Since ive joined ive found myself turning on the computer while my coffee is brewing then sittin down and reading the post.i ve been a maint. Mechanic in a bakery for 25 years they say if it werent for duct tape and tie wires our bakery would fall apart.ive been looking for a thread where you can post some of the quick repairs that have been made til you had time to repair.ive heard stories of panty hose for fan belts.shoe strings for windshield wipers etc.ill start, about 8 years ago i was building my dirt track car motor it was friday and we raced saturday.i was running out of time, money, and patience.tightening the last head bolt it stripped.i tried tapping hole for heli coil no help ruined bolt hole(heads still on motor)i was determined to make this work.i took a drill oversized hole where head bolt would slide in.removed a freeze plug, taped the bolt to a coat hanger,stuck it through the water jacket and stuck it in the drilled out hole from the bottom.put a nut on it and raced saturday.i ran that motor for 3 years like that.well thats enough from me take a few minutes tell your story (maybe you were broke down had to get car home).fact; we are only allowed to use duct now if we write the date on it with a permanent marker.
A number of years ago, I popped a rear brake hose on my beater. I clamped on a pair of Vise grips so I could get home. I continued on with the day and forgot about it. Four years later, when I scrapped it, and the scrapyard loader picked it up, I noticed them still doing duty on the backend. Nothing is as permanent as a termporary repair. *Note* I wouldnt reccomend this repair for obvious safety reasons, but we have all done something dumb, right?
Temporary repairs always seem to end up being permanet. I had a friend that used to have a 69 Ford truck. We put a new 351 in it when the 302 died. Well I helped do the install but that was it. When I came back the next week to check out his progress he had removed all the wiring for some reason so he was trying to make everything work again. Well he ended up wiring the brake lights up to a standard house light switch and when he'd hit the brakes he would flip the light switch to turn the lights on. The other thing he had in that truck was a straight rod right through the floor to put it in gear and a coat hanger hooked up to the passing gear. What a mess. He ended up killing it up in the woods and had to leave it there and it got stripped bare but the light switch stayed there for some reason.
I fixed a radiator leak on my 32 pickup in the parking lot of a Hardware store with good old JB weld while on Americruise lasted the entire trip.
Kelly, I have to go you one better on radiator fix. Many years ago I sprung a radiator leak & needed a quick fix to get home. In desperation I tried a something a friend told me about, It's weird, but it worked. I went into a grocery store & bought a loaf of rye bread, took one slice, wet it with the leaking water, made a 1/2 inch ball of wet dough and jammed it into the leak. It turned into cement. Lasted about a year. I know, it sounds crazy, but it's true.
i bought a ford courier pickup many years ago after a year of driving i was going to work in downtown atlanta it caught on fire.had it towed to my dads junkyard .apparently the guy i got it from lost the nut on the hot wire on the starter and put vise grips on it.they viberated down up against gas line and arced.my permenant repair was i put rubber hose over gas line and taped up the handles on the vice grips.when the motor finally went years later i scraped it and ended up with a nice pair of vice grips.matter of fact used them this morning
Duct tape saved a space shuttle mission, so Ive been told by workers at the Cape. I'm not making this up.
cinemon-cinamon or how you spell it to fix radiator leak works i have tried. Horse shit o fix same leak.. no i havent tried that Soap to fix a leak in the tank gets rock hard with contact of fuel-tried that it works One time i replaced the fanbelt on a Galaxie with a nylonrope from the neck of a dead cow...no im not lying had to drive min 60 mph to cool at 65 the rope jumped of. third time the rope jumped it riped out the cables to the head lights found a piece of cable got one lowbeam to work then i almost hit a moose at 60 mph .....well then the girls we had with us just had enough hahahaha newer heard of hem again so atleast that was a permanent fix
We were riding in a friends 64 chev on a Saturday night going to a race 70 miles from home. A wheel came loose and broke 4 of the 5 studs. We knocked a stud out of each of the other wheels to replace the broken ones so we had 4 studs on each wheel.
I had a 1953 chevrolet 235 6 cylinder back in the earley 60's and was up in the mountains at Big Bear lake in So. Cal. when the top tank seam on the radiator started leaking bad. I went to a gas station to get some stopleak. The station didn't have anything but gas and oil but the attendant sugested that I go to the little convenience market in Fawnskin on the north shore and buy a can of ground pepper and pour it into the radiator. I put it in and added water with the engine running untill the leak stopped. The pepper filled the crack and swelled up and stopped the water from leaking. I had that car for 3 or 4 more years and never did have the radiator fixed properly. If it don't leak don't fix it. The radiator always smelled like pepper so every time I checked the water I was reminded that I should fix it right. I sold the car to a cousin who drove it for several more years and then gave it to a forign exchange student friend who took it to Mexico. Several years ago I asked my cousin if he ever fixed the radiator he said why was there something wrong with it? Dick
I was on a trip from Florida to New England and at about 2:AM some where in North Carolina when I started hearing ticking noses coming from the engine in my truck so I pulled over to the side of the highway in some really tall grass and with a flash light took a look. A long bolt from an air pump was trying to come out but each time the fan would nick it and push it back in the hole. I tried for about 30 minutes to line it back up in the dark and finally said give me the roll of duck tape. I wrapped the duck tape around the entire pump and continued on heading up north. After reaching our destination my son asked me if I was going to fix it! I took one look at it and said No I will fix when we are back in Florida!!!! Thank God for duct tape because it has saved many of us over the years along with JB Weld.
The Jalopy Journal
