How a "shoe lace" saved our @#$

[Bill]

My friend and I went up to the forest to cut firewood today.

We were about 25 miles from the nearest town, and nine miles up a bumpy gravel forest service road when we heard a dragging noise from under the truck. I thought it was a tree branch stuck under the truck.

My friend got out and looked under the truck, then got a look of worry on his face. He said; "We are [expletive deleted]! The tie rod end on the left front wheel is broken off!" (This connects the front two wheels so they both point the same direction when you turn the steering wheel.)

One front wheel was pointing to the left and the other to the right. Not a good situation to be in, especially out in the middle of nowhere.

So then we got on the CB and tried the emergency channel. No luck. Then tried every other channel for 1/2 hour. No luck. We were too far up in the mountains for anyone to receive our signal.

Then my friend got an idea. He used the jack to snap the tie rod back in place. I then tried turning the truck around. It snapped back out of place...

So then we just sat there for a while. Then my friend got another idea. He removed his shoe lace and said let's use this to tie it in place.

So we did just that. Used the jack to snap the tie rod back in place, then held it there with the shoe lace wrapped many times around and tied (long shoe lace).

Then I proceeded to "back up and go forward" about 15 times to slowly turn the truck around (being careful to not turn the steering wheel very much). Eventually I got the truck pointed to go back down the road.

Then we drove very slowly all the way down that forest service road (9 miles) to a main road where we were able to get someone to call a tow truck for us.

So my clever friend and his "shoe lace" got us home!

[tom]

Hmmmmmm. Tom

[MrC1]

Thank you for not coming up with the idea that one of you would hold it in place while the other drove slowly. Funny, but a few with lower IQs than you have been hurt/killed doing similar things!

Nice to hear it worked!

[Sheldon Harper]

"Bill" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

A bungee did this for me so well I was almost tempted to forget about replacing the tie rod end.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Wondering how old the truck is and ever do regular maintenance on it? Tony

[Larry Bud]

I held temporarily held a muffler up in my vette when a bolt for the hanger fell out and was lost. I used dental floss!!!! It's incredibly strong. Held in normal driving for 20 miles until I could get home.

[Bill]

It is an 81 with probably over 500,000 miles on it. I try to keep it in good operating order. (Has recently rebuilt engine, etc.) Actually I was just about to take it into the shop to have the front end worked on....

[badgolferman]

Sounds like a Ford!!! Falls apart with no warning and held together with shoelaces.

[Jack]

I think it is a brilliant post... Bill... ignore the judgemental jackasses who feel the need to constantly lecture those of us who don't worship the God of preventive mainenance..

Hey.. when it breaks I fix it... It works for me.. .life is a little more fun that way.

[tinacci336]

My Father-in-law always said, "God could forgive a thief, but never a teller of tall tales." These tales appear very tall. JD

[Louis Boyd]

I'd be more skeptical of anyone who claims to know what God will or won't forgive than of someone who says they drove a few miles with a tie rod held in place by a shoelace. Who would make up such a story? The forces on a tie rod aren't exceptional with gentle driving.

I believe the story especially in light of memories of cars I semi-maintained in my college days. I'm probably the only person to ever to put a Willies flat head jeep engine and transmission into an Austin Healey Sprite and did it in the dorm parking lot. It cost me $30 including the wrecked jeep. I made the brackets in the physics department machine shop. Drove it for nearly a year afterwards.

[Amun]

I was thinking along those same lines while reading the OP. Amazing that anyone should still be driving a vehicle without doing regular maintenance and would not have repaired a worn tie rod long before it fell off.

I'm going to file this one along with the posts about people who never check their furnaces then post here asking for help that it does not work and the temp is now -40 degrees in the house. Or those that post that their bathtubs just fell through the rotted out floor after water was leaking through a wall for the last decade.

AMUN

[Elmo]

We used to call things like that works doughnuts ("Works, don't it?). In my days as a provider of roadside assistance on the toll road I was fond of using hose clamps and Quaker State oil cans (which were still made of metal at that time) as exhaust pipe repair parts. Duro made an epoxy putty that came as a blue strip next to a yellow strip (mix until smooth green) which could patch small holes in gas tanks. One of my fellow workers claimed to have used a woman's panty hose as a fan-belt but I think that was a tall story because we got extra credit for selling belts and hoses even if it meant an extra trip back to the service station to get the necessary part. But no one could do anything with the kid who had borrowed his holder brother's muscle car and had it break down. When Greg got there the kid was holding a piece of connecting rod and he said "This fell out of the bottom. Can you put it back?" Greg took the air cleaner cover off and made a show of trying to put it back down through the carburetor. Then he called the tow truck.

[Mark]

I'm wondering that if you drove it backwards and steered with the one good wheel, if the wheel with the broken tie rod would caster itself into place...

but on a rocky dirt road, who knows?

Mark

[Doug Chadduck]

You had spaceships? In our day................

[sleepdog]

Ford Escort GT, Mt. Washington, overheating on the way up, no electric fan for some reason, used a paperclip to short the fan temperature sensor wiring harness to fix that.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per MrC1:

When I was *very* young, the fuel pump on my beater went.

I recall laying on the left front fender, feet on the bumper, sort of bracing myself with my left hand, with the hood up, dribbling gasoline into the carburetor while my bud drove us through the back streets of Waikiki with his head sticking out of the drivers side window like the engineer on a train.

[JohnH]

Perhaps all the rattling and slop in the front end before it came apart should have been a hint as to what was coming.

[Goedjn]

Why do you even talk to these people?

[JohnH]

Then you should be quite skeptical of the present US administration.