Whats the most rigged up repair you have ever seen?

General Discussion
1

I have been thinking about many of the half witted repairs I have made and had made to my vehicles over the years and one that comes to mind was this one.
I had a 1977 ltd and the ac quit working, something was wrong with the clutch and It was a total beater even though the ac was ice cold. I had my mechanic friend (the same one which I paid in beverages to reline my brake shoes) weld the ac clutch to the pulley so anytime the car was on the ac was on. I drove the car like that until late fall when I took the belt off. The car didn’t make it to the next summer as it was ready for the junkyard by that point.

I have many more, but this is one that didn’t compromise the safety of anyone so I figured id start out with this.

2

When my grandfather was alive, the center link of his steering came apart just as he was trying to get into his driveway. He used several coat hangers to bind the separated parts together until he got it up the driveway. It worked, though there was about 6 inches of play in the steering.

On my first car, a 1974 Cadillac, the adjuster bolt for the alternator sheared off. It proved impossible to extract the broken bit from the alternator (at least with the tools I had), so I drove the car for a week with a crescent wrench jammed in the slot for the adjuster and wedged against something. It worked perfectly, the belt tension was just right, and I could have probably driven it like that for years. I also had the headlight switch fail on the car, so I added a second floor switch next to the hi/low beam switch to turn the lights on and off. I kind of miss having the high beam switch on the floor sometimes like my first few cars had.

3

Ok, This is the absolute worst I have done and Ill share it, Its 1990 and Im living in a mobile home on a gravel road in the sticks and don’t even have a phone at that point, guns and roses playing on the boom box, small town indiana, I had a mullet, 68 camaro, only car, Friday afternoon, changing the rear shoes, get the right side done, all is well. I get the left side done and broke a spring. Now I was really cheap and didn’t replace hardware back then and the rear brakes were always wearing out due to my almost daily brake stand smoke shows, I live about 5 miles from parts store which back then was closed on saturdays, it would close in about an hour.

I lived by myself at the time and had to get that kit that day since I had a hot date that night, so i put the left rear drum on minus the shoes, pinched off the rear line and drove to the parts store on just the front non power drums, now I lived in a holler in the boonies, so I took the back roads right into town and prayed that the parts store had a kit. Well I drove very slowly and made it there and got my kit.

Well as I was leaving I seen some friends of mine and decided to put on a little show for them, since there was no rear brakes I Stood on the brake pedal and hammered on it, what a smoke show, right in the small downtown, people come out of stores looking, old men shook their heads, my friends were laughing hysterically, and I felt like one cool dude… Until I blew the right rear tire, It had gotten it so hot it popped.

Well downtown was still filled with acrid tire smoke, my buddys pulled up laughing as I hurried to change the tire and get home and just as I had the car on the jack the sheriff pulled up. Now there was still a tinge of tire smoke in the air and there was the tell tale black strips so I was caught.

I told the sheriff what I had done and he scolded me and went on his way, At the time i was trouble, but in a class clown mostly harmless sort of way. He had alot of bigger fish to fry that were into drinking and barfights and drugs. I Just liked to lay rubber with my camaro.

I got home and got the old girl back in order just in time for my date. I was Young, cocky and stupid, Now im just stupid and cocky…

DONT try this at home…

4

My brother had a 1972 Datsun truck and the right frame rail rusted through and broke. The bed tilted into the cab. He got two jacks, put a jack on each side of the break and using two C clamps, bridged the break with a 4 x 4. He drove it that way until he found a similar Datsun truck with a blown engine. He swapped the engine from his “frame repaired” truck into the other Datsun. When the second Datsun frame rusted in the same place, he decided it was time to move on.
He also had a van where the ignition switch wouldn’t activate the starter. He had a remote starter switch and ran the leads to the starter relay through the starter wall and taped the switch to the top of the steering column. He ran the truck that way as long as he owned the truck.

5

Here is a rigged up repair I did, but it was on a rototiller, not a car. The Lauson engine that was on the tiller wouldn’t run and I determined that it wasn’t getting ignition. I pulled the flywheel and finally determined that the coil was open. In a junk box, I found a coil from a LawnBoy mower, but it wouldn’t fit under the flywheel of the Lauson engine. I thought about an automotive ignition system, so I taped the coil and a 6 volt lantern battery to the rototiller, ran wires under the flywheel cover to the magneto points. I did get a spark and after moving the timing, had the tiller running on a battery ignition.

6

So there we were in the middle of nowhere crossing the country in a Winnebego. The throttle cable broke, luckily in some small town. The nearest place to get the part was 125 miles, so I got a lawnmower throttle control at the hardware store, hooked it up, and riding shotgun was in charge of the throttle while my bud handled steering and brakes. My shop teacher’s story, while ministering in Africa rigged up a rotor with a cork and paper clip until he got somewhere that had a new rotor. I had a buddy in high school that managed to squeeze a v8 into an MG!

7

A long time ago we bought our first motorhome, a 10 year old 26 footer that was well used up but ran well and the auto trans worked ok. It turned out that the lug nuts on one of the rear dual wheels were welded to the studs. I can only guess that the lug nuts were coming loose for the previous owner for whatever reason. I was able to file and grind away enough of the weld on most of the lug nuts to get them to come off. The others had to be twisted off so that I could get the brake drum off to press in a few new studs.

Here is another, a second hand story from a college buddy. He had an old flathead 6 cylinder Plymouth that had a loose connecting rod with a scored crankshaft. He did a cheap repair; removed the piston and rod for that cylinder and ran it as a five cylinder. I don’t recall how he deactivated the valves for that cylinder or if he even did that.

8

I once put a newer engine (1979 GM 350) from a low mileage Caprice station wagon in my '66 Chevy pickup and ran into a driveshaft problem. Since I had the driveshaft for the '79 model (automatic) and the driveshaft for the '66 (manual) I just cut them long enough to slide one into the other. They actually fit quite snug and I drilled a hole through both driveshafts and installed a bolt. I swapped out radiators so the transmission cooling lines could be connected.

I drove the truck down to the welding shop and they welded it up for me. I figured that it would be so out of balance that it would shake my teeth out on the highway but it never did. I was going to have the driveshaft balanced but I drove the truck for a few years without any problem. The truck could cruise all day at 70mph and it was as smoth as silk. I actually got better gas mileage with the V8 than I did with the inline 6. The best part of the whole swap was selling the original engine with “granny gear” transmission to my neighbor. He paid me what I had paid for the entire truck. Sometimes…it just all works out. I miss that truck.

9

“Now im just stupid and cocky…”

No fooling. I knew that. It takes one to know one, though.

@Triedaq, what would Mrs. T say? I’m sure she has a flaming moment of glory (yours) to tell us about.

10

“I had my mechanic friend weld the ac clutch to the pulley so anytime the car was on the ac was on.”

This is actually not a new concept.
The first air-conditioned cars (Packards, circa 1942) had no A/C compressor clutch, and the operating procedure was for your mechanic to install the drive belt in warm weather, and remove it once the hot summer months had ended. If the engine was running while that drive belt was in place, the A/C compressor was running, and the faster you drove, the colder the car’s interior would get.

One of the biggest problems for owners of these early A/C cars was that there was no way to regulate the cooling. The chilled air–which was vented to the back of the rear seat passengers’ heads & necks–could become too cold when driving on the highway, but there was no way to shut off the A/C or to control its temperature on that very early A/C system.

Hey, if it was good enough for Packard, it was good enough for you!
;-))

11

@jtsanders–I was in the hospital and Triedaq was “taking care” of things at home. He decided to wash the clothes and all went well until he put them in the dryer. The latch mechanism broke on the dryer and the door wouldn’t stay closed. When the door isn’t closed, the dryer won’t run. I’ll give him credit for calling to try to obtain parts, but our dryer was really old. At any rate, while he was in the grocery store, he went past the hardware section and found the part to fix the dryer–a barrel bolt latch. Triedaq “fixed” the dryer door with that. When you shut the door, you would flip the barrel bolt latch to hold the door closed. The dryer worked like a charm and we used the dryer until the heating element failed.

Mrs. Triedaq

12

@vdcdriver

Thats very interesting, thats why I love these discussions, I would probably never have learned that if it wasn’t for this discussion, very interesting tidbit. Plus I really like Triedaqs stories, they are very interesting and he has seen some interesting things.

13

@jtsanders

Lol, I hear you…:wink: I am actually alot better now than I was then, now I was never into doing anything malicious, just driving like an idiot. We used to have a makeshift drag strip set up out in the country on a deserted road, the farmers didn’t care, there was no public around and the sheriff knew about it but he really didn’t mind so long as no one complained and we kept it away from other motorists.

He actually stopped me one time and told me " Rick, you need to hold it down with that dang car when your in town, go out in the country to get your jollies"

He knew 2 things and I think thats why he let alot of stuff slide, A- I was always sober which at the time our county was having a hell of a time with drunk drivers damaging property, causing injuries, and even a few deaths, and B- He was having a time with a drug dealing bunch with ties to a motorcycle gang. He knew me and my few friend were honest and didn’t cause any major trouble.

Which brings me to my next story…

It was the early 1990s and I had a good friend who had a cousin who made the mistake of getting into a relationship with one of the local motorcycle gang drug dealing punks, well he beat her up and he was out on bail. No one liked this guy, he caused nothing but trouble for almost everyone he came in contact with.

There was a bar on the outskirts of town where the biker types hung out, it was a rough place from what I heard and it wasnt a friendly place. Well we decided to cause a little trouble for that punk, we will just call him…Biff…

We went by the bar one night in an out of town friends club wagon, we parked at a closed gas station next door and went around back, we had a lookout in the van and walkie talkies to make sure no one came out . We used a bottle jack and wood blocks and jacked up biffs monte carlo and set the rear wheels just above the ground so the rear wheels were not touching the ground. We came back at closing time and parked the van discretely across the road at a cemetery. We watched as biff staggered out to his car and tried to leave, he tried like hell revving up the engine and he must have thought that there was a mechanical problem with his car.

So he goes into the bar and a few guys come out and look under the hood, its not untill biff tries to move the car that one of the other drunks sees that the wheels are spinning and the car is in the air. Once they look under the car the other guys start laughing, well this makes biff angry and he starts arguing with the other guys and ends up pushing one, he looked like an idiot and these guys were laughing at him and this enraged biff.

More people are leaving at this point and a little brawl starts in the parking lot because biff is convinced he knew who jacked up his car, and he started to fight with this guy. Well at this time the police drive by and stop, long story short biff goes to jail because he had crank on him. The guy who was fighting with biff went to jail as well, I think we found out he had drugs on him as well.

We ended up sneaking out the back way of the cemetery and going home, knowing that the world was a bit safer with biff behind bars for the night.

Theres more where this came from, let me know if anyone wants to hear them…

14

@Wheresrick: You might like this guy’s pages… good stories. I’m sure 90% of them are embellished, but something in your story struck a chord with these…

http://www.jmooneyham.com/shadowfast-supercar-driver-logs.html

15

I remember another story my grandfather told me. He had a car that threw a rod… I don’t remember the model, but I think it had a straight 6. This was back in the 40s. He obtained a connecting rod from a junkyard motor, put in some new bearings, patched the side of the block with some sheet metal (apparently it missed the water jacket), and liberally spread grease and crud on his makeshift repair so it matched the rest of the block. Apparently the motor ran fine after this, but he traded the car in soon after. I was a little skeptical with this story at first, but he was a master machinist and a tool and die maker for 40+ years, and seeing some of the machinery he made, I believe it.

16

While not really a repair, I had to do the following to get home one Saturday evening. I had driven 125 miles to do some dealing with a guy on some antique motorcycle parts and I was in an old carbureted Subaru.

About 70 miles from the house and with the sun going down the car sputtered and quit. The roughly 1 year old electric fuel pump had decided to go belly up already. This was on the back roads and a tow truck was likely to be in the 2 or 3 hour range assuming they were Johnny on the Spot.

So I dumped nearly a 1 gallon jug of coolant mix (the environment was secondary at this point) and drained a gallon of gas from the drain plug on the bottom of the gas tank. A piece of vacuum hose and a connector was used to splice into the existing carb line and I lashed the gallon jug onto the windshield with some cord. I sucked on the line, got it siphoning into the carb, and off I went with the hood on the safety catch only so as to avoid crushing the hose flat.

Going west the setting sun caused a shadow on the jug which let me know when the jug was low on gas. I’d stop, unlash the jug, and drain some more gas out of the tank, and repeat the process.
It got me home just fine although the drivers of a few cars that passed gave me an odd look while no doubt wondering why an anti-freeze jug was tied to the windshield.
It beat waiting or walking anyway.

17

@oblivion

Oh my gosh, these stories are awesome! thanks for pointing them out, you made my day.

The county where I lived back then was very rural, had a good ol boys network, and was backwards. I always said it was like the dukes of hazzard with motorcycle gangs, speed, crank and guns. I cant be too specific where in indiana this was because many of the people mentioned are still around, though I doubt that many of them own computers let alone read these forums.

I need to post the story of the time a good friend got tired of his thieving meth head neighbors burglarizing his house, he knew it was them but couldn’t prove it. Well he finally had enough and took matters into his own hands, its a good story and I wouldn’t have believed it except that I was there.

18

Probably the most rigged up, or butchered, repair job that I’ve ever been a part of involves a motorcycle rather than a car. Me and a buddy had been planning all year to go to Sturgis, SD and a few weeks before the rally he called me one weekend and said he had cracked his bike up after missing a turn at 80ish MPH. The bike cut a swath through brush and small trees before ending up against a tree by a dry river bed. I agreed to go out the following weekend (he lived 175 miles away) and took along a few misc items and a wiring schematic as the bike had to pass a state safety inspection.

The bike was mangled and mangled in a bad way. We stood the bike up against a tree and used a 25 pound sledge to beat the rear half of the frame into shape while pulling the left side muffler out of the rear wheel spokes. The gas tank lost about a gallon of capacity due to dents but that couldn’t be fixed. We used a pipe to bend the handlebars back into shape (sort of) and adapated a headlight off of something else. A speedometer was required and during the wreck his was gone along with half a dozen other things.

The wiring was too mangled to salvage so I took the snips and cut everything on the bike off. I wired just enough to get a charging system, headlight and taillight operation, horn (from a Chevy), and a brake light.
When done this bike looked just as beatup and pathetic as it did before we started but amazingly enough, it ran. My friend took it out on a shakedown ride and made it back so we were hoping it was good to go for a near 2000 mile round trip.

We stopped at a bike shop and the inspector there thought there was surely a lot of things wrong with it and it would never pass inspection. It did pass though, and off we went to SD.
The bike made it up and there and back with no problems at all other than a slight vibration due to an out of balance rear wheel. We cured that on the side of the road in the Black Hills by using electrical tape to secure a rock to one of the wheel spokes.

What was really funny was a BMW club from MN showing up a few minutes after we got to Sturgis and a couple of them (one even wearing slacks and loafers) even asked if we were serious about that bike actually making it all the from OK.

19

I agreed to trade for a 76 Caprice, then the front end hit something. I still traded but the die-cast headlight cups / front block off plate was smashed up. I took one off a 74 Impala, turned it upside-down and used plumber’s tape and nuts and bolts to attach it. I installed the headlights the right way up and screwed them in as best I could even though they don’t really fit and adjusted them. Dumb looking but effective.

The previous owner used to call the car The Love Boat but with the grill missing he changed the name to Jaws.

20

Nothing spectacular. But back when the exhaust systems were not stainless and in need of constant repair, it seemed the hangers would routinely go first. I always used stainless steel mooring wire to hold them up. This wire always outlasted the rest of the system without exception. Being that cars are now about the price given as a percent of the average salary, you owner why car companies didn’t use more stainless steel where they could…actually I don’t wonder. I also used stainless steel nuts and bolts that did not call for harden steel in areas where maximum strength was not an issue. On body parts especially, they lasted longer then the car without exception. I worked on boats so much, I always have a surplus parts lieing around and always look for ways to use them in repair on cars.