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?Â
a neighbors car decided to eat the condenser in the distributer. this was back in the late 60s. no parts store was open. took the condenser off the generator and used that for her ignition. it worked. don’t know what her radio sounded like, but at least she didn’t have to walk to work.
there was the time we were up in the woods and a buddy had to weld a rock dent/leak in his oil pan. using his battery and a piece of coathanger for rod. i miss those simpler days.
I guess “working“ can be a broad term but I fixed a leaking brake line with a vice-grip,it worked for as long as I had the car.
The worst I have done must ne on a 50cc scooter : the throttle cable broke in the middle of nowhere and I just took it directly from the carb, tied it to the fairing in front with the cable going between my legs and I just drove it like that with my left hand on the bar and my right hand between my legs pulling on the throttle cable to accelerate. I was broke at the time and I think I used it like that for 2 or 3 weeks…
When I was a wee lad with my first car, there was a field that was converted in to a parking lot. I parked over a stump that I didn’t see and while my car pulled in just fine, when I pulled out it ripped off my bumper and broke the fog light mounts. I was able to clip the bumper back on, I was traveling and needed a fix for the fog light. I wrapped it in bubble wrap and crammed it back into its cavity. I had that car for probably 5 more years, and saw it for at least another 5 with its subsequent owner and the fog light was still holding on with its bubble wrap friction fit. A temporary fix can quickly become permanent if it works comulently enough.
there were so many..
Rhodes village at 8000ft or so, a hundred miles to the nearest garage.
Started the old Volkswagen Kombi only to find it bleeding its life’s oil into an ominously black puddle. There is a cunning device known as a ‘freeze plug’ in these engines, which helpfully blows itself out in case of low temperatures. There wasn’t much for auto repair in Rhodes village but the hotel barman sent us to his friend Toffee, an unreconstructed hippie who was able to carve us a new plug out of some remnant hardwood from one of his sculptures. Hammered that in, refilled the oil, and drove 600 miles home again.
Coming into Harare Zimbabwe after a few hundred miles of bad dirt roads in the bush, drive shaft started thumping like a startled rabbit. U-joint had blown out, was able to get that replaced but the shock bearing around the drive shaft had shredded. Cut up a radiator hose, wedged bits of that into the housing, drove another 30 000 miles. Worked a treat..
Borrowed a Mercedes 350 and took it fishing, fabric/metal gas line started leaking. Cut out the bad bit of line and spliced in the metal body of a Parker pen refill, after draining the ink. Drove to the gas station 40 miles back over the bad dirt roads with just the sniff of an oilrag left in the gas tank, somehow made it..
About 35 years ago, my wife and I were in the middle of Wyoming in her old Baja Bug, when BAM! one of the spark plugs blew out of the head. Turned around and went back to find the spark plug, then went on to Torrington to find a hardware store. Got some thin copper wire, wound it around the threads of the spark plug, and screwed it back into the stripped hole with great effort. Definitely hillbilly engineering, but it got us back home to Colorado where I could put a helicoil in there.
The janky part was avoiding the repair.
I had a 21′ 1987 toyota motorhome with a dually rear axle and a 4 speed manual transmission. In the middle of a road trip, it wouldn’t start. My resolution was to park the motorhome on the high end of parking lots, and just bump start it into second gear.
Did that about a dozen times until I realized it wouldn’t start because the clutch switch had come out of adjustment.
I try to avoid the jank and generally succeed,but I did once use a random chunk of concrete block lying around to facilitate a tire change in a Land Cruiser by the side of the road one time. A lift meant that the bottle jack wouldn’t do it, so I looked around for what was available – the block was flattish whereas the rocks not so much – used it under one bottle jack to get the truck up, then the other bottle jack under the rear axle to get it up high enough to take the wheel and tire off. All while my stepsister worked to fend off the village drunk who was trying to ‘help’. I’ve got a photo of it but it’s a bit of a chore to upload.
Is it still wrenching if it involves zip ties? The headlight socket on the driver’s side of my ’97 ZJ is missing the little clip that allows it to lock into the headlight’s housing; a couple of strategically-placed zip ties have worked well enough that I’ve considered them to be a near-permanent fix (I keep spare ties in the toolbox for when the headlights need to be changed).
I once reattached a bumper cover using zip ties through the existing slots since this was pre-pandemic and I worried about my Yaris with its’ face ripped off and stashed in the cargo area would attract police attention if I went on main roads to the nearest auto parts store but there was a hardware place just around the corner.