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

I really want to know more about the patch welded in the cylinder wall…………….

 

after more than 30 yrs as a carpenter (many working on old houses) i can say that shitty work is nothing new ! i have seen truly HORRIBLE original build work from "back in the day". one of my past co workers was fond of saying "this was built back when they used to drink REAL whiskey !"

 

Some years ago my son looked at an OT car for a daily driver. We took it out for a ride, and quickly discovered numerous electrical malfunctions (wipers activating at random was the best one). We looked under the dash and found someone had used a lot of those scotch locks on the wiring for Lord knows what. Pretty scary!

 

If there was no bad , how would you know what good was ?

 

So some guy has mastered the art of how to weld a cast iron block, and this is what he does with it!



Possibly that cylinder was going to be "deactivated"?

 

That repair is fine; it'll just wear in!

 

Just needs one of those high performance notched pistons..

 

That's the "low compression" option!

 

When I was in the Air Force Motor pool we had a Civil Air Corp group come. They had an old Chevy buss with a bad rod knock and no funds. Pulled the pan on the 235 removed the rod and piston plugged the oil passage in the crank pan back on and they drive 300 miles back home.

 

My friend, now gone, did something like that many moons ago. He had a 1957 Ford with a 312 in it and was working out of state. Don’t know all the details, but he did remove one piston and reused the gaskets along side the road and drove that Ford back home!






Bones

 

Back in 1966 I was about to enter the Army and had broke the transmission in my car...I could get it out and in but that was the extent of my transmission skills, the village shop (Double D Garage in Lyman IA owned/operated by brothers fixed my transmission but also took me under their wing and let me work off the bill...I guess they were hard up for grunt labor. Anyway, a local farmer had a Ford Y block with a knock, once the engine was on the floor and upside down it didn't take Smokey Yunick to see the broken main bearing cap. The farmer wanted it fixed cheap so they took a piece of strap over main to hold it together and down using the main cap bolts. I asked years later how it held up and it did fine I wish I could have spent more time with them

 

Sometimes those Mickey Mouse repairs come under the heading of nothing left to lose. In the mid 60's a customer came in with a thoroughly used up early 50's panel truck. The front of the crank was chewed up and the balancer wouldn't stay on. Man had no money so, with his permission, my mentor lined it up best he could and called in the welder.

 

Back in the day, I saw several SBCs with welded cranks/ vibration dampeners! Cheap way to fix it…..and actually worked……for a while!






Bones

 

Did a repair similar but it worked on a 3.0L ranger balancer got loose and wallowed out the crank keyways. Racers used this on blower pulleys you drill a hole at the parting line between the crank and the balancer, thread it and use a bolt instead of keys. He still has the truck..

 

You have to admire the creativity...

 

That there is the difference, between creativity and Mickey Mouse repairs.

 

Depends on who is judging !

 

There's good creativity and then there's crazy.

 

Over the years, I've become very aware of what people with no money and very little resources will try, just to get "another, day, week, or month" of service out of something on its last leg. I've seen some very down right scary patch jobs, some very creative patch jobs, and some patch jobs that exceeded the expectations. Few could be classified as a "proper repair", but for those patch jobs that actually accomplished what the owners wanted, a "patch job" was worth the effort. I see many things here that may be shocking, but I also see many things here that obviously worked at least for a short time, which may have been all that was needed at the time.

The problem is, after the patched vehicle served its purpose and was parked back in the woods, the field, junked, or given to someone to dispose of, some fool like you or me drug it home.

As we dig into our "new project" we see the patch job, and are in marvel, disgusted, or horrified at what we see.
Some feel they have a right to compare the patch job to something they think should have been done, in a way they would have done it, many years after the fact. Most of theses very same people are without a clue of the reason it was patched like it was in the first place, or the length of time it was hoped to last for.

I won't even venture into how some people define a "proper repair." A "proper repair" probably has as many definitions as a "traditional car." It depends on one's abilities, resources, and the their level of OCD.

 

Well said!






Bones

 

The early Chevy V-8s didn’t have a bolt to keep the damper on. A lot of them would work their way off. There was a kit to put a bolt in the center, but I saw a bunch just welded!
Later Chevy figured they should put a bolt in the center like most all other manufacturers did!






Bones

 

By this example , according to some of our moist posturing posters , Chevrolet was " foolish" or " careless" for unleashing such a poorly designed ,& constructed vehicle on the general public , the horror of it all !

 

I've told this before, a farmer brought a old AD pickup in to a old guys shop. The 6 had missed as long as he'd had the truck. Shop owner figured it was a bad valve, so he took off the valve cover, intake valve didn't have a rocker on it. Got the valve working, still missed. Pulled the head, found a hardwood block drove into the cylinder. Pulled the pan, rod had been cut off with a hacksaw, leaving what was left as a bobweight. Cylinder had a huge gouge in it. Ran good except for the miss.

 

Those are in-line taps. They have a legitimate use, just not automotive applications. In older stores with long lines of fluorescent fixtures is where you'll usually find them. Work best with solid wire, so-so with larger stranded (10-14), badly with small stranded. Even where used 'correctly', you'll have to screw with some to get a satisfactory connection. They don't like vibration or moisture.

Scotch Locs are a brand of wire nut, actually the first really successful 'twist on' type so the name became a bit generic. Don't see them much anymore, there's better designs out there now. The wire nuts you get at some hardware stores or come with things are usually the cheapest, crappiest ones. The all-plastic ones (no wire spring inside) should be avoided like the plague. Again, these don't like vibration. If vibration is present, a couple of wraps of tape will help.

Most problems with wire nuts is misapplication. They come in sizes, and the 'usual' color-code (small to large) is orange, yellow, red, gray, blue although that's not an industry standard so you can see other colors. Each is rated for combinations of wires, ranging from as few as six to maybe a couple dozen depending on manufacturer, wire nut and wire sizes. I'd have no problem using one for a temp repair, but wouldn't use any for permanent use on a vehicle.

 

Some of the stuff that HDRs (Heavy Duty Repairman) would do in the old days to get a machine going would make you shake your head, but the money worked that way. I used to work with an old master mechanic, got his start on a WWII destroyer in the Pacific, and had been the shop foreman/troubleshooter for a CAT dealership, and before that a big local engineering contractor. He "fixed" a cable control unit on a cable D9 one day, when it was needed to push 5 scrapers, that had gotten grease in the unit, by throwing a handful of dirt in it- dried up the grease and got it working, and he was ready at the end of the day with the parts to rebuild it- the cost was much less than the lost work. He was amazing with the old mechanical fuel injection, but he was so invested in that kind of system that gas carbs totally mystified him, could not set mixture screws etc., seemed like voodoo to him. They had 4 dozers on one job in the 60's, with pony gas starting engines, one would start and he could not get the others running, so one would start and push start the other three for a month- pretty simple, points in the mag and a simple carb, but that voodoo thing... We have a guy around here that has one of those mobile crank grinding machines, amazing to watch them pull the belly pan off a big dozer, then the big cast iron oil pan, crawl under it, grind a journal, put it back together and fire it up, ready to work the next day

 

As some have mentioned, generally impossible to determine why a "repair" was made the way it was.

One of the more common "fuel economy" modifications to a carburetor during WWII was simply to remove the accelerator pump completely. If one cannot buy fuel (rationed), one saves fuel however possible.

While not car-related, I personally made several "unorthodox" repairs to a totally worn-out pull-type combine. At the time, I was a lad of 13. Long story which I will not relate here; but these repairs accomplished the goal.

Jon.

 

And there is the statement , " the repairs accomplished the goal" Perfect !

 

Yep, Chevy always did the cheap way out. Saved a buck , not putting that bolt in for several years.






Bones