Crazy fixes that worked

Joined
Mar 30, 2020
Messages
528
Location
Houston, Texas
Youall have any stories of going out of the box with a mechanical fix? I had a 1978 Olds Delta 88 with high mileage that started to show signs of transmission slippage out of the Turbo 350. Since this was likely a terminal issue I went and drained and filled the trans with Tractor Supply brand tractor hydraulic fluid 10w-30. Holy [censored] the shifting became firm and no RPM rise at clutch engagements anymore! I drove this car for 4 years with this stuff.
 
When I was 7, I poured chocolate milk on my cereal. It was great then and is still great today after 60 yrs.


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Just kidding & having some fun while being couped up in the house.
 
Not mechanical, but:
Doing monthly maintenance at a remote multimillion dollar field installation, there was a UPS system that wouldn't turn on and maintain the acquisition of data during power failure testing. Attempts to reboot it remotely had failed all month and it had a bunch of warnings and errors. Keep in mind this was supporting a rack of servers and storage NAS and was remotely controlled from our office in Europe.
After trying all kinds of things on site, I wasn't having any success. In an attempt to load it and see what it would actually do, I plugged in the shop vac that was there to keep things clean. Surge current during motor startup wasn't really on my mind at the time, but there was a puff of smoke, smell of burnt semiconductors and the UPS audible warnings squealed. I grabbed the off switch on the shop vac, figuring I blew the whole setup.
After things settled down, I started looking through the system only to find everything working properly and, after rebooting on its own, the UPS came up without errors. I ran it through an proper power outage test, which it passed with flying colours. It worked perfectly for the remaining 18 months that project ran. No idea why it didn't fry.
 
I got into some fun changing the thermostat on my Focus... Two of the 3 bolt heads broke off despite some hammering, and penetrant pre-soaking. There was enough to grab with the vice grips but heat and more hammering wasn't helping... I really didn't want to have to try and drill out the bolts in the aluminum block and get into helicoiling, etc, as I'd never done that before, and I'd need to take off the whole front of the car to get enough room...
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So I stole some M6 thread sleeve nuts off the kids IKEA bunk bed and used them for the two "studs".
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The thermostat housing had lots of meat around the bolt holes so I drilled them out for the sleeve nuts to fit.
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I was worried there wouldn't be enough threads left on the broken bolts but they only needed to hold 7ft-lbs and there's no leaks!
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I broke a thermostat housing bolt on my 1985 Subaru GL10 turbo wagon around 1990. Since it was late Saturday afternoon and I had to be somewhere, I clamped the smallest vise grip I had to the housing, then wired the vise grip closed. It didn't leak and I planned to do a proper repair later. That day never came! It was still on the car when I bought a new Nissan Maxima in 1992.
Indylan, just saw your post. I suppose there's more than one way to skin a cat!
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Originally Posted by IndyIan

I was worried there wouldn't be enough threads left on the broken bolts but they only needed to hold 7ft-lbs and there's no leaks!
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Very clever!

Just an FYI, I've had great results by "TIG" welding a nut on broken bolts like that. The heat of welding helps loosen the broken bolt, and the nut gives a good surface to grab.

Yes, I get it, few people have a TIG welder at home. But it's good to keep the thought in mind when the problem shows up again.
 
Originally Posted by Cujet
Originally Posted by IndyIan

I was worried there wouldn't be enough threads left on the broken bolts but they only needed to hold 7ft-lbs and there's no leaks!
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Very clever!

Just an FYI, I've had great results by "TIG" welding a nut on broken bolts like that. The heat of welding helps loosen the broken bolt, and the nut gives a good surface to grab.

Yes, I get it, few people have a TIG welder at home. But it's good to keep the thought in mind when the problem shows up again.

That's what my friend recommended. He has the welder but it was going to be a bit of a chore to load it up on his truck to bring it over, and it was the middle of snowplow season, and he has enough of his own old junk to fix, so thought I'd give this a try. I guess if it starts to leak now I can atleast bring the car to him!
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Nice! I was on a long motorcycle trip from Texas to Las Vegas with my daughter on a 1985 Yamaha FJ1100 when two incidents happened. The first was the bike getting tipped over when she got off while I was paying for fuel late at night at a truck stop in Arizona. The brake lever knocked a hole in the clutch cover spilling oil everywhere. After some yelling and crying on both our parts I repaired it with layers of that metallic tape slut girl sticker guys put on backs of their cabs and JB Kwik. It would seep but got us on our way. Then the voltage regulator burned up in the desert heat so a old style mechanical voltage regular for a Chrysler was spliced into the stator leads. Further down the road the [censored] foot shifter stripped the splines on the shaft so I bought mini Vice Grips and shifted from Bullhead City to Las Vegas like an old Harley till I found a muffler shop to tack weld the shifter back on.
 
When I replaced the intake manifold and carb on my 77 Buick, the accelerator cable was about an inch too short to reach the carb. I used a paper clip. Drove it for 5 years like that until I sold it.
 
Fuel pump went out on a 77 Dodge van(318), no fuel to carb. Removed the motor hump, bought a gas can and flled it up. My buddy slowly fed the gas down the throat of the carb to keep the engine running where I could drive it back to our work place. Not to swift as we were young and stupid back then.
 
While riding home from the bike shop for a rear tire someone honked and pointed at the back of my 1976 Honda 750 SS. The plastic chain guard was on fire! I pulled over on the shoulder of the freeway and watched the thing melt all over the brake caliper. The mechanic that changed my tire left off a spacer
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I walked a few miles to a strip mall and bought pliers, an adjustable wrench, and fabricated a washer out of a thick coat hanger from a laundry.
 
After a visit to my in-laws, my 1965 Comet 289 V8 wouldn't start. I eventually figured out that the rotor wasn't turning. I pulled the distributor out and found that the pin that holds a gear in place at the bottom of the rotor shaft was missing. As we were a 3 hour drive away from home, I used a nail bent over at both ends as a replacement pin.

It fired right up. Never did replace that nail.
 
When I was a kid I worked at a Pontiac Buick dealership for one summer. The owners were a pair of good sports. Someone wanted to trade in a not very old car that was known to be not running. It didn't even have a carburetor. None-the-less the owners told him that if he could drive it onto the lot they would take it in trade.

So the guy pulled it quite near the garage with his tractor. Then as everyone watched, he stuffed a rag in the intake manifold, and let the fuel line drip on the rag. It started up in a sort of a way and moved under its own power onto the lot. After much laughing and general ribbing they took it in trade.

I wouldn't recommend doing that, but the customer did and it worked in a sort of a way.
 
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