Extreme "get home" repair...lets hear 'em

[sixsix]

oof

Haha, I owned 2 MGs - never had to do that to get home. $10 and the girl pushed the B home.

... and you take care of the Explicit What-not - oops !

[DriveDog]

Had just left on a 6 hour trip with new GF to get a new bonnet for my GT6. Bent one was coat hanger-wired on. After the engine warmed up it still wanted the choke. Eventually I pulled off and unwired the wrecked bonnet and saw that the PVC hose had rotted off and it was sucking air into the intake from behind the carbs. Oops. I had nothing. But a ball point pen, that is, which i jammed in. Wired the bonnet back on, proceeded on to get my new bonnet and swap them, and made it back, no problem. The only comment GF made was "Are you just gonna leave that junk here?", referring to the old bonnet lying beside the car as I fired it up to head home.

[Leeann_93]

My FIL had a Singer Gazelle convertible. Two miles from town, he ran out of gas (it got 40 mpg). While looking through the backseat and trunk to find a suitable container to put some gas in, he found a pint container of windshield washer additive. It said "CAUTION–-FLAMMABLE".

Leon said, "huh" and, very, very carefully, poured what he could into the primaries on the carb and drove it to the gas station two miles down the road.





I should explain that Leon was a mechanic. He could make anything run. Anything. Cars, trucks, tanks, boats, motorcycles, anything. His father was Jonathan Maxwell's personal machine shop apprentice and helped carry him out of the house when he died. Don't know who Jonathan Maxwell was? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_automobile

Leon was the first mechanic who took apart a Corvair engine. He worked for a dealer at the time and had to show the factory representative what was wrong with it (bosses in the crankcase weren't drilled - the bare castings hadn't been finish machined on that block but no one at GM could figure out why that engine had to be replaced under warranty). He was an automatic transmission expert when no one understood automatics, too (I still think they're voodoo).

[Old Barney]

My father had a '40 ford dump truck and a 48 car. Both flat heads had the fuel pump mounted to the oil filler pipe on the very back of the motor. Actuated by a push rod in a cup on the end of the pump lever, I seem him cut a piece of his belt off stuck that in the fuel pump lever cup. both lasted years that way.
Another time his '55 chevy 6 had a rod knocking he removed the pan while soaking a piece of his belt in the oil again. He removed the loosest rod cap removed the incerts trimmed to fit leather tightened the rod cap and drove that car another year. Never owned a torque wrench.

[stent]

coming back from spring break in florida in days of old in a friends flat front chevy van. 250 inline 6 began overheating, we pulled in to an auto parts store parking lot, figured out that the harmonic balancer rubber ring rotted & the outer metal balancer ring which was also the fan belt pulley was not turning the water pump/alternator (much). the loose pulley/ring didn't go into the radiator because of an unused bolt on pulley in front of the balancer. we took off the loose balancer ring, turned the front pulley around backwards so the dish was over the broken balancer hub, shimmed it with washers to line up with one of the water pump pulley's 2 grooves, got a short fan belt that was a jam fit/no adjustment/pryed it on with a screwdriver from crank to water pump, got another short fan belt for the other water pump pulley groove which lined up with the alternator & off we went for the price of some washers & 2 fan belts. the extra pulley groove that got us home must have come from the smog pump that everyone threw in the trash, thanks GM!. back at school my friend had a new balancer put on at the school's auto mechanics program's shop and they turned the front pulley back around but left the fan belts the same way as we rigged it....

[Rod's Trucks]

Back in the 1970's I was doing winter car rallies Canada. The event was called 'Thunderbird Winter Rallye'; and ran in early February in lower and middle parts of British Columbia.
My 'ride' was a hopped up VW beetle. In the middle of one cold snowy winter night we started smelling hot oil. Pretty soon it was a serious stink. We had a brief bit of time to stop, so we got out to check, and there was engine oil all over the motor, and dripping in the snow.
During the last engine work, an external oil cooler was added. It was located between the upright fan housing and the rear firewall, and the oil was fed to and from it by hoses.
One of the hose lamps had somehow worked loose, and the leak location was in an impossible spot to get to without pulling the motor in any normal situation.
I used a hatchet to cut an access hole in the rear firewall ( behind the back seat) , to get at the hose clamps. That made it a easy to get to, and tighten, the hose clamps. We discovered there was a major wiring harness across the middle of that firewall, on the motor side. It was under some heavy heat and noise deadening insulation.
Slicing through those wires was a big surprise, and splicing enough of the the wires back together to get us running probably took us longer than cutting the hole and fixing the leaking hose.
We still finished the event well ahead of some of the other competitors.
Sorry, there was no time for pictures....
Rod J

[stent]

Back in the 70's ...... I used a hatchet.
Sorry, there was no time for pictures.... :

update :

[N6KB]

Some time around 1980 I drove my 1968 Ford Cortina to see the Rolling Stones at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, almost 300 miles from where I lived. The Cortina had a 12 Volt system using a Generator and Regulator, not an alternator. The generator had failed once before and it was expensive to replace, and also difficult to find a replacement generator. Somewhere in Marin the generator failed the morning of the Rolling Stones concert. I did not want to chance the battery lasting long enough to get over the Golden Gate Bridge and to the concert. I did not have a battery charger and I really, really, really did not want to pay whatever towing charge and other fees would be incurred by getting stuck on the bridge. So I parked the car and me and my girlfriend hitchiked to the show. The next day was a Sunday. We hitchhiked back to the car and fortunately there was an auto parts store open not too far away. Of course that generator was unobtainium. I bought a replacement alternator for a Toyota which was pretty easy to mount on the engine with the same brackets that had held the generator in place. The only problem was the pulley mounted directly onto the alternator was about two inches out of line with the other pulleys the belt had to run through. I bought a stack of flat washers and some long bolts that fit the alternator hub threaded holes. Spaced the pulley out with the washers, put on the belt and drove back home. It worked so well I continued to drive the Cortina that way for another few years.

[Rein]

Just stumbled onto this thread and thought I’d add my own 2020 Thanksgiving day story.

Years ago I was helping my younger sister and her boyfriend move from one apartment in Boston to another right near Fenway Park. We were making multiple trips with my Dodge B250 (sorry, can’t remember whether it was the first or second Dodge B250 I owned, or even what year it was…) (hey, at least I remember the story!). Anyhoo, the van started dying at stoplights (there were a lot of them!). It’d start up again but just got worse and worse until finally it wouldn’t start without a push. We figured that it must be the generator on its last legs. Hector was very mechanical and I always had some tools, jumper cables and a tow chain in the vehicle so we did a little snooping around and determined that the generator brushes were right down to the metal connecting strap thingies. (Some terminology!) Hector asked for a pencil and proceeded to break it apart so we could stuff the pieces of pencil lead (compressed graphite, the same stuff used to make generator/alternator brushes) into the brush holes. See where I’m goin’ with this? Got the generator caps back on and he and I pushed while my sister bump-started the van. Voila! Worked like a charm! After that the battery got charged up enough to start the van on its own again. To be honest, I don’t even remember if/when I actually got replacement brushes for that generator, this fix worked so well.

I have to say, I still like generators more than alternators.

Eventually I determined I didn’t need such a large van and did a lot of research to determine the next smaller size van that folks said lasted a long time. That’s when I got my first Safari, a used ’88. The rest is Astro/Safari history.