Worst bodge you've seen

[paulplom]

7 hours ago, Timewaster said:

My brothers house has two rooms that have been knocked into one.. 

On the floor where the wall had been was a nicely finished strip of wood that sat an inch proud. After several trips and stubbed toes he deicided it had to go, but when he prized it up, it has been hollowed out and there was a gas pipe running across the floor underneath it. 

 

He put it back down again! 

Par for the course.

[Burnside]

I was working as a valeter at a Mercedes Dealer years ago. An a used salesman's got completely done over on a trade in.

A guy turned up one Friday afternoon in a K reg Audi 90 Cabriolet in Black. He was interested in a used Silver CLK on the Forecourt.

He wanted to take it there and then as is for cash and a px on the Audi. 

Salesman was only to keen to boast his sales figures. So took the Audi round the block etc. An all seamed fine so a deal was done.

The Salesman then decided he'd take the Audi home for the weekend, instead of his company car. As he planned on taking his Girlfriend away to a swanky Hotel that night.

Expect the Audi and they never made it. Engine imploded on the M'way as it turned out the previous owner had filled it with 20w50 to hide the knocking and his lead foot did the rest. Oh and the gearbox was full of sawdust. 

Surprisingly too they never heard off the previous owner about how he got on with the CLK. 

 

 

 

[bunglebus]

N/S wiper arm on the FIL's Vitara had loads of play. Seems to be a common fault, spindle is pressed into the linkage arm and somehow gets loose.

This is a previous repair attempt

It's that shit that it still moves, as the welds don't penetrate at all.

Here's how it should look

 

[Ghosty]

Door shuts on a mk2 Granada I looked at that had 12" long rectangular steel plates tack welded in place, with each weld blob no more than an inch apart. No grinding back, no filler, but painted.

 

[danthecapriman]

3 hours ago, bunglebus said:

N/S wiper arm on the FIL's Vitara had loads of play. Seems to be a common fault, spindle is pressed into the linkage arm and somehow gets loose.

This is a previous repair attempt

It's that shit that it still moves, as the welds don't penetrate at all.

Here's how it should look

 

That’s bloody awful! So bad it’s comical. I can sort of see where they were going with the bird poo welds (if that is what it is!?) but wtf is the screw doing!?

[bunglebus]

31 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

That’s bloody awful! So bad it’s comical. I can sort of see where they were going with the bird poo welds (if that is what it is!?) but wtf is the screw doing!?

I think that was the first attempt to fix the two parts in place - I'm not convinced they took the arm off the rest of the linkage (I did it by accident) so they would have had terrible access to it

[RoverFolkUs]

K-Seal on a collapsed water pump 😂

Yes, the cambelt was starting to walk off... 

[Bren]

A thread about builders on another part of the forum made me remember this gem - I may have mentioned this before so bear with me.

My first job after leaving school - boss had a builder in for odd jobs. He was shit - like O'Reilly from Fawlty Towers.

One occasion he was paid to brick up a doorway to an office. He did the job and left.

I was using a press and could see into the office with the doorway that had been bricked up. Boss was going ballistic to the foreman. Boss then left.

Foreman, who had started laughing gestured for me to come in.

I went in and he said " Look at that" pointing to the freshly bricked up doorway.

Builder hadn't even trimmed the carpet.

He had laid the bricks on it.

[Talbot]

This seems like an appropriate thread.  Not quite a bodge, but a setting that was SOOO far out it wasn't funny.

@Gabriall's Triumph spitfire has always been very heavy to steer, and has rather darted all over the road somewhat.  It was hard to keep in a straight line.  New set of boots helped, but it was still bad.  Also, on lock, you could get the tyres to rub quite badly.  The steering wheel was offset at about 40 degrees for straight ahead, and it was horrid to drive.

I re-centred the steering wheel at the centre of the rack, and set the tracking today.  It was supposed to be 1.5 to 3mm toe in.  I measured it at...  30mm.

Thirty milimeters toe-in.  Do what now?

Re-set it to about 2mm.  Quote  "It's a completely different car!"

.. and the wheels no longer contact the lower track arms on lock.  🙄

[chaseracer]

Tyre life no longer measured in minutes?

[Talbot]

1 hour ago, chaseracer said:

Tyre life no longer measured in minutes?

Thankfully it had only done about 50 miles on the new tyres, but it's noticeable that all the moulding sprues have been scuffed off in that time.   The old tyres were like hard plastic, so I suspect were just skipping over the road and not really being affected.

What's really amusing is that you can clearly see the difference in the tracking just looking at the car.  From a distance.  Had to turn the track rod ends about 8 turns each side to get even close.

[mat777]

Not mine, but one from another forum that's always stuck in my mind. 

This bloke had a 5 speed Capri that lost 5th just as he was putting it up for sale. The solution? He went to a scrapyard and returned with the gear knob from a 4 speed Capri 😅 

 

Another one that springs to mind was the replica 1275gt Mini my best mate bought. The highlight on that was the rather home made looking rollcage booted directly into the unreinforced rusty floor. Oh wait no, it was the shoulder harness straps secured through that most sturdy metalwork, the rear seatback panel...

[Tenmil Socket]

15 hours ago, mat777 said:

This bloke had a 5 speed Capri that lost 5th just as he was putting it up for sale. The solution? He went to a scrapyard and returned with the gear knob from a 4 speed Capri 😅 

🤣

[mk2_craig]

15 hours ago, mat777 said:

5 speed Capri that lost 5th just as he was putting it up for sale. The solution? He went to a scrapyard and returned with the gear knob from a 4 speed Capri 😅

I think the car must be long gone now so I can admit to it, aircon didn’t work on my mk2 Mondeo (shagged condenser I think) so I obtained a set of heater controls from a base model and swapped the non a/c fan switch in. 

[neil72]

Back in the late 80s when VWs were really really cheap my brother bought a 59 Beetle from a bloke in HACKNEY in an UNDERGROUND car park.....still it was only £250......looked ok until we started pulling it apart, the rear inner wings were a work of art, no metal involved, formica, bits of plastic and filler!

The floorplans had various pieces of metal pot riveted over the holes in the floor, but whoever did it didn't want to get underneath the car, so they just pulled the seats out, pulled the carpets up and did it there, we wondered why the floor seemed 'bumpy'

Car was scrapped about 6 months later when me and my Dad found him an absolute solid 71 1200L for £200.

 

[horriblemercedes]

8 minutes ago, mk2_craig said:

I think the car must be long gone now so I can admit to it, aircon didn’t work on my mk2 Mondeo (shagged condenser I think) so I obtained a set of heater controls from a base model and swapped the non a/c fan switch in. 

What was the benefit? Did those controls not function the same whether the air conditioning was running or not?

 

I appreciate that many climate control systems are just useless without the air conditioning working - they really seem to rely on it or they just blow warm air, even when it's not that warm outside.

[mk2_craig]

3 minutes ago, horriblemercedes said:

What was the benefit?

Literally just so that when I sold the car, I wouldn’t be pulled up for the a/c not working - if it didn’t appear to be fitted then the average car buyer couldn’t claim that it was faulty! 

The cars with aircon had a rotary switch that turned in one direction for the various fan speeds with a/c off, and the other direction for fan with a/c on. 

[BritChod]

A 1970-something Beetle made of expandable foam and held together with hope 'n' dreams. It was delivered with a 12-month MOT, so how bad could it be, right? Overnight, it sprang a huge fuel leak and the driver's seat fell off its broken runners. I rolled it back from its space to look at the leak and a headlight fell out. I fixed these things and a side skirt fell off within 200 yards and was driven over by a following vehicle. That was as far as I ever drove it. 

[Mally]

I used to take workmates cars to an MOT garage I knew.

Took a Lada, in the days when everybody had one.

It turned out to be two cars welded together around the middle. It passed, with the observation note.

Car appears to be 2 separate vehicles welded together. Welding seems good, but I hardly think it was worth the effort.

[mat777]

3 hours ago, Mally said:

I used to take workmates cars to an MOT garage I knew.

Took a Lada, in the days when everybody had one.

It turned out to be two cars welded together around the middle. It passed, with the observation note.

Car appears to be 2 separate vehicles welded together. Welding seems good, but I hardly think it was worth the effort.

I'm intrigued to know how that passed ... I thought cut n shuts were massively illegal? 

[Richard_FM]

On the A to B TV series a boy had borrowed some money off his Dad to buy a Beetle, only to find the front suspension mounts were made of fibreglass when they collapsed when driving it!

[Billy - Medhurst]

Bought a nice looking mk2 Escort around 1991 with  full mot. Part ex'd it for a Mini at a rural garage I used to use. Got right earache off them later - Boot floor and rear quarters were off other cars and not welded in well either. He found this when a interested purchaser was shown how "Nice" the car was on the ramp!.

[Marshall2810]

Not the worst but certainly makes me giggle every time I sit on the shitter. My view is this where the previous owner has opted to cut the architrave instead of the tiles even when the tiles have been cut down anyway!

Absolutely first class

[Split_Pin]

In my previous house the old couple who had lived there for 25 years and were suddenly moving out told me the neighbour was 'lovely' when in fact she was an alcoholic nurse who banged music out at all hours.

That's not the 'bodge' though, the condenser on the back of the boiler had a crack in it which had been covered over with PUTTY. I wondered why my then girlfriend (now wife) kept getting headaches..... 

New boiler immediately installed by British Gas.

[sierraman]

11 hours ago, mat777 said:

I'm intrigued to know how that passed ... I thought cut n shuts were massively illegal? 

No they’re not illegal at all just a bit err unsafe! 

[Dobloseven]

18 minutes ago, sierraman said:

No they’re not illegal at all just a bit err unsafe! 

Suppose the ultimate cut and shuts are stretch limos!

[comfortablynumb]

I've often wondered about cut n shuts, they're welded together (usually)

Cars in general are welded together.

I'm not talking invacars or scimitars here obvs😁

If it's done properly, and aligned right, what is the issue?

Excepting the fact that there were a fair number of nicked/written off cars involved.

[IronStar]

29 minutes ago, comfortablynumb said:

I've often wondered about cut n shuts, they're welded together (usually)

Cars in general are welded together.

I'm not talking invacars or scimitars here obvs😁

If it's done properly, and aligned right, what is the issue?

Excepting the fact that there were a fair number of nicked/written off cars involved.

I would assume it’s usually the standard of the craftsmanship. If done properly it can be seamless - I’ve seen many totaled cars getting half the car replaced, and if you didn’t know you’d never be able to tell. Obviously someone skilled enough to do this, with cutting and joining it back up at the right places / at the factory welds costs ££££.

If it’s obvious that it’s a cut n shut, it’s probably not done to any sort of acceptable standard though. 

[chaseracer]

30 minutes ago, comfortablynumb said:

If it's done properly, and aligned right...

This.  Very VERY much this...

[Rocket88]

On 15/01/2018 at 14:51, DeeJay said:

Fed up with wind and water whistling up my trouser legs when driving and knowing it was getting crushed when the "Legit" mot ran out.

Not having a welder but having a saw.

Tongue and groove floorboards in my old Anglia.

Mate had a Mk3 Escort estate with “ structural “ carpets glued to what remained of the floor….