Worst bodge you've seen

[djoptix]

Not-a-terrible-bodge-but:

 

Back in the day my 106 1.5D (of Satan) got broken into and the radio stolen... how quaint! I was living in Manchester and managed to locate a scrapper with a good window, near my parents' place in Herefordshire. On my next trip back home I bodged the window thus:

 

[twosmoke300]

When I used to have motorbikes that were quick on the road paranoia got the better of me and I ended up lock wiring drain plugs. Then I moved on to worry about the split (rivet) link in the chain...

Always run a rivet link on dirt bikes now . Seen so many split links fail on other people’s bikes

[stonedagain]

Always run a rivet link on dirt bikes now . Seen so many split links fail on other people’s bikes

I used to keep a spare split link attached to the zip on my bike jacket.

[DodgeRover]

I always have a spare split link on the front brake cable / hose for my off road stuff, Wierdly this means I have never needed one.

[pauldoubleyou]

Just to add to this i remember watching someone will a bore with rope through the plug hole, turn the engine over until its compressed the valve in place and then replaced a broken valve spring. Worked a charm.

[MikeR]

Just to add to this i remember watching someone will a bore with rope through the plug hole, turn the engine over until its compressed the valve in place and then replaced a broken valve spring. Worked a charm.

if I did that ... the worlds fastest knot would be on the wrong side of the plug hole !!

[Richard]

That's not a bodge, it's the accepted way to change valve springs or valve stem oil seals. 

[red5]

Just to add to this i remember watching someone will a bore with rope through the plug hole, turn the engine over until its compressed the valve in place and then replaced a broken valve spring. Worked a charm.

 

As noted, not a bodge. used to do loads like that. Sash window weight rope was good for it in a fix, or old style windscreen seal rope. 

[bunglebus]

DSC01375_wwwkepfeltolteshu__wwwkepfeltolteshu_ by RS, on Flickr

[fordperv]

Just to add to this i remember watching someone will a bore with rope through the plug hole, turn the engine over until its compressed the valve in place and then replaced a broken valve spring. Worked a charm.

I do this when replacing valve stem seals on pintos works a treat

[Tamworthbay]

I do this when replacing valve stem seals on pintos works a treat

And me, saves taking the head off.

[NigeT]

Thought these pics justified resurrecting an old thread, even though they're  from a BMW bike engine. Came into a mate's garage the other day - bike was ex-Argentine police who were responsible for this brilliant repair a number of years ago. Must have been some more post-worthy bodges since December '18.

[somewhatfoolish]

I'm struggling to think of a set of circumstances that would result in the conrods being a weakpoint and failing, at least without utterly destroying the rest of the crankcase; more likely this is a shadetree attempt at reducing compression for shit fuel or using too-long rods from another engine. Top bodging whatever the reasons though.

[Tamworthbay]

1 minute ago, somewhatfoolish said:

I'm struggling to think of a set of circumstances that would result in the conrods being a weakpoint and failing, at least without utterly destroying the rest of the crankcase; more likely this is a shadetree attempt at reducing compression for shit fuel or using too-long rods from another engine. Top bodging whatever the reasons though.

With a BMW boxer it may well have just killed the cylinders which are easily replaced. I guess they were too lazy to split the case and swap the rods out. I think that is an amazing repair. I wonder what the balance is like though?

[Richard_FM]

The bangernomics site has some interesting bodges, including someone who tried fixing a VW Beetle 1200 engine with bits from a 1300.  

This meant welding together a hybrid crank rod as the ends on each one was a different size.

There was a mention of one particular engine where it was easy to strip the threads on the spark plug hole in the cylinder head.  It suggests testing these out before buying because it’s possible to find someone has araldited a plug in place.

[somewhatfoolish]

That's definitely in the pointless end of the bodgery pool, helicoil kits for plug threads are £25-ish.

[ruffgeezer]

I once bought an Ax with a 4 stud conversion and a saxo kit glued on for not a lot of money.

Imagine my delight* when s fee days later a loud rattle from the front suspension turned out to be because one of the two too mount studs had been sheared off and then stuck back in with silicon.

The other one had failed in sympathy leaving the strut free to roam in the strut tower.

[Inspiral_Mondays]

Back in ca. 1981 a mate of mine had a shed of an Austin 1300 which was used to transport 5 or 6 of us to the pub on Friday nights. On the way home on one occasion, the temperature gauge shot up into the red and the battery light came on so we stopped. Looking under the bonnet confirmed that, indeed, the fanbelt had snapped and as my mate had no breakdown cover we were looking at a long walk home. At the time there was an old wives‘ tale that it was possible to replace a fanbelt with a pair of tights to effect a temporary repair. Fortunately on that occasion my mate‘s sister had accompanied us and after much protesting I managed to convince her of the veracity of this trick and she disappeared behind a tree before coming back with said garment in her hand. We then spent an age with our heads under the bonnet trying, and eventually succeeding, in wrapping the tights around the pulleys. We closed the bonnet, got into the car and my mate started the engine. It worked! No battery light! Into first gear, clutch out, puff of smoke from the grill and the battery light came back on. Bollocks.  Opened the bonnet to be greeted by a cloud of smoke and a light rain of fine nylon particles which covered everything. What can I say? Myth busted. Oh and we walked home.

[2MB]

I bet she was delighted

[Richard_FM]

I used to look at biking site which had plenty of bodges.  
 

Some early Honda alloy blocks used to be easy to strip the threads on, especially the ones holding the cylinder head on.  The usual remedy was to use a slightly larger whitworth bolt to cut a new thread.

[somewhatfoolish]

Bike engines made of monkey metal, or crossgrain shite as it's sometimes known. The tights situation; I suspect more luck might have been had if the the makeshift belt only went around the waterpump, leaving the electrics to run off the battery.

[Richard_FM]

One book I have on car repair & maintenance has a section on corrosion.

One picture shows why it isn’t a good idea to repair a split wing with newspaper & filler.

[Tamworthbay]

1 hour ago, Richard_FM said:

One book I have on car repair & maintenance has a section on corrosion.

One picture shows why it isn’t a good idea to repair a split wing with newspaper & filler.

Very common for ‘repair’ manuals in the 70s to show the use of chicken wire and fibreglass. Sadly the previous owner of my Capri had a love of p40. But at least it just encapsulated the rust, where he had tried to teach himself welding was the really hard bit to fix.

[Richard_FM]

1 hour ago, Tamworthbay said:

Very common for ‘repair’ manuals in the 70s to show the use of chicken wire and fibreglass. Sadly the previous owner of my Capri had a love of p40. But at least it just encapsulated the rust, where he had tried to teach himself welding was the really hard bit to fix.

That sort of repair is featured in the book.

The Haynes Book of Bodywork Repairs has a lot of repair tips like this, nicely written Lindsey Porter

 

 

[GingerNuttz]

2016 Astra GTC that came from Arnold Clarke like this, a girl brought this to me saying the back quarter panel needed polished as it was very dull 

[vaughant]

On 1/14/2018 at 8:32 PM, Timewaster said:

Well if we are going household, my place had a socket box in the kitchen which had been filled in with cement and painted to match the surrounding tiles.

When the old kitchen came out I knocked the cement out and discovered the wiring was still in place, taped up and still live!

Must have been interesting slopping the wet cement in there.

 

This was not a one off. There was a double socket next to the downstairs toilet.

Yep, had the same on my current house. Rewired as far as I could upstairs but decided to use the ring return back to the box (well initially, but read on). The house was wired with a ring upstairs and all downstairs sockets were effectively spurs off, back then I suppose it was ok as you had maybe 2 electrical appliances. 

I went all out on it, 4-8 doubles in each room, etc etc. 

Got to the last bedroom and discovered the drop to the kitchen and feed back to board, ace, cut off kitchen drop as all new wiring, connect new wiring in to old out.

Knocked off appropriate circuit, tested, cable volt free, but fridge still on? Tried disconnecting ring main, same again, what the hell? No wires in (above) but fridge still on!!!! 

Started chipping away, ring main bypassed and spurred to the fridge socket by burying a 50p junction box in the middle of the wall,could have drilled into that at anytime. 

Then had to do the lit back to the box. 

 

Great. 

 

Also in my first house the entire kitchen extension, oven circuit included, was run from a redundant lighting circuit with only enlarged cables where visible. Always wondered why the lights dimmed when the fan kicked in ???. 

All redone now and no probs since. 

[Tamworthbay]

House wise I could write a book on ours. The ‘best’ was a pair of wall lights where the flex appeared out of the artex covered wall with a plug on the end. When we stripped it out the flex  only went just up into the wall, there it ended up in a pair of choc blocks and from there it was car speaker cable which had partially melted and scorched the artex/ plaster. Another favourite was the ‘high quality’ fake beams in the front room. I started to take the first down as my wife made a cup of tea. When she returned the whole lot were down - because they hadn’t screwed to the joists but just into the plasterboard. As soon as I disturbed one the whole lot came down. There were many many other bodges.

[Bren]

6 minutes ago, Tamworthbay said:

House wise I could write a book on ours. The ‘best’ was a pair of wall lights where the flex appeared out of artex covered the wall with a plug on the end. When we stripped it out the fed only went just up into the wall, there it ended up in a pair of choc blocks and from there it was car speaker cable which had partially melted and scorched the artex/ plaster. Another favourite was the ‘high quality’ fake beams in the front room. I started to take the first down as my wife made a cup of tea. When she returned the whole lot were down - because they hadn’t screwed to the joists but just into the plasterboard. As soon as I disturbed one the whole lot came down. There were many many other bodges.

This could become a new forum - " houseshite"

[Zelandeth]

Oh, household...yeah, the place we moved into in 93 was great for that...

Oven plugged into a socket with a bent nail instead of a fuse.

The main supply to the house (they'd apparently moved the fuse box at some point) had been chopped off at one wall, then was routed to the consumer unit in hot standard twin & earth...dangling a good foot down into the cold water header tank which was directly underneath the consumer unit.  Oh, the join having been made by a 15A choc block too...which had thoroughly welded itself together.

That place was... interesting.

[Richard_FM]

I’ve heard about someone who moved into a flat where the entire electric supply was wired into a single plug with two neutral pins and no fuse.