I bought a 59 chev pu that had bathtub caulk on the engine to hide the crack in the block. A real pro job blending in the dirt and grease. I also wittnessed a guy I knew in high school use water in the master cylinder before a test drive on an unsuspecting buyer. Bought a 56 chev sedan with sheetrock mud used for the repair of body dents. Also had a plexiglass to replace a rear quarter window. Rags stuffed under upolstery to hide broken springs. Well oiled belt leather cut to replace squealling altenator/generator. Buyers beware!! I think I finally lost my rose colored glasses. Graduated School of Hard Knocks 71' with continued studies on occasion.
My dad tells me these stories ... When he or... someone in his car club would buy a car or parts they would look really throughly cuz it was common back then!
i know a guy by the name of "ken the transmission man" he is a mechanic at a GM shop just north of Dallas and is the modern day Magiver. he was driving his peice car, with a GM four banger (not sure of the year or size) down south for a fishing trip and lost a rod bearing. he had a set of tools with him so on the side of the road he pulled the pan and all that, cut a strip of leather off of his work boot and replaced the bearing with it, drove it for a few years like that then sold it. he can legit. build a trans though, my old suberban never drove better.
no need for all these silly tricks to sell a crap car these days, just sell it on ebay with doctored pictures and a bullshit description. seen a story where the seller actually photoshopped the leather interior of this late model to cover cracks rips and dirt.
I saw a USED CAR guy that did his own repairs brazing up a couple of teeth on a cluster gear. This was after I bought a 39 2dr from him. Thats a nother story.
hard pull to the right (bent control arm) Less air in the left tire, More in the right. Pillow in the door to hold the window up. (4 year old BMW) Used "Car Dealer" tricks.
had a friend who ripped the splines off the shaft connecting the trans and transfer case in a truck..he cut an access hole and stick welded the two together. imagine trying to pull it apart not knowing any better,lol.
A friend of mine had a few holes in his radiator sooo he put a couple tablespoons of corn meal in it.Stopped the leak an it smelled like cornbread!!
As an auto tech years backs I pulled the head off an in-line six in a International Scout only to find that the number six piston was not a piston, but actually an 8 inch section of cedar fence post. Sure explained the rough idle complaint the customer had.
I had a 69 chevy truck with a worn out saginaw 4 speed in it.The trans was noisey,and actually rattled in third gear. I removed the oil fill plug and used my grease gun to pump a couple of tubes of chassis grease in to it. I drove it for a year or 2,them sold it with the trans still working.
On his way to show his oil burning 67 Vette convt to a perspective buyer, my buddy stopped down the road, wiped the burnt oil from inside the tailpipes, then painted the same area with gray primer. Good motors burning leaded gas would "chaulk" up the exhaust. The sucker bought the 11 year old Sting Ray for $2200. My buddy made $100 and thought he had hit a home run.
1 Drain oil, refill with 5 qts of "No Smoke". 2 Install second PCV valve to help hide blow by. 3 Connect oil pressure gauge wire to temp sender. Hotter it gets the more oil pressure shown. 4 Replace broken lens with piece of gallon milk jug cut to fit...Dye as necessary. 5 Tape up and paint simi-gloss black on panels where body side mldg. is missing. Works really well on '79-'86 Mustangs if stripes in middle are replaced. 6 Jack, with wood block under door, to bend hinges to compensate for worn pins and bushings. 7 Dye exposed foam rubber seat color, to hide worn upholstery. 8 Superglue old visor mirror over broken OS rear view mirror glass. 9 Overdrive out in auto trans? Remove quadrant and grind away stop for od position. Reposition indicator so that drive position appears to be od. 10 Wrong dipstick? Dip in brown paint up to full mark. Let paint dry and re-install. 11 Write info about car, or auction numbers, strategically on windshield to hide crack. 12 Got 3 blackwall tires and one whitewall? Paint the whitewall with semi-gloss black rattle can. 13 Nothing but water in radiator? A little green jello or food coloring does the job. 14 Badly worn timing chain? Re-position wires in dizzy cap so vacuum can appears to be in correct position. 15 Carpet worn or filthy? Use contact glue in cheap spray gun to install cheapo "stretch" carpet on top of it. Don't forget to glue on a new heel pad. 16 PBR can, radiator hose clamps, and muffler cement work wonders on rusted or broken exhaust pipes. 17 Wally World wood grain vinyl shelf paper works well to "restore" faded "woody" wagons. 18 Never, I repeat NEVER buy a used car from me...as Mighty Mouse said..."There's still more!"
Back in 1962 I was working as a "lot boy" at the local Studebaker-Rambler dealer. We had someone trade in a 56 Chevy two door sedan. Looked good BUt the six cylinder was well worn.Very little oil pressure and SMOKE. The owner had me add 90 wt. oil to the thing. The stuff was so thick that we had to start it with the charger hooked up. We kept the thing warmed up and a local nurse came along and bought it.It came back a few days later driven by her BIG brother and the owner ended up buying it back.
I have never done any of this except getting some bars leak for my own radiator and then shelling out $150 (at the time) for a radiator rebuild. I have worked on some old girlfriends cars and found... baling wire holding a tie rod in place. something (smelled like rotten bacon) in the diff leather strap in the main bearings (it was running when I took it apart) caught a guy pouring rice into the carb to get a smoking motor to stop I just assume whatever I buy is put together with baling wire and duct tape anyway. Also, I did know a guy that was building a camaro for his son. He used screen mesh to fill the hole of the front fender he swapped, I guess 68? had no side indicator and 69 did and he had a 69 fender. Memory is a little fuzzy. It was a good job though, no rust hiding and clean work. It came out nice. Johnny
A table spoon of Bon Ami powder poured into the carb of a running engine.This sometimes will "reseat" worn piston rings and reduce smoke out the tailpipe. It's not the best for engine bearings however. This was taught to me as an old-school trick for seating new rings in a rush. In that case though--the case being you gave a rat's ass about the engine and car--it was said that if the car died while adding Bon Ami you had to do another rebuild. Have to say I never tried it. As far as the cedar log--in a great book by a pioneering motorcyclist who rode a Henderson four from NYC to LA in 1920--he had a problem with overheating and shattering rear pistons. When he was stuck out east of East Jesus without his spare piston, he whittled a stick and stuck it into the wrist pin hole. That kept his connecting rod riding up and down safely until he could cop another piston. As I remember he could get to the top end with the engine in the frame and removing the rod altogether meant yanking the engine.
69 would be different, most 68 cars had markers, 67 didn't. Pontiac made the rear ones look like Pontiac arrowhead logos, they're kind of cool. Most of the cob work I've done was just to get me home, like when I backed out of a parking spot a few weeks ago and then the linkage fell apart. It's still held together with some mechanic's wire, I drove the truck a little today. Still can't hardly get it into park, either.
The guy I bought my 57 Cadillac from bought it from Silvers auction at hot august nights, the engine had several broken pistons and anybody could see it needed a total rebuild . except him. someone had installed crankcase evacuators on the header pipes to pull the blow by into the exhaust. after I overhauled it I could not get it above 30 MPH and it sounded like a shop vac, the gook from the blow by had completely plugged up the mufflers and narrowed the pipes to half their inside diameter.
My neighbor took a rusted out trunk and laid some strips of wood down and then put tin strips over the top of it. He then splatter painted it and sold it that same day. saying the trunk was a little "soft" in some places.
My brother in law detailed cars on a lot, they had one come in full of sand. After an hour of vacuuming the owner of the lot brought out some black paint and had them color the sand...
Not a mechanical thing, but what about spreading baby oil all over the body to make it look like a new paint job to prospective buyers?
Heck, I have a car here that the lower quarter on one side if you look under you can see small 3-4 inch strips of galvanized tin riveted on which are coated with sculpted bondo on the outside. The wheel arches don't even match side to side, and I doubt a factory skirt will fit either one. Car has lead, bondo, rivets, and even has part of the floor patched with a sign.
Rub a ball of aluminium foil on rusty chrome then coat with rattle can gloss clear. Replace a cracked 327 piston with a 350 piston. A guy a work bought a 67 Nova that suposedly had a vette 327 with a 30-30 solid, just needs a carb rebuild to make 500 hp... it was a stock 307 that they had backed the rockers off to cover the sound of the rod knock. put a lug nut on top of a broken wheel stud and fill the center with weld. attach patch panels with pop revets, bondo and paint white. I have seen all kinds of 4x4 front end stuff welded back together, many buyers don't try 4x4 on a test drive. A friend wraped his leaking exhaust with duct tape, it lasted long enough to sell the car. 100% Power-Punch in noisy gear boxes or diffs. I bought a mustang once that the owner said the brakes were just rebuilt but not bled, so it pulls to the right a bit... the left front didn't even have a drum, just the hub and backing plate. The hardline had been pinched over so the other three would still kind of work.
The Jalopy Journal
