'Rigging' things on the road....

[Longhorn Man]

Everyone who has been daily driving an old vehicle knows the value of being able to 'rig' something just to get it home. The further from home you drive your old stuff, the more important your 'flexibility' on repairing your vehicle becomes.
Chevy fat man , cheese wagon and I were talking about this last night, and we were kinda wondering about everyone's storys.
I have used a bungie cord as a throttle return spring, windshield washer motor as a fuel pump, a string for throttle control...
I'm sure more will come to mind.
So what kind of stuff have you done just to get home, or to ensure you could get to work in the morning?

[mtdave2]

The favorite story, for my friends, was with my old 64 vw bug.. it was -20 deg, snowing, 11pm, just got off work. when i hit the gas peddle a few times before starting, the cable broke!

so i had some kite string in the back. i tied it to the carb and threaded it out the hatch, over the roof and to the driver window. it wouldn't work unless I had my had out the window, but it worked!

So my friend followed me home, laughing by the way, watching me freeze my hand to death. Was not easy trying to steer, shift, and run the gas, all the while not being able to see.....no defrost in those old bugs. was a fun trip!

[Tx Firefighter]

Last Sunday, my wife and I set out on a 200 mile round trip to bring my newly bought 70 short step home. It's a 6 cylinder, 3 speed.

Coming back, I noticed the generator light comes on. I pull over and lift the hood, expecting to see the belt broke. Nope, the outer ring part of the harmonic balencer was gone, just the inner hub left. The belt was wrapped around the fan. My wife pulls up carrying the ring of the balancer. She had seen it fall out under the truck, and stopped and found it in the ditch.

I cut two strips of the rubber floor mat out of the truck. I wrapped the strips around the harmonic hub, and hammered the ring over them, kind of press fit. I figured it originally had rubber there, so why not replace it with rubber.

It got me home, but I only drove 40-45 miles per hour. The truck has 3:73 gears, so any faster and the engine would be singing and might throw the ring back off.

[jef5150]

this one was really stupid, but it worked at the time,,,,,we were camping ,my friend backed in to the campsite and hit a steel post sticking up.Needless to say it punctured the tank,we had to rig a 5gallon gas can that i held sitting in the back seat,hose hanging out the window,freezing cold,we made it home,1 stop for gas,people staring,quite a day,,,,,,,i think we were 16,or 17 at the time.....jeff

[Southpa]

This happened to me over 20 yrs ago and still makes me flinch when I think about it. I had a 69 AMC Ambassador at the time. I was coming off the highway on an exit ramp just outside of Canmore, Alta when I hear this horrible scraping noise. I pull over right away and jump out of the car. Upon looking underneath the rear I see that one of the steel straps holding my gas tank up had broken and my tank was scraping on the pavement. Luckily it wasn't full and didn't break thru. I had some plastic "zap" straps handy and resupported the tank with those and gently drove the rest of the way home.

[ckenwright]

I got orders to move 650 miles from Albuquerque NM to Las vegas Nv. So I made about three round trips not including the u-haul with my 69 C-10. I had one final trip to albuquerque bec I had 1 month of work left there. All of a sudden, about 175 west of Flagstaff, at 75 mph I got kink, kink, kink, grind, kink, grind. I pulled over, climbed under thetruck on the side of the highway in the rain and saw the carrier bearing had snapped from the mount. I was pissed, so Islowly drove to the next exit and Bout 3 miles to the small town nearby. Only to find there is not a parts store with-in 30 miles. So I climbed under the truck with a ratchet strap and a c-clamp, ran the strap around the bearing housing cinching it closed, then ran the excess up between the bed and the cab and tied it down with the c-clamp so it would not get caught in the driveshaft. drove 450 miles home, plus 1 month around the city before I changed the bearing and u-joints. Haven't had a problem since.

[Palf70Step]

Lots of stupid little things....Like my friend and my 65 cuda...You alsways had a passenger in winter...One to scrap the outside of the windshiled...the drvier does the insiside....Boy was I glad when we got that heater core fixed.

My dad used my visegrips fro a gas pedal on the Galaxie I left him when I went into the service. 2 years later,....they were still the gas pedal.

While I was staioned in Japan, I learned how to put just about anything on that 55. I had two mazda alternator brackets...a lower Mistis bracket and a alternator from a dodge truck upside down. I think I commted holy sacrelidge(??) on that car. I believe it had parst from every possible car manufactured in the US and Japan keeping it together.

[beautimus]

once apon a time i owned a 81 chevy luv truck. on the way to work one morning, it sheared the four bolts holding the rear of the drive shaft in. this happened about 20 miles from nowhere.
the only thing open in the vicinity was a gas station. it was self serve, so no garage ,or parts. i happened to see a rack with battery terminals inside the store. i bought 4 of them with the last few bucks i had, and used the bolts to put the drive shaft back in. i knew that these bolts were soft so i took it easy going on to work, and back home that evening. after i got home i pulled the bolts back out and found that they were close to breaking so i put some grade 8 bolts that my dad had in the shaft and they were still going strong when the truck got totaled a year or so later. Tony

[1969 GMC]

once, i had to use a fuse from a CD player car kit to replace one, i think it was the headlights

[sgtjed]

i have used duct tape to fix a ruptured rad hose,and also have used very thin wire,found on the side of the road to thread a fan belt back together so i could go 20 miles to the truck stop once.

[krazy_texan]

one night about 11pm when i was comeing home i came down the offramp and i hear a scraping under the truck so i pull over and look under the truck and the exhaust pipe had come disconnected from the header and where digging into the road like a plow blade so with an old t shirt i had lying in the seat i tied the pipe up to the bottom of the truck while holding a burning hot tail pipe and with no light at that but it got me home and the next morning about 630 i got to fire it up with straight headers to take it to the muffler shop before school.

[Lippyp]

Replaced the throttle cable on my 1965 LandRover with the brake cable from my bicycle when it bust. Had to rebuild the front brake caliper on a little Suzuki SJ 4x4 in a wheatfield, at the side of a road coming down out of the Pyrenees mountains in northern Spain . Greased the sticking caliper with butter! Damn thing fell of the jack twice with no front wheels on as we were on the flattest bit of ground we could find which was still bloody steep!

Had to replace all the bolts in the UJ on the driveshaft of my Triumph spitfire in a supermarket carpark with bolts scrounged from an exhaust shop. Had to back the car up a bank as I had only owned it for a week and was on holiday in it and didn't realise there was no jack! Also on the same trip, made the 350 mile drive home with the passenger seat with a broken back wedged upright with a gas can, not very comfortable for my passenger!. A few weeks later I was jumping into it over the door, holding onto the steering wheel when it came off in my hand, the previous owner had installed a sporty bolt on wheel with tiny short bolts which had pinged off in every direction! I managed to find enough of them and a couple of odd bolts in the glovebox to get it back on and get home, I had stopped for a "comfort" break in a forest miles from anywhere when it happened!

[JayDubBlazer]

When in the army we had the front road arm go out on a CEV (Combat Engineer Vehicle) the tank they used to break into the Branch Dividians(spelling) in Waco, Texas. We were about 10 mile out on a training mission and the hub on the arm that holds the first set of wheels inside the track broke. We broke track and took a couple of track linds out chained the arm up and drove it back to base with a shorted track.

[Palf70Step]

Let us not forget the ultimate repair...Leggs...Drove from Fairfax VA to the coast here on a pair of leggs. Old Tempo...the belt tensioner froze on a sunday evening. We had a spare belt...but it would brake with the tensionor froze...off to 7-11...extrat strength leggs and we were off. My friend droze another 3 days beforehge got a new tensioner and replaced it.

Those leggs are tuff stuff!

[VTKidder]

I'm partial the floormat strips story. hahaha....good highway fixes. Wish I had a worthy story, but I really don't.

[69 XCamper]

I jumped in my 69 "Baja-Bug" one morning to go to work and as soon as I put it in gear and move forward..."SNAP"! The LF ball joint snapped in two. The car was parked in an underground garage, so there was no way to get a tow truck in there. So, I looked at the broken ball joint, then off to the harware store. I bought one of those "U" shaped bolts, the ones with threads on both ends with a rectangle shaped washer and a pair of nuts. I slipped it over the broken balljoint, tightened it up and presto! Ball joint fixed. I drove it to the shop and they were quite impressed with my quick fix.

[speesh]

well I'm sure most of you know this trick but it saved me more than once....
The first time was when I drove my Nova up to Whitney Portals, which is about 8,000 feet elevation. This is the trailhead for the trail up Mt. Whitney. Anyway, I got there and got out to feel the cool mountain air and what did I see but steam and hot water pouring out of the engine compartment! Fortunately it was the heater hose..... and I had water with me. So I just disconnected one end of the hose from the heater core and attached that end to the engine, thus removing the heater from the loop. Drove it that way for a year or two..... and now I have another car, V. W. Golf, which had the same problem. This time I couldnt loop it because the hoses are formed a certain way. So I used a loop of metal tubing from my kids swingset! It has been this way for about 2 years now, and I have had no problem other than lack of heat.
Moral: ALWAYS CARRY TOOLS!!!

[Randy70C-10]

Gum wrapper around a blown fuse works great to get the headlights back on, had to do this on my 47 Chevy.

[yellowgmc]

my buddy and i were out 4 wheeling once. i was in my old dakota, he was in his bronco II with a 302 swapped in. on a big bump he snapped the bolt holding the left side of the engine in (no mounts, just holes torched into the cross member). the engine shifted to the left and jammed the steering linkage. we had to jack up the engine using a come-along tied to a tree about 15 ft up, and then use ratchet straps to move the engine back and forth to get the bolf nub back into the hole. got it back and slowly drove back off the trail and home.

[lewi]

A little off the subject but funny... Many moons ago, ok maybe a couple hundred I was riding with a friend of mine in an old VW bug when we felt a little bump. A few seconds later we get passed by the rear tire that was rolling faster than we were going at the time, the bump turned out to be the tire coming off. It was his car and I found much more funny than he did at the time.

[oldsub86]

Not my story and I may have told this one on here before on another thread but here goes anyway.

My brother in law and his friend Jeff went up North fishing on an annual basis for a few years. They were known to take everything but the kitchen sink along. They were a long way from home with night coming on when the alternator on the Dodge pickup started to give up. They knew they would never make it back even without the lights on and were a long way from any sort of parts store. They had a battery charger and a little gas powered generator along so that they could recharge the battery for their electric trolling motor. At any rate, they put the generator in the boat on the trailer behind the truck and strung the electric cord up the trailer and over the truck into the underhood area and then hung the battery charger under the hood and clipped the wires onto the battery. They came a couple of hundred miles through the night with the generator in the boat powering the electrical system on the truck and made it home.

[oldsub86]

Another story - also not mine but I think I remember how it went.

I went to a BBQ last week and heard this story from the couple to whom it happened. They went from Winnipeg to Regina for a car show back in about 1967 driving a 36 Ford. The trip out was fine but then it started to rain on the last day of the carshow and all of the way home. (If memory serves correct Regina is about 5 hours from Winnipeg). The roof leaked on the car - it was one of those that has a fabric center to the metal top. She said it didn't leak much so long as they kept moving but was bad if they slowed down or stopped. That however is not the real story. The car also had the vacuum operated wipers and they were not performing well. It was raining so hard that the wipers couldn't keep the window clear so that he could see where he was going. The solution was string. They tied string to the wipers on each side and ran them in through the side windows. All the way back to Winnipeg she sawed back and forth on the strings to keep the wipers moving and the windshield clear. She says by the time they got to Winnipeg they had stripes on each windshield post where they totally worn the paint off of the car with the strings.

[jjk3]

Here's one for y'all. This happened to me about 4-6 months ago. I had a 327, with double humps, in my '68 C10. I always had problems with the alternator alignment, so I bought a Holley low-mount bracket. The one that attaches into the 2 bolt holes on driver's side by the balancer. Anyway, the bracket mounts with those 2 holes and has a 3rd bolt to adjust the alternator. I was traveling home on I-75 one night after work, when I notice the motor is overheating and the lights are getting dim. I pulled over, and the top bolt that goes into the block had sheared off and had swung the alt. closer which wouldn't spin the belt. I had some old belts and electrical tape in the truck, so I cut down one of the belts, overlapped about 2 inches of one side on the other, and tapped the belt together with electrical tape around the water pump and balancer. I was about 200-250 yards from a gas station that was just up the off ramp. I went very slowly and made it to the gas station. My mom had actually arrived before I got everything finished on the side of I-75. Anyway, at the gas station I decided I was going to try and drive home like this (about 11-15 miles to the house). I ended up making it about 3 miles down the road before the tape and belt came apart. We ended up calling a tow truck the next day to take it home.

[trinic]

Never do this as a rig......

THE LIGHTS ARE ON BUT NOBODY'S HOME

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS - Two local men were seriously injured when their pick-up truck left the road and struck a tree near Cotton Patch on State Highway 38 early Monday morning. Woodruff County Deputy Dovey Snyder reported the accident shortly after midnight Monday. Thurston Poole, 33, of Des Arc and Billy Ray Wallis, 38, of Little Rock are listed in serious condition at Baptist Medical Center.

The accident occurred as the two men were returning to Des Arc after a frog gigging trip. On an overcast Sunday night, Poole's pick-up truck headlights malfunctioned. The two men concluded that the headlight fuse on the older model truck had burned out. As a replacement fuse was not available, Wallis noticed that the .22 caliber bullet from his pistol fit perfectly into the fuse box next to the steering wheel column.

Upon inserting the bullet, the lights began to operate properly and the two men proceeded on east-bound toward the White River bridge. After traveling approximately twenty miles and just before crossing the river, the bullet apparently overheated, discharged, and struck Poole in the right testicle. The vehicle then swerved sharply to the right, exiting the pavement and striking a tree.

Poole suffered only minor cuts and abrasions, but will require surgery to repair the other wound. Wallis sustained a broken clavicle and was treated and released.

"Thank God we weren't on the bridge when Thurston shot his ______ off or we might both be dead," stated Wallis.

"I've been a trooper for ten years in this part of the world, but this is a first for me. I can't believe that those two would admit how this accident happened," said Snyder.

Upon being notified of the wreck, Lavinia, Poole's wife, asked how many frogs the boys had caught and did anyone get them from the truck

[Longhorn Man]

JayDubBlazer, I didn't even think about all the rigging I had to do in the Army.
I was a Tank hull mechanic (63E10H8 for those of you who can decipher that)
I had short tracked many vehicles, totally removed road wheels and arms and just drove with out. (center ones of course) When Hummers would blow a rear 1/2 haft we would just remove the shaft and take it apart, install the 2 C V joints without the shaft (tp hold the oil in the geared hub,a nd hold the disc brake on the rear diff) and send them limping home with front wheel drive and only front brakes. Another faveorite of mine in the army was when the head sets inside the vehicle woul;d die (all the dam time) I would tie 550 cord (very strong rope) around my drivers left and right arms, and pull on them like on a horse to tell my driver which way to go. (way too loud to hear and you MUST have comunicatiuon with the driver, he can not see all the corners on the vehicle.)
I could go on and on with army stuff.
Keep them coming, some of these are real good and I've even stored some of them away in the 'ole gray matter for future break downs!