What's your best makeshift car repair?

I'm wondering, what's the best/silliest/most clever/stupid makeshift repair you've done on a vehicle to get it running when in a tight spot?

I'll start with something simple.

Was driving out the back of Bourke once (literally) on a 45 degree day in my old '71 HQ wagon. Engine was overheating, so I decided to pull the thermostat out (which I had already known was sticking, but was too lazy to replace when I should have ), and then the gasket disintegrated on the thermostat housing.

Made a cardboard gasket out of a weetbix box, and soaked it in oil (from the dipstick) to stop it going soggy. Not only got me back to Bourke, but survived the 13 hour drive back to Newcastle the following day.

79 corolla. kept loosing water. Wanted to go clubbing down the goldie from Springwood half way there I got the shxxt's with stopping to refill so I got a 2lt coke bottle and created a tube with foil tape (from Hvac work) and taped the bottle to my windscreen washer bottle and plumbed it into the overflow from the radiator, disconnected the wiper motors and every time it got to hot I just re-topped the radiator with a quick windscreen wash.

The coke bottle turned into this giant 5lt bottle wedged under the hood half melted. Never popped - certainly was expecting it.

Also had the water pump fail on my mercury 35hp 84 model. Rigged up the bilge pump to go into the water tell tail. Got me home - although instead of just a water pump I had to buy the whole housing aswell. Sad thing was this was only about weeks ago.

Was working the late shift at the local liquor store and my Mate rang. "Wind is good for surfing the outer reefs first thing in the morning. Are you keen?"

Of course I was. So i drove straight home late at night after work to get as much sleep as possible before the early. I was pretty pleased with myself that the boat was already fuelled up and ready to go for just such an eventuality.

Woke up first thing in the morning, connected the boat onto the car, went passed my mates house, then we launched and headed out on to the ocean and scored some nice waves.

Nice One.

When driving home from the boat ramp the car stopped on a major road.

I was so pleased that the boat had been all ready to go that I'd forgot about checking the car for fuel.

So we were stuck on the side of the road and my Mate kindly offered to walk a few k's to the nearest service station to get a jerry can of fuel. I didn't like the idea of that and I didn't like the idea of being by myself with the boat and surfboards on the side of the busy road.

So I grabbed an old 600ml coke bottle from the rubbish pile behind the passenger car seat, a screw driver from the toolbox and some black electrical tape.

Disconnected the boat fuel line, put the screwdriver into the boat fuel line end and pumped some fuel out and into the coke bottle.

When the 600ml coke bottle was mostly full of petrol, I popped the bonnet of the car, pulled off the fuel line that went from the fuel filter to the motor and stuck it into the coke bottle. My Mate looked a little concerned by this stage. "Your're not leaving that in there are you?"

I taped up the top of the bottle and found a nice place under the bonnet between some cables for the bottle to rest upright so it wouldn't tip over too easily. Closed the bonnet and jumped in to start the car. My Mate stayed outside the car in case the car exploded or something. He didn't think it would work. The car started up after a few cranks and he still wouldn't get in. He looked a little bewildered.


"Are you getting in?" I asked. "Fine. I'll see you at the next petrol station or I'll come back and get you" I said and started to drive off.

So I slowly drove away in a car running off a 600ml coke bottle petrol tank with a boat in tow.

He soon yelled out for me to stop and he jumped in. "Man. This is crazy. You'll only make it 100m up the road before the car stops again. You'll need me to push you off the road or direct traffic around"

So not knowing what to expect we drove up the hill and onwards. Did about 3km's before seeing the petrol station. Still going we cruised in next to the petrol bowsers nicely, yep motor still going. My Mate was laughing, probably glad we didn't end up as fireball.

At the petrol station, I popped the bonnet, tipped the remaining 200ml of petrol from the 600ml coke into the car petrol tank, reattached the fuel line and put some fuel in. No worries, car started easily and we continued driving home.

'77 corolla wagon, corroded cylinder head lost its cool half way to Geraldton, rolled into a roadside parking bay and under a nice shady tree.
Ripped the cylinder head off and found the ally head had a hole a tad smaller than a 5 cent piece, which bridged a coolant passage and the head gasket.
I scraped out the loose corrosion, hammered in a 5 cent piece, added some gasket goo and put it back together.

I had only had my license for a week or so, and that was the first of many dodgy-ish roadside fixits.

Traded the Corolla for a V6 Capri a year later, then the fixits became even more regular.

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Capri's dizzy fell to bits on the way to Albany.
Found a dead transit van in a farm scrap pile.
Used the dizzy housing from the V4 transit, and hoiked in the V6 dizzy innards - up and running again.

Capri timing gear fell apart, bending a bunch of valves.
Scrounged a timing gear from another V4 transit, and valves from Datsun engines.[all from Toodyay Tip]

Capri gearbox failed, [many times] over the years I used bits from transit vans, [same cogs, different shifter and extension housing], Cortina's [same cogs etc],
zephyr [same cogs - but mirror image housing]

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LJ50 'zook with LJ80 motor, using the '50 radiator and exhaust - constantly overheating, so bolted the external oil filter bracket from a burnt out slant 6 Valiant on one side of the front bumper, with a Volkswagen oil cooler on the other, silver soldered barb tail fittings onto everything, dodgy-ed up an adaptor block that screwed onto the motor and piped them all together.
More than doubled the engine oil capacity and all the overheating ceased.

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HQ 1 Tonner, radiator holed by a roo's leg bone / fan stuffed.
Crimped the damaged tubes with pliers, but didn't have enough water to refill the rad.
Jumped a fence and walked to a dam for some water, still had a slow leak - so left the radiator cap on loose so it slowed the leak down, topped up the Rad every few klicks - until I noticed that the sediment in the dam water had blocked up most of the leak.
Used the washer pump to squirt water over the radiator to help with cooling whenever the gauge started climbing.

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The fuel pump carked it in one of my Fiats - leaking petrol badly. [later found to be a counterfeit pump]
Bypassed the pump with a biro housing, hooked a 12 volt tyre pump to the fuel tank vent hose and used air pressure to force fuel from the tank to the carby.

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Brand new Toyota Crown at the hotel I worked at was broken into - smashed passenger window.
No spares in the country. It was a Saturday afternoon, Boss was worried - the owner was a bigwig running a medical conference at the hotel.
It was middle of winter and bucketing down, the Doctor that owned the car was not happy.
I nicked the Perspex side from an icecream fridge in the Brasserie, and made a temporary window so they could get home in the southwest without drowning.

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A Scout Association owned Lada Niva [that had been seen "swimming" for an extended period of time at Lancelin] was dumped at the property I was working on
[The property was supposedly being donated to the Scouts]
HQ reckoned I could use a spare 4wd on the farm.
Nice idea - if the thing would run!

Found that the emission controls and fuel system were full of salt water and mud - as were the diffs, transfer-case, gearbox.

Drained all the fluids / flushed with diesel / refilled with fresh tractor grade stuff [since it was free].

Emission controls and all the fuel system were removed, blown out with air and the good bits were replaced.
Simplified the whole system - not exactly ADR compliant using none of the emission controls, and jamming .303 cases into the air cleaner housing for the "new" carby breather and crankcase breather thingy connections.

Removed practically all the wiring and anything not deemed essential, since much was salt water affected.

Damn Niva went like the clappers after I put it back together, and was a great little runabout on the farm!


stephen

While doing Environmental Science at Uni I met a guy who was car mad. He was from Adelaide and said it was hard to find any offroad tracks in the Adelaide Hills that one could fang around on.

I told him there were plenty of offroad tracks in the Perth Hills and beyond. He said he would buy an old car to fang around in if I showed him where some good tracks were.

Too easy.

So he bought a few Corollas with his Dad's money and we spent many days sliding around on all sorts of gravel tracks.

One day he rang up asking for a lift out to Midland to pick up a XF Falcon that he had already bought. So we drove out and he got the XF.

"Lets go to the Hills and see how different the XF is on those gravel tracks" He said.

So off we went to the hills. He drove the XF and I drove my car as the backup car to get us home in case anything happened to the newly purchased Falcon XF.

Compared to the Corollas we had previously used the Ford XF did very long and smooth fishtailies. So that was a bit of fun for an hour.

During this time we noticed a group of people were thrashing an old corolla around. Sometime in the afternoon the distant revving motor noise from the corolla stopped and 10 minutes later we saw them all leave the area in another car.

Hmmm. Was their Corolla still in the bush somewhere?

We drove down a few smaller tracks around where we saw them leave and soon found the Corolla. We presumed the motor was cooked so we started looking for any parts on the car that we could use. We had a look under the bonnet and discovered there was no battery and no HT leads. We also found the ground to be slippery like wet clay underfoot.

The car wasn't bogged but it occurred to us that maybe the car was stuck on the slippery ground and the owners had gone to get a tow rope. So we installed the battery from my car and tried to swap the HT leads over. Yep they fitted. Then we tried my key in the ignition. That worked to! The dash lights went on and it had 2/3 a tank of petrol left in it. What the? Surely it won't start.

It did! The old bashed up Corolla started straight away.

So we rammed it out from the slippery ground with the Falcon XF and before I knew it my Mate had driven off in the Corolla and was last heard muttering something about seeing his Mate at a local farm.

He left and the forest was quiet. Then I realised my Mate had driven off with the XF falcon keys. There I was alone in the forest with an XF Falcon positioned where someone's Corolla last stopped and my car parked nearby missing its battery and HT leads. And what happens if the group of Yocals come back looking for their bashed up Corolla? I mean it had 20 bux of fuel in it. That's another hour of fun for them. What would I say? I felt very vulnerable. This wasn't thought out well at all.

After a long 20 minutes I heard a car in the distance. As it got closer I started getting real nervous and couldn't help but run into the bush. It rocked up, the car stopped and I could hear my Mate calling my name.

Phew.

He had taken the old bashed up Corolla to a local farm, removed my battery and leads and the son had driven him back in the work ute.

So we put my battery and leads back on my car and drove to the farm.

I left my car at the farm, pulled out my battery and leads and installed them back onto the Corolla and jumped in the bashed up Corolla and my Mate jumped in his newly purchased Ford XF. Away we went back into the forest.

We spent the afternoon and into the evening going around and around on gravel roads playing low speed bumper car games and seeing who could spin the other one out. The cars were scratched down both sides and bits were falling off, it was hilarious.

During the war games the Corolla got a flat tyre, a busted radiator and the headlights were broken but we didn't care and just continued on. We were 30kms away from the nearest town or farm and it was a cold night but hey, we had the trusty ford to get us home.

At about 10pm we had enough fun and were finally thinking about heading home when the Ford ran out of Petrol. The petrol gauge wasn't working and my Mate thought $15 would be enough to put in the tank after he bought it earlier in the day.

Things quickly changed from careless funtimes to surviving the cold night in a reasonable manner.

So we rolled the ford into a ditch to minimise the chance of someone finding it and looked seriously at how the old bashed up Corolla could possibly get us 30 something km's home to civilisation.

In the blackness of the night we figured out the radiator had a big leak, the alternator wasn't charging, the flat tyre was falling to bits, the fuel guage was on low and the battery was close to flat. And we had no tool box.

We went back to the Ford in the ditch and grabbed anything that could be useful. The basic tool kit, tyre lever, sheep seat covers (for possible warmth) and an old empty water bottle.

We got the battery out of the ford and put it into the bashed up Corolla. It was on an angle but it served its purpose. We looked around at other broken cars for useful items. I found a rim and tyre from a 120y. The tyre was pretty flat and I was unsure if the 12" rim would fit. But the rim had a metal hudcap.

The metal hudcap was levered off and was great for getting water out of shallow roadside puddles and sifting out the rocks and silt. The radiator was topped up from empty to over half full with the use of the hudcap. We also filled up the water bottle and put the hudcap on the back seat half full of puddle water.

So off we drove with no headlights, only park lights, hoping to get as close to civilisation as possible. I wanted to get at least within 10km of civilisation before considering to walk through the darkness with no moon.

The first 5km were Ok. Motor struggling in 3rd gear with a flat tyre. Then the last of the puddle water must of boiled away inside the radiator and the temperature went up to the maximum on the guage. Against my instincts to collect more puddle water for the radiator my Mate said to just keep driving.

Next the tyre started to shred off the rim. The tyre started to clip the wheel arches. Soon the shredded tyre was ripping the front guard apart. The noise was unbearable. Was it ever going to stop? But we kept driving at 50 - 60 km/h in 3rd. Soon the bulk of the tyre shredded off the bashed up Corolla and we were about halfway there. Just a bit further and we could consider walking if need be.

The Corolla was overheating but made it to within 10km of the farm and it was a massive relief. Every km closer was even better. We eventually made it to the bitumen where I drove the last 500m on the soft shoulder and drove into the farm and parked up next to the homestead. 25Km's of overheating with no water in the radiator, with no headlights, and running on 3 tyres and one metal rim. No probs. What were we concerned about?

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sn said..
'77 corolla wagon, corroded cylinder head lost its cool half way to Geraldton, rolled into a roadside parking bay and under a nice shady tree.
Ripped the cylinder head off and found the ally head had a hole a tad smaller than a 5 cent piece, which bridged a coolant passage and the head gasket.
I scraped out the loose corrosion, hammered in a 5 cent piece, added some gasket goo and put it back together.

I had only had my license for a week or so, and that was the first of many dodgy-ish roadside fixits.

Traded the Corolla for a V6 Capri a year later, then the fixits became even more regular.

.
stephen

I'm impressed that you had all that in the car, to fix it with! My dad used to drive around with a fully loaded toolbox and everything left over in it, and it was pretty handy at times. So, I tend to do the same and drive around with all the left over nuts and bolts and hose clamps that seem to find their way into my toolboxes. I think my father would have classed Harrow's cardboard repair as a permanent repair and there would be no need to replace it.

Sad to say, (well good I guess) but I haven't needed to do many road-side repairs like that.

It was snowing as hell , freezing cold and suddenly my wipers motor died in my German made Trabant on the long trip in Europe (long time ago) .

I attached string to wipers arm and passengers been able to swipe the snow from time to time to clear wind screen....

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FormulaNova said..


I'm impressed that you had all that in the car, to fix it with!

All I had was a basic toolkit.

Jack, wheel brace, twin screwdriver, a couple of crappy open ended spanners, slip joint pliers - but most importantly, my vice grips!

I borrowed a socket to fit the cylinder head bolts from a grey nomad [he reckoned my vice grips were a bit rough for the job]
and the gasket goo was chucked at me by a sympathetic truckie.

My total previous experience with working on engines at the time, was de-coking a 2 stroke moped's exhaust.

Pretty steep learning curve that day!

I have to admit though - the Toyota 3KC engine is pure simplicity to work on.

stephen

Had some good rust holes on the old windsurfing wagon Hiace van many years ago.. Policeman said drive it home, take off the plates and never drive it again...So, filled the holes with clay and/or paper mache, then brush painted it with left over house paint. Got another couple of years out of it .

I'd like to hear about more dodgy rust repairs...

Just for you Richiefish. My old daddo 200B aquired several engine failures at once. My solution was to throw in a reco S donk I had lined up for next to nothing. So, jacking it onto blocks crunch thud, the jack goes through one rail, just a little rust there.

So, my dodgy rust repair involved scrapping the car buying $250 worth of beer with the metal value and repaying a couple of beer debts in the form of a backyard booze up.

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Richiefish said..I'd like to hear about more dodgy rust repairs...

My neighbour had a 70's Corona with door sills rusted out so bad you could barely touch them without them falling apart, and we had nothing for the bog to stick to. It happened that coke cans were just the right size to fit inside, and we slid half a dozen of them inside the sill on each side, which gave us something solid to work with.

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Richiefish said..

I'd like to hear about more dodgy rust repairs...

I bought a mitsubishi l300 van off a backpacker for 2 grand - fully kitted out with gas stove, 12v fridge, bed, mozzie nets & curtains, 2 big boxes of random stuff like food, cooking utensils, camping gear, even a boogie board & fins.

Had some great times in it. Eventually it started breaking one thing after another, finally blew the head gasket due to water leaking from carby, yes the cooling water flowed thru carby to activate/deactivate auto choke, and with the rust etc it eventually dug it's way out to freedom. Fixed it myself, bypassed carby water flow & decided to sell. Put it in for roadworthy and they said 'not a chance with all this rust'. Called in a few mates, masses of bog, and 6 cans of spray paint. Did it over the weekend and it came up alright although the paint didn't match that well took it for a test spin and -bang- the clutch pedal went slack. Found the cable was broken near the pedal, but the pedal still had a loop and the cable had a lump at the end. Fixed them together with a tiny, old, $2 chinese padlock. Took it back to mechs the next morn and they passed it.

Sold it to backpackers for 2 grand the next week.

So next one.

Used to work for a rally team. Scene: Rally Australia in Perth about 1996 ish.
The driver hired a car for recce as you are not allowed to do it in the race car. As usual it is supposed to be driven slow whilst co-driver does his trip notes, but last run thru the stage is about 75% pace.
Budget and Thrifty would not hire cars to rally teams for good reason
So a new-ish Toyota Starlet hired by "Mr Eidnehousenbrocker" for a 'work trip' gets a fair workout, near Muresk somewhere he gets air and the front strut tower lets go - shockie went straight up thru the bonnet.

Secondhand (free!) red bonnet, installed and painted, strut tower bodgied with a circle of 5mm steel plate welded in, bogged and painted.
All overnight - and hire company none the wiser. Alignment just a bit out lol

Years ago me and a mate went bunny shooting way out in the bush.

One morning, after a big night on the Wild Turkey listening to the car cassette all night,
we woke to find the battery on my old 2.2litre (petrol) Hilux was completely flat (not even a click).

It was parked in soft sand - nowhere to push it.

In desperation my mate being an old ‘bushie’ suggested we try something....

So we jacked one back wheel up in the air and wrapped a cray rope around it several times.
I ran with the end of the rope while my mate dropped the clutch in third.

Three goes and she fired up!!

We actually PULL STARTED a Hilux!!! I **** you not!

^^ Not good in front pants pockets either apparently. Saw some idiot stuff a couple into his pockets at the pub and within ten minutes, eyes watering and offering up some choice expletives he was madly rinsing his nuts in the sink trying to stop the burning.

^^^ it's safe to say he failed the sobriety test before he blew into the machine