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Bodge Jobs


Tenmil Socket

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I was thinking the other day of bodge jobs I have encountered over the years. I was wondering if any of you have any stories to tell on the subject whether they was ingenious, dangerous or just funny!

I'll start anyway...

A couple of years ago a young lad I work with had just passed his test and bought an old Astra off of a mechanic*. He mentioned to me about it having an oil leak so I said I'd take a look. I lifted the bonnet and the engine was covered in oil and I spotted the problem immediately. The previous mechanic* owner seemed to have decided that it didn't need a rocker cover gasket and that white silicone would suffice! The cover had been tightened that much that the mating surfaces were touching and had forced all the silicone out anyway ?

Another example...

When I was in high school (mid '90s) I was keen on mountain biking and a friend at school also started showing an interest and we would tinker with our bikes. I went round to his house one day and he was stood proudly next to his Raleigh Activator which he'd been servicing*. Looking over the bike I noticed the front forks (suspension) covered thick with grease*. I asked him what grease he had used and he replied he didn't have any so used lard out of the chip pan instead ?

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Many moons ago I built a go kart using an off the shelf Honda engine of the type commonly used in go karts, to cut a long story short the gearbox I had for it was a close* fit and pissed oil out at an alarming rate (at least half a litre an hour), it being an old gearbox and me wanting to be environmentally friendly I just used the cheapest sunflower oil I could get. It ran fine for years until some scrote nicked it. It smelled nice if you made the centrifugal clutch slip as well. 
 

One day I will run an old car engine on sunflower oil and see how long it lasts.

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2 minutes ago, Tamworthbay said:

Many moons ago I built a go kart using an off the shelf Honda engine of the type commonly used in go karts, to cut a long story short the gearbox I had for it was a close* fit and pissed oil out at an alarming rate (at least half a litre an hour), it being an old gearbox and me wanting to be environmentally friendly I just used the cheapest sunflower oil I could get. It ran fine for years until some scrote nicked it. It smelled nice if you made the centrifugal clutch slip as well. 
 

One day I will run an old car engine on sunflower oil and see how long it lasts.

I spent time, money and effort on sorting out the seals on my Corolla's gearbox - for me to pinch one of the driveshaft seals and it's started leaking again.

I'm going to drop out the oil, and fill it with sunflower oil just for you. It only needs to last for as long as it takes to get my Lada done. And even then I'm going to do a 4WD conversion on the Corolla afterwards. So I'll lose nothing.

As for bodge jobs, I held up the splash guards on my Corolla with cable ties. It stood up to the MOT, didn't stand up to a pothole. 

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3 minutes ago, sgtberbatov said:

I spent time, money and effort on sorting out the seals on my Corolla's gearbox - for me to pinch one of the driveshaft seals and it's started leaking again.

I'm going to drop out the oil, and fill it with sunflower oil just for you. It only needs to last for as long as it takes to get my Lada done. And even then I'm going to do a 4WD conversion on the Corolla afterwards. So I'll lose nothing.

As for bodge jobs, I held up the splash guards on my Corolla with cable ties. It stood up to the MOT, didn't stand up to a pothole. 

I cannot wait to hear how it goes!

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Before petrochemicals were widely available animals fat, olive oil and the like were often used as axle grease. 

The best bodge I've seen was a shite Mk 2 Golf Driver my brother bought. The head gasket had clearly blown. despite having only just being replaced by the previous owner, a 17 year farmer's son. Of course what had actually happened was that he'd snapped two of the head bolts and attempted to make good his mistake by doing the others up extra tight and then 'glueing' the rogue ones in with thread lock or hylomar. 

In the 70's my dad had the clutch replaced in what was then his Land Rover (on the cheap, because proto shiter). The bloke who did it replaced the bolts holding the transmission tunnel and floor in with coach bolts. Years later (mid 90s) a link pin in the clutch release mechanism sheared off. The 'pin' turned out to be a section of four inch nail cut down to size. That said it did last 20 years so it wasn't the worst bodge ever.

 

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I once used one of those black plastic plant-pots (that are thin plastic & sort of square section) folded out to bridge a gap on a sill on a mates Morris Marina. I then filled over it with Plastic Padding type elastic (filler).

Looked good as new & i'm convinced that due to the elastic properties of the filler it  actually increased the strength of the Marina ?

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I'm well know in some circles for my bodges. 

Most famous is the 'Flymo wire' mod.... 

I had replaced the horn on my Lada with an air horn as the original was knackered somewhere, and had to add a circuit. I used the only spare wire I had, which was from an old Flymo lawnmower. That would have been fine, but I was in a hurry and left the orange outer casing on. Also, I connected both ends without cutting the wire down, so just coiled up the excess in the scuttle area. And then all I had was a rocker switch, so I rewired the new horn into the windscreen washer circuit and the washer into the new rocker switch. 

And all because I couldn't find the wiring fault in the horn that was on the steering wheel. 

I loved that car. (I also replaced the water pump at the side of the M4 near Reading.)

RRG11015.jpg.8204e2da519f742a8feb92cccfe61332.jpg

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The throttle cable on my old green zx was very frayed. So I toddled off to ebay, and procured a new one. 

Which didn't fit, because all pattern parts r shit. 

So I joined it to a clean cut end of the old one, in a nice free bit of engine bay with a choc bloc, then cut down and made good the throttle body end with the new cable. 

Outlasted the car, did an mot like it, nae bother.

The same green zx had its exhaust held up with dyson mains cable for a few weeks until i could buy it a new exhaust

The main vac pipe on the old Zafira was 7 layers thick with insulation tape. Again it never went wrong again and I fully forgot it was even there! 

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in the 70's and 80's before mot testers actually gave a shit the way of repairing bodywork was to use chicken wire, fiberglass and underseal, the chicken wire gave the fiberglass something to hold onto, bit of filler made it smooth and underseal made it look like freshly painted metal. for sills fold used to tack weld another sill roughly on top, saw a astra with 4 layers of sill. newspapers covered in filler on arches, old road signs bashed to shape and tacked for chassis legs... no wonder cars crumpled and folk died

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^ In the absence of any chicken wire in your shed or back garden Dexion shelving brackets, carefully handcrafted to the correct angle of your particular door outer skin with a club hammer, makes an excellent base for fibreglass & filler repairs in lower door skins. Simply fibreglass to the inside base of the door shell. Possibly even make a complete new base for the door shell should the original be missing. (A Fiat Strada, not mine).

See also aerosol expanding foam then bodyfiller (Fiat Strada with totally rotten & leaky rear roof edges).

Leaky aftermarket glass sunroofs (a horrid bodge in the first place IMO) sealed shut with heavy duty 1980s industrial Mastic.

A mate bought a low spec Mk1 Escort once and thought the radio cassette was fucked so just left it turned off. Had it about a couple of weeks when one rainy day the wipers were switched on while someone was fiddling about with the radio, and suddenly it was working! And then it wasn't. Oh, it's back on again!  WTF?  Radio had been wired into the switched side of the windscreen wipers. A bit inconvenient if you wanted to listen to a 70s concept album on tape. Easily fixed though.

 

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2 hours ago, Andyrew said:

Ive seen chemical metal used to patch a little hole in an inner sill for the MOT then undersealed over the top because the person couldn't be arsed to weld it. 

I saw this today in fact, with my own two eyes and hands, I watched myself applying the chemical metal.

I used chemical metal to fill a massive hole in the spark plug well of a Corsa C that I was stupid enough to buy on ebay auction after a boozy dinner. Spewed out several litres of oil on the drive back home. 3 cylinders sufficed for pottering around locally before flogging as scrap.  Repair held up ok all things considered. Last Poxhall I ever owned.

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I once made some Forest arches* for the front of a Mk1 Escort that I'd fitted Capri struts and 5 1/2j chrome ro-styles too, by snipping  about 10  2"cuts around the wheelarch then shaping it with a lump hammer around a brick, all finished off with brown parcel tape. This lasted until the first time it got wet and was then fixed permanently with gaffer tape.

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3 hours ago, Mrcento said:

I once drove home the Cinquecento that had snapped its throttle cable with a long piece of string fed out the rear of the bonnet and through the window to work as a hand throttle....

Wind the window up for cruise control. 

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Fuck. Where to start...

One of the Doloshite's headlights is wedged in with cardboard and cut up garden hose and then bathroom sealed into place as there is no longer any metal for it to bolt to.

The Acclaim's O/S/F wing is largely crafted out of gaffer tape rattled canned blue.

The 1850HL was ran with shoe laces holding the carbs tight to the manifold when the rubber mounts started to split.

Both the Civic's headlight bulbs were gaffer taped in.

I taped over a big hole in my Corsa D's rear light with clear tape to such a good standard nobody noticed when I sold it.

The Acclaim's wiper arms have been filed out to use a nut and bolt instead of a wiper pin.

The Doloshite's rear bumper is spaced out with a million washers to compensate for crash damage.

 

And that's just the stuff I've done...

 

When I bought the Doloshite the throttle linkage was some metal wire twisted around the original broken one.

The radio in said car is also earthed directly to the bottom of the dashboard, through the vinyl, so it doesn't work properly and gets very hot.

The wheelarches had been repaired by riveting repair panels over the top of the original arches.

The entire underside of the 1850HL was structurally underseal, several cm thick in places.

One of the window winder handles in the Doloshite has been replaced with one from a bathroom cabinet.

Every single wire between the Acclaim's ignition barrel and the rest of the car has been cut and then twisted back together and taped.

On purchase the Dolly 1300's radio was wired in such a way that the negatives and positives were backwards the left and right channels were backwards and it only played mono because they'd used the feed from left front and left rear...

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