BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?

Subject: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: Mr Red
Date: 16 May 03 - 03:15 PM

A few years back my car suddenly lost all power and I was on a mission to rendezvous with people to transfer my passenger and the timing was critical. About a month before I saw Armin Schwartz on the Rally GB have the same problem and he got co drivers shoelaces and operated the accelerator arm on the carburettor through a hole in the bonnet (hood) and hand out of window. So I got a piece of string and did the same, arriving with minutes to spare. It cut my hand and froze it but got there.

Yesterday I was replacing a fuel line and found a rubber overflow line ratting. The local car bits shop had no pipe to do the job and sold no tape because nothing survies in the engine bay. While I was pressing him for ideas I remembered the old WWII fighter pilot's strategem of carrying chewing gum as a quick-fix for bullet-holes in the petrol tank. Gum does not disolve in petrol - just about everything else does. So I got chewing and covered the putty-u-like with Kaptan tape (high temperature tape I just happened to have). It only carries fuel rarely but it is holding so far.

Anybody else got any bizzare wheezes to keep you going (mechanically that is).

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: jeffp
Date: 16 May 03 - 03:20 PM

I plugged a vacuum line with a golf tee one time after removing a manual (handicapped) throttle and brake control.

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 May 03 - 03:28 PM

Hey jeff!!.....Any mechanic knows the value of golf tees!!

Got a good one......My friend Howard was working the late shify at the station one night when a guy limped in with a large straight truck (24foot box). The throttle cable bracket had broken and there was no way to get a new one that late at night. Howard whipped out a pair of Vise Grips, clamped the mess together and it worked! He sold the guy the vise grips and off he went.

I spent my working life as a wrench so if you want some stories, I got plenty.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: MMario
Date: 16 May 03 - 03:32 PM

we crossed the mojave desert with a leaky radiator plugged with chewing gum.

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 May 03 - 03:54 PM

Our families call these "Entries in the Make-Do Hall of Shame."

Staples or dental floss, or a masking-taped paper clip make nice emergecy fabric repairs.

My mother once made a clever speaking tube from kitchen to basement, with a green garden hose and two orange funnels.

But I am on the winning end so far in the family, with 1" ceramic kitchen floor tiles duplicated in layers of cardboard with duct tape over top, to keep the floor level inder the fridge where the 12" tile sections had been attritted, and section of the same tile in the loo patched with sand where it got too wet outside the shower. With a rug over it, it levels the floor nicely and provides drainage. :~)

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: Gareth
Date: 16 May 03 - 04:28 PM

I burst a car heater hose just outside Gloucester (UK) one dark Sunday afternoon on an old Talbot Horizon. No shops around for a spare. Took off the other line from the heater. Out with me trusty knife, whittled out two plugs from a tree branch. Hammered them in the holes, wired them down with locking wire, and drove 180 miles back to Canterbury. The plugs held too !

And the less said about what you can do with insulating tape and self amalgamating tape the better !!!

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: gnu
Date: 16 May 03 - 06:34 PM

A bar of soap rubbed over small holes in gas tanks and lines will get you to a permanent repair, although it's dicey on lines that aren't gravity fed, which is, more or less, all modern vehicles. As well, if your fan/drive belt is wearing badly and in danger of imminent failure, soap may help get you to a repair, but there is a slipage trade-off with drive belts (of course, not having a spare belt is kinda stunned, especially a drive belt). Needle nose pliars applied gently to radiator fins at small holes can suffice, although a can of the liquid plug is far better. Anyone ever have any success with those pressurized cans of guck for tire puncture repair ? (I carry real plugs and a hand pump.)

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 May 03 - 08:44 PM

College friend of mine had the seam right under the fly on his pants break open, showing the white inner lining. Since these were black pants and he had to do an oral presentation in 15 minutes, the gap was obvious and not immediately correctable.

He tried staples, but they pulled out almost at once.

In a moment of genius, he used a permanent black marker to color the white lining black. It worked wonderfully, and his presentation went off without a hitch.

He, on the other hand...well, he wasn't wearing underwear and he not only colored the inner lining black, but certain parts of his anatomy became sort of piebald. His social life suffered for a while....

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 May 03 - 09:45 PM

The plug on the pickup truck block?/head?/radiator? (I no longer remember) blew when my brother and I were up in the mountains, miles away from any shop. He whittled a plug from the handle of something or another then with umpteen trips with his Stetson I filled the radiator with water from the roadside ditch. Worked great.

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: JennyO
Date: 17 May 03 - 12:14 AM

Pantyhose as a substitute for a broken fanbelt (heard about it but not tried it).

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: Snuffy
Date: 17 May 03 - 04:25 AM

Accelerator cable broke on my Hillman Imp, just in the engine compartment. This was about 3.30 a.m. with 150 miles still to go.

One of the wife's hairgrips through the moving thingy and spliced into the cable did the trick. But there was alot of slack and we couldn't do more than 40 on the motorway.

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: DMcG
Date: 17 May 03 - 05:05 AM

As a student I once went to an interview a few hundred miles from where I lived and on reaching the hotel they were putting me up in discovered I had taken one black shoe and one brown shoe.

I polished the brown shoe black and the black shoe brown ... and I got the job!

Subject: RE: BS: Bizzare wheezes to keep things working?
From: Mr Red
Date: 17 May 03 - 07:18 AM

DMcG
and vice versa on the remaining pair?

gnu
Yes - I am running around on gunk. I had three screws in tyres - one I replaced, the second was found during an MOT inspection (legal necessity every year here) which was safe and the now gunked one that caused deflation overnight. It is apparently a stupid adolescent practical joke round here, screws can be made to stay long enough to drive themselves in - I check before moving-off now every time.
The gunk inflates the tyre but you have to check pressure properly and drive fast enough to spread the stuff around with the <PEDANT=ON>centrepetal acceleration</PEDANT> of the wheel's revolutions.