Tight wad Old giffer style 'expert' maintenance

[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.

[stuboy]

cable tied exhaust piece under cavalier td drivers seat

[Des]

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- 

 

I've stuffed tights in my birds mouth in the quest for quietness, didn't work either.

[panhard65]

2 Classic from a few years ago when me and my dad used to do a few damaged repairables. His best bodge was a mk2 cavalier with damage to the rear 1/4. He bought a complete corner cut off a scrap one and unpicked the outer panel. Not having a welder was no problem just pop rivet it on. There was a chrome trim under the window that hid the rivets nicely. He then sold it to a taxi driver. I saw it again some years later when a trader brought it in for an mot. He thought he had a bargain until I told him the history. The 1/4 had been done properly by then though. My best bodge was a 5 door metro VDP it was mint except for the shunt up the back which had closed the rear door gaps up. I tried pulling the back out by attaching one end of a steel cable to a barn and the other end through the rear panel of the metro. It sort of worked and with a new rear panel actually welded in this time it looked ok. The only problem was the rear door catches still caught when you shut the doors. Easily repaired by grinding the heads of the screws that held the lock just enough to get clearance. I am sure there have been loads more over the years as well. Jointing compound that the electricity board used to use to seal joint was also a good metal substitute for steel in the front subframe of a Peugeot 304. My dad used it all the time for rust repairs. My mate tried it once on the load bed of a Mini pick up. It didn't go well as it was taking so long to go off he left it and went for a cuppa. When he got back the trowel he was using was stuck solid to the floor and had to be chiseled back out.

[danthecapriman]

A guy I used to work with was a used commercial vehicle dealer back in the 80's. He told me that back then they used to shove sawdust or banana peels into the diffs on old Transits to quiten them down for the test drives. Once it had been in there a little while the noise came back again but by then it was sold and someone elses problem!

 

He also mentioned something about putting brake fluid into auto gearboxes when they wouldnt engage gears! I have no idea if this would work or work for long but I cant imagine it doing the autobox much good!? Maybe he was talking bollocks!?

[castros_bro]

I know someone* who repaired the rusted chassis on an Herald for an MOT by cutting a bit of biscuit tin to shape with sissors and sticking it on with body filler it over the rusted holes then filled an old toothpaste tube with filler and squeezing an imitation arc weld round the edge and slapping gray wood primer over the lot.

[DVee8]

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.

Big Mike's car sales by any chance?

[brickwall]

I have seen the old biscuit tin rust cover twice so far. Currently my steering column is hed together by electrical tape. Works quite well and is a bit quieter than the screws and fixings.

[AlabamaShrimp]

My dad was a professional bodger. There loads of examples I can't even remember half.

 

Peugeot 504 pickups one had had its inner wings loving made up with paper, another was done exactly the same but also with a giant board screwed to the non existent load bed.

 

I seem to remember helping do that on a few other pickups and transits too. Is ideal of welding sills and arches was always straight over the top of the rotten ones. I never saw him cut out any rust just hit it with hammer then grind it. It is wasn't a pattern part going on the metal was never new just an old panel cut up.

[spike60]

Big Mike's car sales by any chance?

Indeed it was. I bought 2 cars from there, an ex-plod Sd1 and an Alfa Sud Sprint Veloce, both fine toys for little money but everyone else I know came away feeling they'd been shafted.

[Pillock]

I once bought a Beetle that had the heater channels filled with silicone sealant. Not just in one go, but clearly another inch or so lobbed in each year - some clear, some white, some black. Same place MOTed it each year for the old dear too, handy.

Same car had half a wing painted and blended in. Because painting a whole Beetle wing is LOADS of effort.

[fordperv]

Hey pillock that wasn't from a place in Stoke was it as I once bought a Sierra off a bloke I know, searching around it when I got home I discovered that it had the outer seat mount on the driver side and the floor to sill expertly welded with silicone sealer then a good dose of underseal on it, there was similar repairs through the car as well, he had it for years and always took it to the same bloke to repair for m.o.t, he was mortified when I told him the horrors I found.

[Micrashed]

A friend of mine who shall be called Alan once expertly repaired the sills on a brown Maestro using Scotchcast and Micropore robbed from A&E where we were working as student nurses.

The same Alan once fixed the bolloxed radiator on a Cherry Europe with one from a Metro - bugger that it didnt fit - there isnt anything that cant be made to fit with jubilee clips, cable ties and gaffa tape.

[Shep Shepherd]

^

A fair bit of Microporeâ„¢ ended up holding bits of my father's X-reg miniMetro together, as he had easy access to it due to being in the Kent Coalfield's mines rescue team during the time he owned it; I found it pretty good for bridging rust holes before the application of white Smoothrite with a half-inch paintbrush

 

Nowadays, he swears by what he calls 'Pfizer Tape' for household bodgery, which is white duct tape he somehow liberated from his final place of employment. So far, he hasn't used it on his 59-reg Polo, but there's always time

[nrm69]

Bought a mk2 golf gti 5 door and one rear window wouldn't wind down. Took the door card off to find a bit of rotting 2x1" timber wedging the window up, explained the clear silicone sealant. I think a replacement window mech from eBay cost less than the wood and sealant

[Guest unsaintly]

A transit flat bed I was MOT ing. The offside brake caliper held on by plastic wire ties as the mounting lugs had broken.

 

A piece of floor tile on a Fiesta to cover the rust hole up with Sikoflex to hold it in place..covered over with bitumen

 

Bakeofoil covering a underside hole 2 inches from the seat belt mount ...covered over with black shite when I gavs the belt a tug I fell on my arse as the whole thing came away

 

And the worst attempt at removing the inside of a dpf filter ending up with cv boot clips joined together holding the empty casingin place with about 10 tubes of exhaust paste

 

Brake pipeflexis wire tied to coil springs

 

And my favourite. ? A john Smiths can holding an exhaust together....sadly the can was empty:-(

[nigel bickle]

Ive beer or baked bean tin exhausts together; bodge of choice in pre- internet days when parts werent easily available, or took months to order.

 

Often used to outlive the exhaust, and went through MOT's then, without comment.

 

My worst, I think, was a mates acquisition of a £50 Mini with 11 months Mot. He discovered ,around 4 days later that the entire floor, inc all the boot, was simply a fibreglass mat, artfully painted black, undersealed and carpeted. The lot fell out, at around 50 mph.

 

Wasnt even safe enough to tow to the breakers

[Imhotep]

My old 106's front bumper and headlight was held on with parcel tape for a good 3 weeks until I decided to actually mend it properly...

[Stanky]

I bypassed the failed heater matrix in a Mk3 golf with a bit of handlebar from a BMX I had at the time, cue the coldest winter since the last ice age.

 

I am also guilty of the baked bean can exhaust repair job on a Suzuki swift. We were totally broke and it was needed to get domestic management to work, so I wobbed it up with about 3 pots of exhaust paste and wrapped it with a chopped up cat food tin and wrapped the biggest jubilee clip I could find around the can. It failed its next MOT since the bit I had 'fixed' was just the worst part of a terminally rotten system, though the tester did comment that it wasn't a bad job I'd done, but he thought I probably wouldn't like to do the same repair on the rest of it to enable it to actually pass.

[Bren]

Bought a mk2 golf gti 5 door and one rear window wouldn't wind down. Took the door card off to find a bit of rotting 2x1" timber wedging the window up, explained the clear silicone sealant. I think a replacement window mech from eBay cost less than the wood and sealant

I invented that one on my vauxhall royale.

[hairymel]

 

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

 

i have been racing in a dirt oval series this year and have had great results 'fixing' rads with huge lumps out of them - i swish the egg up in a little water and pour it into the header tank. it works better than the radweld stuff i used previously and is a darn sight cheaper

[Parky]

I bypassed the failed heater matrix in a Mk3 golf with a bit of handlebar from a BMX I had at the time, cue the coldest winter since the last ice age.

 

I am also guilty of the baked bean can exhaust repair job on a Suzuki swift. We were totally broke and it was needed to get domestic management to work, so I wobbed it up with about 3 pots of exhaust paste and wrapped it with a chopped up cat food tin and wrapped the biggest jubilee clip I could find around the can. It failed its next MOT since the bit I had 'fixed' was just the worst part of a terminally rotten system, though the tester did comment that it wasn't a bad job I'd done, but he thought I probably wouldn't like to do the same repair on the rest of it to enable it to actually pass.

Tried bypassing a Renault 9 heater matrix using plastic central heating pipe. It didn't work!

Luckily a mate ran an engineering shop and came up with a perfect diameter piece of aircraft grade steel pipe which stayed on for months.

 

Fixing rusted out Renault 5 suspension turrets with fibreglass and filler worked well. As did rebuilding a Fiat Panda door out of fibreglass which lasted about two days when a passing car hit the wing mirror and tore half the door off!

[Rusty Pelican]

Heater valve leaked in my old Imp , none available anywhere so i removed all the guts and soldered a 2 pence piece in the end to keep the coolant in , pre 73 2 pence coins were pure copper .

OK so the heater was permanently on but the coolant stayed in.

Lasted 10 years 

[forddeliveryboy]

Ardent veggers using PSA cars sort out the filter/heater plastic affair so it gives constant heat, with the help of small coinage.

 

http://www.biopowered.co.uk/wiki/Filter_modification_for_Peugeot_and_Citroen

[dugong]

A colleague at the call-centre I worked at bought a Corsa with a 12V motorcycle battery fitted. The PO wedged it in place inside the tray to stop it shifting around on cornering. 

 

With broken fragments of house brick. 

 

[Luckythirteen]

Fixing a leaky Renault sunroof is hardly an epic adventure (or anything new), but I did spend time, effort and money (probably too much of all three) trying to invent a better compound to do it with.

I tried 'improving' ordinary silicon sealant with value bandage, which made a kind of fibrous, sticky sausage. I tried loading it with paper fibre, from mashed up cardboard box.

Eventually I did what everyone else does (lesson learned), and laid the silicon inside cling film, but with some shitty cheap wool through it, to hold it together. It kinda works, but I'll need to redo it soon.

[Richard]

When I got the Volvo there was some kind of bungee cord arrangement holding the battery in, I don't know if it was JD's handiwork or the guy he bought the car from. I still haven't got round to looking at it but it wasn't mentioned in the car's successful MOT last week so it must be ok.

[dangerousdave]

what used to be common was sawdust in old gearboxes to quieten them down me and a friend once used newspaper and filler to fill a hole in a mini back valance covered it in underseal and chucked some muck at it looked like it had never been touched

I once used newspaper and underseal in the inner  panel on my Cortina because I discovered it was a bit holey the night before it was in for mot it worked

 

I did the beer can exhaust on my metro a few years ago it had snapped the day before I was going on holiday so my mate got a couple of beer cans and jubilee clips it worked for a few weeks I once tried the same thing on Cortina when I was in the lakes but it was on a bend where it snapped that lasted about a mile

[Ronnie L]

Back in the late 70's my workplace was near to a Clydeside shipyard and I watched a guy from the yard doing a complete repaint of his Moskvitch saloon over four lunch breaks. His approach to the job would make any true autoshiter glow with admiration.

 

At the start of each lunch break he came out to the car park with a gallon can of red-lead paint (bright orange stuff, now probably illegal because of the huge lead content, used in the old days as a primer on ships hulls), clearly nicked from his work. He took out a 3 inch paint brush, and then took several minutes to light his pipe. He then unwrapped his sandwiches and put them on the roof, along with his thermos flask. Next he gave the bodywork a wipe-over with a grotty rag and commenced painting. He managed to multi-task very skillfully, painting, eating, drinking and puffing at his pipe in perfect harmony. This continued each day until the hooter sounded and he had to go back to work. By the end of the week the Mosky was a startling bright orange colour and all rust was well covered-over.

 

I admired that man's optimistic approach to the task because he wasn't put off by the fact that it was mid-winter and on several days there was a lot of wind and heavy rain. Admittedly it was never actually raining when he was painting but it often came on after his lunch break finished. My experience of painting with red-lead was that in cold weather it took a good 15 hours to dry, so when he was driving home about four hours after each painting session it must have been barely even tacky. Surely an object lesson in autoshitery and an inspiration to us all.

[dave21478]

I Someone I used to know had a Mini for sale and found a hole in the sill about 20 minutes before a buyer was due to arrive. I he wobbed it up with filler, then used his compressor and an old paint gun full of muddy water to spray dirt over the whole length of the sill to blend in the fresh repair.

 

Worked a treat.