Until now, Wrenching Wednesday has been a Members-only deal (not to be confused with Members Only, which is a different kind of cool). But great news: With the introduction of Only Fanbelts, Wrenching Wednesday is free for everyone!
This means that every Wednesday we’ll be talking about wrenching right here in the comments of The Autopian, and today’s topic — thought of by our very own Jason Torchinsky – is one near and dear to my heart. It’s about janky repair jobs, and as some of you might know: I’m the king of that ish.
If you don’t believe me, check out how I “repaired” the failed fuel pump on this 1958 Willys FC-170:
That’s right: A wooden pole shoved into the bedside, a strangely round jerry can tied to it via a J-bolt and some 550 cord, and a rubber hose. Absurd, but it worked!
On the way home from the zoo, the Yugo decided that trouble-free operation felt too weird so the shift linkage vanished. I bodged up a fix with 2 hose clamps and a rock and we made it home. pic.twitter.com/25PWyfq4fn
— Jason Torchinsky (@JasonTorchinsky) November 27, 2021
We can’t forget about the time Jason fixed his Yugo shift linkage with a literal rock! That led to this clever Tweet by Peter — a tweet that ultimately led The Autopian to hire this brilliant now-Managing-Editor:
And don’t forget when Jason used a pen and garden hose for his throttle cable linkage:
And does Jason chainsawing a battery count as a janky fix? (Or a fix at all?).
Then there’s Peter, whose latest bodge happened when his mower’s carburetor-opening cable broke. As Pete noted, it’s not really a throttle cable, as it just holds the carb wide open – which allowed for a very simple fix. “I just cut it down and used a Vice Grip to do the job the cable housing had been performing.”
Nice and janky, there.
I have about 9,000 other examples of janky fixes, but none is as fun as the jerry can-on-a-stick. So tell us: What was your own most ridiculous repair that actually, somehow, worked?
The battery tray was long gone when I got my 1972 Delta 88, but at least there was a small 2×4 keeping the battery off the inner fender. Now, of course that wasn’t exactly stable and relied on the side post cables for balance, so I supplemented with two more small 2x4s. Finally put in a proper new tray this summer after only 22 years.
But for field repairs, that would be the time the fan shroud fell off that same Oldsmobile. The bolt holes were stripped and useless, but luckily I had zip ties and a knife. Stabbed a few new holes in the shroud, zipped it back to the core support, still holding seven years later.
92 Ford Tempo. There are two, one by the previous owner and one by me. One of the fenders was rusted out pretty badly, so they added foam to a black garbage bag, shoved it in the whole, and rattlecanned it black to be close to the right color.
The floorpans were pretty much just rust and held up by the carpet. For a while I tried not to put my foot through it. Asked a buddy about welding new floor pans in. He pointed to the fender and said it’s like putting lipstick on a pig. I did my best Red Green impression and wrapped a piece of plywood in duct tape and screwed it in place for the driver and passenger side and ignored the rear seats. It was still holding up fine two winters later when I sold it.
I’ve replaced the bolt holding clutch lever twice with a branch of a tree when the bolt fell of during riding (once with moped, once with motorcycle).
I repaired a radiator hose on a Jeep XJ with tape and tube socks. Was enough to get me back into town and to the auto parts store!
I grew up on a farm and don’t even know where to start.
Broke a tie rod on a pickup and fix it by driving it straight ahead so that caster would align the front wheel stopped it and then welded a fence post over the broken tie rod.
Attached to carburetor to a tractor after losing one set of nuts and bolts into freshly plowed ground by cinching it down with baling wire.
Oh, baling wire choke cable, did that a couple times.
Wired up the headlights on a harvester with the Romex pulled out of an abandoned house.
Oh, I know, we had some military surplus deuce and a half, 6 x 6 trucks that we use for hauling tomatoes. I can’t remember if they were GMC‘s or Studebaker‘s but they were really underpowered for getting over the overpass next to the Heinz plant where we were hauling tomatoes. So my uncle bought 3 Wrecked California Highway Patrol cars with big block Oldsmobile engines in them and did an engine swap into the three army trucks. I think it involved welding the subframe from the CHP cars into the trucks, but it was 60 years ago. Anyway, the radiator on the truck was vastly inadequate for the big block Oldsmobile engine.
What to do?
Well what we did was get a 5 gallon jerry can filled with water and attached an electric fuel pump to it and crimped a piece of copper tubing so that it made a nice misting spray and switched it so that when the engine started to overheat it would spray water onto the outside of the radiator. Problem solved!
Broke college kid driving an 82 Dodge “charger” 2.2 auto. Rear ended somebody lightly and broke the inner fiberglass mount for the headlights into a bazillion pieces – headlights now flopped wildly.
In the light of day I could see that the inner bumper was just a square metal tube – nice and straight. Cobbled together a new headlight mount out of a 2×4 and a piece of 1/2” plywood carefully cut to hold the headlight buckets. Even made the adjusting screws work. Mounted the whole thing to the metal tube with some 12 gauge electrical wire twisted nice and tight.
This looked good enough with the hood closed that the insurance inspector actually didn’t believe I hit somebody and denied the other driver’s overblown claim. It also lasted for another 2 years until I had to trade the shitbox in because of a bad carb.
Not me, but Motorcycle journalist Doug Richmond told me of a repair he effected in Baja (in the 60s) on a Honda motorcycle he had ridden the length of the peninsula. He had broken an engine case on a rock and the oil within was making it escape. He threw the bike down on the opposite side and wiped off all the oil. I believe he cadged a roll of masking tape from a local (he usually carried electrical tape as a repair tool). He put the masking tape in several layers over the hole, added oil to the full mark and rode the bike home. Was able to replace the case cover after getting home.