best jerryrigged fix

hey everybody, what is the best jerryrigged fix that you have seen on a car?
I have seen a fender on a chevy pickup that had cracked and someone had stiched together with tie wire. there is also my friend that had the fan motor die on his taurus, and he had another motor that was identical other than the output shaft, so he jb welded the motor on to the fan. I have also heard of people driving down the road with out a steering wheel, with two vicegrips clamped on to the steering shaft. can't think of any more right now. anybody have any others?

hmmm..this is a tough one. having run on a national racing series, i have seen jerryrigs like you couldnt imagine. i saw an 8 second mustang with a parachute, and instead of running the pull wire through the car, or having an electric activator, he had wire wrapped around the lock pin, and had it fed up over the car through the sunroof, attatched to a pull start handle from a lawnmower.

they can make an 8 second car, but they are to lazy to run the parachute line outside of the car???
saw this one in a magazine. they had a dodge pickup that had the fuel line clog up. instead of blowing out the line, they ran an aluminum line from the tank, out to the outside of the truck, along side the rear fender, door, and front fender, and into the carb.

then there is the method of driving with a broken axle- you take a pole and tie it so that it runs across the wheel and is tied back to the frame, so that the wheel can't work out of the axle tube. I have seen that one a few times.

Saw this on a show called 'Junkyard Wars', 2 teams made cars for a drag race. One of the teams car had a problem and only had reverse gear. So they drove the first race backwards. Then one of the team members said, "let get this thing going forward with the reverse gear". Everbody on the team and in the show where sratching their heads trying to figure how. Then this guy at the race track in the stands, I guess got tired of waiting, went over to the rail, and yelled to the team to flip the rear axle. Brillant, flipping the axle over making the right tire the left and visa viresa, make the tires turn in the proper way for the car to go forward. I don't think this guy even got a thank you.

hahaha...the external fuel line is the greatest ever....thats amazingly dumb!

one would think it would be easier just to follow the old fuel line than run it out side the truck- not to mention loads safer, and these people publish a Four wheeler magazine!!!

I was rewiring the ignition system on a 53' F600 flatbed that we got free a few years back, and much of electrical system was wired together with 12 gauge Romex house wire. it was even still in the plastic sheath, even when there was only one wire in use. of course, I won't talk about the desklamp dome light with a sixty watt bulb...

there is also our 67' Dodge M400 flatbed- both outside door handles are missing, forcing you to reach inside the door to open it (we have had this truck for over 17 years, and drove it across the country this way) the dipstick sits on the dash after the tube for it broke and was consiquently pluged with a hickory branch, one interior door handle and a window crank were lost and replaced with pairs of vicegrips, and the headlight switch consists of two wires and an aligator clip.

Found two more in magazine coverage of the baja 1000- these could actually be handy one day-
A CV boot made out of a shop towel
welding an open end wrench on as a splint to fix a broken axel housing

hahaha....some of those are great! american ingeuity, right?

what is really amazing to me is that this post has gone this far with out the words "Duct Tape"!!

well..i suppose if you cant laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at...

i have a non-ford street stock drag car, and for the last few years, i ran a small national circuit...well, during the last event of the season we were at norwalk raceway park on ohio, and there had been tornados in the area...we were racing into a 60 mph headwind, and my 1983 dodge didnt like that....the wind was so bad that i was losing about 2 tenths in the QM...it even ripped the hood off of a pro stocker!

so...we covered the headlights, and grille with duct tape trying to direct the air over the car instead of through the grille and into the sunken headlight bezels...i picked up abuot a tenth from that..but i have alot of frontal area...so it didnt do nearly what i had hoped...

hopefully you guys wont mock me too much....for using duct tape, or racing a 1983 dodge

quote:

ORIGINAL: Patrick

hopefully you guys wont mock me too much....for using duct tape, or racing a 1983 dodge

what engine was in it and what did it do the quarter in?

the duct tape airlining was genius.

Now that it is time for confessinal, I guess I should tell some of the jerryriggs I have done. First, the broken stereo antennia on my jeep- it was broken off about eight inches tall, and if I passed any brush along the road taller than that, my stereo would cut out. i took a long piece of #9 wire and straitened it out and electrical taped it to the antennia stub. the same was true, tnat any brush that stood over the top of the anntenna make it cut out, but with four feet extra hight, than kind of brush is less common.
then there was the broken windshield wipers on my SAAB- since the mount for it is not avalabile anywhere I looked, I used copius amounts of JB weld and tie wire to fix it and reinstalled it. my last is an "almost" jerryrig- when my starter quit and i was chasing down the problem, some of the tests seemed to say that the ignition switch was to blame. later tests found the starter to blaim, so i rebuilt it, and when I reinsalled the starter, everything worked so I did not have to do this, but when it seemed that I would need to replace the ignition switch which would require ordering it and waiting for it to be delivered, the fact that this was my only form of transportation go me thinking, and I developed the following solution- I would take a push button switch and run one wire from the battery to the switch and run another wire from the switch to the ignition terminal on the starter. then I would run these wires out of the hood and in the drivers window- to start the car you would have to put the key in and turn it to run and push the switch hanging from the door.

its a low compression 1969 340..and i run mid 12s...but thats on old springs and such...so its getting freshened up...and new gears..looking for high 11s

My welding teacher races a dodge charger with a 440 and twin carbs- it is set up for 1/8 mile track, but he said that he ran high 9s in the 1/4 I don't see anything wrong with Mopar, chevy on the other hand... their cars and engines are too generic and their trucks are ugly. plus, I have seen way more chevy trucks broken down on the side of the road than any other vehical.

OK,I have two, the first is, when we were around twenty as a group we went for a cruise, my brothers car a mk1 zodiac, the left rear leaf spring bolt snapped and went through the boot. Out in the country unable to drive the car he did the next best thing, we jacked the car up and put a log between the boot and the spring. Drove all the way home no problem.
The other one was actually mine.Again out in the country in a mk1 gt cortina, the hydraulic line to operate the clutch touched the extractors and burnt through. Solved the problem by taking the line off, walked to a service station, cut the two middle burnt parts and superglued them together,bought some fluid and put it all together,kept the line away from the exhaust, and it remained there until i sold the car.

quote:

ORIGINAL: NIGHTHAWK

The other one was actually mine.Again out in the country in a mk1 gt cortina, the hydraulic line to operate the clutch touched the extractors and burnt through. Solved the problem by taking the line off, walked to a service station, cut the two middle burnt parts and superglued them together,bought some fluid and put it all together,kept the line away from the exhaust, and it remained there until i sold the car.

WOW!!! I have heard of duct tape on a radiator line, but that is even better!! Course superglue can be jerryrigged medical help- ever superglue a cut closed?

Here is a scary one- one of the kids at school was saying that their brother lifted a chevy love using chunks of 2X4 as axel blocks- front and rear. something to think about when you see a lifted pickup coming at you huh??

when working as a tech i saw a guy who drilled holes through hockey pucks and used those for spacers for the body kift.

Body lifts are scary enough as it is. but that still seems loads safer than the 2X4 block lift.

How about blocks of wood tied under the bumpstops on an overloaded truck to keep the fenders from hitting the tires? That is Montana for you- there is ALWAYS room for another piece of firewood!

its ok..i went from PA, one of the most strict states in the country for safety inspection...to michigan, where i see things like cars with no hood or fenders or bumpers,....its illegal to make a right turn on red, but youre allowed to make a left turn on red....

this whole freakin state is jerry rigged.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Patrick

its illegal to make a right turn on red, but youre allowed to make a left turn on red....

?????????????????????????????????????
I have always wondered why the logic behind the Right turn on red does not carry over to other directions- Right turn on red says that if there is no one coming, you can make a right turn, so if no one is coming from both directions, why can't you go straight, or even make a left turn- treat the stop light as a stop sign that changes directions.

BTW, here in Montana, the lack of Fenders and bumpers and hoods and such is not supprising, and I have seen a number of trucks around here where every singal body panal is a different color. On Friday I saw an S-10 with a WOOD bumper. bumper pads cut from old tire tread are not uncommon and I am yet to see a set of mudflaps where at least one of the corners is not held up with tie wire. one of my friends has a toyota sedan that got smashed up on the drivers side front, taking out his headlight and turn signal- he has driven it around for at least two years without fixing it. He could just do what I saw one time on another car- same problem, they had taken a headlight group out of another car that was quite a bit different and tie wired it onto the bumper, then spliced in the old wiring from the old light. need a cheap car audio system? go to your nearest 2nd hand store and pick up a battery powered boom box. then you take a Cigarette lighter power adapter and cut the wire and strip it down and attach it to the battery contact points. if the boom box takes 8 batterys you got it easy because that is 12 volts, otherwise wire a resister in line to step it down. that was the sound system in an old van we used to have. a friend of mine took it one step farther by putting a full set of three foot tall wood cabinet house speakers in the back of his Jeep Wagoneer.

I like the fact that you can make a right hand turn on a red light. Here you can even make a left turn on red if you are on a oneway turning to another one. My guess as to why they don't let you do that on twoway streets, is that most accidents with cars going diffrent ways are from felled left hand turns.
I spoon my Ranger in the snow, tore-up the frontend. I replaced the headlight, side marks, and turnsignals with parts from the junk yard. I then hammered the metal fender, hood, and bumper close to back in shape. A few hole drilled and screws later I was back on the road. Even passed inspection in Virginia, and they're pretty tuff.

my college roommate had hosue speakers, but small ones in his tracker...

After I went through a fence in my SAAB, the bumper was all torn up on the side that hit. the edge of the plastic had a two inch tear in it. I drilled holes on either side of the rip and stiched it with tie wire, then I took plastic epoxy and spread it over the rips. after that dried, I cut the wire and pulled it out. side by side with another SAAB, it is barrely noticable. now more than a year later, it is still holding up.

thats a pretty good one

In the Army while overseas, it has damn difficult to get some parts. The oil safety switch on
M -151 Jeeps gave out often. We'd pull the rubber connection plug and shove in the ends of a heavy paper clip in two of the three terminals to get back.

Not great I know, but it worked time and time again.