I'd just about bet that came off a 47/54 Chevy pickup with a small block in it that didn't get the steering moved over and inch and a half. Kind of glad that JD Fikes didn't think of that when he helped me put the 283 in my 48 in the 70's.
I was just looking at this post at work, unfortunately when someone walked by and saw this. Well, what does it look like from ten feet away?
When a loaf of bread was five cents and you didn't have five cents you sure as hell wasn't gonna buy a new pipe. Lippy
Wife had a coworker wreck an OT truck on the way to work. I bought it over the phone. It was parked in a restaurant parking lot where it was pushed after the wreck. The radiator was knocked back into the engine. I pulled the radiator support forward and removed the radiator. Me and a friend used pliers and pinched off all the damaged flues, then stood on it to straighten it. Put 100k on that radiator. Never leaked a drop.
No Sir I do not just copied the picture and it may not have been here. I thought. WOW! Using square tube to reroute a free flowing exhaust and then to top it off 90 Degree bends in it.
Just this last October I was bringing a load of junk / valuable treasures back from the Kootenays to the Coast when I lost one of the four cylinders due to a bad spark plug wire. Luckily I had some rusty steel wire amid the junk, and a bit of surplus vacuum hose from the engine to insulate it where it drooped over the air cleaner snorkel. The secondary carb barrel was gummed up tight so I couldn't even limp up the mountains on three cylinders: It worked fine, I'm still driving it around town procrastinating fixing it "properly".
Actually that's not rope, it's called "mule tape" used by electricians to pull huge cables into conduits. The smallest size mule tape is rated 5,000 ft. lbs. tensile strength, and that big stuff is over 15,000 lbs. tensile strength. Used a ton of it as an electrician on large commercial jobs, and it got tossed at the end of the single use, so I took it home. I've pulled cars with it, and kept some in my trunk for emergency use. Probably a pretty solid temporary repair to move a car at low speeds, for short distances.
I was out water skiing with a buddy and we hit something and broke the shear pin in the prop. We were a long, long way from the dock at the other end of the lake. I got in the water, removed the prop and what was left of the shear pin. I put the prop back on, pushed the shear pin all the way to one end so it was catching the prop and filled the rest of the hole with bubble gum. We idled back to the dock with no problem.
My Dad did a "make do" fix about 30 years ago on my Uncle's OT rig. Uncle George showed up in our driveway with a terrible rod knock in the SBC. Dad pulled the offending rod cap off and used a mill bastard file on the cap to tighten it up about "that much". That and new bearing halves and bolts and Dad told him it'd be good enough to limp home ~ 100 miles. It did. Then survived for decades after that. True story.
I have a ball point pen spring still in a Rochester 1bbl from over 20 years ago. Installed it on the side of the road.
I had a muffler fall off an old beater I used to drive, and couldn't stand listening to the rumble it made in the interior. I grabbed an old 4" downspout, slipped it over the broken off pipe, and wired it into place dumping out in front of the passenger rear wheel. It was still loud as hell but at least the interior didn't have that annoying rumble inside. Ran it for a couple of weeks that way. Yeah, my thought too. No shit!
Have been caught to many times coming home from a race night with something falling off a wrecked race car or the trailer but the most memorable was coming into NY from PA, Johnny Law flashed us over. We had no tail lights so we were driving faster than everyone so they didn't need to see them. He didn't see the humor but allowed us to go to the truck stop to get lights. We bought 2 flash lights, put red plastic over the lenses duct taped them to the bumper and were back out in the hammer lane.
I've had a pen spring in the carb on my 63 Falcon for a few years now, I forgot until I read your post.
I remember my uncle Rudy, who was a child of the depression, had a Chrysler product car that had a bearing knock. About once a month he would jack the car up in his car port, pull the oil pan off, and install a piece of old leather belt in the bearing shell. It would last about a month until the next time.
Back in the late 50s my dad said that his 1st car, a Model T developed a bad rod knock. Being low on $$$, he cut a piece of leather and made a "bearing" insert which lasted a long time.......he passed in 1998; i wonder how many other "make do" repairs he came up with that i never heard about.
My dad used to always talk about using pieces of Bacon Rind to wrap around worn out main bearing in Model A's and such.
Those main/rod bearing mods must have been a popular fix because my dad told me his uncle who was a mechanic back in the 1930s & 40s had done the same thing.
I have heard of the leather strip fix before about 50 years ago but never heard of the Bacon Rind fix. It is surprising what can be done when necessity dictates.
Beer cut to shim a hammerin rod bearing to get you home. Did this to lawnmower and it lasted a season
A hinged muffler. Well, we're getting even closer to the ever elusive muffler bearing. Keep searching, lads!
Just in case the hinge on the muffler wasn’t enough entertainment, the brazed-on plumbers tape patching what must be a hole tops it off.
That poor bastard with the heart pacemaker still clutching his chest when you drive by, or did he finally expire?
I never thought of that... I hope I didn't cause any more medical distress than giving high blood pressure to other motorists whose radios went crazy. And I rebuilt the carb a week ago - the secondary throttle was stuck shut. Now I have twice the power!
The Jalopy Journal
