Tight wad Old giffer style 'expert' maintenance

[sierraman]

What sort of inexpert maintenance have autoshiters seen in cars? One that sticks out at me was a guy i worked with whose anti roll bar bushes were fucked. Waste £3 on some new ones? No, he bound the perished bush up with some gaffer tape and put clamp back on.

[Bren]

I think most shite maintainence was conceived on this site.

 

Remember, its only a bodge if it does'nt work.

[daveb47]

Had a Morris 1100 once with housbricks between seat base and rear subframe cos mounts were rusted through.

Also estafette with bike handlebar rubbers as wishbone bushes.Renault 4 with rear brakes pipe disconnected & crimped over so no rear brakes at all.

that was when we had the worst snow and ice for years.

[tooSavvy]

I bought an ex-telephones MM1000 van, j reg.

 

Service had fitted a steel core metalastik bush on the torsion bars (rather than the top hat rubbers per hbol).

 

Discovered 'they all do that, Sir'.

 

...... NOT a bodge then?

 

 

TS

[Noel Tidybeard]

private hire driver? only changing the brake pads that were worn i.e drivers side only cos pas side were ok and with 2nd hand pads from scrappy at that

[Richard]

Guilty of most of the above and more.

[KruJoe]

This thread could be much improved by the addition of photographic evidence.

 

For example, remember this plasterer's van which had been, erm... plastered?

 

[DS20]

 

 

 

Courtesy of thereifixedit.com 

[bub2006]

Vw polo breadvan with one clamped rear brake hose and one pad on from to the metal made for an interesting driving experience. Ford escort mk4 with sealant on the sump to stop it pissing oil. Rover 820 with a cable tie door release and cable tie bonnet release. Peugeot 205 with gaffer tape holding back light and rear bumper in place. Same Peugeot also had half the radiator core missing and the main battery lead was a window key and screwdriver. Probably many more but memory isn't what it used to be and I was young a dumb.

[Station]

Anything that uses Wood screws, white bathroom sealant, cable ties or gaffer tape is a bodge!

[bub2006]

That sounds pike most of my cars 10 years ago.

[twosmoke300]

A certain gold saab 900 had a piece of wood inserted above the weakened rear spring seat before it went to wales.

[Bren]

Gas struts on my dad's montego estate tailgate kept popping off their ball.

 

Rectified by glueing two blocks either side of the strut which stpped them popping off.

 

Then painted moonraker blue.

 

Still on the car when it was moved on.

[Richard]

Both my C5s have failed an MOT for binding brakes. The problem was the cable for the front handbrake sticking. Last year on the saloon the slightest touch on the actuator would make it release so I fitted an opposite-handed return spring upside down, in addition to the standard spring. That gave it just enough to fully release the handbrake every time.

 

This year the estate failed for the same reason so I tried the same repair. Not enough.Replacing the handbrake cable on these is a massive faff and expensive so it was Game Over if I didn't get it working. Then I remembered the box of assorted springs I liberated from my work when it closed in 2002. A compression spring round the end of the cable had the handbrake working perfectly. Back to the test station today and it's good for another year..

[derskine]

nice rear archies m9



oh

[DS20]

Rust took hold on the lower edge of the rear wings of my old Honda Accord (a common problem on those cars), mainly surface stuff, but a few pinholes that went all the way through, and let water in to the boot.  So I plugged the pinholes with Araldite, and it worked a treat.  

 

That was also the car where a passing lorry took the front bumper off (in one piece).  The bumper was pop-rivetted back on by the local blacksmith for about a twenty quid.  A new bumper (unpainted, of course), would have been hundreds.  

[mat_the_cat]

So I plugged the pinholes with Araldite, and it worked a treat. 

 

Arguably better than filler in some ways, as it doesn't absorb moisture!

 

My best/worst was this:

 

 

after I cracked the sump on our track one morning. I was on the way to my mate's for a party, so I fixed it up as best I could (not 100% successfully) and hoped it would last the 400 mile round trip.

 

There's actually a little bit more to the story, as my mate had just moved to a reasonably nice suburb, and I hadn't visited his new house before.

This was before I had a sat nav, so I borrowed one, plugged in the postcode and arrived on his road with the number 16 stuck in my brain. As I drew level with number 16 it told me "You have reached your destination". Great, I thought, spot on with the location, and Matt has left a space on his driveway for me to park. So I pulled onto it and started to unload.

 

It was only when I got to the door that it struck me there was a distinct lack of other cars and party noises, so I phoned him up to check I'd got the right time. On the other end of the phone was a party in full swing, so with a sense of dread I asked if his number really was 16? Nope. Number 46, down the road apparently... opps. So not only had I started to unpack on someone else's drive, I had deposited an embarrassing amount of black oil all over their block paving. I cleaned it up up as best I could, and buggered off sharpish!

[Banger Kenny]

Two narrow Fishing Rod Float centres used as a "bridge" to join some severed rear brake flexy hoses together on an mk3 Escort Van I m.o.t'd once

- they probably would have got away with it apart from the fact it was gushing brake fluid out 

 

 

- and they used luminous floats.

[nisfan]

no mirror on your pas side sun visor sir? Just glue one on, but make sure when the visor is down in summer the glue melts and it falls off.

[fordperv]

i once fixed the rotten core plug on the back of a pinto head with chemical metal, it did the job well until i got around to replacing it

[beko1987]

Repaired the accelerator cable on the zx with the old one, new one and 2 choc blocks.

 

Works better than it did before now! I imagine its an mot pass too...

[tooSavvy]

Corrosion Shock in N.E.  

 

My latch spring has rusted away to nowt and yesterday, after popping the bonnet to check the oil, I couldn't slam it shut. 

 

This piccie [old skool Cortina] gives an idea of what mine looks like.....

 

That coil spring had gone.

 

 

.... I, of course, didn't have an exact swap in my 'rummage box' but have managed to get it working (likely a perm fix!)

 

The car won't alarm with anything 'open' so all this was done in the dark.... extra $hite points, perhaps??

 

 

TS

 

... posted, earlier, in News24... top$hiteing/Gifferrette 

[M'coli]

I've slapped filler on a leaking sump, where the hole is above the oil level and it only leaks when the engine runs...

[spike60]

Many years back I was technical assistant on the one of the worst bodges I've seen. A Volvo 145 with collapsed rear suspension on one side had been bought at auction and after a 1/2 hearted attempt it to repair a block of wood was fashioned to sit on the axle, correcting the ride height. It went back to the auctions where it tripled it's money, bought by the worst dealer of crap in the area.

[tooSavvy]

^^^^ Whessoe Rd, Darlington, had absolutely the 'bodge kings' of the entire N.E. 

 

 

TS

[spike60]

^^^^ Whessoe Rd, Darlington, had absolutely the 'bodge kings' of the entire N.E. 

 

 

TS

Pretty close, I think it was the Stockton branch of the same outfit!

[tooSavvy]

Ahh... went there to look at a Skoda 130 Estelle (pre webbie - Yellow paper....)

 

... sales [pikey] guy looks out of the office/crapper.... "Err.. Aye, yull know what your lookinn for if you have come to see that!!"

 

PASS

 

 

TS

[NorfolkNWeigh]

A mate* once stuffed about 3 pairs of tights in the gearbox of Volvo 240 he was selling,after hearing that it would quieten a noisy box- it doesn't and it takes ages trying to pull them out when the bastard wouldn't select gears,.

 

I might have tried egg in the rad before now as well- guess what? That doesn't work either.

[Doctormop]

My Dad once told me of a back street trader who stuffed rotten sills with metal pan scrubbers before spraying them with Hammerite so that clued up punters who brought a magnet with them found only solid metal.

Rumour has it that following a very promising test drive on a Metro HLE one sunny afternoon (during a few weeks of warm weather) a heavy downpour saw soapsuds emerging from said repaired sills, despite assurances that this was a BL prototype self cleaning model the prospective purchaser had "a few more to look at"

[catsinthewelder]

I'm fixing up a friends Mercedes Vito for probably its last MOT at the moment. This has included a small block of wood thats been shaped and fitted into the passenger door to compensate for the stretched cable that meant it wouldn't open from the inside. I realise that a new cable might not be that much but I couldn't figure out how to remove the catch to fit one.