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

1976 in Vegas for the sun sin and tin run temp about 105 melted the plastic line for the oil pressure, shot oil everywhere before i got motor shut off... took the brass fitting out of the block and stuck chewing gum up in the brass fitting drove it to auto parts store and bought a copper line...

 

had a 77 firebird,brake lights didn't work so i wired them up with a toggle switch,hit the brake and hit the toggle

 

had a guy show up wantin somethin fixed on his old Toyota crown...we opened the bootlid (trunklid ) to find the floor was so rusted he had laid a concrete fence post longitudinally in place and attached the rear leaf spring to it with fencing wire!! couldn't believe our eyes...

 

Bought a 1960 chevy viking big truck 2 hours from home, ran good, no brakes though....

I swapped the brakes to the clutch master cyl, fired it up and headed home . all went well till we swapped drivers after lunch. he forgot the clutch pedal ran the brakes and tried to clutch on a downshft. That got his attention!


we stopped at napa and picked up a master cyl. rebuild kit . Turned out to be a good truck , goofy torsion bar front end though.

 

Put pepper in the leaking radiator of an old Ford to get it home....it actually worked.

 

drove the 51' to BTT50's show in St.Paul a few years ago (around 600 miles from home) had oil mist'n all over the firewall out of the breather on the valve cover, these were the old style Cal Custom covers with no baffles. Hit the hotel parking lot cleaned the sprayed oil up, next day found a vendor that was selling breathers with the tube on it, found some hose, empty beer bottle, zip tied the bottle to the inner fender well and ran the hose from the breather to the bottle, worked great! Kinda like an overflow for oil! The next week I removed the valve covers and made some baffles, took care of the problem!

 

ok , i know this car is o/t but .... after owning this thing for 35 years i can tell plenty of stories . i had owned the r/t about 8 months , im 18 years old and my brother and i had put a new coat of paint and dolled up the old 440 during the winter . i take a ride (by the way , im very proud and plenty psyched ) to the local micky-d's to check out the crowd . back in the day this place was packed with all kinds of hot rods and muscle cars . lots of my friends were there , including some not so much - firends , if you know what i mean . our guys were the small town "farmers" and the others were the big city (30,000 population lol) kids with big $ hotrods , big block chevelles , camaros etc.... we on the other hand were the mopar guys . so , as i was leaving , i decided to lean on the big block 4 speed as i pulled out , i did a little side step action and nailed the pedal , things were looking pretty fine up until the throttle returned to an idle . shit-shit-shit , throttle cable broken , sitting on the far right lane of 4 lanes at a complete stand still , in front of all to see . i pulled the lowe back seat up and ripped the speaker wire to my mind blower speakers out , opened the hood and tied one end to the carb and ran the remainder through the cowl venting , into the drivers window , off i went , tail between my legs . what a bitch it was to drive that 4 speed while using the "drive by wire " i still laugh everytime i think about it .

 

once driving my 55 chevy from n. minnesota to arizona I had the generator mount bracket bust on me just south of the twin cities and lost my charging. stopped at a gas station and picked up a u bolt bracket and a ratchet strap.. mounted the u bolt on the wheel well and wrapped the strap around the generator and tightened it up....(little story about a couple lisbians at this point also-but I wont go into that here)got me all the way to casa grande like that

 

I had a guy passing through stop in my shop with the harmonic balancer wobbling on an old Wagoneer. The end of the crank was all screwed up too. I told him he needed a new crabkshaft. He asked if there was anything we could try that might get him home to Wisconsin. I lined it all up and welded the harmonic balancer to the crankshaft. He stopped in a couple years later to tell me it was still running, no problems.

 

When I used to run slicks on the street I blew the drive shaft out, got out tied it back in to the rear with ten gauge wire and made it all the way home. Another time time I changed my u joint with a 99 cent wrench and a ball ping hammer with the wife and kids in the kmart shopping center. The best though is when I blew it my first night in ocean city and hiked to the only parts store in oc called Western Automotive, a small mom and pop place, with my drive shaft over my shoulder. The old guy let me press a new one in with his bench vise and then I hiked several blocks back to my car with a drive shaft on one shoulder and a case of trans fluid on the other. After all that I was 21 at the time, with a girlfriend, who ten years later is my wife and my baby girl who rode around after that all weekend and then followed her brother pullin his trailer queen a 175 miles all the way home on cheater slicks, I had a shit eating grin every time I passed him and his trailer.

 

One of the gang who lived up in Yountville had a '56 Chebbie, and of course they had watched "Two Lane Blacktop" too many times, so it had those twist-in spring spreaders in the front to raise it up, and the required 350 two-bolt, camel hump, 2x4 tunnel with a potato cam special in it. The boys just had to make the cruise on Saturday night, and did.. We got to looking, and the 5 minute throttle linkage was a foot and a half of- toilet chain.. From then on, anything seriously rigged was termed "real Yountville"
And then, the REST of the story-
Had a couple buds in the 70's who were into Cobras and GT40's and such in a big way, and had a business working on them. So they were moving the shop from Concord to Vallejo, and got down to the last car on Sunday with no trailer, a pretty robust genuine 427 Cobra with a 447ci stroker engine in it, known as "the red car". The engine had just been freshened, and everything was done except the gas tank hadn't come back yet- so they come up with "the plan". Heckle & Jeckle rig up some heater hose over the fuel line and clamp it together, which gets them up big enough to stick a big funnel into the end of the heater hose, and run it to the passenger seat. Then they talk Jeckle's cousin into riding in the passenger seat with Heckle driving, with a 5 gallon can and the funnel, and off they went, Hwy 680, over the bridge to 780, Columbus Parkway to 37 to the shop, with Jeckle following in the pickup with a second can of gas. True story, no BS

 

Not car realted but I have seen some interesting fixes involving duct tape, sticks, mountain dew bottles, zip ties, and other random items to get snowmobiles back to the trucks.

 

had a 55 ford victoria in the 70's with a 352 in it leaked oil to beat the ban. I was about 16 at the time and my money went in the gas tank , no $ for oil, well the old man han some gallon jugs of linseed oil in the shop so what the hell I topped her up. that old ford smelled like a painters truck going down the road for a couple weeks and quit leaking. I was suprised it held together oil is oil right!well I decided to pull a valve cover off it one day, it took a crow bar to get it off , the linseed oil had built up a layer all thru the block and glued it together.

 

I've been accused of riggin' things,many of times but none have been as hardcore as some of you out there,or at least I can't remember
The last one was using a big ass hose clamp to hold up my friends glass-pack he ripped off his nova.He was trying to make it to the liquor store for beer before they closed n hit a speed bump WAAAY to fast

 

I've done the same thing... Haahaha

 

balancer broke off a $300 dollar SBC I bought for my car. It took the crank bolt with it. Pressed on a new balancer and tack welded it onto the crank snout. Lasted almost 2 years.

 

Was given a Tempest Station Wagon with a horrible seal leak in the transmission. As I was about to fill the transmission with ATF a friend said why put in 6 quarts of expensive ATF when all I was going to do was to drive it less than 5 miles to the shop and replace the thing. He told me to run the garden hose and fill the transmission with water. He said that there was enough ATF in it to lubricate all the parts. I did just that, it worked just fine. I replaced the transmission and flushed out the cooler lines and saved myself the cost of half a case of ATF.

 

driving to turkey run in daytona one year and got pulled over for not having trailer lights. It was too late to find parts store, so while my truck was running took my battery out and direct wired the taillights on trailer to my only batterym then strapped battery to trailer with bungee cord. Made it in to daytona with taillights but couldnt turn off my truck because battery was dead after lights drained it

 

Bob ran over a real big rock that rolled down hill in front of the motor home,took out all the gastank and with that the fuel pump out in nowere vill,so we had a extra gas can for the gen we held in the pass seat and rigged up a hose to the carb=gravity feed,to get in to a big town for a new tank.

 

My latest on my beater van was a couple of things. I wanted to put tires with actual tread on the front for the winter and I had a full set of nearly new LT285/80R16s or something like that, really big - the stock tire size on these is like a 235/75R16. So the big ones went on, but would rub the back of the wheel arch at the rocker if I turned them very far. Solution? I cut about 2 inches off the wheel well at the bottom, angled up towards the front, with the cutoff wheel, then painted the bare metal with some Rustoleum. Even managed to do it without having to take the mudflaps off.

Then, the parking brake stuck on on the right rear. I took the tire off and the damned drum is also stuck pretty good - going to need a big puller to get that bastard off. Cutoff wheel again - I cut far enough through the cable to get it to release, but not all the way. Now the inspection is due and it won't pass with it like that... so I cut a piece of old heater hose and slipped it on, with a couple cable ties to hold it in place and hide the cut in it. Will be interesting to see if that gets me by. They don't check it for operation usually, it just has to be there, if I could get the drum off I'd put another used cable on, but that's going to be an all day project.

And bear in mind this is a fairly rusty beater that eventually will rot to the point that it won't pass an inspection anymore, if gas doesn't get too expensive to drive it first. No sense in even spending money for used tires that fit it right, although I did try to find a pair first.

 

Back in the 80's I had the interior out of my Can-Am'd Corvair for a paint job (no dash, door panels, nuthin..)
Drove it to my girlfriends house sitting on a milk crate, my buddy behind me in his '68 Fairlane (after dark, he's got his headlights off.) He gets pulled for no headlights, I return from checking on my girl and stop to see what's up. Cops want to check my car since I stopped. Cops let us go after suggesting I upgrade to a lawn chair....

Shitfaced in New Orleans at 2am and my '80 diesel battlerabbit (several different color panels, no grill, $50.00 car..) shits a radiator hose. After searching around (staggering) decide there is no help to be had so I took the hose off with a leatherman tool and used an entire roll of electrical tape on the hose and left the cap loose so the cooling system wouldnt' pressurize. One of the others drove us back to Keesler AFB in Biloxi-90 miles. Have driven several cars with leaking cooling systems with the cap loose...

rubber floor mats and undercoating to fix rotten floors temporarily....

 

Does a wooden transmission mount count for anything?

 

hd a 62 chevy nova in high school (4 door 230 six 3 on the tree). took it to a family reunion. well the the trip started with you being able to rest your arm flat on the bottom of the window by the time i made it to the camp grounds my elbow was at the top of my head. the floor support brace had broke and every time i hit a bump it would drag. had my buddy bring me his welder and i used a bottle jack to put the brace back in place and welded what was left up. held till i sold the car a year later.


had the battery cable on my ladys 1950 buick (still 6 volt) melt. used a set of jumper cables as a postive cable to get us home

 

went for a drive in my 55 pontiac, just made it over the golden gate bridge, heading to the warf. hit the brakes nothing. pulled over found the rear hard line to the drivers side axel and chaffed and had a crack. took the line off found a bumper bolt in the road box screwed it in to the distrabution block and made it home

 

used a shoe string (doubled) for a fan belt... it would turn the water pump but not the generator... got me home

 

Broke the alternator bracket on my sbc while cruising in chehailis. its amazing that with a bunch of ductape, it worked fine.

Had a 51 buick that had a broken tranny mount. Tranny dropped and it bound the linkage so i couldnt get a gear.

Fixed it with a 2x4 and a "borrowed" jack from schucks. ran like that till it broke again, and i replaced it with a nylon block.