Art & Inspiration Road side repair stories

I broke a panhard bar once, model A pickup, I had a ratchet strap in the bed, so I used it to bind the body to one side and drove the sucker on home. Many times I've done roadside repairs, it's part of hot rodding to me. This was a recent one, when the sensor wire broke on my alternator and it hit 16v. Quick repair though. I always have my toolbox with me

 

I got a flat front tire in the middle of nowhere B.C. a couple years ago with the family, so pulled off the road and discovered I didn't have a jack. So drove a little way until the bad tire was on gravel, dug a hole under it with the tire iron and swapped the spare on.
Then packed a bit of gravel back under the tire and drove off.

 

Billie, Now you're sounding like the "Old Ranger" on Death Valley Days with his "another True Story"
LOVE IT !!
Randy

 

I have a great friend that builds hot rods. One day as we were building my Model A he says, "you've never done a true roadside repair until you've used your shoe laces to fix your car".

Fast forward several years...my Model A is finished and on the road. I'm in Minnesota at Back To The 50's. As I'm heading down the interstate in Minneapolis I notice my grill shell and radiator moving back and forth. As I merge onto 35-W, I see an off shoot for a city bus stop (truly an incredibly odd place for this thing to be) and lucky for me as it's a safe place for me to get out of traffic. I get out and give the radiator a once-over when I notice both my lower aluminum radiator mounts have snapped. Alone, I stand there for a moment wondering how the hell I'm going to get myself out of this one. Out of nowhere that comment my friend had made years earlier instantly emerges from my gray matter. I look down at my shoes and begin to chuckle. Off with my laces, which I use to tie off the radiator & grill to the frame so I can limp my car off the highway. I got off on the next exit ramp where coincidentally there was a Minneapolis Fire station. I pulled into their parking lot and called my brother. He grabbed my truck and trailer to come get me....and my shoes laces....still attached to the car.

 

Yes, my closest friend in the world and I would do suicide trips from Penna. to Orlando Florida in a OT Chevy (rhymes with mega). This happened twice with different (megas). We fried wheel bearings at the exact same exit on I95 in Jacksonville. Luckily we where near a junkyard and we got some used parts and we were back on the mission of bonsai. If I wasnt there to see it both times I would never believe it. If I am not mistaken it was the same side both times. We still crushed the time it took to get there. They both had 5 speeds and my friend and I knew those things inside and out. I think it was just over 12 hours. talk about pedal to the metal. Good Times.

 

Talking about shoe laces. Have I got a good one. Brother in law and I where in NY for motorcycle races in his VW beetle when on the way home it starts down pouring. Turn on the wipers and nothing. We dont know what to do, cant see diddlely. I said take off your shoe laces. We tied off to each wiper and in thru the splitter window and pulled back and forth. got us home.

 

Now that's gettin' it.

 

I was with my brother around 1977, in his beloved '64 GMC 1-ton. Ironically we were buying parts for his truck at a truck 'yard and were heading home... in an epic downpour. At a light, the clutch pedal hits the floor. He jumps out looks and comes back... the z-bar pivot broke at the chassis mount.

What to do? Drive it home, as is. He started it in 1st gear, had to kill it at almost every light and it was a 15 mile trip. I'm lucky to have not lost a filling or 2.

 

Another '64 GMC tale from the same time period. My 2 brothers were heading home from the bar in the wee hours, less than sober, they were both heavy hitters. The truck gives up the center hanger bearing shortly into the trek home. Beats the snot out of the bottom of the bed and tears out all the wiring to the back of the truck.

Stranded... With luck, someone from the bar gives them a lift home, where my brother had a parts truck. So they get the needed part and commandeer dad's Chevy wagon, take some tools and head back to get the truck fixed. With that done, now its time to head home. My other brother, no license and about 75% lit, follows the GMC home since it had no rear lights.

 

Uno mas. We were at a wedding in Glen Cove, about 30 miles from home. I was with my fiance at the time, her mom, her youngest brother and her older brother, driving a '72 Caddy. With a failing fuel pump.

We left around 11, the town had the side walks rolled up by then. All we needed was some gas to prime the carb on the Caddy. Not an open gas station for miles. We contemplated sleeping in the car until morning.

I get an idea... I find a old coffee cup and go to the closed gas station. I take a hose off the pump and got a little gas out of it. On a roll, I get enough to attempt a prime. And it worked, we got home and the brother replaced the bad pump the next day.

 

Way back in 1968 I rebuilt the 283 in my '57 Chev. A low buck rebuild that was new bearings, rings, honed, and heads gone through. A few weeks after the build I was coming home from the beach, and about 30 miles from home cruising at 60 mph it suddenly started running on 7 cylinders, and blowing a cloud of oil smoke!
Pulled over and after some spark plug wire pulling I discovered which cylinder was dead. No way to fix it there, and knew it needed to make it home. So I left the plug wire off, and pulled the spark plug too. Fired it up and drove home on 7 cylinders, and no smoke, and not that rough at 50 mph.
Pulled the head, and dropped the pan the next day, and discovered a tiny pinhole in the piston. Dropped the piston/rod out, and the bottom side of the piston was like a crater! The pinhole on top, and blown out about 1.25" diameter on the bottom side. Bought a single piston, slipped my rings on it, and put it back together. Drove it for 3 years until I traded it in on a Chevelle I wanted.

 

Another one that didn't really get a fix. I had an off topic little car that I commuted in from Stockton CA. to Walnut Creek CA. That car was a nice car, but plagued with stupid little problems. One of those problems was while going up the Altamont Pass heading west, about halfway up the car would shut off. I'd coast to the side, and the car would start right back up and never do it again, that is until the next day in the same spot. It wouldn't do it going east up the hill. I got to the point that when it shut off, I just push in the clutch, coast to the side, let the clutch out and it would refire. It wouldn't restart if you tried to restart it in the traffic lane, you had to pull to the shoulder before it would restart. That was just one of the stupid problems that car had. It pissed me off so bad one day that I punched the windshield out of it. I'm convinced it was possessed.

 

On the way to the Street Rod Nationals in Detroit, 1972 in my buddies 1962Chevrolet station wagon when out of the driver's side wheel well came massive smoke. The axle retainer came loose and the axle started to come out causing the tire to rub against the fender lip causing the smoke. We limped off of the highway to the closest gas station / garage. The mechanic installed a new retainer, and tack welded it in [place. We couldn't see the old retainer anywhere, so we drove off. The next day while going through Cleveland, Ohio in the left lane at about 65 miles per hour the old retainer found it's way to the ring and pinion, terrible noise, it cleaned out the ring and pinion. I immediately made a 3 lane change as we were right at an exit. We got off of the highway right at a gas station. The bays were tied up, but he let us use a hydraulic jack in his parking lot. We pulled the axles, and pumpkin, and cleaned out a much debris as we could. A local guy gave me a ride to the closest junk yard and bought a used pumpkin for $ 25.00. Back to the garage parking lot we made a new gasket from a brown grocery bag, re-assembled the rear end, paid the garage owner for the use of his jack and bathroom to clean up and drove to the camp grounds where we were staying for the weekend. We got there at 9:00 PM just when they shut off the showers. In the morning when we went to take a show, the showers used a push button system to dispense, / time the water. We felt that this was un-called for. I held the button in for my buddy, the next guy in line held it for me, and so on. I bet there was a lot of water used that morning.

 

It was around 1982, driving my OT '68 Mustang GT, headed to my junkyard sponsor to get stock car essentials. All of a sudden, a cloud of smoke rolls out from under the hood and starts coming into the cab.I grab my wallet, sunglasses, frisbee full of herbs from under the seat and exit the car.

The cloud dies down and smells like ATF... so I pop the hood. One of the short rubber hoses connecting the hard lines to the radiator popped off. No screwdriver and I lost the clamp. I walked by the side of the road looking for it... no dice. I found a piece of bare steel wire, rusty but managed to get it tight enough to get to the scrap yard and they fixed me up with a clamp and tools.

 

Going uphill, I down shifted, and the clutch cable in my 1961 Corvair broke. Hey, this was about 55 years ago, and it was getting me almost 40 mpg. Anyway, I had enough momentum to pull into a rest stop. And some basic hand tools. I removed the clutch cable, then the emergency brake cable, then routed it through where the clutch cable had ran. Then turned around and headed home. Aren’t interchangeable parts wonderful?

 

We do a few long trips every season , we have always some roadside repairs , loose fender, ignition , broken gas pedal cable , stuck brakes electrical problems etc.
It is part of the fun of driving an old hot rod and we always help each other nobody is left behind, after the fix there is another story to be told end of the day that gets better and better after a few beers .

 

I was at the Rumbler's Brooklyn show in 2008, my first one. There was someone with a Model-A ish Ford with a crowd helping him with a fix. The guy was 100% covered with grease, I guess it was something major.

 

Several cars/miles/years of cruisin down the road, only 1 flatbed ride home with my wife's beautiful 51 Buick classic. I'm that good or very Lucky, been saying for years, Luckier than smart. LOL I have some stories towing racers around the midwest for years/ miles, guessing 250,000 + I will say on the road I met many good people/businesses that were very helpful, fair with $$$ involved, got us Back On Road Again, just like Willy said, I hear that song in my head traveling today sometimes.

 

Another trip driving with the mother in law and a load of treasures / junk from the old ranch heading through the mountains. A spark plug wire failed and the loaded truck couldn't make it up the steep stretches of road on three cylinders.
There was some old, thick rusty fence wire tying down stuff in the bed. I cut a length of it, rolled a tight loop in one end that snapped over the spark plug terminal, slid a couple pieces of vacuum hose onto it where it touched metal and then made another loop that I stuck in the distributor cap. It worked so well that I ran the truck about two years like that.

When I was quite young I was travelling along the coast in a small aluminum boat with my boss, an old logger / fisherman when a nasty storm came up really fast. The pitching of the boat stirred up the water and sludge in the in-hull fuel tank, clogging the fuel supply to the little Chevy 153.
We had an extra gallon jerry can and a plastic mustard squeeze bottle so my job was to use this and carefully squirt a tiny stream of gas into the carburetor while the boss steered and held the throttle wide open. Worked great and saved us from a very dicey situation.

 

One of the older kids next door had a '47 or so Dodge, this was around 1968. He was out and broke a rear leaf spring. So he scouts around by the side of the road and finds a beat up packing skid.

He had a few friends (overloaded the back seat...) and a few tools. They strip the skid for the oak 4" x 4" piece and remove the spring, slide the oak piece in. He drove it back and forth to HS fo a few days until he got a spring.

 

Back in 69 or early 70's my Dad had a 54 Chevy pickup. V8 Auto, open driveshaft, 56 Chevy car rearend. He could gas weld, we didn't have a fancy ARC welder, not sure if tig or mig even exited then. He made the locating brackets/lowering blocks and gas welded everything together. The truck had been on the road for a couple years, daily driver. One weekend my Dad, Mom, and myself, I was maybe 10 or so, drove to McDonalds in Castro Valley CA, about 10 miles from home. Pulling into Mcdonalds parking lot, the bracket on the drivers side let go. The leaf spring and rearend retaining bolts hit the ground. He managed to get it into a parking spot, we ordered our McDonalds, sat there and ate it, then the three of us walked the 10 miles back home. He grabbed a jack, some chain and some other stuff he thought would help and put it all into the 65 GTO that was Mom's daily driver, and back to McDonalds we went. He was able to "fix" it in the parking lot and we drove home. He drove the truck to work the next day with his "fix". He rewelded the brackets and they were still in the truck until he crashed it and parked it about 20 years later. He never fixed it, and it sat torn apart until he sold it about 10 years ago. I have no idea where it went.

 

A friend turns up at my place on the way to a car show with his '64 Pontiac with a hole in one of the heater block-off plugs on the water pump. I looked around for something to replace it with, and all I could find was a 1/2" garden tap , which I installed, turned the tap off and refilled the radiator. He went on his way, & the tap was still there about 5 years later. I remember driving my old Beetle when I was a kid, and using a piece of fence wire which went through the panel behind the back seat and over my shoulder to operate it with my hand. I think it was the clutch or could have been the accelerator. Too many beers ago!

 

65 Mustang running through the middle of the desert at 11pm. Started hearing a hissing noise and suddenly felt little burning spots on my legs. Clutch in as soon as I saw the temp gauge start to rise, and shut it off as soon as I coasted into the ditch on the side of the highway. Core plug on the back of the head was steaming everywhere, the middle of it had rotted and blown out. Big hole in the middle of nowhere 70 miles from town. All I had was jb weld and 600 grit sandpaper, I cleaned what was left of the plug and crammed it full of jb weld. Let it set up a bit and added more layers. Slept in the back of the car for 4 hours while it cured, then poured all but two bottles out of my case of drinking water into the radiator. Fired the ***** up at 3am and drove it 1500 miles with the hood strapped to the roof and the jb weld plug seeping but holding the whole way. Drove up the California coast, over the Golden Gate bridge, then all the way back down through the Nevada desert like that.
We won't talk about the sustained 114mph that led up to the incident...

 

As stated earlier my vocation had me do many, too many, roadside repairs. This one was on my mind but ,,, well why not, the thread lives on.
Heading home from a driving instructor job, I happen upon a little coupe, A or 32, I forget.
There are already several motorists stopped. I am carrying zero tools.
They should not need me, but I wanna look.
As I walk up I deduce the trouble to be a gas line leak at the carb.
Wrenches are present the fix has been made. The issue at hand now, is various pockets on the intake are full of gas. I reach to to my back pocket and produce stack of folded paper toweling, that is always with me when I ride with students, cause they seem to have sinus problems, colds and whatever else you could imagine that need wiping up off or down.

 

Hello,

The wind along the Coast Highway is horrendous during the strong “offshore” wind days, usually in the Fall season. When driving up the coast from our southern surf locations, Huntington Beach pier, Salt Creek in Dana Point, Camp Pendleton in South Orange County, the wind plays an important part in keeping the wave up a little longer. But the effects on the roads are not the most enjoyable.

My friend was in a hurry to get home and in his station wagon, he checked the motor to make sure it was going to start. He also checked the oil and did not want more mechanical repairs than normal. So, we attached our long boards and started home. It had been blowing the So Cal “Santana” winds and they swirled around from inland out to the ocean. Most places are set up by homes and geography to funnel the winds between the homes and up/over and down to the flat ocean areas of So Cal.

The natural phenomenon is wonderful to see its effects on the waves that come in to most beaches. A photographer’s helper and photo booster, to boot. When on the waves, it holds up the face a little longer, makes the ride more exciting and the one bad effect is that it sends any droplet of water or moisture on your face into your eyes. Yikes.

But, on the road, sometimes geographical formations increase or decrease the strength of the flow and creates odd situations. The old station wagon we were in, looked good with two surfboards strapped to the top. As we left the HB Pier area, the wind was howling. Then as we arrived in Northern Huntington Beach area called “The Cliffs,” the protection of the oil wells and cliff barrier drops to sea level and no inland side cliff barriers during the next 5 miles of open land, inland and shoreline. The winds increased due to no land barrier guiding it up and over. The winds had no obstructions and usually are stronger at this location.

Bolsa Chica State Beach is the long empty shoreline and a straight line of highway fully exposed to all sorts of winds.

As we continued to drop down the highway to the water level highway, the strong winds gave us a cross wind effect. Steering adjustments had to be made and we plodded along. I was looking in the direction of the inland salt marsh and in the outside rear view mirror, I saw a long plank twirling high up in the air behind us.

It was my friend’s surfboard twirling in the air above the cars behind us and now, flying towards the inland salt water marsh. It did not hit the car behind us, it just flew over two cars and twirled around until landing on a rail to rest upside down. Lucky fin… my longboard was still securely tied down on the roof rack. So, we stopped to assess the damage.


Jnaki

My friend thought he had tied the rope securely before we left the parking area. But, did not take into account the strong pull of the winds going sideways and swirling around anything that moves across its path to the ocean. Luckily, it did not hit any of the following cars. They all pointed and laughed as they continued to drive away.

The damage was minimal. Back then, those old longboards were almost indestructible. They usually had two layers of 10 oz. fiberglass on the top and bottom, with wrapped rails. The wrapped rails created a 20 oz bullet proof edge against other longboards when they collided or hit some rocks. Today's lightweight surfboards are made with lighter foam, thinner shape and covered with a thin 6 oz or less fiberglass cloth. One can almost grab the board with one hand and raise it overhead. If one flicks a finger against the underneath surface, it may create a # pattern on the thin shiny gloss surface.

I remember carrying my other 10 foot 6 inch longboard from our backyard garage to the normal concrete pad to load it onto my station wagon rack. I dropped it from shoulder height and not one single ding or mark on the rail as it flopped down onto the concrete and over on its deck, fin up.

On my friend's side of the rack, the rope tie down was a shredded old rope that lost the battle against the strong “offshore” winds along this portion of highway known for its strong(er) open geography area vs moving cars… Since the longboards were deck down fin up/back position, the flat surface was a perfect platform for winds to lift it up and up if it was not secure... it was not secure.

He then reverted to storing all surfboards back in the rear lift up window, securely tied down inside…YRMV

NOTE:
Some gas fumes, but at least no flying surfboards while driving down the highway. Later, we used old towels and t-shirts to stuff the dropped down rear lift area to at least seal off some of the fumes...

 

My buddy had picked me up after work for a run to the Moonshine Festival in Dawsonville, GA. driving his recently acquired 40 Ford coupe. It was a bad omen when there were no wipers for the rainy, dark ride to Nashville for an overnight stop.
There was also a slight miss that got worse as we got further down the road. All the way on 7 cylinders, since he had NOTHING on board to fix it.
Next morning, at the motel, we discovered the #1 plug wire burned completely away for four inches, down to the carbon fiber. Been laying on the exhaust manifold. NO parts store open yet within 10 miles, so I took my pocket knife, cut out the burnt section, then sectioned off about an inch of insulation on each end, overlapped the exposed fresh cores and wrapped it in tape. The extra length that caused it to fry turned out to be enough to make the splice.
Worked like new, all the way to Dawsonville and back.

But we weren’t done yet.
About 30 miles later he noticed the volt meter taking a dive. Got off the road and under the hood, and the feed wire from the alternator was bare, burnt copper all the way back to the solenoid. Instead of 8 or 10 gauge, it was at best 14 ga! Of course, no wire on hand. We limped into the next little wide spot on the almost dead battery, and there was a little store. Bought some wire, a pair of crimpers and some ends and replaced the fried piece. Got a jump start and the meter came up and the alternator wasn’t fried. Lucky us.

Another time at the Nats in Louisville, a u-joint in the same car started to come apart. Again no tools, so he went to the MSRA help guys, and pulled out the driveshaft. It was late Saturday afternoon and the closest place open was a NAPA shop down in Elizabethtown, and they were only open for another hour. Piled in my roadster, driveshaft sticking up like a ship’s mast and took off down the I-65. Got there to find only a fuzzy faced kid who couldn’t look up a part number.
I took the parts catalog, looked in the dimensions pages and with some calipers from the attached machine shop found what we needed, then used a vice in the shop to press it in. The kid learned something that day.
Ran back to Louisville and he was soon back on the road.

I wanted to get him a bumper sticker: “I do all my maintenance on the side of the road”.

 

Back again,,, When training to be a commercial driver ( 18 wheel semi-trailer trucker )
We were out one night, on US#1 NB.
As I approsch a hill I get set to commit a double clutch downshift.
The clutch pedal practically falls to the floor, when stepped on.
I inform the instructor that we have no pedal.
With tension in his voice he asks if I can find a spot to get it off the h'way.
No prob, there's room enough, just opposite the the original Wawa Dairies.
We climb down he goes for his phone, and help.
I slide under and find the linkage disconnet.
The rod eyelet and the adjuster eyelet, aren't sharing a bolt anymore.
The Phonecall, sounds to be a lot of negativity. So I bring the instructor to the rear of the cab.
I had found in my back pocket a small adjustable 'distributor pliers'.
I show him how the rear of the cab has a lot of hand-hold rails for getting up + down.
I explained that a nut and bolt from there, will be our answer, down under.
He agreed but said he would have to drive it home.
Fine by me, still the hero.

 

I had the same thing happen to me one day coming back into Baton Rouge LA, I was able to stop at the old Tiger truck stop by gearing down and crawling in the lot in low gear. Pete 379, bolt in clutch linkage had worn in two. Couldn’t reach it from the bottom, had to take out a section of the drivers side floorboard and go in from the top, and was still tight. I didn’t have a bolt the right length, too long and it would bind the linkage. Walked around the parking lot, by the tire shop found a brand new class 8 bolt and lock nut along with some washers mashed in the ground. Gathered up a handful of stuff, went back to the truck and the bolt was the perfect length. Put it all back together and by the time I was finished, the afternoon traffic was gone, a big plus!

 

Now there, is a roadside repair, with parts off the side,,, of the roadside.

 

If you choose it to be, or life becomes a series of travels, be it Cars, Bikes, Trucks, Planes, or the sea,
problem solving or finding a means further becomes instinctive. As we progress, our methods of doing so simply become better and more refined.