Stupid, cheap repairs to get you down the road.

[SteveSS]

I've tied hoods down with bailing wire more than once. I even had one fly up in my face at highway speeds. Just eased it off the road and took out a speed limit sign. Flying down gravel roads with bald tires. Duct tape on radiator hoses. I've heard you can use a pair of panty hose for and emergency V belt. I've filled pop bottles with water to cool off rear wheels bearings.


We always had a ranch. I never lived on one but I had to work it all the time. In about 1972 my dad bought a 1956 Ford Pickup and told me if I painted it I could do whatever I wanted. I made it red with white to yellow flames. Blacked out the grill. I was 16 and thought it was cool. We had a rickety old stock rack that kinda-sorta fit the truck bed but not really. We drove to Oklahoma to pick up a Charolais bull. On the way back the front wheels barely touched the ground. We had to keep stopping to pour water on the rear wheel bearings. I makes me laugh to think of what a sight we made.

 

[bobtile]

I wasn't wearing any pantyhose when my v belts broke. Just my luck!

 

[AMX364]

I have used speaker wire for outside throttle control to get home. Have driven car at night with only one working headlight, after voltage regulator failed on max voltage and burned out ALL the lights. Had one bad headlight and had replacement in the car.

 

[the mississippi madman]

Tied my shoe string to a broken throttle cable on a pos truck I had one time and hand operated it. Polaris ranger front right ball joint pops in the middle of no where se Oregon, had my over weight friend and another guy hang off the left side to up right the ranger and hang on while I drive us several miles back to the truck on three wheels. Got the idea from watching these 4 little black kids steal a go kart from a hardware store in jackson, ms by taking the wheel off that had the cable ran through it

 

[Runner 68]

N2O as starter fluid. What a light show at 2:00 AM and 8 or 12 beers in.
Had to change header gaskets the next day...damn lucky we didn't blow the heads off of it... but she fired up (literally) and got us home.

 

[Meep-Meep]

I slit a piece of vacuum hose lengthwise and used it as a valve cover gasket on an old Mercedes. Help up for months with no leaks until I got the correct gasket.

Clutch linkage failures on various cars so I just shut it off before a light and put it in 1st. When the light turned green start the car in gear and shift without a clutch.

Starter went out on my old 68 Mustang 302 4 spd so I pulled it out on the side of the road and drove for a week without one. I was lucky to have the correct wrench in the trunk and avoided getting parked in.

Ran out of gas in a 70 Bug right on a freeway off ramp but the gas station was just around the corner. I was running low and was hoping to make that station but missed it by "THAT MUCH." Having no can I decided to put it in 1st and crank the starter (lesson from above). Off I went and even shifted into second while holding the key in crank mode. Shifted to third but that was too tall so back to second. At some point the slope of the ground changed and it found gas and started and I drove to the gas station.

Made a tool to change the distributor bushing in the hemi with the engine in the car.

That's all I can think of for the moment.

 

[440+6]

Had a 74 Torino and my shift linkage fell apart, so temporarily took the linkage off and left it in drive and disabled the neutral safety, got to like it so much I left it that way for the summer.
Nothing like mashing the gas and starting the car, instant burnout, I was in my early twenties.
Duct tape and bailing wire where used regularly and could repair anything.

 

[old_skool]

cereal box cardboard to repair leaky t-stat gasket to get me home....matchbook cover to re-adjust points gap....low beam burned out, unplugged them and used high beams, adjusted them downward.
shoestring to pull wiper blades....ziptied choke open....vice griped rear brake flex line when wheel cyl blew, drove home with good front brakes only....oh wait....you wanted to know what we did in the past, not our current situation:3gears:

 

[Bruzilla]

Mine is likely the stupidest ever. I was driving up I-95 in Virginia during a trip from Florida to Maryland in an 87 Dodge Charger 2.2 and the engine started running rough then cut out all together. I coasted off the highway and popped the hood and came to the conclusion that my fuel filter was clogged. I didn't have a spare, and with the in-line filter removed I didn't have enough fuel line to run from the pump to the fuel inlet. So I looked at the radiator overflow line and decided I would just pull that line off and use it as a gas line... I mean rubber tubing is rubber tubing right?

The engine starts right back up and we start up I-95 again. I should have gotten off at the next exit and gotten a filter, but the car was running fine so we kept going. About 30 minutes later I start getting faint whiffs of gas, but I figured a few drops must be leaking out of the hose ends... no big deal. Then a few minutes later I get a strong smell of gas, and decide to pull over again. I open the hood and that overflow tubing looked like a sprinkler hose! There was gasoline all over the engine, the underside of the hood, just everywhere, and that engine was hot as we had been driving for about nine hours by then. How that gas didn't catch fire I'll never know.

On the plus side, I figured I needed a way to clean out the fuel filter that was clogged, so I went MacGyver and took a big nail out of the tool box in the trunk, put it into the outlet end of the filter, then slipped it over the tire stem on the front tire and played with it until the nail pressed down the stem center and sent 32 lbs of air pressure shooting through the filter. It took a second but then a wad of crap came flying out and air was blowing out the other end. I put the filter back on, took my gallon of just-in-case water from the trunk and poured it over the engine and hood to get the gas off, and we started off again and made it the rest of the way.

 

[apostle228]

I had a radiator get a hole punched in it... A small one, just a pinhole, but enough to make it spray non-stop... I stuck a tooth pick in the hole and it didnt leak a single drop for over a year!

 

[1970GTX]

Had a '70 MGB. At each end of the intake manifold was a small frost plug. Mine blew out on one end. I had a bottle of wine in the car. Stuffed the wine cork in the manifold, drank the wine and drove home.

 

[khryslerkid]

Had a '70 MGB. At each end of the intake manifold was a small frost plug. Mine blew out on one end. I had a bottle of wine in the car. Stuffed the wine cork in the manifold, drank the wine and drove home.

Lol, yea you had to do something with the open bottle!

 

[Big Bad Dad]

I had to do the shoestring in place of broken throttle cable trick in a 65 New Yorker when I was a teenager.

A Buddy had a big Ford LTD overheating with a stuck thermostat late one freezing cold night. Only tool we had was a big screwdriver. We were able to R&R the hose clamp at the T'stat housing and used a big rock to drive the screwdriver through the T' stat and broke enough out to let us get home. Had to refill the radiator with some of our beer...........

 

[satman72]

Had a '70 MGB. At each end of the intake manifold was a small frost plug. Mine blew out on one end. I had a bottle of wine in the car. Stuffed the wine cork in the manifold, drank the wine and drove home.

Good thing you drank the wine. I don't know about BC, but here in Ontario, it's illegal to drive with an open container of alcoholic beverages in the car. Gotta stay legal.!!!

 

[Moparsmitty]

Had a fire under the dash of my 58 English Ford Anglia (yea, I know, surprise, surprise). Ran a wire from the battery to the hot side of the coil, push started 'er, and drove her back home.

 

[kb67mopar]

Radiator had a hole in a friends pickup and we lost all the coolant. The engine got so hot it siezed up and wouldn't start. (he didn't care about the POS) We stalled in the middle of no where but it was January and this was Michigan...Took the shovel from the bed and packed snow in the entire engine compartment around the block. Drove home and the temp light never came back on.

 

[idrivemopar]

I used a 1x2 for a tranny mount on a 73 Pinto, and a 2x4 and piece of concrete block to straighten out the starter after it got bent 90 degrees up from jumping it off a small cliff.

 

[Budnicks]

Great looking Bull there SteveSS, I had one, also a Charolais Bull in HS for a FFA & 4-H project named "Kevin" almost named him "Arnold" because he was so buffed, when he matured, But never hauled him around in an old pick up bed thou... 2000#+ would have been a site... LOL we raised Brangus & then we had Char-gus hybrids after wards, sorry no photos

- - - Updated - - -

I broke a coil-over shock in a ladder bar suspended V8 Vega I had in the late 70's, driving back from Fairfield street racing out @ Ball Cannery rd. out by Travis AFB, had to figure something out to get it off the side of the road, I wasn't going to leave it there, I had no hood & just put a new to me, Smokey Ram & new Holley 950cfm 3bbl & roller cam set-up in the car, before going out to whoop on some Fairfieldians & AF boys...LOL... figured if I left it, I'd come back to a stripped or stolen car... Anyway I jammed a ballpeen hammer/wood handle, hammer side up between the body & rear narrowed 8.750" rear-end, I pushed up on the back of the car & wedged in it's place & it got me 40 miles or so back to Concord Ca... amazing it worked, let alone stayed in place

 

[old_skool]

I had a 70 coronet that was jacked up pretty high in the back, rode rough as crap, got under it to look at it the first time, the car was jacked up extending the rear shocks, then 2 muffler clamps kept the shocks from returning.

 

[SteveSS]

That Charolais bull was an ill-tempered SOB. We were trying to keep him in a corral and I was in charge of guarding the gate. He came at me and I broke the big stick I had right over his skull but he kept coming and got out. We later changed to a Black Angus bull. Smaller skulls making birthing calves easier. Apologies to you city folk.