Autoshite Bodge of the Year Award

[brickwall]

Just remembered another.

 

About 20 years ago I was driving the 2.0 litre Montego and one of the windscreen wipers came flying off at Bothwell services. Luckily I had the big toolbox with me and I drilled two holes in the arm and but two of my girlfriend's curby (sp?)grips through the holes and bent them like split pins. Lasted a good while until they gave way and the wiper ended up in a hedge somewhere near Drymen.

[HMC]

Whilst driving through heavy rain somewhere in belgium in my w123 estate the wiper linkage fell to pieces- only to be expected perhaps after over 400k. Tied some string to the wiper blade, threaded the string through the driver and passenger windows and had a half successfull 'to me- to you' wiper set up.

[simmo]

The earlier posts regarding the Triumph Lucas PI injection system reminded me of a get you home work around we used to do on Pogo 504 TIs. I did my apprenticeship at a Peugeot dealership that had previously been a Triumph agent, changing franchises around 1976 they had had plenty of Trummy PI experience. The 404 and 504 injection cars were fitted with the mechanical Kugelfisher inj system which was as reliable as the Lucas CAV was crap. Being mechanical the pump/metering unit was belt driven and one of the few faults was the belt breaking. By wiring in the start aid (basically a big electrical injector) straight to the battery you could drive a auto at a resonable urban speed for a short distance and certainly get a manual out of a driveway etc. The start aid injects into the inlet manifold which had a single butterfly so there is some throttle control.

[cort16]

I once replaced the wiper linkage in my old Nissan Silvia with cable ties. It was a shit idea though as it only cleared about 3sq cm of windows and they knocked into each other on the way back down.

[triumph1300]

My mate used to drive like an absolute twat and show off, his cars were never looked after either, one night in margate he was handbraking around a carpark on the seafront and he hit a wall and ended up hanging over it. We pushed his back but his gearbox his dropped out, the mount had completely ripped apart!! We used string and cable ties to hold the mount and gearbox together. He carried on driving it for a few months, but not after using some huge jubilee clips to hold it together.

Nutcase, it clonked like mad and drove like hell.

[Albert Ross]

Not mine, but a customer's car, I had the peril to work on..... this was just over 3 years old at the time, and therefore just out of warranty....

[autofive]

all this bodge-talk reminds of a mk2 granada I once owned. Someone had already bodged the accelerator cable and it finally dislodged at the pedal end.

 

I had to unthread the cable from the bulkhead and get my passenger (who was about 7 or 8 years old at the time) to work the accelerator through his window with a pair of pliers (cable wasnt long enough to reach to drivers window) while we headed for scarys yard to get it sorted out

[Des]

Starting to remember more from many years ago, my brothers Cavalier started pissing water from a core plug on the inlet manifold, didn't have any the right size so self tappered a big penny washer and piece of inner tube over it, stayed permanent, had an old Gallants headlamps go dim and the wipers slow down at 2am on way to ferry in middle of nowhere Wales, parked on a hill, ripped the alternator apart and yanked the worn out bushes as much as I dared to stretch their little connecting wires, made the ferry. My cousins Hunter had a bit of a leak from a rear cylinder, he hammered the metal brake pipe flat, this crap continued until he was left with just the one front brake. (This was Ireland in the 80s so no big deal). A friend in Ireland used to run motorbikes on a tight budget as he was signing, I saw him recut teeth in the rear sprocket with an angle grinder, rebuild his brake pads with filler and dirt, these did nothing but spare the discs getting scored, he would re-grove secondhand bald tyres for it as well, but they'd be down to the canvas within hours, and when his electronic ignition packed up he screwed a timing plate with points on the outside of the cover with a big hole in the middle with a sawn off cam poking out.

[CreepingJesus]

20 years ago, when I lived in Aberdeen, a flatmate of mine was a courier - ratty Kawasaki GT550 held together with prayers and duck tape type. Coming home half asleep, he dropped the bike on the wet cobbles in the street. No serious damage really, apart from the utterly fucked alternator case. So, with the help of a couple of the local ladies of negotiable virtue, we chucked the bike in the hallway, and yours truly set about removing the alternator case.

Now, it's a small alloy bowl, and notoriously fragile if bashed. So what I had was the flange with about half the bowl attached, the rest in varying sized chunks. Luckily, it doesn't need to be oil or pressure tight, so once we'd rustled up all the resources we had (and had a cuppa, followed by a couple of beers...), a plan hatched. Make a jigsaw of all the broken bits, laminated in duck tape. Cut and shape Coke and beer tins to the inside and outside profiles of the bowl. More duck tape, lots of Araldite, and a coupe of big Jube clips we pinched off the janny. Best of all, the screw holes were even accessible.

It went back on a treat, looked like just another rat mutant part of an already scabby bike, and it kept the alternator clean and dry. How long for, I know not, 'cos it was still there 9 months later, last time I saw the it.

Changing the alternator on aircooled Kawasakis is a piece of piss. Case off, lock the rotor, undo the nut, extract. Which doesn't explain why mine isn't fixed yet. I'm just a lazy cunt. What I've never been able to explain, is why the guy I bought it from, instead of fixing the broken alternator, set up an elaborate bodge. He had to remove the grab handle, to fit a luggage rack, onto which he bolted a topbox, into which he bolted a car battery. He screwed a hefty inline fuse into the topbox too, and lead some stout wiring under the seat, where the original ends were bolted to the 'extension'. Why, just why?

Back in the days when I used to carry some rudimentary tools in my kitbag (trucks are as electronic as cars these days, woebetide you if you try a stunt like the following, now...), I picked up a scabby old trailer in the pitch black, in rural Northumbria. I wondered why the other driver was keen to fuck off, didn't think too much about it, went for a kip. When I got up, I did all my checks like a good little professional, and the Renault's dashboard flashed up a handful of lamp failure warnings. Half the lights were u/s, and the fuseboard did an impression of a popcorn machine. Long story short, it was obviously the fault of a rusty bit of leccy conduit on the trailer chassis. Phoned the yard. Not keen to help.

So, I buy some spare fuses, make sure the Renault's electrics are fine (and they are!), and proceed to wire the brake light line to the foglamps. Fuck the rest of it. There'll be no-one else between here and Dunfermline at this time of night. Wrong. Two Northumbria coppers sat beside Morrison's in Berwick, having a wank/fag/discourse about Wittgenstein/whatever, and another 3 of Lothian+Borders finest* before I got to Auld Reekie. Not one of them batted an eyelid. To say my nerves were in tatters would be an understatement; the defect report for the trailer simply read 'pile o shite'. That may well have been the trailer that was dismantled with a JCB when the yard was being cleared a few years back. Please, let it be so.

[Lord Sterling]

Certainly not as heroic as everyone else here, but....

 

The clutch cable pin that holds in onto the actuator decided to free itself and disappear for good somewhere down a dark lane one evening, RAC called out and a bolt was put on the end of the cable to hold it onto the actuator. Being a lazy arse, I didn't take the RAC advice and get it sorted straight away, howvere, it did hold on for a good while before the bolt too made a bid for freedom. Needing the car mobile again, I opted to use a garden shed nail to keep the cable held onto the actuator, it held on for a good few weeks until the car went into the garage for a clutch change.

 

Since the new clutch was put on the clutch pedal feels quite stiff, its never felt right, I reckon a visit to proper gearbox and clutch place is on the cards......

[rml2345]

Not nearly as good as anyone else's but on a drive down to York, the wiper linkage in my first 740 siezed solid in the pelting rain. Once we'd found a place to stop, my mate and I murdered the siezed bit of linkage using a screwdriver and a couple of spammers to get the drivers wiper working at least. Put it all back together and it did for the rest of the journey.

Got a free S/H linkage off the chap I bought it from too!

[catsinthewelder]

I'd been slowly restoring my VW camper on the drive when an angry letter arrived from the landlords giving me 3 months to have it MOT'ed or gone so a few bodges were used most of which have been sorted by now.

 

The best one was the N/S front wheelarch/doorstep where the metal of the step was almost gone and a large section of the arch was made of rough fibreglass resin. I reprofiled the arch back to the right shape with the grinder which went far better than I expected. The step was trickier, First I filled it with broken up expanded polystyrene then I covered that with lashings of P40 fibreglass. Before that had time to dry I sprayed it with primer then stuck the rubber step cover back on.

 

I really should have fixed that properly by now considering I've had a brand new panel sat in the loft since before the bodge was done

 

Another good one was replacing a lost sump plug on the same van with one of the seatbelt mounting bolts (until I got home)

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Rotten sills on a 1982 Mark 1 Fiesta? No problem. Can of expanding foam, trim it back when hard, skim of Hairy Mary (P40) and underseal. Safe'n'solid.

 

Low oil pressure on a 1984 Audi 80? No problem. Sump off, punch a few big holes in the pick up gauze, reassemble and fill with EP80. Sorted.

 

Blown head gasket on a '93 520i? No problem. 1.5 metres of copper brake pipe with a new union on the end, wind it into the bleed hole on the rad and run the pipe around the 'bay and into a Mini washer bottle wedged into the corner. That and a bottle of K Seal and the middle of the stat ripped out. Excesss pressure vented into the washer bottle along with a bit of coolant that can be tipped back in later.

 

Austin A60 1500 diesel into a 1.3 Marina saloon? Easy with two days, and unspeakable bodging with a gas welding kit. Marina and A60 props sliced, Cambridge prop hammered over the Marina one until it was bollock deep and welded on. It didn't break.

[barefoot]

Here's a couple that proper garage mechanics have done to my shite, first off, this very morning I took the Porsche to the local specialist with a sticking throttle pedal/cable.

I'd wd40'd everything that moved at the cable end and cleaned the pedal hinge & spring till there was not a speck of grubbiness to be seen, but still it stuck.

Chap picked up a great big fuck off hammer & belted the floor. Apparently over time, use of the original front jacking point causes the floorpan to move slightly and causes this very distinctive sticky pedal!

 

Another, this one to make you proper wince, my old Trabant had felt a bit wiggly at the back for a while, a bit like a soft or flat tyre but I could see nothing amiss until one day a few hundred yards away from home I was turning right into a junction & it stopped dead & stalled. The trailing arm on the n/s/r wheel had detached just completely, but had been held roughly in place by the hand brake cable which was now so tight, I couldn't get the bastard car out of the junction. It either stalled again or the front wheels just span up & smoked the tyres.

Called local chap who jacked it up, pulled it back together using a length of rope and finished off with a pair of molegrips.

"All right youth, It's only a couple of miles back to the garage, go steady & I'll follow you"

[jonny69]

Ooh, ooh ooh, wait, I thought of one. It's so entrenched that I even forgot it was there...

 

 

Look through the bottom of the steering wheel and there's a white bungee stretched under the passenger seat up to under the dashboard. The wiper mechanism is worn and the wipers lock up when they are all the way over to the left. The bungee pulls just hard enough on the mechanism to stop it locking up. Been there over 10 years this year hence I don't even notice it any more

[brickwall]

That's awesome!

[pandarus]

To my shame I once repaired an Allegro door with masking tape before painting it so it looked a nice if somewhat temporary repair before selling

[binboy]

About 5 years ago I used to work for a body shop that mainly did VW campers. Used to find some proper bad bodges that people had done in the past like inner sills held on the self tapping screws, large plates on the chassis stuck on with sikkaflex, body filler in the front axle beam etc. Most of the time the new owner had just paid 6k+ for the van. The first garage I worked in was a bit of a bodge shop, one of the jobs I did was to learn how to make Maestro rear arches out of fibre glass. He use to do some proper bodges to trade in cars that he used to send to auction. One was a 4 door white 1986 Escort Ghia that was well rotten, he filled the front inner wings with fibre glass and filler then resprayed them. The rear door shuts had big holes in and one had rusted round the latch so badly that the door would not shut properly, so he removed the latch bolted it to a bit of old metal the screwed it in to the door shut. I remember a Fiat Panda that had rusted round were the back suspension bolted too he just filled the area with sealer before sending it to auction. His proper bodged up cars used to look quite good after a good coat of filler and paint he was a really good painter. But some of the bodges were proper dangerous really.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I did my bodyshop apprenticeship at a Berkshire VAG main agent in 1986. We had in a T plate Strada part ex that (would you believe) was as rusty as an old horseshoe - it was fucked. For a laugh, we got it in, DA'd it over with 180 grit, sorted the holes with hairy mary before painting it from the roof down with texturted stonechip. This was top coated with basecoat and laquer - the basecoat was a mixture of paint left over from 5-6 paint jobs all mixed together. Plenty of laquer and it didn't look too bad. The colour was a sort of greeny purple.

[oldford]

I've just sorted the pneumatic lumbar support in my Ford. I mentioned it to someone at a tyre place that we use and he had a rummage around and gave me an old inner tube out of a fork lift truck. I removed the lumbar support to find that it was punctured, lashed the inner tube to it with an old bicycle inner tube, refitted and connected it and it works a treat.

[fordperv]

mrs fordperv started laughing earlier and pointed this out so I took a picky for you all

 

[John F]

Wood, gaffa tape AND metal?

 

Nice.

[phil_lihp]

Maybe he's hoping he can remove the splint once it's had a chance to heal

[Station]

New Year's Eve, London City Centre, 11.00.

Sat in gridlocked traffic in my old Astra GSi. Hear a loud bang, assuming someone had crashed, but realised that it was in fact my car, and the hose from the engine block to the radiator has blown as it had overheated.

A few Asian lads ran over and pushed me and missus to side of road and I assessed the damage. I cut the pipe back to the hole and stretched it to the engine coolant exit and jubilee clipped it back on. What would I use as coolant fluid though? I used my own piss and a 500ml bottle of water as coolant.

On the way home on that very night, the gear linkage failed. The pin that connects the linkage to gearbox disintegrated after 18 years, so I took the pin out of the rear seat hinge and it fit snuggly. Drove home in gear, 250 miles without a single stop.

 

Had a rumbling alternator last year on MR2. It failed on the way home from work at just gone 11.30 at night. With no hope of fixing it, I had a spare MGF alternator in the bonnet in case - not knowing it would fit, I bodged it in place - it fit the bracket perfectly, lined up with the bottom pulley, and the belt was of the same type! LUCKY. The adjusting bracket was not the same, so I wedged it tight with a sturdy branch that was lying on the floor nearby, then used a 12v cigarette lighter charger adapter wiring to connect it all up. Incredibly, it charged fine and didn't squeal once until I bought a new alternator on the weekend.

 

Have driven a Rover 213 when the throttle cable attached to the inlet through the bulkhead, then strung around one of the knobs and hand operated, like one of those emergency pulls on a train. I also felt like Ironside for period I was very perilously driving it.

[Richard]

Thread resurrection.

 

My C5 failed the MOT for a sticky handbrake yesterday. It wasn't too bad, a little push on the actuator would release it. I quickly established that the handbrake cable was at fault and set about trying to make it free off with exercise and various lubricants. It still wasn't quite releasing.

 

Correct solution- new handbrake cable, which is £££ and an absolute bastard to do. The exhaust and hear shield have to come right off, which could be half a day wiped out, and potential complications.

 

My solution- I had a scrap calliper from the other side so I took its return spring and fitted it upside down to give a bit of assistance to the spring that was already there. It works a treat

[overrun]

When I was festooned with a DTi Laguna, that decided to shat the gearbox from the mounts, a 2x4 and a ratchet strap saw me on my merry way again.

 

With perfect* visibility.

 

 

All I have had to deal with so far this year, is the Mondeo's boot CL solenoid packing in, leaving the tailgate unable to latch.

A quick rummage through a skip, got me home.

 

 

 

Oh yeah, the wiper linkage completely fell to bits on a mk3 Astra I had, so it was shoe laces out of the window time.

[Anglevan]

I'm not sure I should admit to these as generally I try to pride myself on doing a decent job but these examples throw that into the water.

Many years ago I owned a BMW 2500 one owner car 40k genuine, however one of the big problems with 70's Bm's was the stone chip coating simply didn't work. A stone would hit it chip than it would build into a volcano of a scab. The inner wing was covered in em and every time you prodded them you got a hole. SO I simply ground the inner wings down, sikaflexed the holes, re stone chipped the inner wings. I bought it for £400 and sold it 2 weeks later for £1500. It was then on a dealer forecourt for £3000 for many months after - then disappeared off the planet never to be seen or heard of again.

 

Once also bought a standard 10 that someone welded sills on very badly, now the car was solid but the gaps where shit. So I filled the sills and ran a grinding disc to make a decent gap. Quick respray and quick profit selling said car - but again this has never been seen again and dvla has it listed as unlicenced as soon as the tax ran out which surprised me as it was a solid car not rotton.

 

Other bodges included when I worked in a dealership in the early eighties we had a wolseley 6 come in with a genuine 14k from new but wings were rotton. We taped em and painted over for the MOT !! as customer couldn't afford new wings..

[Lord Sterling]

A few weeks before my mk1 Sterling shat its engine, the wiper linkages decided they'd had enough a came loose rendering me wiperless during the monsoon we had sometime around March/April time. The linkage was a ball that clipped into a cup, both were quite worn and wouldn't hold. The RAC man repaired it by means of cable ties that worked quite well.

[tooSavvy]

A few weeks before my mk1 Sterling shat its engine, the wiper linkages decided they'd had enough a came loose rendering me wiperless duruing the monsoon we had sometime around March/April time. The linkage was a ball that clipped into a cup, both were quite worn and wouldn't hold. The RAC man repaired it by means of cable ties that worked quite well.

MkII Escort wipers same, ball in cup. Mine would drop off fairly regularly, and it is a pain when you really need them moving....

 

I drilled the pressed arm and attached a piece of tough plastic, cut to look like a tuning fork [sort of..] with the prongs holding the ball in!

 

100% fix.... and then it got nicked soon after 

 

tooSavvy

[FredTransit]

a few months ago we threw an engine in a luton in an emergency, not noticing the air cleaner was rubbing on a brake pipe. Weeks later it burst. Not daring to take the pipe off to get a new one I cut a bit out and sleeved it with petrol pipe, securing it with jubilee clips. Over the pipe I laid half a pack of chemical metal to reinforce it. Even me own mate and mechanic said it wouldnt work. It lasted 10 days before we got the chance to replace it with a proper pipe