[Verm1n]

soo... basically was driving home and I smelt radiator water.. I pulled over to find that I split the small 90 degree radiator hose that goes from just next to the water pump to underneath the intake manifold... water pissed out everywhere. I knew I had a spare at home but was too far to walk soo with quick thinking... (yea I think sometimes) I swapped the split hose with the one that goes from the intake manifold to a T connection which splits to the air filter and the rocker cover WILL TRY TO GET A PIC UP TOMOZ... Luckily for me i pulled over next to a bottle-o.....

Soo.. wats ur dodgy/quick/repair that has gotten you out of trouble??

N thanks Steky for jinxing me

[ajsr]

drove home one day after the alt in my car died , with the fuel pump powered off the taillights. lasted 140kms before the bat went flat 2kms from my house

[skyman]

We had a Volkswagen station wagon thing..don't know what they call them, but they are ugly and low to the ground.

Anyways dad called and told me to ring a 2x4 and some rope one day. when I got there I had found that the engine mounts broke and the engine had fallen right on the ground. So we wrapped the rope around the engine a couple of times and around the 2x4.

We used that to lift the engine, then put the 2x4 across the engine hatch sideways to support the motor. He drove it home, and then to work for two days before he got it fixed.

So an engine held up with a 2x and some poly rope from an inflatable raft lol.

I also once used a small deep well socket to splice two heat core lines together to by pass the heater core. I never did fix that, it sold that way armsup

[Drova]

Nice, mine bang hole in sump oil pissing
Out. What do I do Earplugs!! Stuff them
In the hole, top up oil. got me home all
The way home!!

[matty]

broke clutch cable while camping up the beach in perth.
drove all the way home starting the car in second gear at every roundbout and lights.
its true the alkermos is haunted.
the clutch cable broke over night while everyone was asleep. oooooooh

[harvs]

I love these stories. I can't really compare, about the best I've done is fixed a broken accelerator cable by hooking up a piece of bailing twine to the carby, out the bonnet and used it as a hand throttle through the window. Got me home...

A mate of mine "fixed" a big end bearing by shimming behind it with a piece of a coke can. That one never ceased to amaze me. But it was a tractor and he was a farmer...

[ajsr]

I once saw a 6cyl hq holden drive into my friends mecanical workshop.
it had punched a hole in the block on number 4 cyl and the good ole boys dropped the sump and somehow wrapped two footy socks and wire around the broken piston/rod and drove it from somewhere like 1/2 way between adelaide and melbourne to monbulk an hour the other side of melbourne .
they just kept topping the engine up with chainsaw chain oil
you should have seen the smoke screen out of this thing

[boostedbrick]

Broke an upper shock mount bolt on holidays last week, fixed it with cable ties and hose repair tape and bounced round off road for a week like that

[whincup]

boostedbrick wrote:

Broke an upper shock mount bolt on holidays last week, fixed it with cable ties and hose repair tape and bounced round off road for a week like that

didnt tighten a shock properly after changing my springs, top nut fell off while 4wding so i pulled it out completely... that was 6 months ago, i still have no front right shock

dodgiest thing i have ever done, down a track, went through water, snapped a fan blade and it went through the radiator... ok, no worries, duck down to the local wrecker in a mates car. no sierra radiators, ok old swift radiator, theyre the same motor so it should work! get back to my car before realising the inlet and outlet hoses were on the wrong side... no worries, upside down!... hoses line up, but brackets are nowhere near fitting... out come the zip-ties!!!... had to fill it through the drain plug since that was on top and run no overflow bottle.

i drove 150kms home with a swift radiator upside down and zip-tied in place... sad thing is it actually cooled better than the old one!

[Verm1n]

Its amazing the amount of things that ppl try to do... and even more surprising when it actually works.. love all the stories

[reeceh]

In highschool in 2006 I had an old kb laser carby turbo. Being a student I had little to no money. Went out one night showing off and I snapped the front eng mount. So under acceleration the engine would tilt and slam the bonnet. I had two ratchet straps in my car for my kayak I went from behind the back of engine over the tappet cover and down to the front chassis. I got it that tight it would send vibrations through the car. Spent my savings got new clutch and mount fixed and the following Friday went out again snapped mount so I strapped it again and had the straps there for a year! They were far better then the eng mounts! I painted them black and left them in there. Every few weeks I'd retension them lol

[bazook]

doing the the tracks at ripleys only to get told to shut the motor off buy someone only to realise my oil pressure adaptor had snapped off in the block, and in the middle of the bush so i pulled my trusty steaky out of my tool box and made a m6 bolt thread into the bit of brass that was in the bolck which acted like a helicoil worked perfectly...

Another time when i trusted those solinoid fuel pumps It died on me so i filled my washer bottle up with fuel and ran the hose into the carby worked like a dream just pump the wiper every so often to fill the bowl

[sogone]

Filled my tyre up with sticks and sand to get home from hunting one night. Forgot my spare at home. Worked awesome.

[fordem]

Where do I start - there's three decades of memories to go through.

We had Mitsubishis that were known for breaking the clevis on the clutch cable - I've driven them home with no clutch and then for days with baling wire tied around whats left of the clevis and the clutch lever

- swapped an air intake hose for a radiator top hose on an old Simca - that one needed the radiator outlet wrapped with tape to take up the slack

- string in place of the accelerator cable, out the side of the bonnet and through the driver's window

- stuffed flat tires with grass - hit a pot hole with both wheels on one side and flattened them, only had one spare

- stuck a ball bearing into the brake line where it goes into the wheel cylinder to prevent the fluid from leaking past the wheel cylinder rubbers

- hot wired the ignition & headlights after an electrical fire under the hood - that one pissed the boss off - it happened on March 31st, so the next day I told him the van had caught fire the night before, but being April 1, he didn't believe me - until he went outside and saw the scorched paint and came back inside cussing - why did I tell him the van caught fire - so I said I did, first thing this morning, but you wouldn't listen.

There's probably more, but those are the ones that come to mind.

[skyman]

I never though to stuff a flat tire with something, that;s an awesome idea.

I ran a branch of a pine tree through the radiator of a dodge 318 (1967) up in the mountains one day. It put a pop can sized hole in the radiator.

Those radiators were brass and had fairy big flat pipes running vertical. What we did was take pliers and roll over the ends of the broken fins, then crimp them really tight. i think there was 6 or seven vertical fin/pipes we did that too.

The thing held water all the way home (50 miles).

That truck was so old it had a burlap bag hanging on the side of the engine bay for water. The water bag came stock form the factory. It had instructions that said to use plain water so it would not eat the burlap, and could be used for drinking. It was kind of cool, because the bag would get beads of water on the outside that would evaporate and keep the whole water bag cool.

That truck is what taught me how to do dodgy repairs. Shoot the truck was made so dodgy repairs would work!


I also broke my shift locator bolt once in the sierra and could not shift, so I pulled a bolt form the rear diff to use. I used my leather man packet knife to file the end so it would work as a locator bolt.

The diff bolt worked so well I used it for an entire summer before I order a new locator. aside form that it took me 4 hours with that little file to make the bolt, I was proud of it! armsup

[stocker]

Hit a sand dune a little to hard one day... dented the fuel tank but more importantly broke the top off the fuel pump

after ripping the tank out on the beach to discover this, we had a few beers and came up with Metalmend. used an entire tube to glue the plastic fuel pump delivery piece back on the to the fuel pump let it set over night.

Drove all the way back from newcastle

Happy days

[ZookFan]

reeceh wrote:

In highschool in 2006 I had an old kb laser carby turbo. Being a student I had little to no money. Went out one night showing off and I snapped the front eng mount. So under acceleration the engine would tilt and slam the bonnet. I had two ratchet straps in my car for my kayak I went from behind the back of engine over the tappet cover and down to the front chassis. I got it that tight it would send vibrations through the car. Spent my savings got new clutch and mount fixed and the following Friday went out again snapped mount so I strapped it again and had the straps there for a year! They were far better then the eng mounts! I painted them black and left them in there. Every few weeks I'd retension them lol

GOLD

great storys here

[Built4thrashing]

drove home from yarra junction with a busted rear leaf spring, no brakes and a slipping clutch.

Used 2 D shackles and a ratchet strap to hold diff inplace. Clamped off rear brake lines to force more pressure to the front and drove home in 1st and 2nd gear..........
and i got off lightly compared to the other cars on that trip.

[jimbo_jones]

I broke a transfer mount on my zook and used a ratchet stap to hold it in place I finished wheel drove home and used it like that to go to work for the following week and fixed it that sat

[suzukikid]

Drove from neerim to home with a broken rear drive shaft(so in front wheel drive) and a transfer case held in with built4thrashins ratchin strap!

Made a long trip even longer!

[trity]

my mate had an MK triton did a stupid thing and drove through salt water long story short his fuse box shorted and blew some crucial ceramic fuses - these fuses basically start the car

i am known for some bush electrical mechanics so i repped out the ceramic fuse and spuerglued in a mini blade fuse of the same amperage

tried the car and it started but had nothing else - checked some others and yep another ceramic fuse was stuffed so i did the same thing

that was about 5 years ago and they are still in and running the car to this day without an issue

[youda]

all the rubber came apart in my gsr turbo lancer engine mount and i had to drive it to brisbane the next morning. I ordered a mount in brisbane got the tube the mount bolt goes through and wound ducting tape around it till it filled the mount back up then coated it in super glue to stay together. it lasted all the way to brisbane with a few enthusiastic overtakes and was still in one piece when i put the new mount in.

same trip a mate came off the road in his fwd turbo lancer and ended up in a ditch. did a tape measure wheel alighnment on a wheel that was out by 17degrees, threw his bumper in the back seat. repaired an intercooler hose with a peice of turf sprinkler pipe kindly donated by a local and fitted it with some fencing wire (cut the pipe where the tear was put the pipe in the midle slide the cooler piping over the top and secure with fencing wire as hose clamps) throw in a few zip ties and she made it all the way home still running 12psi boost.

[SierraDan]

Cable tie holding a broken engine mount. its still holding up haha.

[harvs]

Didn't stuffing the flat tire with straw come up on Malcom Douglas?

[Built4thrashing]

suzukikid wrote:

Drove from neerim to home with a broken rear drive shaft(so in front wheel drive) and a transfer case held in with built4thrashins ratchin strap!

Made a long trip even longer!

dont think i ever got it back either all good. ratchet straps are a long lost cousin of duct tape.....and cable ties

[missmyljdaze]

split rims were rusted so bad we couldnt get the tyres off, or the locking rim off, so I taped detcord onto the rim next to the tyre, hooked up the det and lit the fuse and let Dr Nobel do the hard work for us.

After some serious research and experimentation with regard to the scientific application of chemically released energy and dissipation of shock waves to render steel free of corrosion with different methods of application and detonation (generally having shitloads of fun and waking up the whole district ) we determined the following:

-that 2 turns of redcord would blow all rust off the rim leaving clean steel and pop the tyres bead at the same time.

-if you place the wheel with its detcord underneath- it will send a perfect smoke ring about 100' in the air, while echoing through the hills much further than if detonated on top.

-4 turns of detcord underneath will make the wheel jump about 3' and sound like a howitzer.

when we got back to town everyone wanted to know what we had been up to- and most were really pissed off (only cause they wanted to watch)

[steak_knife]

Buttercup

[atari4x4]

steak_knife wrote:

Buttercup

this thread is done.

[matfan]

My whole suzuki is a dodgy fix!!!

Broke the right hand transfer mount out at ripleys and had left my spares at home. I replaced one of the left hand mounts with some telstra rope so I could secure the case on both sides. I hoped I'd be able to get home but it worked so well I stayed out for the rest of the day and didn't fix it for a couple of weeks.

A couple of years ago I did the alternator upgrade and the new one had a fan thingy on the front of the pulley. What I didn't realise at first was that the clutch cable was rubbing on the fan and it eventually wore through the outer sheath while I was driving through the valley. I sent the missus off to the chinese cheap shop to get some hose clamps and zip ties while I prepped the cable. 10 mins later we were off again. I've had a new cable sitting in the back for nearly 18 months now.... I really should fix that at some stage.

Many years ago, I had a 32 GTR and the clutch hydraulics shit itself when I was down the coast. Drove all the way from Smiths St to Coorparoo clutch-less shifting. Thank god for synchro's!!!!

The list goes on

[buzbox]

bloody hell. I'm shocked that Shep hasn't piped up.

My only dodgy repair has been a flat tyre. I didn't have a spare, I took it out for increased fuel economy

Drove it to a servo, bought super glue, stuck the nozzle into the hole, filled the nozzle with glue, let it set, trim the nozzle and filled it with air.