I still remember the '63 VW Bug I had in college. I drove through th mountains of West-By-Gawd-Virginia in the middle of the winter and froze my butt off! (Wait.....no I didn't....my butt's still there....;-]). I remember ordering a "booster fan" for the heat system from J C Whitney's that was supposed to give you more heat for the passenger compartment.
All it did was help blow the cold air even more in the passenger compartment......
Yeah. I loved that bug. I remember I had a tool box with rubber bands and paper clips in it.....
;-]
Had a 60's era Morris Mini when I drove it through a heavily rutted industrial development site and ripped the fuel line under the car's floor. I used the sticky clay to stop the leak. Drove the car off the rutted track to park in a safe spot until I could figure out a fix. I couldn't afford a tow truck at that time. Anyway the fix was to empty out the windshield washer bottle on the firewall, fill it with fuel and use the plastic tube to feed the carb. Worked like a charm. I could drive it for more than 10 miles to home where I used a fuel resistant rubber hose to bridge the fue line tear and secured that with small hose clamps.
snip
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I might gt my nerve up topost my few odd hardware fixes, but after your massive missive, I now see my proudest moments barely rise to the level of holding a light for you to work with.I printed your list out and will show it to my dad Sunday afternoon. He grew up poor in eastern Kentucky and had to improvise to get by.
Terry
Early Ford Courier...throttle arm bushing broke while on a week long hunting trip By using three cornered file, I cut the rim off of a 30-30 rifle case and installed it in place of the bushing with the arm riding inside the rifle case. 3 yrs later it was still working fine.
Gunner
Confronting Liberals with the facts of reality is very much akin to clubbing baby seals. It gets boring after a while, but because Liberals are so stupid it is easy work." Steven M. Barry
I think we have the First Place winner here.....
Confronting Liberals with the facts of reality is very much akin to clubbing baby seals. It gets boring after a while, but because Liberals are so stupid it is easy work." Steven M. Barry
Roger on that. I replace the SU's (now that you have brought that tid bit back from the Black hole of memory) with a pair of 45 DCOE Webers on my old TRIUMPH TR-3. Also upgraded the engine with a 360 duration 1/2 inch lift cam with a 24 degree overlap, some trick exhausts, a little clean up in the intake ports, balanced and blue printed the whole shooting match. The puppy engine wouldn't idle below 1000 RPM but it would burn rubber in the first three gears and top out at 160 or so. It would embarrass a stock tuned for the street Corvettes.
Wish I still had that baby blue TR-3.
Howdja handle the sexes of the hose fittings? Have to cut one male end off and replace it with a female?
Jeff
++++++++++++++++++++++ Why to the English drink warm beer? Lucas makes their fridges.
Lucas, lord of darkness!
Negative on the Webers, Jeff. The Spit and almost all English cars of that period had SU carbs. Designed by a plumber. They were ok if the gaskets were good, the dashpots had oil and the throttles were synch'ed. I still have my Uni-Syn down in my toolbox. Webers would have been a great relief and a big step-up in power.
R
Just a couple days ago , the diesel injection pump came loose on the bus we use for motor home , one of the mounting studs came right out and was gone , the other was loose inits thread . I jammed a piece of wood behind it to hold it in place and wedged it back where it shoulda been . the fuel supply line to the pump also broke , we fixed it with just a pice of rubber line found in the bottom of the tool box and wire to hold it in place . Wire also held the wood brace for the fuel pump in place .
way back when I was working in the outback I saw a old ford , no doors bonnet or boot , loaded up with people , one guy doing gears thru a hole in the floor , another doing the steering and clutch and brake , another guy sitting on the plenum panel , foot braced against each spring tower , doing the accelerator . They were heading for town , town being Wiluna West AU . I didnt 'fix er up' but I reckon they deserve a mention for adaptability and ingenuity.
Another time I was driving an older holden , and the engine mount broke , it was a cheapo jap one that didnt have the movement limiter built in , and the engine came up and knocked a big dent in the bonnet ( OK , I WAS racing a mate at the time , up Wannaroo Rd in Perth ) I used a coat hanger and pliers to wire it back down , everthing else was OK , I was going to replace the broken mount as soon as possible ,but it ended up holding up for a cuple of years till I sld the ute .
We were driving our current jackaroo through the barrington tops , on some of the nastier back tracks and the center bearing on the drive shaft began knocking realy hard up on the floor We camped up and I dropped the drive shaft , and after rerouting the heater hoses , cable tied a length of heater hose into the rubber mount as extra reinforcing for it . That repair has held up for a couple of years , including a couple of round australia trips towing a caravan .
Some friends I know staked their dinghy they use for fishing , its an alloy boat , and they didnt have the money to have the hole welded up . They flattened the edges down and melted a plastic plate over it inside and out . hat lasted for a couple of fishing trips I know of and probably is still holding up good .
I had an one of the first alloy head fords , but the head gasket was blown and the head very very corroded . I took it apart , cleaned the corrsionout of the head , plastered it all over where it met the block with silastic , and coated the head gasket with silastic too , after being a bit careful the water ports and where the oil went were not going to block up , I reassembled it . Drove it on that repair for a couple years , and sold the car to my brother , with a warning not to pressure flush the cooling system , that warning went unheaded . kinda funny to see him crank the motor with no spark plugs in it and see the fountains of water jetting out of it .
My brother had an old valiant with the torsion bar suspension on the front , one of the adjusters lost its bolt after a long stretch of some of the wort road I seen for a long time . His soultion was to simply take the bolt out of the other side and drive it on its bump stops , reckoned it cornerd heaps better that way , no body roll at all .
I had a ford transit van that had a bit of a wiring melt down , I unhooked the battery and looked at the back of the dash and it was toast .. The under bonnet wiring was OK , so with the help of a donor fridge from a handy dump , I jury rigged the ignition , ran a wire from the ignition ballast to the battery and the little wire that makes the alternator go was cut and joined into the new ignition wire , poked the starter motor with a screw driver and drove it the rest of the way on that .
My brother had a suzuki lj50 that broke an engine mount , we wrapped a brick in rag and tape and chocked the motor up with it , wiring the brick and motor and chassis together and drove some 150 kms on it through some rugged terrain . THe brick was broken into several pieces when we eventualy got home , but it got us through .
I blew a raditaor hose way out back of nowhere , bandaged the hose in duct tape and left the radiator cap loose so it didnt build up pressure , drove slower for the rest of the trip , this ws a commonish occurance when I was younger and driving snot buckets .
Put several roos thru the front of cars , picnching off the ruptured radiator bars with pliers became a familiar thing to do .
One roo incident that sticks in my memory , a car was passing me on the road between Perth and Geraldton , close to Enneaba as he pulled out to overtake ,he put his highbeams on , he was realy moving I was doing 130 in a 110 zone and he was passing me like I was standing still , hislights lit up a roo that had to be dam near 6 foot tall right in front of him. I braked , hard as I could without losing traction , he hit he roo and it went up and came down in front of us , we were in a tiny front wheel drive 4cyl hatch back car , but we lost enough speed that I was able to swerve and miss the roo as it landed and not hit the guy who was passing us . I was thinking we would collect the roo throug our windscreen . I turned around and went back to see how bad damaged he was , we lost him as soon as his lights went out . He was OK , after we pulled the front of his car forward a bit , his car was driveable , I pointed his spot lights into a lowbeamish pattern and tied up the bits of AP gear that were broken and hanging down , and senthim on his way . I waited for the brakes and tyres to cool abit before follwoing him . He got to eneaba Ok , we got home with no hassle .
Aonther roo incident was in our car , My wife had been driving and we got into some heavyish fog , she pulled up and we swapped over . After a while the fog was thinning , and she turned to say something to me , I looked over her way briefly and saw a roo on collision course with our car . I swerved over the road a bit , it wa early am's and we wre the only car on the road , but the roo ended up still sticking its head through the closed window on her side . Showered us in glass and left its head on her seat .
I blocked up the window with cardboard from a convieniently abandonded beer carton from the roadside .
Few weeks previous a roo tried the same stunt but only broke the glass .
I went off the road and put a hole inthe sump of my old ford , I collected as much oil as I could with an empty water bottle that I cut the side out of to make a tray , dropped the sump , and hammered the hole as closed as I could , and with a deliberate dent outward .
I walked nearly 20 km back up the road and scabbed an old battery from a roadside pull off / rest area , and fortunately for me , an old steel hubcap . I busted the battery and took some of the lead grids and meltd it in the hubcap when I got back to the car I scrathced the area around the hole in the sump clean as I could and tipped the liquid lead onto it .. when it cooled it held tho it looked like it had horrible cold lap on the job . Reassebled the sump , poured the oil back , the level was only about 2/3s full after , so Id lost a fair bit . Drove home . the gasket was reused and silasticed for luck , but it leaked a lot , but the repair to the sump didnt until I hit another rock and bent the whole sump again ...
Hi, Wife insisted on driving a Subeam Tiger LONG time agon. That twin carb and Lucas electrical system! Still I have nightmarish shudder thinking about them, LOL. I was away on TDY and she ignored oil warning light seizing engine. I was so happy hauling that car to wrecking yard. Tony
Back in the old day living in Italy, where owning a battery charger is unheard of. Dead battery, single car, home out of town, only service station in town closed. Got to go to work in the morning and can not afford to waste time and money calling for a tow. Ironing Iron 800W at 220 is about 3.7A, could do as a dropping resistor. I have diodes of course, that is my line of work, but they are 25V diodes. Made a bridge, connect to battery and plug into the 220V outlet. The car frame is floating at 220V so you do not touch it, and keep the dog out of the garage that nite. The diodes only see about 17V reverse because the battery clamps the voltage. In the morning: warm battery, warm engine starts right up.
I was worried, I figured 3.7A 8 Hrs, not nearly enough to overcharge. The iron is on a concrete floor and is 20% under powered. I went to sleep.
Mauro
[snip] a Sunbeam Tiger [snip]
Jeff
Easy with a clothes washer hose; both female ends.
A friends's father told of his trip from west Texas to Fort Worth during the depression. He had to start a scarce job that he HAD to be at Monday morning. He is 75 miles out on Sunday PM when the old 6 cylinder car starts to knock and looses oil pressure.
On the side of the road, he drops the pan, finds the burned out rod, pulls it down far enough to hacksaw it off next to the piston. He pushes the piston back up the bore out of the way. Cuts the rod off as close as possible to the crank end. Uses a piece of his leather belt to wrap around the crank, puts the rod end back on to hold the oil pressure and heads to Fort Worth.
My first car - the water pump was leaking. I had never really worked on cars before, but everybody said it would be easy to fix. It was right up front - easily accessible. SO, I went to the car parts store, bought the new pump. The guy who worked there told me I needed a gasket and some sealer too! I was greatful for that bit of advice.
Until I got home, had the old pump off and then found that he had given me the wrong darned gasket. So I took the side of a Heineken 6-pack, traced around the outside of water pump, and the various holes, slathered that sucker with gasket sealer a-plenty, and prayed it would hold until I got back to the store. It was Sunday, store was closed, I had to work on Monday....I never did get a proper gasket in that car.
A
Damn- why didn't I think of that the one time I had to do that trick, years ago? The 'borrowed water' from the neighbor didn't have enough pressure to make the washer usable anyway, and I wouln't have had to mess up a good garden hose with the 'wrong' end... (we were just trying to keep the toilet usable, etc.)
aem sends...
Use a washer machine hose and regular hose in the length you need.
Yeah, but the guys on Misc Surv do better than you home repair guys.
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