Worst bodge you've seen

[Uncle Jimmy]

This is not a bodge, wood has a long and illustrious record as a bearing material. Lignum Vitae is still used in ships' stern tubes. As long as you avoid wood with a high mineral content like Teak which would abrade the steering column it's a perfectly acceptable substitute for what are usually plastic bushes.

I did actually use Lignum, I have a nice stock of bowling balls!

[Zelandeth]

Bus (well, coach). 2004-ish.  Heritage vehicle, can't remember what precisely, Dominant II body, *think* it was an AEC, can't remember for certain though.  Call came in that it had gone bang, then overheated, then stopped.  In that order.

 

We grabbed the first available vehicle, tools and legged it.  I wasn't involved in any way beyond the owner being a mate of mine, so I was happy to help, it beat watching my parents get drunk in the pub on a Sunday afternoon.

 

We got there, shuffled passengers and luggage onto the replacement bus, and surveyed the damage.

 

What had happened was an engine mounting bracket had sheared off the block (that would be the bang), the engine had then dropped, decapitating the thermostat housing en route, and as far as we could tell the only thing holding it up was the starter motor cabling.

 

Our please-get-us-home-a-recovery-truck-will-be-expensive-its-Sunday bodge consisted of reattaching the engine with about five ratchet straps around the chassis rails, and another two around the block to mostly hold the thermostat housing in place.  It leaked like a sieve, but would do.

 

Astonishingly it did get us home.  More worryingly, the damn gearchange was better that day than I ever remember it being on that coach!  I seem to recall that never did get repaired as it was starting to suffer the usual rot around the rear body frame that usually killed Duple coaches from the 70s.

[overrun]

I like the DVSA page, they have a good sense of humour!

[fiatdaft]

 

 

 

 

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[Datsuncog]

Worst bodge for a car I have owned:

As mentioned elsewhere recently, it transpired that my '96 XM 2.5TD had its very rotten sills FIXD by a previous custodian using such high-quality materials as plastic bags, lengths of plastic electrical conduit and lashings and lashings of Fastglas and Isopon. It would probably have been quicker and easier to actually just weld the damn thing than spend many, many hours laboriously crafting a new set of sills from items with no structural integrity whatsoever. Terrifyingly, this car came with a fairly new MOT when I bought it.

This is just a selection of what the MOT inspector pulled from the underside of my poor old Cit, like some species of Autoshite magician:



And this is what I was left with:



And, unsurprisingly, this is what happened to it. Far from the only major issue afflicting it, UIW went off to live on a farm. (A farm that happened to specialise in breaking big Citroens.)




An honourable mention should also go to the previous giffer owner of my Phase 1 Gooner, who, after snapping a locking wheelbolt in the hub, partially drilled out the buried shaft and then carefully lathe-machined another bolt down to just jam into the hole. Beautiful job, absolutely fucking useless.




For bodge spotted when out and about, I think this Mondeo owner has taken the humble craft of gaffer-taping a bumper and raised it to an entire art form. Ladies and gents, may I present to you "Untitled 1 (The Unbearable Shiteness Of Being)".

Note the use of negative space to highlight the dichotomy of both bumperness and non-bumperness; the repurposed mixed media challenging our concepts of form and function, making an exaggeratedly parodic assent to our bourgoisie assumptions as to the nature of running a shit old Ford, and culminating in a silent scream for the inchoate absurdity of searching for healing or relief in a dying world of decay and entropy. Wow. Get this chap a Tate Modern exhibition, if you would be so kind.

[Wack]

A guy on another forum paid a lot of money for a restored MGA

 

Had it for about a week , went to go round a bend and the steering went so he ended up in the ditch

 

Somewhere on the steering they'd used a metric nut on a unf thread

 

When he contacted them about it they pointed to page 6 paragraph 27 line 3 of his terms and conditions of purchase contract

 

Sold as a project even though it wasn't, don't know if he got anywhere with a claim

[Kiltox]

Hopefully he pointed them at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/unfair-terms-explained-for-businesses-full-guide

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

When I got my Mondeo, the first thing I done was smash the rear bumper with a hammer so I could tape it up. Not. In fact I stripped the outstandingly clean car and put the wanted bits in my Orion, bought the relative XR3I bits and Turbo bits, put them in the Orion and then sent both cars to be cubed. Total project failure.

[sierraman]

That Mondeos still a test fail as its got sharp edges protruding. A new bumper is £40 and takes an hour to fit.

 

Once made up a few gaps at the end of a sill with some offcuts of some thin wood I had, made a form to trowel some filler on.

[Datsuncog]

That Mondeos still a test fail as its got sharp edges protruding. A new bumper is £40 and takes an hour to fit.

 

I never saw that particular Mondeo again (was usually parked in the same place on my walk to work, back in the day) so I'm gonna guess it was a get-you-to-the-scrapyard quick bodge. The use of electrical tape, not gaffer tape, would indicate that the owner's heart just wasn't in it... shame, as it looked fairly clean otherwise (and with a full set of original wheeltrims). But back in 2005, these were still everywhere...

 

I once had a Flickr album titled 'Great Sussex Car Repairs', including a Montego held together with multiple fraying layers of clear Sellotape, and a VW Type 3 coupe with the doorskins stuck back on with gaffer tape and then simply rattlecan'd over...

[Vince70]

My ex had a white 1989 mk4 Escort auto once which was 5 door on the logbook but was a 3 door car.

 

The car was only 5 years old at the time and I reversed it a small post and damaged the spare wheel well and and rear valance.

So I took it around to a mate as he was a a dab hand with a spray gun and welder and we discovered the back end was from a very early 1981 blue mk3 escort (smaller strut towers)and was made of filler and rot so needed a lot of welding.

But saying that she kept the car for years afterwards and it only ever failed once on a crack on the windscreen.

But it did explain the blacked up cills on a relatively new car.

[Timewaster]

Wow. 3 pages and my name has not been mentioned.

[Talbot]

This has reminded me of a bodge I witnessed while living in the Netherlands 30+ years ago.  My father had a MK1 RWD Datsun Bluebird 2.0, which I still have the number plate for, and my mother had a succession of shite from a dodgy little garage in Amsterdam run by an English bloke (who fucked the company over, stole all the cash and ran away to Spain one day, but that's a different story), where we had to go back to every now and then for various things.

 

The bodge wasn't really a bodge, more a complete cock-up.. one of the young blokes working there had been told to sort out a car that had been swiped all down the side.  Front wing, both doors and the rear wing were all damaged.  He spent ages doing a beautiful filler job on it, got the lines perfect and it was ready for paint.

 

Filler bloke: "how long should this filler take to set?"

 

Boss of Garage:  "about half an hour.. how much hardener did you use?"

 

Filler bloke:  "Hardener??  what hardener?"

 

Had to take the whole lot off and do it again.  He went through about 5 tonnes of P38 that day!

[Exiled_Tat_Gatherer]

Worst I found was a 'restored' Spitfire I was given in lieu of cash owed..... I didn't inspect properly as I just wanted something/anything instead of a promise. It was a deathtrap - the sills were wob, wire, hopes n prayers and stuffed with OILED paper! I found this out when looking at welding the rear inner arch that had a 50p size hole. Turned into an ongoing 4yr project....... resoration shop has long since gone though of course so couldn't call them and blast them just for the sake of it.

Another one was a get me home TR7 - my MG had carked it that week so I was desperate...... I got flashed on the A17 a few times and thought they liked the car - it was on fire underneath. Exhaust mount was fubar'd and they'd jammed a rag in between the exhaust and rear axle to hold it up........

 

Worst I did was on my second car - Mk4 Cortina 2.0Ghia(or GL) - front suspension strut went partially through the top mount when I took Wroxham humpback bridge a bit too quickly (by mistake, honest) - mate in the civvy side of station support ops cut down a hardwood plank to fit and put it the length of the wing and bolted through....... it worked too! Didn't drive any worse than the usual Cortina with bushes shagged etc....

My R19Mk1 16V dropped it' exhaust - soup tin and exhaust bandages saw it good for a fair while ..... mate preferred the F1 sound before the 'fix' though.

[Exiled_Tat_Gatherer]

Not a bodge as such - mate had a R19 cabrio....... chopping it in for a BMW IIRC. All agreed and awaiting part for BMW MoT - so Monday deal arranged. Of course the GF (he says) was messign around before a last goodbye and slid it into a ditch. He arrived VERY early Monday - parked it with shagged side up against a wall and signed, grabbed and ran before they noticed. Very lucky to get away with it - but apparently sold as seen works both ways!

[cort16]

I had a big hole in the floor of my first cortina so I got a large sports sock, covered it in fibre glass and wedged it in the hole . It kept the water out over the winter anyway.

I think every cortina of that period was full of expanding foam trying to keep water pissing into the cabin through the various holes in the bodywork.

[Talbot]

Another I remember... an attempted bodge on an early 80's breadvan polo that a friend owned.  He realised one day that the top of the OSR wheel arch was basically missing, and brought it over to mine one day saying he just needed a patch bodging on to keep the water out.

 

The "patch" turned out to be about half-a-square-foot of the inner wheelarch missing. So I cut out a random bit of old bonnet I had kicking about, and with the combined effort of a welder, lump hammer and grinder, bashed merry hell out of the patch, while tack welding it in place, and cutting off excess patch / body as we went.

 

The final result was amazingly good, looked the part and after a slap of underseal even went through two more MOTs.  If we'd been trying to make a good job of it, I dare say it would have looked no better and we'd have taken 3 times as long.  As it was, it was under an hour from him turning up to the work done and drinking tea.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

.....I cut out a random bit of old bonnet I had kicking about, and with the combined effort of a welder, lump hammer and grinder, bashed merry hell out of the patch, while tack welding it in place, and cutting off excess patch / body as we went.

 

The final result was amazingly good, looked the part and after a slap of underseal even went through two more MOTs.  If we'd been trying to make a good job of it, I dare say it would have looked no better and we'd have taken 3 times as long.  As it was, it was under an hour from him turning up to the work done and drinking tea.

 

You should see what the panel beaters in Cuba are capable of, keeping their ancient bodywork going.

[Exiled_Tat_Gatherer]

oh yeah - a mate with a 2002 - turned up at my garage and said he thought the boot floor needed looking at. Half the thing was hanging down on one side - not far off below the valance. Utter rotbox........ we cut it out and he took the remains of some whitebox metal I had (old washing machine IIRC) and tacked it on each corner...... left it like that and buggered off back up the road home. He's STILL running around with that in place if I'm right. I don't think he ever bothered to do anything else on that particular part of the car.

[plasticvandan]

I ran a Reliant Regal off a 5l petrol can in the boot with the feed pipe gaffer taped into the nexk when the tank rotted,lasted a few months before i found another tank

[twosmoke300]

That reminds me of running my chevette on a motor bike tank hung on the divider in the boot between the normal tank and tool kit bit.

Was having the bodywork done at college every tues afternoon and cba taking the real tank out every week. Think it was like that for a couple of months . Right pita and always running onto reserve.

[Bobthebeard]

I bought a Ford Escort estate back in 2004. It was an R reg with full MOT. The bulkhead turned out to be made almost entirely of sculpted expanding foam. Creative sanding and painting made it look like metal. It went to auction and I didn't get my money back.....

[strangeangel]

gas struts

 

When they failed on my old Skoda Favorit I cut the handle off an old yard brush, kept calm and carried on.

[fordperv]

The best one ive seen but worst at the same time is the mrs mk1 sierra project, I nicknamed it teabag because it's gold and full of holes, the previous owner spent a good amount of cash at a garage (the receipt was with the car) having "welding" done to the floor to sill and rear outer seat mount area, the sills etc I came to check the car over when I was taking it to bits the welding was expertly layed runs of silicone sealer made to look like welds and overpainted with black tar shit, I didn't mind because I gave him near scrap money for the car with tax and test, we did laugh because the guy wasnt a small lad and I formed him of how his behind was risking dropping out of the bottom of the car if he hit a large bump in the road, he was heading to the garage for a chat after we left.

[cort16]

My favourite is the Fiat Uno bought from Ayr car auctions by a couple of bodge it and scarper types who operated out the yard my lockup is in before I was there. They used to buy cars, give them a quick blow over then put them back through the auction and make a few quid here and there.

They bought this UNO but the tail gate hinges and tailgate itself had rotted right out it so they tacked it on, filled the gap around it with filler, painted the car then drew a black line on with felt pen where the tail gate meets the bonnet and back through the auction. Imagine getting home and if finding that.

Apparently they used to lay out sheets of newspaper, cover them in filler then stick the paper to the cars. Once dried they'd just sand the paper off for that factory fresh look.

[pilninggas]

I always like this bodge: My old man and my grandfather were working on the build of the M5 in North Somerset [c.1973]. They had a ratty old van to get to the site. One evening they were running late to get back to Bristol and were going across the site quite quickly. My old man went too fast over a rut and the back of the van collapsed inwards [like a squashed tin can]. So they, being shuttering chippies, stuck an Acroprop in there and spread the body back out. The acro only got taken out when they scrapped it a few years later.

[bunglebus]

I worked for a bodger plumber with a Nissan Bluebird estate as a work van. The sills were made of concrete where they'd rotted through...

[Split_Pin]

That vosa blog was a good read!

[taxi paul]

Along the lines of bekos post. On the 75 forum a chap asked about a sticky rear seatbelt.i advised him to put a child seat in and the tester would leave it alone. I was scolded and told off for being dishonest.

[Eddie Honda]

That vosa blog was a good read!

It's not what it used to be . Before the blog, they had a mag...

 

Here's the "Horror Story" from Issue 9, October 2000:

 

 

There isn't one in Issue 10 - Jan 2001.