Unplanned roadside repairs

[drewd]

I was driving from Lancs to Lincs today in a non direct route and around 40 miles into the journey my nearside wiper blade decided that the M62 was an ideal place to fall apart.

I was near Birch services so thought I'd pull in and buy a new wiper blade as even motorway service station prices would be cheaper than a new windscreen. They didn't sell wiper blades. Arse.

But the W H Smith's had a truckers section, and that had superglue! Result!

Wiper blade glued back together and the journey continued without drama. Autoshite motoring at its finest. New blades will be purchased tomorrow.

What simple temporary repairs/bodges have others performed on their shite?

I realise that this is a crap repair but it's better than knackering a perfectly good screen. Why don't service stations sell stuff like wiper blades?

Edited November 2, 2019 by drewd
Pointing out how crap and trivial this repair was

[spike60]

My Scimitar snapped a front wishbone mount coming out of the Tyne  tunnel. I limped  into Wideopen industrial estate, found a factory working on a Saturday afternoon and bribed a worker with a MIG. I then drove the car up to the fire door and I welded it back onto chassis. I drove it round for about 6 months before replacing it.....

[SillyBilly]

Did this solution really work? I ask as my 406 coupe did the same. However, I am fortunately near a Wilko(s) and they had the extremely long driver's side blade for a couple of quid. But, and this is a big BUT, for the life of me, I am far from able to replace the thing. The wiper arm will only lift about an inch, given that new blade comes with myriad number of connectors and I sadly, do not have the ability to work it all out. A dab of superglue would  hopefully, seem to be the cure to my current situation. Thank you in advance for any and all of your advice.

[drewd]

44 minutes ago, SillyBilly said:

Did this solution really work? I ask as my 406 coupe did the same. However, I am fortunately near a Wilko(s) and they had the extremely long driver's side blade for a couple of quid. But, and this is a big BUT, for the life of me, I am far from able to replace the thing. The wiper arm will only lift about an inch, given that new blade comes with myriad number of connectors and I sadly, do not have the ability to work it all out. A dab of superglue would  hopefully, seem to be the cure to my current situation. Thank you in advance for any and all of your advice.

It's held up with the rain and spray I've encountered today, but I don't know how well it'd hold up as the temperature drops.

[bunglebus]

1 hour ago, SillyBilly said:

 for the life of me, I am far from able to replace the thing. The wiper arm will only lift about an inch

Can you stop the wipers at the top of the screen by turning the ignition off?

[bunglebus]

Anyway roadside repairs.

Having just put a used fuel tank in my VW T3 van, I was on a mission to drop my daughter home to Eastbourne from Essex, about 90 miles each way.

Just as I was getting near the engine started to falter going up hills. I could get it restarted but it wasn't happy. Stopped on a very windy hilltop and guessed that some crap in the tank had blocked the hose. At luck would have it I had a longer bit of fuel hose still in the van from doing the job, so I could connect up to the return side of the tank. Fired up, ran perfectly and stayed like that until I sold it years later 

[DoctorRetro]

I changed a water pump on my Lada years ago at the side of the M4. 

Recently I cut and stretched a burst pipe to get me to civilisation on my Rover 416.

Probably loads more, I am known as the king of the bodge... 

[sutty2006]

I once brought my manta back to life with a billy bat after the distributor conked out on a roundabout on the A50 coming home from a weekend long car show. One good thwack saw it away under its own steam again. Nothing like a good thrashing to keep it on its toes. 

[Floatylight]

Can you stop the wipers at the top of the screen by turning the ignition off?

Try turning the ignition of and immediately giving the wipers a flick, may park them at the top of the screen

Sent from my Moto G (5) using Tapatalk

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

I operated my mates throttle on his mg metro by sitting on the engine whilst he done the gear change bit to get us a mile to the next garage after the cable snapped. Was along Southend sea front cruise too so 11 show off points was earned.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

There is an old family story of my Grandad driving in the Highlands (on the way to Orkney) with the family in the car.  This would have been about 1970-ish.  The rear leaf spring partially snapped on their car (which I believe was a Morris Minor Traveller) under the load.  The story goes that Grandad got in the boot, grabbed a coathanger from the luggage and used it to effect a temporary repair by wrapping it around the leaf spring  to get to the nearest garage.  Which was about 40 miles away.  It held fine, apparently...

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

14 minutes ago, sutty2006 said:

I once brought my manta back to life with a billy bat after the distributor conked out on a roundabout on the A50 coming home from a weekend long car show. One good thwack saw it away under its own steam again. Nothing like a good thrashing to keep it on its toes. 

I used to carry a hammer for my cvh starter motor which wouldn't work off the key once it got hot. It was a couple of twats or a half hour wait for it to cool down.

[vaughant]

My clutch pipe came off on my way into work by Bath in my Zafira on the long hill climb to jct 18.

I managed to get the pipe back on but sans fluid didn't help much really. 

All I had was engine oil which I managed to get a bit in and after using an old crutch to hold the pedal down managed to bleed through enough to get going again. 

It got me to work on time and being a contractor no work=no pay. 

However it cost me dear, I tried bleeding it through but I must have damaged the slave cylinder which means box off on one of these. 

Caused other brake issues as well so despite being really proud of myself, I would have been better off calling the AA and losing a day's pay!!!!!

[tapir]

8 minutes ago, BoggyMires said:

I used to carry a hammer for my cvh starter motor which wouldn't work off the key once it got hot. It was a couple of twats or a half hour wait for it to cool down.

reminds me of the golden eye scene with the sledge hammer

it's a 1963 ZAZ 965 A Zaporozhets apparently - https://www.imcdb.org/v004317.html

[HMC]

I used Some chemical metal putty to fill a hole in a rusty inlet manifold on a 425cc 2cv which got me home just before the chassis snapped.... I didn’t use chemical metal on that.

[spike60]

Last year I bought a cheapo suspension air bag off Ebay for the rear of my very well used 530d estate. This repaid me by bursting on the motorway near Eindhoven in Holland on the way back from the N24 car race in Germany. We limped  a short distance to a service station just off the motorway where in 30c I hoiked everything out the back, removed the wood floor and cable tied the pipe going to the shit air bag to seal it so it will then lift on the other . I boxed it all up and had leisurely drive to Rotterdam ferry watching like hawks for any bumps, the car was basically on 3 wheels with the other dangling. Ferry deckhand were very helpful, they thought they could raise it with a compressor, they must have thought it was an assister, not the only spring.

Queuing to get off the ferry in Hull I saw someone with radio paying a lot of attention and sure enough the traffic plod pulled me, - before I even got to passport control!  After asking some questions they said just be careful, I was surprised to be told ok for the 110 miles home. 

Despite the look it isn't on the bump stop.

i bought an expensive air bag when I got home even though it cost about half the cars value.

[beko1987]

My Xantia shed a wiper blade on the m40 in the pissing rain once. Hard shoulder, rear blade fitted to the front, carried on home 

I've told the story of racing a Halford light bulb man and winning whilst reconnecting the clutch fluid feed pipe in a corsa c before

I've removed and refitted the aux belt in the xantia in a layby too

[castros_bro]

We were pottering slowly towards Barcelona with only France and Spain in the way and the pottering got slower and slower.  Somewhere near Argelès-sur-Mer we finally coasted into a strangely not-full campsite on by a beach.     Spent and interesting week sitting on the nudist beach  deeply grinding in burnt out exhaust valves on a Standard Eight cylinder head before refitting it and packing up then getting several large  naked Frenchpersons to bump start the car, pointed the 8 towards Spain and only parked on hills for a couple of weeks.

[eddyramrod]

I love a roadside bodge...

Huggy's wiper heads are cable-tied to the arms to stop them slipping off under load.  One of them has been that way almost since I got him!

[meggersdog]

I've mentioned this before ( I think). On the way back from the coast the Mercedes throttle pedal went funny. I freewheeled along the dual carriageway and coasted into a Costa carpark .  The plastic part that holds the  outer cable onto a bracket had disintegrated meaning the whole cable moved when you pushed the pedal. With the open ended 10mm spanner supplied in the Mercedes tool-kit I lifted the air filter. When we go to the coast I usually take a wind break but the pegs supplied are rubbish so I use welding rods bent double. With one of these rods I fashioned a clamp to hold the outer cable to its bracket.Dropped the air filter back on and away we went.

Erm....... it is still like this.

[Three Speed]

My CX2500D featured a de-aerator in its cooling system. This was a plastic egg shaped thing with 3 water connections. It was designed to remove air from the water as it circulated around. I guess this was necessary because the water pump was very good as mixing air in with the water. Anyway, this thing exploded on the way out of a French village at 5pm on a Saturday evening in the summer of 1989.  We had AA 5 star cover but that apparently did not then work weekends in France. So we stayed the night in the village and early Sunday morning I replumbed the cooling system. This entertained the villagers as they went to church. With the de-aerator and the heater no longer in the circuit, the pipe that took the air away was plugged with the short extension from the socket set. We then headed off to Andorra and Spain and back. The only consequences were:

1 -we found it was surprisingly cold in Andorra without a heater

2 - the radiator puked up a pint of water every time the engine was turned off

3 - I vowed never to use the AA 5 star service again. - I have since renaged  on that and was very appreciative of the excellent service we got from them in Germany a few years ago when my Chrysler ran out of electricity.

I think it was several weeks before I got the new part and fixed it properly.

[jollysmart]

My old man always told the story from years ago when he had a MGTD as daily driver, the original so early 1950's, when he ran out of petrol about a mile from home but just before the top of the last hill. So he abandoned my Mum and the car and walked home as he knew he had just filled his petrol blow lamp with petrol, walks back with blow lamp and pours the half pint of petrol in the tank, car starts and he gets it up the hill and he coasts home, all at 2 in the morning.

My best one was a few, (lot}, of years ago when I first started driving. I had a green mini RJV548 which really was a wreck. Driving up a short hill the engine cut out and wouldn't restart so I rolled it back to turn round and rolled down the hill when it started instantly so I turned round and started up the hill again when the engine cut out again, repeated the process and decided to look under the bonnet. After much searching and fiddling with parts I found that the low tension wire to the coil had broken inside the insulation next to the push on connector. Snapped it off and bared the wire trapping it under the connector the car started and  and drove straight up the hill.

[Squirrel2]

Young Squirrel2 temporarily solved an oil-soaked slipping clutch on his R16 on a journey to Cornwall towing a boat, by buying a bottle of methylated spirit and spraying it into top of the bell housing (via the timing mark slot). Got us to our sailing holiday and back again like this albeit with bad judder until I could get the gearbox our to fix the input shaft seal.

 

[Saabnut]

Back when I was at university and was running my first car - a Singer Chamois (or posh Hillman Imp). By this stage in my ownership it had had three engines and five gearboxes (when you pay a fiver a time from the scrappies you don't expect much and are rarely disappointed) and all had been changed at different times so I was pretty good at swaps. One Saturday lunch time a friend and fellow Imp botherer phoned to see if I knew anyone with breakdown recovery as he had been visiting his parents 250 miles away and his gearbox had exploded about half way back. As no one had membership at the time, I foolishly agreed to go down and tow him back, although the thought of over 100 miles on a tow rope behind my Chamois filled neither of us with glee.

As I left I had a brainwave, and loaded my tools, trolley jack and one of my spare gearboxes into my car. As a result we changed his gearbox/transaxle in a layby at the side of an A road in just under 3 hours, and drove both cars home. The old transmission was left in the rubbish bin in the layby to surprise the council workers!

[iainrcz]

My Panda snapped clutch cables for fun.

I got pretty good at fitting them as and when. I got Xmas bonuses from Quinton Hazzel for two years..

 

The accelerator cable on my 406 pinged a clip once and went slack, I managed to permanently bodge that with random shit I had with me at the time.

 

The a pillar trim on my 508 started clattering about on the motorway so we pulled in the services and I wobbed a shit load of blu tac behind it.

Never came off again.

Unless the new owner has had that joy..

 

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[clayts450]

9 minutes ago, iainrcz said:

The a pillar trim on my 508 started clattering about on the motorway so we pulled in the services and I wobbed a shit load of blu tac behind it.

Never came off again.

Snap ! Was the sound my chrome* A pillar trim made when hooning it along the A1 in the 620, quick dive into the hard shoulder, hazards on, rummage in the boot, Gorilla tape and scissors located, stuck down with a lusty blow, and on I went. Still there, the tape.

[Inspector Morose]

One of my Trabants used to pop head gaskets for fun* (OOP-X the Jaypol one, no less). I used to keep a few spares and tools in the boot so when the inevitable happened, it was just a case of whipping off the dead head gasket and dropping on a new one.

one of my Wartburgs did this to me on a date too. She awaited patiently outside Bloxwich bogs while I swapped the head over from one in the boot and a few minutes later, we were in our way. She told her father who refused to believe what happened until I showed him what was under the bonnet.

[rainagain]

I was driving North towards Pitlochry, I pulled in for petrol and mentioned to my girlfriend that someone must be really burning oil due to the stink hanging in the air. As I went to drive off I noticed whiffs of smoke coming from under my bonnet. I drove out of the petrol station and stopped on the exit road, for some stupid reason I decided to open the bonnet without first turning off the engine. As I opened the bonnet the missing oil filler cap allowed the spinning camshaft to give me a lovely splatter of oil right down my jacket. The whole engine bay was soaking in oil the cam had flung around, I had some spare oil in the boot but not a spare filler cap.  

I bought a can of juice from the garage and tried to flatten it over the oil filler but it was no good, it was then I noticed the wind screen reservoir cap was about the right size. I managed to squeeze it over the filler but oil was coming our of the vent hole in it. Luckily in true MacGyver style I found some chewing gum inside the car which I stuck over the hole. This let me finish my journey and got me home. 

[drewd]

There's some impressive content here, and it's reassuring to know this stuff happens to others.

Another one of mine dates back about 5 years ago, when I had a MK3 golf. I was pulling out of a junction when the clutch pedal fell to the floor and the car stalled in the middle of the road. After shoving the car in neutral, Mrs Drewd and I pushed the car to a nearby pub car park and I had a look at what happened. The clutch cable had pulled through it's retaining clamp under the arm that actuates the clutch. The plate to stop the nipple sliding through it was rotted enough to allow the cable nipple to pull through. I found an old washer and a junior hacksaw in the pile of crap I had in the car, cut a slot in the washer and was able to jack the clutch release arm up enough to slide the washer between the clutch cable nipple and the retaining plate.

I was really pleased with my Heath Robinson repair until while searching VW forums I discovered that not only was this a common problem, but someone else repaired theirs with the head of a dinner fork! 

Going back to the wiper blade, the superglue is still holding up. Unfortunately on Sunday I discovered a crack in the bottom corner of the screen, so my repair to save the screen was in vain. Cars eh?

[HMC]

Least successful repair- failed wiper mechanism on a w123 merc in Belgium. Cable ties kept failing every few kms so I and my passenger each had the end of some string tied around one wiper arm.

TO ME, TO YOU Got us back!