low
grade metal, (or something) because I'm truly not that strong. I certainly
could not do it today. I can only explain it as motivated by desperation,
and youth. The utter disbelief on my girl's face stays with me to this day.

I couldn't have impressed her more if I had tried; and dad never noticed.

jt.

Here with hosts of friends I revel who can never change or chill;
Though the fleeting years and seasons they are fair and faithful still!

I like this one because it saved me over $100! I had a 1988 Dodge Diplomat with a 318 in it. The starter went out and I noticed this was an oddly small starter. I surmised it must be a newer design hi-tech starter. The discount auto parts store wanted about $160 for a replacement! Having messed with small block and big block Chrysler V8's for years, I thought I would see if the old style gear reduction Chrysler starter would work. I took the little one to the parts store and asked the parts man for a starter for a 1969 318 Coronet and he brought out an early style starter that engaged the gear and bell housing the same as the original.

I did have to change one of the terminals but the $35 starter worked perfectly. My 1988 car now also had the characteristic gear whine at start up of an old gear reduction starter. Maybe thats the reason Chrysler went to the updated version.

Here is another. My first car was a 1963 Mercury Comet with a small six cylinder. It was a pretty good car for $30. My brother and I (he was driving) were goofing around in the woods with the car and he center punched a tree at low speed. The radiator got pushed back into the fan and we drove it back to the barn squirting out water. We got out the propane torch and solder and blocked off probably half of the radiator tubes. We also hammered the front end out enough to stop the contact. We figured we would carefully watch the temperature gage when we got it going to see if it still had enough cooling capacity. The drive train seemed very under-stressed. Sure enough it ran fine and never overheated in my future driving. Some time later I sold the car, for $30.

Using golf tees to plug disconnected vacuum lines.

On my off road VW Chopper Bug, the battery was in poor shape so I welded a pully to the outside of the crankshaft pully, cut a notch in it and started the engine with a pull rope.

Oh nice...
I bet that stopped the traffic.

Lost a hose on my girlfriends chevette. Happened in Pennsylvania on a Sunday about 35 years ago. While walking into town to try to find a gas station or someplace to buy a radiator hose, we came upon a washing machine discarded off the side of the road. I had the old hose to match up the new one and found that the sizes were pretty damn close. I ripped the hose off the washer and snapped off the fitting going to the pump and snatched up the hose clamps. This allowed me to cut the split out of the radiator hose and attach the piece removed from the washer to reach the top of the radiator. After both emptying what water we had and relieving ourselves into a cut open gallon milk container, we filled what we could into the radiator and drove the 10 miles into town. One thing you never want to do is pee on a hot exhaust. I had to promise my girl (now my wife) that I would definitely flush and replace her hoses as soon as we got back. She thought peeing in the radiator would destroy her engine.

On a hot summer day and a long walk ahead of us, it sure was nice of that lazy a** litterbug to leave us what we needed.

While four wheeling a handful of years ago, my friend was going a little too fast in his Landcrusier and bonced his Chevy small block around a bit. Upon investigating the accumulation of coolant under the vehicle, we found a nice "smile' cut into the bottom of the radiator. The fan had moved into the radiator and sliced a nice cut at least 12 inched long into the lower portion of the housing. Several minutes of pondering brought about the solution to use of a rubber slipper out of the back of my Toyota. By cutting the rubber into strips, I was able to stack them into the cut and form an effective seal. After filling the radiator with any and all available fluids, my friend drove over 65 miles home and then to the radiator shop the next morning with NO LEAKS! He later told me the look on guy's face was priceless when asked to estimate the repair. I only wish I would have taken a picture to share.

A buddy of mine was on his way down I-5 to California from Oregon, Car suddenly died around Ashland. I was about an hour away, when he called for help. When I showed up the Car would crank, I could smell Gas, but no ignition. After Probing around for a while I pulled off the Distributor Cap to find the rotor just floating around inside no longer connected to the shaft. The screw that held the rotor in place was stripped, and partially broken. I ended up steeling a sheet metal screw from another area of the car, and began carefully reinstalling the rotor in correct orientation, with the new fancy sheet metal set screw. Car promptly fired up. I advised him to head to the nearest part store to pick up a new rotor, and install it immediately, because I had little faith that this new fix would hold for more than a few miles. He then drove strait to San Diego with the sheet metal screw still installed.

Another buddy of mine, dumped his bike and ground a large hole in his aluminum oil pan. A few precise application of JB weld and a few beers later the bike was refilled with oil and back on the road.

For a car about the only thing I can think of using is "muffler tape". I think I used a piece of aluminum with a clamp once for a hole in the muffler.

Last summer I revived my 1970 Yamaha motorcycle when the gas prices hit $4 a gallon. Many parts are not available. I desperately needed an air filter, and ended up using a filter for the return ducts on a furnace, held on with a piece of tape. The oil injection cable was broken so I lengthened it with a picture hanging wire by wrapping both around a small bolt. The muffler baffle was long gone, so I had a copper elbow bolted to the back of it for a while. Later I put in a black iron pipe through a wood sleeve. It also has an elbow which reduces the noise a bit.

Timing chain broke on a 1970 302 Ford Truck Engine. All the intake valves were bend when I pulled the headS. Wife on vaction with her mother and other car. Stuck for transportion out here in the country high summer and no one around. So while waiting for one of my calls to be returned I took a chance.

I took a hammer and straighted the valves just like you would a nail.

Then gently worked them in and out of the head and tapping them into alignment. I was careful not to damage the valve seals by layering them with a wheel bearing grease. While doing this I missed 4 returned calls of friends ready to help. By the time I had finished my project it was near miodnight. The next day all I had to purchase was the timing chain.

I used the same gaskets with some silcone sealer and put it back togeather. It istill runs today just the way I finished the repair. I had never run the engine hot so I was not worried about the head gaskets. That was 16 years ago.

That's a great piece of work to keep an older vehicle running which reminds me of one of mine although not as good.

I got my 318 Dodge pick-up truck stuck in the snow. While rocking it back and forth (1st, reverse, 1st, reverse) I over reved it and it started missing. I suspected valve problems so I took off the valve covers expecting maybe stuck (bent) valves. Some of the push rods were loose but the valves still moved OK with a pry bar. Bad lifters! I remover the intake manifold and found the broken pieces of two lifters laying in the valley. The right thing to do would be to take the motor apart to get out the pieces or at least take off the oil pan. Since this truck had 270,000 miles and the engine had never been apart I just put in three new lifters and push rods, picked out the stuff I could see and changed the oil and filter. The miss went away and the thing still runs fine 3 years later.

I have been there with metal in the top of the engine. So far never missed one that stop the oil fom flowing. Those darn lifters just do not seem to last like the old Ford and Chevy Lifters did. You coould take them apart run an emery cloth over them and put them back togeather and go with descent oil pressure too.

One thing I forgot to mention in the valve repair was the above is that all the push rods on the intake valves were also bent. But they were so easy to straighten. The valve stems worried me most because one mistake meant replacing a cylinder head.

Pardon me.

HERE IS THE LINK.

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/ziggy;_ylt=ApT6yJM5Myycz9tpPXfRSSAHVIV4

This all reminds me of when I was a Boy Scout. We were on a 5 mile hike. We came back by the dump, and looked around at the junk. It was a hot day. One boy found an old car door with the window still intact. Another boy told him "Why don't you carry that back with you - if you get hot, you can roll down the window"

one day about 3 years ago me and some friends got together to do some 4 wheeling now we don't have big rigs that cost alot we recycle trucks that people throw away.behind my house is about 2 or 3 hundred acres of trails that border a section of state park that no one goes to unless they are wheeling.so we fired up 3 trucks 2 jeep cherokee and a bronco 2 that some one gave me we proceded to beat the ever living crap out of them and after about a 6 pack each the bronco broke the drive shaft so we removed that noisey floping shaft and continued on our way in front wheel drive.. well after a few more beers(few is a realitive term meaning 10 to 20 or so)the bronco broke the left front universal joint now our front wheel drive wheeler stoped wheeling and we can't have that so what do you do when youre 5 miles in..well my buddy who should be involved in the space program for redneck enginering shoved a tire iron in to the broken u joint and let it bind up so now the bronco is 1 wheel drive and we decided it was time to head home and retire the beat down ford to the junk yard we made it with no other isues about 5 miles out of the woods... the next day we drove the truck on to the flat bed and sent it to the chrusher...dam i miss thoes days they are now building houses back there and it's just not cool any more i have so many more stories of mass destruction we went out every weekend for 3 years destroyed countless trucks and always got home and we never left anything behind and never got in troubble

I think the first was the time we had discovered a leaking valve cover gasket on an old Ford 292. While visiting my girl friend and her mother at a resort hotel for the weekend, we replaced the cover gasket with a nice piece of cardboard.

Scratch that from the list of good substitutes. The car was a POS anyway.

Years later after I married the same girl, we managed to be the owners of a 1971 Plymouth Cricket. The rear door latches never worked well. We just used bungee cords from the inner seat track mounts to the door window cranks on the back doors. Worked well as long as you did not lean on the door, or go around a corner too fast.

The next one comes second hand. One of the Dolphin football players had a long drive from the East cost to the West coast of Florida after every practice. So he had rigged a funnel and a rubber hose through the floor of his car. This allowed him to relieve himself on the long trips (about 3 hour drive). The best part was that one of his team mates knew about it and plugged the bottom of the hose on him one day.

i learnt this in mexico.

bicycle inner tubes.

have patched transmission lines, cooling, and gas lines. always keep some length in my travel tool-kit. plus you can use it as a substitute bungee cord.

i have also used it at home for plumbing repair.

all the above are temporary save-the-day fixes only....of course

Hello members, moderators and guests! I am new here. I think forward of having a great great time here. I am an accountant and like to share some ideas with you. Hope i could also learn more from you guys here. Thank to heaven and the universe I found this forum.

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