Whats some of the jury rig things you have done to cars?

I realy dont want to say, because now looking back on it, it was completely stupid, but it worked.

I had an old 79 Gm pickup truck 3/4 ton..
coming back from the west side of the state (michigan)
I saw something out of my side view mirror spinning across the lanes behind me, turned out to be a piece of one of the rear leaf springs.

I pulled over and me and a co-worker looked up under to see wtf was going on..turns out that some of the intermediate leafs were cracked and a few parts of the leaf came out of the pack

we had worked a full day and had a 3 hour or more ride home..like hell if we were going to sit stranded on the side of the road..(no cell phones in these days )

In the back of the truck was left over supplies from a job we had finished and cleaned up from..

we found a hank of #9 tie wire (not the wimpy 14 G shit)
with our pliers we tied up both spring packs as best we could to keep all the leafs to stay in the pack, and continued to drive home..mind you none of the pieces that came out were the ones held by the U bolts..but that was next to happen

Made it..the following monday took the truck to a spring place in detroit..they couldnt believe their eyes..and really thought i was pulling their leg when i told them how far it was driven like that

all i told them was..I didnt want to talk about it, just put new springs back there for me guys eh?

 

I remember one Sunday when I was a kid my dad took me fishing out in the middle of nowhere in his little Honda Civic. It was on the old county logging road, all dirt, that runs all the way to Canada I hear. We were done fishing and were headed home when my dad ran over a rock that was a little too tall for how short the car was and it ripped his exhaust down so it was plowing into the dirt and we slowed to a crawl and then a stop. We didn't have any tools or even a piece of wire and the sun was going down. We hadn't seen another car all day long either. I remember standing in the middle of the road and not seeing another car for as far as the eye could see and knowing it was 15 miles or more to the next paved road and even further until you hit civilization or even a place to borrow a phone.
My dad managed to get the car jacked up but no amount of shaking or swinging would get the muffler to just let go so we could at least make a noisy drive home. It was nearing dusk and in the distance, we could see some headlights approaching pulling a long dust cloud. An old man in a beat up old van slows down and pulls to the side. He hangs his head out the window and says, "Looks like you could use a coat hanger."
He gets out of the seat and crawls into the back and we can hear him banging around for a minute and when he pops back up in the driver seat he's holding a bent up old coat hanger. He handed it to my dad, smiled, and drove away. His taillights faded in the distance and my dad had the exhaust held up and out of the way by the time the sun finally went down.
I always wondered about that old man, where he was going and what he was doing and why he just happened to have a coat hanger when we needed one. Guess what I carry in my truck?

 

Quote:Originally Posted by Sam F.
what does "jury rig" mean?

do you mean 'JERRY RIG",,i am strongly offended by that since i'm half black...

Wouldn't 'JERRY RIG" be more offensive if you were half german? LOL

 

Then there are those of us named Jerry

 

Had the throttle cable break leaving a show one day. I took some electric wire I had in the tool box and tied the one end to the linkage on the carb ran it through a hole in the firewall and tied it loosey to the steering wheel so I could find it after shifting gears. (Stick shift truck)

Trying to work the throttle with your hand is hard to do. It got me home.

 

I'm honestly shocked I am not dead or crippled after some of the stupid shit I have done.[/QUOTE]


my buddies and I where talking about that same thing last night, not a one of is blind , crippled , or dead (yet)

 

Twenty five years ago my son and I were driving from Tempe AZ to Phoenix International Raceway (as spectators) when the fan belt in my Toyota pickup let go...

I tied a piece of clothesline rope around the pulleys -- crank, water pump and alternator -- snugged a square knot in it and cut the ends short.
We made it to the races, and back home no problem.

Replaced it with a real belt later but I saved that fanbelt, uh rope, for a few years after that.....

Oh want to edit for an experience with a Japanese motorcycle in the 1960s, which I drove to work every day.
One day on the way to work the clutch cable broke. No jury-rig... didn't need a clutch... rev the motor, drop it, shift. Same thing on the way home... good thing there was no full stop on the back road....

 

Kerouac lives !!

 

Me and my brother were on our way back from Dallas about 20yrs ago. My dads 1963 D-100 Dodge truck windshield wipers broke and it had just started to snow. So we took our shoelaces and tied them to the wiper blades and with the windows cracked, we had one on each side and pulled them back and forth to work the blades. We made it home. Hilarious!

 

Back when I was 20, we had my 62 Impala out at a party in the woods and were doing some serious drinking on a Saturday night. Somehow I poked a stick through the radiator, so here we are, AFU with a hole in the radiator. We looked in the trunk and I had a tube of silicone caulk but no caulking gun. We also had a box of wooden matches. So we cut open the tube of caulk and cut the heads off the matches. I stuck the match sticks tightly in the hole and then packed the area with silicone from both side. We then went back to the party in the woods. The darn patch held for 2 years.

 

when i was a kid late 60s me ,my dad & a couple his buddys coming back from indy to northern illinois, my dads buddy tow car lost oil pressure and started knocking so they unloaded my dads 57 chevy gasser [sbc hilborn inj 4sp]and jury rig the trailer to the push bar and loaded the tow car onto the trailer. it seemed to take for ever to get home we had to fill the moon tank i think a million times but it was fun

 

Stock 1947 Chevy 4 dr. Sedan, broken motor mounts, 2X4 & rope, middle of winter, going over Stevens pass to see my girlfriend in Seattle.............................

 

Back in the early 80's I broke a throttle cable in my 75 chevy p/u coming home from NY state after a day racing motocross, pulled the throttle cable out of the race bike and hooked it to the carb and used a pair of vise grips as a hand throttle to go the 75 miles to get home,still have the cable and carry it as a spare just in the tool box just in case.....Rich

 

The worst I ever did -
'68 Chevy van in my ex-wifes yard, right behind my ex-father in laws house. Carb was clogged up, so I took off the engine cover , rigged a fuel line up to me, and pinched and opened with needle nose pliers as needed to keep it running, --so I could drive it home. Stuck in first gear of all things. Can't remember if it had brakes.

Glad the timing was spot on.

 

OkC Fairgrounds had a rule -all race cars MUST HAVE a tow truck in front of them!

One time some guys had the engine blown in the truck they used to get there.

Solution- rig a tow bar on the front of the race car, and push the truck to the speedway! Man in front steers, man in back pushes with the modified.

Yes, they went home later that night the same way.

 

Driving back to the base after a weekend's leave - 350 miles away. Driving my 70 Opel Kadette twin carbs 1.1 liter four speed rear drive 4 snow tire 40 gallon gas tank - this was my energy crisis vehicle.

Blew a radiator hose on the super slab. Cleaned the hose with gasoline, taped it up with self-vulcanizing tape, and - damn - no water. But I had lunch. Poured in a couple of cans of Coca Cola. Not enough. Took a leak into the radiator. Got me back to the base on time. Drained and refilled the rad a week later. That hose lasted for years afterwards, like 250,000 miles more.

 

Vise grips instead of a steering wheel.

 

Me and a couple buddy's were out tooling around on motorsickles, stopped for gas and a smoke, heard this god awful racket. Sounded like an airplane flying flatout, 10 feet off the deck. soon we see this chevy pickup towing an airboat, only there was someone sittin in the boat and the prop was spinning.

they pull into the station, fill the truck up with gas and both pile into the truck and take off. I guess they had run out of gas in the truck and used the corvair powered boat to shove it a couple miles to the station.

 

49 Dodge, upstate NY in the Catskills chasing skirt, climbed the mountain too hard and a rod started knocking.

Straddled a ditch. Dropped the pan, leaving the oil in it - did not spill too much.

Opened the rod caps. Took some tin foil from my lunch. Pressed it flat on the trunk lid. Folded it four times and put some between each rod bearing insert and the cap/rod. Tightened up the caps, oil pan back on (spilled a little more). Tried to start the motor - too tight. Let the car roll down the hill - god bless fluid drives - and the engine turned over. As soon as it started the motor loosened up enough. Good oil pressure. Got to the skirt, drove all weekend, and then back downstate with no problems. Replaced the rod bearings with new ones about a month later.

 

My 1940 Pontiac me and my 3 buds put together in 1962. We dumped a 303" Oldsmobile into it.
The left hand motor mount was a log shoved between the exhaust manifold and the L.H. front frame rail with a heavy chain wrapped around it to hold it in place.
The selector shifter we converted to a floor shift using vice grips for reverse and 1/4 round tube curtain rod for the rest of the puzzle.
Depending on the season, yellow for spring or green for fall..........S&H store trading stamps for the annual lookalike inspection sticker.
WE thought we were the BOMB!

 

when i used to run slicks on my 55 driving it daily it would always blow the ujoint out after nailing second gear a half dozen times really getting on it. One day i ran to get tires at lunch and on the way back i got on it pulling out into the main road and when i hit second it blew the drive shaft out bangin around on the floor held up by the parking brake cable. After sitting for a half hour i said the hell with this i gotta go, so i tied the drive shaft in with 8gauge wire and limped it 4 miles down the road to a friends where i hammered in an extra ujoint and high tailed it back to work. I used to change those things allover the place with a wrench, hammer and parking block. wouldnt have it any other way.

 

I strarted my career of Alternative engineering with a Sunbeam Imp my Dad let me drive when I was 15 or so I broke the half shat coupling a rubber donut looking thing and with it broken you aint going anywhere so some wire from newspaper bundles I found on the side of the road (my younger brother had a paper route) I wired the coupling back together and got us fifteen miles back home. My wife and I were stationed in Germany in the mid to late seventys the points on our Volvo broke off one side So I Eye balled them back into close and we made it about ten miles back to the house we weree living in at the time were I put in new ones and reset the timeing I blew a line on my Citroen DS 21 and it promptly sat on the ground I had to dig a hole in the dirt so I could get in close enought to cut the line in half and slip on a fitting to fix it with lucky for me this happened at a junk yard in Kaiserlautern cuase everything I need to fix the car with was found in the trunks of cars in the junk yard.

I have aslo done my fair share of Jesus clips and shoe string fixes I have used weed eater string so manny times thant it is something i carry any more along with Duct Tape and a Swiss Army Pliers.

 

Some twenty odd years ago I owned a breathed upon Vauxhall Chevette ( I know it's OT) . The viscous hub for the mechanical fan packed up also taking out the water pump, which was quickly and easily replaced, as it was winter at the time cooling was not an issue neither during the summer living in a fairly rural area, holiday time comes around and with a few friends we decide to travel to East Anglia, as far as you can travel eastwards in Britain, I live on the West coast. My holiday with a fully loaded car and no cooling fan, long designated to the spares box in the boot, coinsided with the hottest day of the year, and the busiest Bank Holiday Weekend traffic, Motorway Crawling around Birmingham's Spaghetti Junction mostly stop start traffic, then via Leicester City Centre even worse hold ups and traffic. I didn't dare stop the engine as it was an absolute pig to get going when hot, tempreature guage climbing, I survived by having the heater on flat out intermittently with the booster fan running, to let some cooler water back into the engine, the car interior being the heat soak. It was a rare for the UK, 100 degree plus day, with the heater on in the car it was even warmer. We were fortunate enough to make it to our destination without overheating the engine, with the exception of having spent a day in a mobile sauna. Te fan was not replaced for another couple pf years until I eventually sold the car.
So guy's if it gets hot open the windows and use the heater matrix as a auxilliary radiator, an easy but very uncomfortable fix.

 

Another little episode, just a year or so little earlier than the "in car sauna" with another OT car, I was travelling to a show some 200 miles from home and British miles are a lot further than American Miles due to the twists and turns encountered on our A and B roads, and prior to any dual carriageway or euroroute being built in North Wales, I had travelled some 100 miles from home very early on a Sunday morning, no businesses used to open then on a Sunday in rural areas.

I could smell something funny, so I decided to pull over and have a look, I tried to depress the clutch pedal to down shift, the pedal was on the floor, anyway I pulled in at the side of the road popped the bonnet open and saw the electrical wires burning from the back of the alternator, I pulled the live off the battery some how it was very hot, rushed to the boot pulled out a gallon of water meant for the radiator and poured it over the wiring and extinguished the fire. What to do next? no mobile phones then, I investigated further found the clutch cable had snapped and somehow had found it's way into the back of the alternator causing it to short out. I found some wire in my tool box wired the car ignition, directly from the battery, no switch, push started the car and drove home with no clutch, luckily it was quiet and I was able to anticipate hold ups in the traffic. I have read somewhere that car ownership has trebled in the UK and the volume of traffic has increased correspondingly since the 1970's so I doubt very much if I could have made that clutchless journey today.

 

WIRING FIRE!

A number of years ago when the kids were getting to be just about driver's license age, I bought an old Buick to sacrifice.

Once I took them to the store, and when we came out to the parking lot, I noticed smoke coming out from under the hood. After making sure there weren't flames ready to rush out at me, I raised the hood to see the alternator smoking pretty good.
I tried to unhook a battery cable, but they were on too tight.
I thought that since it was only a hot alternator that was discharging the battery from some internal short, I had time to go back into Sears and purchase a wire cutter.

I came back out with the wire cutter pliers to cut the output-to-battery wire.
The car was a whole lot smokier, and a few people came to watch.
As I neared, I could see a few flames start, and a fire truck rounding the corner.

I clipped a few wires and shot the fire extinguisher at the burning wires to put them out.
The fire truck didn't have to do anything, but wanted in on the action anyway. It took a bit of angry persuading for him not to put on a show and douse the car. He was mad, but he stepped back.

After the event was over and spectators wandered off, I went back inside the store and bought some wire, tape and a carpet knife.

Right there in the parking lot with my stranded kids watching, I wrapped a few melted wires that were salvageable, then patched and twisted a few more that needed help.
All this with the whole engine covered in the fire extinguisher chemicals coating everything.

After a few minutes all that was left to keep it from running were the three melted plug wires.

I patched the three plug wires by cutting away the burnt areas so I had three stubs of wire on three spark plugs, and several inches of plug wires coming from the distributor with a large gap between.

Well, you're gonna laugh, but a few lengths of doubled up speaker wire and lots of electrical tape made a few patches to get spark to the plugs again as long as I kept the wires suspended by tape to make sure they didn't lay on anything the spark could jump to. (spider web hammock made from electrical tape to suspend the rigged-up wires above any metal)

It fired up and we drove home!

As long as I put it on the battery charger after every errand and at night, the dead alternator didn't matter all that much, so we kept on driving it.

It was a real mess under the hood, but the AC and lights still worked fine, so I drove it like that for about three or four weeks until I had the time to put a new trans in the Stude and send the Buick to the crusher.

 

Ok, I just got out of the navy back in July of 73, in Mayport Fla, headed back to SoCal, in a 67 Ford Econoline Van,, It had a cable for the accelerator, from the pedal to the engine that you sit next to,, anyway it broke, and I was in Alabama somewhere... I had a long way to go to get home,, I had limited resources and tools, so I took the choke cable and it was missing the knob, so I put a pair of vice grips on it and used it for the go 'handle' until I got home.. listened to Allman Brothers band on an auto reversing cassette deck most of the way too.. ahhh memories.

 

`66 Triumph Spitfire/Broken muffler hanger/Jumper cables clamped into tailpipe-slammed the trunklid....Drove it that way for 3 months.

 

Ding Dong tinfoil on Tom's Fun Run on my "traditional" hot rod."Old p o s" was what I got from my wife. Lesson #1, Hostess can fix fuse problems!

 

`73 Gremlin /Blown donut gasket on exhaust manifold (developing theme??) Made a "rope" from aluminum foil/stuffed it in the opening/stainless worm clamp around the joint...Drove it like that `til I scrapped it for beer money.