Technical Look out for the "Mickey Mouse" repairs of Previous Owners....

After my repair. JW

 

Very nice!

 

Whew! That was a job. 2 days of hard work.... I feel like I've been shot at and missed and shit at and hit.
New gas tank and sender is installed. This issue has been corrected.
Untitled by Travis Brown, on Flickr
I have no idea what that tank came out of. Maybe a Jeep or some kind of import. As you can see it a good deal smaller than a Shoebox tank. It is a little deeper than the original type tank.

There were moments when....
The issue was in doubt.
Since the tank that was used was a different shape and smaller. It was a fight with those tank straps. You need every bit of those straps. There is no slack. Mine being bent meant I had to pull and straighten them. Try and fit...try and fit.
I had to use a jack to help hold the tank up.
I finally got the tank mounted. Then I had to take drop it again.
Hint...
On a Shoebox Ford, You have to make the filler pipe connection before/while you are hanging the tank...
It's in connected and tested.

This almost was trouble. You see the exhaust system was installed. There was almost a clearance issue with the pipes but I ended up having enough clearance.
If I had to cut off/ remount the tail pipes that would have been an example of the domino effect. Not making or correcting a bad repair may cause you to re-do good ones later...

 

I had a guy and his dad show up at my house yelling at me 3 months after I sold them a car, there was a dash fire and they wanted me to refund their money. I explained the bill of sale they signed was as-is no warranty written or implied, so there won't be any refund but since the owner was a friend of my brother I'd come take a look.

The electric fan bypass switch to the dash, wired with a cut up house extension cord, instead of just replacing the temp sensor was my first tip off. The large after market stereo with the amp laying under the dash hanging from the cars wiring harness with bread bags ties was another. All the wiring for the stereo power and speaker wire was the same color solid core house wiring. Connections twisted into the harness with duct tape covering the splices.

I told them good luck.

Ended up buying the car back for nothing 6 months later and parting it out, they couldnt fix it or sell it. Was a very nice 3rd gen trans am GTA before these bafoons got a hold of it.

 

This is the cluster Fox-Trot I had to deal with... It would appear that the brackets to mount rear leaf springs on a '56 Chevy were hacked of and "welded" (term used loosely) to the frame of my '39 Ford. UGH!!! There were a couple "blow-throughs" and what seemed to be several arc welding sticks of bubble gummy looking globs of metal somehow attaching this mess together. I had to cut out the offending area and patch the frame in order to have a place to put the new C.E. brackets in place.

 

When i was a kid. There wasn't anything at all. Finding a wrecked car on the roadside that had been abandoned longer than i was alive was a goldmine of bolts. All 3 or5 of them we could remove.
So naturally all bolts didn't match. I even 'fixed' a lawn mower with wooden plugs carved from a stick, shoved in the stripped block, with a rusty nail in the center to expand them enough to hold the carb' on.
That's all we had. Looking back, we must have been poor.
I think i still have that mower buried somewhere, and now i have a few taps & dies....
I've done the speaker wire for some temporary spotlights before. I'm re-doing some of my wiring over winter so i think i'll upgrade it now.

 

Yesterday I put a aftermarket fuel gauge temporarily on my 56. (My buddy gave it to me and my original gauge is bad) I installed it with a small screw and nut holding together 2 connectors and lots of electrical tape. While doing it I kept thinking about this thread and how if I never go back to correct this temporary install, and get old and pass away, what the next owner would think of this cobble job.... Someone said earlier how sometimes things become temporarily permanent, or permanently temporary!

 

Yep, the old "temporary fixes becoming permanent solutions" trick! This is also related to "we never have time to do it right, but we always have time to do it over" approach. I used to work with a guy who would just cobble something together just to get the job done; his favorite saying was, "Can't see it from my house!"

 

I purchased a car from Georgia, I purchased a car sight unseen, I wanted the car, I purchased the car for below market price... you notice that the main word is "I".
I have to fix all sorts of stuff, well no sh*t. That's half the fun.

 

Hey, if these car were built right, they would not be for sale.

 

I got a car from someone on the HAMB form a guy that builds cars and races them from the right coast. I got good references from people on the HAMB. I should of had someone inspect it. My little 7 year niece wanted to go for a ride in my car and it crapped out and got stuck on some railroad tracks. I had her steer it and pushed it off the tracks. Cheap Chinese fuel pump. I took it out for another ride after I got it and heard a rubbing noise from the left front wheel. They didn't use hydraulic brake adapters. There was so muck play on the wheel . I decided to take a better look at things after that. They also didn't use wire wheel adapters, 2 of the wheels were cracked and the rear hubs lugged out. There was a lot of slop in the front end, they didn't put a spacer in the front end when they took some leafs out and used a reverse eye spring. There were places they should of used lock nuts and cotter pins and didn't. An ear was broken off the trans. Have your car inspected by someone you trust or inspect it yourself, even if it means flying out to look at it.

 

Not repairing can get way more expensive.

 

Yep

 

I bought my car knowing full well that I would find hacks and bodges.
I have learned to keep my expectations low. Never underestimate the ability of someone else to totally half-ass a job, either through stupidity, lack of knowledge or experience, laziness or being a skinflint.

I rewired the car because the old insulation was unserviceable in a lot of places. That and a previous owner had used yellow covered 18ga wire for everything that did not work on the original wiring. Did it work? No, not really. The headlights and tail lights worked, though one light was on bright when one was on dim, and vice versa when you hit the dimmer switch. The ammeter registered the output from the generator, but not the draw from the battery. The radio worked, because obviously that's important.

I rewired it to the factory layout, using the fusebox and bumped up the commonly used wiring a gauge or two from the factory spec. No connection gets warm, no wiring is overloaded or near limit. Every function has a different color wire (black is ground. Red is battery permanent. Yellow ignition switched. Green headlights dim. Blue headlights high. Turn signals pink, brown. Etc.)
The charging system is upgraded to cope with a higher output generator. At 6V, everything switched on the current draw would be about 28 Amps, about the limit of the dynamo at full tilt, with nothing left over to charge the battery... New alternator fitted in place. Consideration given, 63 Amps at 12V through a couple of badly crimped connections on 18ga wire?

Don't get me started with brake hoses you can pluck like a banjo string on full steering lock, badly routed and joined hard brake lines, expanding foam and Bondo repairs, Chinesium metric fittings...

Phil

 

A 20 something project..

Hello,

One other thing that was changed out were the red clear gas line hose and the crappy colored spark wiring. I can understand that the previous owner wanted the red gas line to reflect the chosen Red color for the sedan delivery. But there is so much color matching and color coordination that looks good. As much fun as seeing the gas sloshing inside of the red fuel line, it was changed over during the rebuild process.

As far as color matching in the 327 SBC engine compartment, the motor color was as close to the color of the car, so that was enough for us. Through our experience with drag racing motors and set ups, we switched out the red line and red spark plug wires with the good black stuff we used back then. (AC Packard 440...) Now, that was color coordination for performance and safety. HA!

Jnaki

Not that the changeover mattered, but for the 1000s of miles of trouble free road trips and vacations, it must have been the right thing to do to make it safe and long lasting without further repairs. Trouble free? It was a pleasure to drive the 40 Ford Sedan Delivery everywhere. Even my wife liked driving by herself whenever the need arose for visits, errands and family functions.
Sometimes, it was on its bi-weekly visits to the Westside of Long Beach for an all day event. Up along the coast into the LB/LA Harbor region was the preferred route.

 

When I buy anything used, I expect to have to repair something. The older...the more used....the more I expect I'll have to repair.

As I've worked in several trades professionally including mechanics. I've come to realize that there are hacks in all places, and many of them think they are the absolute best at their craft.

 

A lot of the “ hacks” on this thread may have been done out of desperation! I sometimes have to laugh a guys here on the HAMB ,in their sanitized shops, with tons of tools and a wealth of parts and all the time in the world to fix their hobby car.
Some of these “ repairs” have stood the test of time….due to the amount of rust on both the part and the repair! I am sure some of these repairs were done out if necessity! Either do this or not have a way to work in the morning!
I cobbled many repairs on my equipment as a kid on the ranch to get the job completed on the back side of the ranch, using nothing but what was in my tool box at the time! Didn,t want to have to walk back home and tell my Dad I didn’t complete the task!
Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do! Luckily in this hobby we usually have a choice and get to do it right!






Bones

 

Doing what you have to do to put food on the table is one thing. That's out of necessity.
Half-assing a repair on your hobby car and passing it on to the next guy without telling him is some dirtbag level shit.

 

My 39 Ford pickup was used for drag racing. They didnt care about anything except going fast. I spent months fixing and upgrading. I had a long list of the things I fixed

 

Like I said, we, in the hobby, have a choice! But some of those “ repairs” look like they were done when the car was somewhat new!






Bones

 

Way back did a few "iffy" repairs after work on my 37 Ford so I could get to work the next day.

 

Maybe even some from the factory!! I've heard some stories about Friday cars.

 

If you were distracted by " ewwwww shiney" & failed to do your due- diligence inspecting the vehicle BEFORE you put your money down , you have no one to blame but yourself . If you're not qualified to spot shoddy work ,& you didn't consult someone competent out of vanity , you have no one to blame but yourself . Get over it !

 

So do you condone doing shitty work and passing it along to the next guy without disclosing it?
I think most of us here know what to look out for, but for the young guys taking up an interest in old iron, many don't have the knowledge or connections a lot of us do. It's no wonder young guys aren't getting into the old stuff with all the gatekeeping attitudes.

 

I'm not a body and paint guy. I work under the car. There WAS a gent here in town who did beautiful body and paint work. He had many good looking cars. I always cringed when I got under his vehicles to fix them. I won't begin to describe the mechanical horrors that lurked beneath the show quality paint job where it shined. I think this is why the term "keep the shiny side up" was coined.

 

All this talk of Mickey Mouse led me to remember my 66 custom cab I bought in high school and fixed up. Not only did it have bare wire twisted together, blown fuses wrapped in tin foil, but the back cab corner was rotted. To keep the elements out, previous owner stuffed a Mickey Mouse t-shirt in the cab corner! Haha guy must have been a comedian…

 

Actually, that would be pretty cool had he used a aluminum rod, that would look great on a hot rod. HRP

 

A lot of what has been shown doesn't surprise me in the least, but this one could have hurt or killed somebody, hard to believe somebody is that stupid. HRP

 

This is the front brake line on my current UK hot rod project...

They soldered the brake line...then I found out the former owner actually drove the car like this...I was very thankful I swapped all the old stuff out on it...

 

I don't condone it , never said I did. What others do is their business . Lack of knowledge is the problem , its a " buyer beware" world , if you don't have knowledge , don't blame the other guy , he may not have known better either . Flippers & dealerships don't care . Being unaware is not an excuse , just because the last guy screwed it up doesn't mean the next guy has to accept it . The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the purchaser .