Duct tape and Bailing Wire, Stories of the dangerous and wierd

I think a thread based on gonzo engineering and quick fixes is in order. Creativity blossoms when your stuck without wheels!

 

Okay, I can think of two examples. When I was a kid back in the 60's we were travelling way down in Baja. A sharp rock punched a small hole in the oil pan. My Dad took a bar of soap and rubbed in back and forth over the hole allowing the soap to melt into the hole. It stopped the leak until we got back to the states.

Another time, miles from home on a sunday night, my buddy had a 318 in his car and the aluminum housing behind the water pump corroded from the inside and sprung a leak. The hole was about 1/4 wide. We found a dry piece of wood and whittled it down to just fit in the hole. When it got wet, the wood swelled and sealed the hole. It got us home.

Is this the kind of stuff you're asking about?

 

You maybe need to add ZIP tyes to the list! Cool deadwood nites in the black hills last summer and the trottle linkage fell off my buddies '65 cutlass. The aluminum part that controls the switch pitch broke in half!! I spent some time looking it over and ran zip tyes around it and pulled them tight. We made it home! and he is still driveing it that way!!

 

Got stuck out on the highway one time in my daily driver PU when the fuel filter plugged up. Sitting alongside the road trying to figure out how to get going after I figured out it was the filter. I dug through the jockey box looking for anything I could use to replace the filter, or possibly open the filter up to make it flow.
I found a ball point pen, and unscrewed the two halves. I took my pocket knife and cut the small end back enough to make a larger opening, and then slipped it into the hose in place of the filter, and tightened the hose clamps to hold it. Got me home the 40 miles I had to go, and then replaced it with a new filter.

 

One that comes to had a 56 ford with a 360 horse 327 vette motor .I was playing road racer in the mountains and flipped a fan belt. Took my boot laces made a few loops crank to water pump.and made down to civilization without problems

Then was the time chasing Jack rabbit's with my buddies fiat 124 spyder thing just died traced down to no spark past the distributor the carbon block in the cap had disintegrated. Found a brass 22 shell it might still be running that .

 

OT, but timely. We fixed this yesterday. It is the tiller arm (steers the rudder) on a 41' Formula powerboat. The "tie rod" had worn clean through the hole on the left end. Summer would be over by the time formula fired up their foundry to make a replacement. The steel strap around the outside and the shaped block of steel rounding out the socket is our hillbilly reapir.

 

I did this just last week at work. I got a late model car that is hit real hard in the quarter panel and suspension. Well the tire had a one inch slice in the sidewall. So I had a thought, just to make it easier to move around the shop until the new tire arrives I superglued the slice shut. It says on the bottle " bonds to rubber instantly". Believe it or not the tire held air for three days befor it went flat.

 

Similar theme on a rockcrawler. He's been driving this thing for nealry a year with my best crescent wrench.

 

When on tour with my band our first van had 400,000 miles on it. This was 2003 or so. '91 Dodge 1 ton.

I remember cannibalizing a guitar pickup for wire to make the distributer work.

When a radiator hose blew cause of a stuck thermostat at 2 AM in the desert I remember hiking back two miles to an old station where I stole the hoses and clamps out of a 70's buick or something (it wasn't running) and rigged something together.

Fuel pump went out and I got a new one but had no lift and limited tools and was on the side of the road so I pulled the rear bench and cut a hole in the floor and pulled the pump straight out of the top of the gas tank (in-tank pump).

I remember parking the van close to a wall and using a small jack braced sideways against the wall and the top of a road case against the wheel to make a press to press races into a hub.

There was a bunch of shit I can't remember but they loved that van and it was the bane of my existence.

 

Tie rod end came loose @ 40 mph, 2 miles from the house. I used bailing wire to hold it together until I got home. Country road @ 10 mph.

 

...
......First Place MacGyver Award.....

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I had an old Nash Metro in a previous life that had a leaking gas tank due to some pinholes. A bar of Ivory soap was the fix for many miles. Of course it had to be re-applied after any rainy drives.

 

About 30 years ago I was driveing down I 70 in MO, about 1 AM my fuel pump went out in my chevy truck, after giving it some thought, I drained the windshield washer tank wired the hose to run into the carb and filled it with gas , took a bit to figure out how to push the washer button and feather the gas to make it run, limped it down a few miles down the shoulder, pulled into a little repair shop /gas station and slept til morning when he opened, When in told him I needed a fuel pump for a SB chevy, he says yeah that will be $50 bucks , I say hell they go for $15 or $20 bucks, ,,He looks at me and smiles and says YOU GOT ONE? Tim Jones

 

Guy that runs the muffler shop around here still tells people how I wouldn't let him cut the bootlace that was holding my exhaust up because I had to put it back in my boot.

 

I mentioned this in my 61 thread, but I'll go into more detail.

On my way to Viva back in March, I played it safe and my dad and I towed my 61 to Vegas. When we were near Henderson, I saw that the trailer tire started going flat. I told my dad to pull over immediately. I got out and saw that the valve stem split at the base where it seals to the rim.

Well, I remembered this problem with a bad lot of stems back when I worked at a tire shop. A customer had duct taped the stem in place enough to get him to our shop. So, luckily I brought duct tape in my tool kit. I taped the valve stem enough to slow the leak down. I used my cheapie sears 12V inflator to air up the tirem which took about a half hour. The repair was enough to get us to my grandfather's house about 10 miles away. By the time we rolled up to his driveway the tire was half flat. Let me tell you, I have a newfound respect for duct tape! I take it wherever I go.

Here's the damage:


Here's the repair:

 

I had a throttle cable snap on the way to work in my '67 Pontiac. I ended up stripping the copper wire out of a cheap extension cord I had the the trunk and twisting it together and feeding it through the cable housing. Felt good enough that I drove it to work and then home.

Another time out with my Dad on the way to the lake to go boating. Truck dies. Turns out the fuel pump broke off. He had tried an electric pump at one point but it was too loud so he disconnected it and left it in place. We hooked it up but still had a hole in the block. Opened the cooler, drank a beer, flattened it and put it between the block and what remained of the fuel pump mounting flange. Drove to the lake and had a great day.

 

Had a summer job building silos for a guy that would pick us up in the morning, four guys across the cab seat with a Labrador laid across our laps. For throttle linkage he had a coat hanger through the firewall from a hole he drilled in it that he would manipulate the carb with. Whoever was sitting next to him had to make the shifts while he clutched and orchestrated the hanger. Quite the scene with the floor shifter, dog, coat hanger and four guys shoulder to shoulder.

 

Traveling up hwy70, in the mountains outside of copper mountain, to go to work making snow. The hood on my 70s 210 datson (yeah, yeah) flew open at 60mphs. Good thing it was at 6am. Slowed and pulled off the road. Yanked some speaker wire and tied it off. Nothing more surprising then a hood coming open at 60mph on a snowy mountain road.

 

There was a transmission shop in Sunnyvale CA that had a knarly looking drag link hanging on the wall. The owner was a 4 wheeler and said he had broken it on the Rubicon run in the Sierras. Welded it together using coathangers and a 12V battery.

 

Years back, on our way to spectate at drag races in lower Michigan, eyes starting to water from the light exhaust leak on my 68 Chevelle. Fumes were coming through the rusted floor in the back seat. Stopped at Arby's for some rosst beef, and used the foil wraps to "patch" the floor. No more fumes for the rest of the trip.

Did a better repair with some sheet steel, a bunch of pop rivets and roofing tar when we got home. Hey, we were kids!

 

I did this with a slight variation: Surfing deep in Baja on a dirt road in the middle of absolutely nowhere. A rock punctured the fuel tank. Luckily somebody smelled gas before it all ran out of the tank. Our fix was jamming the hole with surf wax, and holding that in place with duct tape- the two things traveling surfers always have on hand. The fix lasted 3 days.

 

My dad had the fuel pump go bad a a 63 chev semi tractor about 5 miles from home. He ain't about to call a wrecker so a roll of electrical tape, a rubber ball and a hand operated tire pump to the rescue. He cut a slit through the ball shoved the tire pump hose through it and taped the ball into the filler pipe on the saddle tank. I got to sit on the saddle tank and pump air into the gas tank as needed to keep the engine running. Drove it home! I was about 14 and experiences like that have helped me "Git 'er Done" many times.

 

Many years ago I had scored a junkyard transmission for the Stude. Slapped it in just hours before we were to leave for the 600 mile trek to the Hunnert Car Pileup. I didn't trust an unknown junkyard trans, so I loaded up the car on a two wheel dolly and towed it. Went to put the driveshaft in at the hotel and broke two of the u-joint strap bolts into the third member. (Road dirt had packed into the threads.) There was no way I was going to get the car that close to the show and not have it there. Grabbed several feet of mechanics wire and wrapped it tight around the joint, then wrapped that with duct tape. Made it the 2 miles to the Pileup and back to the hotel.
Got a new rear end yoke the day after we got back home...

 

The throttle cable broke on my Model A pickup on I-40 about 150 miles from home from the Nats South many years ago,,so I eased off to the side of the interstate,,opened the hood and quickly spotted the frayed end of the cable coming through the firewall.

Necessity being the mother of invention I told ladyhrp I needed something to to pull the accelerator arm on the carburetor and she suggested the detachable strap on her purse.

I quickly unhooked it,,loosened the radiator support rods to loosen up the hood and pulled it off and put it in the bed of the truck.

Pushed the windshield out and attached the hook of the strap to the carburetor and stuck the other end inside the truck,,,hand control all the way home. HRP

 

57 Chevy,broke a fan belt 10 miles from home. Used elastic waistband from my fruit of the loom draws and made it home.

 

Had a similar thing happen some years ago, driving from Tempe AZ to PIR in Avondale in a Toyota pickup...
I used a piece of clothesline rope, one loop with a square knot. Got us to PIR and after the races back to Tempe !!

 

The trusty piece of rope I keep in my f100 has been all sorts of things from a center support bearing for the driveshaft to a fan belt, tow strap, hood latch etc

 

Had an '82 Ford truck with a 302. In May 1987 I was headed down Hwy 14 on my way to LA to catch a boat to Catalina Island where I was taking my wife for our first anniversary. The mechanical fuel pump expired. I limped into what is now Santa Clarita to a parts store and they said the pump would have to come from LA and would take a couple days (for a Ford 302???). Wifey's tears began to flow because she thought we were gonna be stuck on Hwy 14 for our anniversary. Asked the parts guys if he had a universal electric fuel pump. So I got it and a little bit of fuel hose. Mounted the pump to the York AC compressor, ran the fuel lines, and used the 12V wire to the AC clutch to power the pump. Had to have the AC switched on to run the truck, but we got to the boat on time. This jury-rig got us there and back home, but we had no AC since I had re-purposed the AC clutch wire. The tears stopped and we had a great time in Catalina.

 

I Inherited my dads 72 Gremlin and drove it in high school. My school was pretty much nerds vs rednecks. I was a nerd. The ignition switch broke on the gremlin and my dads fix was to just remove the housing from the steering column exposing the pushrod that starts the car. It was visually obvious to the mechanically inclined. The back window latch was broken too, so I spent many days after school trying to find out where the rednecks put my gremlin.