A buddy and I were about 100 miles from home in his OT crx beater and we lost power from the alternator. Well, somewhere along our drive the adjusting bolt fell out and was long gone. We couldnt find a bolt that would work correctly so we jammed an empty camel cigarette pack between the alternator and adjusting arm! It made it back home with no problems too!!!
Man, thats a talented monkey. Hate to see the ones wasting their lifes throwing poo and jacking off at the zoo.
A freind of mine once traded in his nice-looking '70 Bronco on a new pickup. A week later, the salesman at the dealership's used lot called and had a buyer on the line for his old Bronco and the salesman wanted to know if the Bronco was equipped with a limited-slip differential. Without missing a beat, my buddy told him, "sure, it has a "Lincoln Locker". The salesman was thrilled to hear that the Bronco had this unknown option and ran off to tell the potential buyer. I would've given anything to be there when the slick-talking salesman bragged about the thing having a Lincoln Locker...
These things all sound like "it was running fine when we parked it out back ten years ago". I am guilty of using excessive ammounts of STP in my 64 Rambler, when it came time to trade it. I was driving 32 miles a day to work and back, and every day it needed another quart of oil. It also silenced the knocking that was going on inside the engine.
Back in the 50's during the Korean war tires, especially new ones, were hard to come by. All the used car dealers in Dallas would re-groove the old tires. They were really good at it. You had to get down on the ground and really eye ball the tread pattern to find the "good" tires. That was my job. Another thing that they did was called re-vulcanizing. The tire people would re-vulcanize a patch into the tread. Looked like a new tire. Worked okay around town, but would go bad in a hurry on the highway. First a little thump thump then a little shimmy then the ditch. Re-cap tires also had a real good reputation. Matt
Guilty of the 90w trick on a friends late model lincoln. Works QUITE well to silence a rod knock. especially on $500 car from the auction, he ended up gettin around 3000 for it when he sold it. Had another friend with an O/T honda. Car had been wrecked & the whole right front replaced. Went to replace some frontend parts, new srtut rods I think. Driver's went in no problem, p***enger side... put the car on the ground & the wheel was shoved all the way forward in the wheel well. Looked at the old one & it had been cut down 2" shorter. Needless to say we put the old one back, returned the new one & bought a for sale sign. Looked at a Nova to buy in high school that had "new paint" Car was slathered with bondo & had been spray painted blue. Looked good from afar, but far from good. It was wavy as all hell. Had a guy in my high school autobody cl*** with a wrecked t-bird. Car musta had 4 gallons of bondo on the quarter by the time he was done, atleast 2" thick. Then he tried to sell it for $4500
The pepper trick in the radiator works, its pretty much the same as some over the counter products. Although I have not tried it raw egg is supposed to do the same, keep water in the radiator to get you home sort of trick provided you do it the right way......... I remember in my fathers radiator shop I was stripping down a radiator for a re-core. Some woman had driven in and left the car with us, she had a leak and was told to put an egg in the top tank to get her home. She was home luckily but needed to get to the shop so she dropped the egg in there. It didn't seem to work too well as it was ******* water out when she pulled in. Imagine my surprise when the top tank came off and out falls a whole hard boiled egg! I guess who ever told her about it didn't tell her to pour in the un cooked egg, she boiled it and popped it in the filler!
My Dad always had cars for sale, he knew all the ******* tricks!! But NO, he would fix everything wrong, even if he sold the car at a loss. Good rep was most important to him. I reember a cat who did speedo turnbacks, tire grinding, and ***orted other used car dealer cover ups. Dad wouldn't let the dude near his cars, tellin him, hit the road Jack!! I was always proud of that. Using the black tire paint to freshen up rubber floor mats and tires was his limit of disguise. I really admired his skill and knowledge. ~Sololobo~
In about '64 I was at the Ol' Man's shop when we pulled a babbit rod motor down and found what was left of a piece of leather belt on one rod where the babbit should have been. I recall because the Ol' man was pissed and said someting along the lines of "(mulitple expletives) damned lot of work to cheat someone (multiple expletives) all I got to say." Raised his voice about 3 octives, "Wolfe (multiple expletives) get over here, if you ever do something like this I'm going to break your (one big expletive) arm!" Then he calmed down and explained to me what had been done and why. That was the day that I learned to pour babbit and fit a rod. But to this day I remember more vividly the leather belt and why it was done, than how to pour babbit or fit a rod. And I'm damned good at the later. Used to be this guy in San Francisco called Car Crazy Jack or something like that. He had a lot down on Army Street. Always had those funny ads on TV about beating down prices and he'd take a sledge hammer to a car or cutting prices and take a torch to the roof of one. He was infamouse for filling a crank case with 90 weight gear lube of putting sawdust in a differential.
Not sure which monkey has more talent. I imagine its not easy performing those acts in front of a crowd of people either...
Back in the early 60's, I saw NASCAR racer Wendell Scott with his Ford jacked up and changing engine bearings in the pit. It was a 1/2 mile dirt track at Jacksonville, FL. The "new bearings" were cast-aways that he had picked up from the Woods Brothers Ford team. I don't know if he used a new pan gasket, may have just Permatex'ed the old one, but he did use fresh motor oil.
Put tobacco from 2 cigarettes in a leaky radiator..stopped it. Said I'd get it repaired when I got home...drove it for 2 years like that. broke a rear ujoint on backroads between Lincoln and Omaha Ne...put it back together with a 1/2 inch socket as one bearing cap,used a plastic burger king cup, sliced down the side to cover it with about 50 plastic wire ties and a roll of duct tape.....got me home.. Went with a buddy to look at a 55 chevy for sale...I asked if it had a posi rear end....'Uh, yeah, it's a posi" said the seller.....my buddy bought it and when we pulled the thrid member the spiders were all welded up and the welds broken.
Back in my youth. I worked at a garage as a pump jockey/mechanic. Also did NY State Safety Inspections. Had a shady car dealer across the street who always tried to get something by you. Sent over a Mopar with a rotted out ****** cross member near the torsion bars. Frame rot was a fail item as unsafe. Guy was a welder, so I sent it back for him to weld up. Next day car was back and I checked it out. Looked too good? I smacked it with a hammer and it fell apart. he had filled it with bondo and sprayed undercoating over it. He was banned from any more state inspections at our shop. Another cheap fix I saw many times over the years was copper tubing for brake lines. And even saw a guy coil a brake line to replace the flexible rear axel line................
Another guy I knew would bring back faded paint and make it look new by rubbing motor oil on it. Same guy sold a 66 chevelle to a kid with a trunk floor made out of painted cardboard. The gas tank was wired to the frame................kids father chesed him for months over that one.
That reminds of something sort of O/T. When I was in the Army out Transport Yard (Motor Pool) was taken over by a civilian contractor. The manager didn't like how all the camouflage painted vehicles were no shiny so he had the civilian mechanics cut and polish them!! They were painted in FLAT COLOURS! It didnt work to well so he oiled them as well so they would be shiny! I mean honestly what sort of a ****wit would make a camo vehicle shiny?!! Talk about making yourself a target! All our vehicles had to be sent back to DNSDC for a re-paint! Doc.
Its funny to me someone can get cut off in traffic and they decide to shoot the other person. You would think we would have a bunch of dead shady mechanic's with all this **** that they do.
The Ol' Man always said "all mechanics are dishonest" I guess he knew turned wrenches for nearly 60 years before he finally retired.
My dad used JB Weld to attach a water pump to a Spitfire head once. The studs were all stripped out. dka
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As stated in one of the previous posts, never buy a two toned car. In a body shop I worked in we did work for a few used car lots, one was a major big time dealer of new cars and is still in business today. Use car dealers never want to pay to have the job done right. For the big time dealer we did a CJ Jeep that had all of the typical rust throughs. I was just starting out and my dumb *** boss had me grind the rust off, knock the edges in and tape stainless tape over the holes and bondo them up. After the body work was done he went to his paint locker and pulled all of the open cans of metallic brown out and mixed them all together to make a gallon. We hosed it on the Jeep and it looked pretty good when it left. About a month later the used car dealer called and ask what color paint we used because the new owner of the Jeep had an accident and his body shop couldn't match the paint. I went to the paint locker and pulled out the color that I thought was fairly close and told the guy it was '80 Pontiac color, never heard from the guy again. Other times we'd pop rivet sheet metal over a completely rusted out quarter panel, bondo the hell out of it and if the car was a light color we'd paint the bottom half a dark color and run a strip of pin striping tape over the paint edge to hide it.
The Jalopy Journal
