Worst bodge you've seen

[Metal Guru]

  On 25/03/2025 at 08:34, comfortablynumb said:

Don't know if it's standard practice, but I saw a limo in a breakers a few years ago, it was basically chopped in half, a few pieces of box section welded in, and the rest was fibreglass.

I know there were issues with some imports getting UK registered, might be why,?

Never been in one, no desire to either.

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No one wears a seat belt in those things anyway, so in a serious crash you’re probably going to die by being impaled on the cocktail bar or other lethal  interior fittings.

 

[EyesWeldedShut]

  On 25/03/2025 at 08:34, comfortablynumb said:

Don't know if it's standard practice, but I saw a limo in a breakers a few years ago, it was basically chopped in half, a few pieces of box section welded in, and the rest was fibreglass.

I know there were issues with some imports getting UK registered, might be why,?

Never been in one, no desire to either.

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I had a chat with a load of limo drivers at an event  back in the day (kind of 1996/7) and they were debating the pros/cons of the newer, modern stretched things vs the coachbuilt Daimler DS420 types. There was a lot of tapping and knocking of body panels and the like. Moderns had a lot of fibreglass - much sucking of teeth from the older drivers in the Daimlers.
The younger guys in the stretchies then pointed out that their normal clientele would not be seen dead getting out of a Daimler type, giffer limo at 2am outside Stringfellows.
Both sides agreed to differ.

[artdjones]

18 people were killed in this one. It also mowed down two pedestrians, making a total of 20.

[goosey]

  On 25/03/2025 at 11:22, artdjones said:

18 people were killed in this one. It also mowed down two pedestrians, making a total of 20.

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Wasn’t this due to Brake failure caused by poor/non existent Maintenance by the Hire Company?

[artdjones]

  On 25/03/2025 at 11:30, goosey said:

Wasn’t this due to Brake failure caused by poor/non existent Maintenance by the Hire Company?

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It had a 15 foot stretch, making it 34 ft long, and didn't have the federal certificate needed. Also it had 18 seats instead of 10, all occupied. Brake failure was the cause, but almost every other regulation was broken. The driver had drugs in his blood as well. 

[mk2_craig]

  On 25/03/2025 at 11:22, artdjones said:

18 people were killed in this one. It also mowed down two pedestrians, making a total of 20.

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Let’s look on the bright side, that back end would probably go again if welded onto one that had been rear ended. 

[artdjones]

  On 25/03/2025 at 11:04, EyesWeldedShut said:

I had a chat with a load of limo drivers at an event  back in the day (kind of 1996/7) and they were debating the pros/cons of the newer, modern stretched things vs the coachbuilt Daimler DS420 types. There was a lot of tapping and knocking of body panels and the like. Moderns had a lot of fibreglass - much sucking of teeth from the older drivers in the Daimlers.
The younger guys in the stretchies then pointed out that their normal clientele would not be seen dead getting out of a Daimler type, giffer limo at 2am outside Stringfellows.
Both sides agreed to differ.

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Lots of Daimlers have fibreglass all over the place too, although often well disguised.

[Metal Guru]

  On 25/03/2025 at 11:22, artdjones said:

18 people were killed in this one. It also mowed down two pedestrians, making a total of 20.

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I think that’s pretty much what happened to the one on 5th Gear crash test.

[Jerzy Woking]

  On 14/01/2025 at 08:49, IronStar said:

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. 

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  On 14/01/2025 at 17:36, comfortablynumb said:

Near where I used to live, there was a huge breakers (Universal Salvage?) and it was really common to walk round their yard (remember that?) and see lots of stuff with major body cuts taken from them.

Probably more than you'd think. Cheaper supply of body panels I guess

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Riding around Albania a few short years ago, nearly every town we went through had a car breakers on the main road through the town.

Odd in itself to see so many. Espevially as a quick look showed that nearly all of them had half cars-either a complete front end or back end of various models. Must be a huge trade in cut and shuts there.

[comfortablynumb]

And a skillset that encourages the reuse of such parts, rather than the throwaway attitude we seem to have adopted in this country. @Jerzy Woking

God I'm getting even more depressed now

[Lankytim]

  On 25/03/2025 at 17:47, Jerzy Woking said:

 

Riding around Albania a few short years ago, nearly every town we went through had a car breakers on the main road through the town.

Odd in itself to see so many. Espevially as a quick look showed that nearly all of them had half cars-either a complete front end or back end of various models. Must be a huge trade in cut and shuts there.

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Isn’t that to do with paying import duties? Late cars are bought from abroad to break for parts and are cut in half to minimise the tax paid as it’s no longer a complete vehicle. (or something like that 

[IronStar]

  On 25/03/2025 at 18:58, Lankytim said:

Isn’t that to do with paying import duties? Late cars are bought from abroad to break for parts and are cut in half to minimise the tax paid as it’s no longer a complete vehicle. (or something like that 

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In Serbia cars are driven into the country by someone with foreign passport, as Serbian nationals not allowed to drive foreign-plated cars in Serbia, and then broken for parts, avoiding any import duties. I would be surprised if it’s any different there.

[groovyboovy]

  On 25/03/2025 at 17:47, Jerzy Woking said:

 

Riding around Albania a few short years ago, nearly every town we went through had a car breakers on the main road through the town.

Odd in itself to see so many. Espevially as a quick look showed that nearly all of them had half cars-either a complete front end or back end of various models. Must be a huge trade in cut and shuts there.

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Saw this in Alexandria, in Egypt, stacked high around the front of the scrap shops

 

  On 25/03/2025 at 17:47, Jerzy Woking said:

 

Riding around Albania a few short years ago, nearly every town we went through had a car breakers on the main road through the town.

Odd in itself to see so many. Espevially as a quick look showed that nearly all of them had half cars-either a complete front end or back end of various models. Must be a huge trade in cut and shuts there.

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[JMotor]

Few more bodges I've found.

This greeted me when I replaced the heater matrix in the Maestro. Piece of filing cabinet and heaps of silicone used.

Then the lower water rail was some hydraulic hose, a Massey tractor rubber pipe with bits of carpet cable tied to stop it rubbing off the rad.

This next one was on a Proton Satria GTi I owned years ago. Someone snapped the adjustment thread on the main handbrake cable. To fix this they just slotted the holes for the mounts and slid the fucker forward! With an ugly as blob of weld to mate the cable to the adjuster nut.

Luckily I had a scrap Proton Coupe at the time to pillage parts from.

[sierraman]

I really cannot talk, I once made the end for sill on a Focus out of an old greenhouse plinth. 

[DavidB]

  On 13/01/2025 at 13:16, horriblemercedes said:

 

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.

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Why is that I wonder - it was warm the other day so set my climate control to low and it blew hot air out that was hotter than the air outside, it only comes through a vent, I don’t even think it has a pollen filter. 

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

Very neatly done.

[martc]

[Zelandeth]

  On 27/03/2025 at 20:37, DavidB said:

Why is that I wonder - it was warm the other day so set my climate control to low and it blew hot air out that was hotter than the air outside, it only comes through a vent, I don’t even think it has a pollen filter. 

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Because the system knows the incoming air temperature, so will switch to recirculation mode automatically if it thinks it's more efficient to just cool the air inside the car - obviously that all falls apart when the AC part isn't working so there's no cooling.  You might hope that in this day and age the systems would be smart enough to know this and drop into a useful fallback mode - but that's just the sensible engineer in me talking I think...

The worst car I had for this was a Jag XJ-S where literally the only controls you had were two dials for fan speed and temperature - there was manual control over anything whatsoever.

Didn't help that the control logic had *also* gone slightly senile in addition to the AC being dead.

Given the amount of heat soak through the transmission tunnel and fact that opening the windows seemed to just make huge amounts of noise without moving any air, that car was murder on a hot day.  Fact that it was black didn't help either so every surface that had even seen the sun for a few minutes would be too hot to touch on a hot day.

[Surface Rust]

  On 01/04/2025 at 16:11, martc said:

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Arguably better executed than VWs own effort to update the Beetle....

[Dyslexic Viking]

When the new starter didn't fit on a tractor we have, the previous owner cut the oil pipe that goes from the oil filter to the engine to make it fit and used an old coolant hose held with 2 hoseclamps as a replacement for the pipe and this sees full oil pressure.

[Matty]

  On 01/04/2025 at 19:05, Dyslexic Viking said:

When the new starter didn't fit on a tractor we have, the previous owner cut the oil pipe that goes from the oil filter to the engine to make it fit and used an old coolant hose held with 2 hoseclamps as a replacement for the pipe and this sees full oil pressure.

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Probably be reet that in fairness. It'll only be seeing about 4 bar when stone cold won't it? For peace of mind replace it with length of 10 bar braid rated for oil delivery and a couple of proper hose clamps not jubilees and it'll probably outlast you 😀 

[JeeExEll]

Years ago a mate bought an early Mk2 Granada Ghia but the heater blower didn't work. Soon afterwards we were out in it one cold rainy night and he went to buy ciggies while I sat in the car, engine running. Condensation on the windscreen was becoming a problem so I  started to mess about with the heater controls trying the settings and suddenly the heater blower started to work. Yaaaay. Then it stopped. Then it started again. Then it stopped.

Somebody had connected the blower wiring into the intermittent wiper wash-wipe circuit. The heater blower only worked when the wipers swept across the screen.

My mate wasn't really practically minded so myself and another mate repaired it.

The followng hot dry summer he bought a tidy orange Escort Mk 2 Sport and asked us to fit and connect a tape player. The Escort wiring is simple but for some reason it was, again, a bit of a mess. For a laugh we connected the horn to the load side of his wiper circuit. A few days later it rained. Every time the wipers swept the screen the horn would sound.  Confused the fuck out of the driver as he was on his own.