What's you best roadside breakdown fix

tmf6902 · May 13, 2003

So what broke, where were you going, and what Macgyver/Shady Mechanic technique did you use to fix it....here's mine..

So it was my first senior year in college, I had my ugly beat down 86 blazer, had my new 36 inch swampers, and my little 305, that had stock 160HP, anyway about a month before I had put on an oil cooler, hoping that it would make it run a little better, and it did I guess....so it's spring break time, trucks filled to the brim driving 5 or 6 hours to the OBX of NC...driving down Route 460 near Crewe,VA....BFE...anyway so as I am driving I notice that my oil pressure....starts fluctuating...then I see smoke coming out the back....so I pull over look under neath and see some oil...so I pop the hood andd lo and behold a line from the oil cooler had gotten hot enough to expand the oil line, so it now rested on a header...burning a whole in the side of it....Well this is where I get stupid....I know the area and there was an exxon with a garage about 5 miles away, if I could just limp there. so I broke out the duct tape.. burnt my hands, screamed some few choice words...anyway, back on the road now, two minutes later....The duct tape actually held for about 30 seconds, now the smoke is really pouring out, into the truck got the windows down, looking like a scene from a cheech and chong movie, so I pulled over about 3 miles from the service station and was like WELL SH*T....so anyway..there was a Jonh deere store right where I broke down, so I went over, and they lent me tools, and took me to a store to buy a new filter and a case of oil...(I didn't really know how I was gonna fix this yet)...so on the side of the road, I cut the lines with a stolen outback steakhouse knife, then I ripped them out and threw them into the woods....I was pissed...I then took off all the hardware for my oil cooler, it was just a screw on adapter type thingy, burnt the crap out of everypart of my body, and dripped hot oil in my eye (yes it hurt a lot), so put the filter on, filled up the oil pan, and returned the tools....BAM back on the road, only took about 25 minutes do everything, I think it was perhaps my shadiest mechanics moment. I hope it provided some entertainment for anyone who reads it, and I hope to read some shady stories.

oh yeah, forgot to mention, this whole fiasco saved spring break....we were renting a house at the beach that you were supposed to be 24 to rent, I was 22, and going down with fraternity buddies....by the time I got to the rental office, they were closed, and just left the keys, so they didn't know how old I was until I returned them a week later....Yes the house was still intact....

MountaineerTom · May 13, 2003

A friend of mine had an old Plymouth Fury and one day while picing someone else up on our way to school, he decided to goof off and swerve around on this gravel road. he lost control and slide off the road. Hothing was really wrong with the car other than in had a lot of dirt/grass stuck between the rim and tire and was leaking air. I dug as much of it out as I could, but it was still leaking some, so I took my bubble gum and packed it in there as much as I could. I stopped the leak enough until we got his car home.

About a week or two later, they put a bus house in the spot he cleared off after leaving the road.

99silveradoz71 · May 14, 2003

So it was my first senior year in college

tmf6902 · May 14, 2003

Uhhh...yeah..see I don't really remember my freshman or sophmore year...plus I thought it would give me an edge to get my first job...I mean what sounds better "I was in college for 4 years"...."I was in college for 5 years".....exactly

The SPEEDY · May 14, 2003

Well its not shady but kinda inovative I guess. After getting my uncles F-250 stuck at the deer lease and white smoking the tires on the rocks we put under the tires. We had a blow out one hour into our six hour drive home. No big deal except for the fact that we were pulling a horse trailer (don't know length but its 3 horse and tack room, perty big). And us being the lazy red necks that we are didn't feel like unhitching it. So we just used the jack on the horse trailer to lift the rear tires off the ground. Perty nifty huh.

lrymal · May 14, 2003

...Perty nifty huh.

Great messages!!!!

Ok, my contribution... late 70s, Honda Civic, the Baytown/La Porte tunnel.

The Baytown (Texas) Tunnel was a two-laner. No shoulders. You break down and your car is smashed, flattened, and swept away to be discarded.

We are heading south toward Galveston Island and are just entering the ramps to hit the Baytown Tunnel. Suddenly, the little Civic sputtered and died, and I quickly whipped that car out of the ramp and just barely missed the point of no return. whew!

So, pop the hood. Crank the engine. No sparkie. NADA. Pop the distributor cap, crank the engine. HUH? The points weren't opening/closing as the distributor shaft turned. I looked closer and saw the little mica bumper on the points was gone!!!! That's the piece that rubs against the shaft.

I pull the points off and stare/glare at them. What to do? What to do? And this is a Sunday when, in those days, NOTHING was open.

Well, my passenger was trying his best to offer ideas but couldn't nail anything down. I was trying to figure out what our alternative was. He was at the back of the little Civic and was rumaging through my toolkit. He had a Eureka! experience.

He found some nylon tie wraps and wondered if somehow one could be turned into a spacer on the points. I thought and thought and yes! I placed a tie wrap on the points where the mica bumper was, cut the excess tie wrap leader, reinstalled the points. And wow! The little car roared to life.

So, we drove the car up and down the road, prior to the Tunnel, debating whether to enter it. I pulled over, popped the hood, popped the distributor cap. Everything looked just fine.

Sooooooo, we went for it. The little Civic zoomed through the Baytown Tunnel perfectly and we made it to Galveston Island. Monday, I removed the tie-wrapped points, put a new set on.

Anyway, that is the most unusual repair I have done.

Wingnut · May 14, 2003

I was out screwing around with a buddy in his 65 Ranchero, when he said the dreaded.."hey, watch this". .0375 seconds later we are in the bar-ditch less than 1/4 mile from the house.

Wasn't stuck, but we (and the car/truck) had a bumpy ride.

Got it home, and he had lost 1/2 tank of gas in 1/4 mile. Somehow he had ripped about a foot and a half of fuel line clean out from under it.

I wound up replacing about four feet of fuel line with a section of air hose that I stole from dads shop.

This was during high school, so lets say...13-14 years ago.

I talked to him about 6 months ago, and he said that he still has the truck, and that the air line is still carrying the fuel.

95whtZR2 · May 14, 2003

My problem was fixed with a tow truck coming to pick my happy @$$ up...

Anyway, I was down in Port Aransas, TX spring break of 02' with two of my best buddies, and my Bronco that are in the pics below... Anyway, I was putting the pedal to the metal in the truck (and with a 5.sl0w it still ain't going anywhere) and swerving back and forth in the sand. Just having a good time in the sand. Anyway, a friend told me to put it in four wheel drive to throw some more sand, so I do, and not 10 ft. later the front drive shaft throws. I am like ok, take it off and don't worry, when this happend it was low tide, and I was parked about 30 ft from the shorline. I get under there with the proper tools, get part of it off when I realize that the ocean is kissing my leg. So this had to happen right at the start of high tide... Anyway, I quickly realize it broke my speedometer cable, no biggy I can make it home like that... I go home the next day, I was going back to Austin, TX... I get to Cuero, which is a around an hour (I think) from Port A, so I got 3 hours left. I am going approx. 70 mph when my tranny downshifts into 1st gear so I pull over, look around, don't see anything weird. Get back on the road, and shifts all the way to forth perfect, then wam!!! back into 1st... get out and tranny fluid is drenched all over the underside of my truck So, we decide to keep driving and just fill up the tranny as it gets low... 6 hours, and about $40 in fluid later, I get to Manor RD. and 183 (South Austin) I was still about 45 miles from my home ......this is where my bronco won't go anymore, a wrecker coems to pick me up, and a friends AAA card paid for the wrecker.

I have gotten stuck in my old ford ranger 2wd before and applied the parking brake halfway so both back tires would spin, it was enough to get me unstuck...

Tom

SilveradoWV · May 15, 2003

Some good ones so far!!! A buddy of mine had his '88 or so K2500 on a rough dirt road back in the woods when he hit a bump and the battery fell out of the pan (his falt for not having it attatched) and somehow melted some hoses that have the metal ends. He kept wrapping that stuff you see people using as markers which is often tied to trees and is orange, no stickyness to it and very thin, around the metal part of the pipe and it held enough to get him home!

doverarjim · May 15, 2003

Years ago and I mean years ago a friend had a 58 392 hemi in a older 51 or 52 ford pickup, he noticed that the oil pressure had dropped and it had picked up a slight knock, so we grabbed some hand tools and pulled the oil pan off on the side of the road, and found he had spun a rod bearing so we cut a piece of leather off my belt and put it back together and when on our merry way. We made that repair about 7 or 8 different times.

On my 67 Chevelle I pulled the mufflers off at the drag strip and got a wild hair and drove it home with no mufflers on it and the tail pipe where it when up over the rear end knocked a hole in the gas tank, so I got a bar of cheap soap and every morning I would rub that bar of soap on the hole!!! It was about 6 months before I got around to fixing the tank it was just so much quicker to soap it up than fix it right.

tmf6902 · May 15, 2003

Wait I am always up for a shady mechanic trick....what does the soap do when you put it in a hole in the gas tank....besides make your gas tank a bubble bath???

I have another stupid fix for ya'll....a friend of mine had a leak in his coolant overflow in his F*rd exploder.....so he put that hole plugger goo, that is supposed to go into the actual radiator....it plugged the leak in the overflow....but it also plugged the drain hole...so he ended up blowing up his radiator...not so much blowing up...but it blew some hoses off...

Charlie in TX · May 15, 2003

My buddy had an early '60s International Scout. Every time a brake cylender would go out he cut the hose and weld it shut. Well after the 2 front brakes and one back went out and the 4th was leaking fluid on the linings, the brakes were more like slows, maybe. O, the cluch went out on it to, so you started it in gear and killed the engine to stop. It was a deer lease truck.

We were driving back from Austin in a mid '70 GMC C1500. The alt bolt backed out and flatened all the threads. Used a pair of dikes to recut the threads.

varmint2506 · May 15, 2003

Some years back my friend dropped a timing belt in his Honda Prelude. He called and wanted to know if I could put one in. I had never done much with Honda's at the time but figured what the heck. I filled my portable air tank, (needed a impack to break loose a few main bolts) packed up some tools and tore into it sitting in the gravel off a major road here in town. That was a fun experience. We did the whole job in a couple hour and he went on his way. He had about 300k or better miles on the thing. He said it ran better than ever after the roadside maintenance call.

Larry · May 15, 2003

While in high school (early 90’s) my girlfriend’s brother and I decided to ditch a few afternoon classes and head out into the prairies in his 1968 Chevy C10 to goof around. Shoot animals, etc. This was about a week after he got his drivers license….go figure. It wasn’t long before us couple punks wound up rolling the truck a couple times down an embankment while chasing a rabbit. Luckily, neither of us got hurt especially since we were not wearing seatbelts.

Anyway, after the sound of broken glass, bent metal and dust cleared and we surveyed the damage we found the rag joint that connects the intermediate shaft to the steering box broke and we had no steering. The funny thing is the truck never quit running but not being able to steer this wreck home was not a good thing since we were about 20 miles away from civilization. He was not exactly mechanically inclined at all and was ready to hoof it back to town. I remembered when we opened the hood to look at the steering box that he had to remove a bicycle chain. I figured it might work to hold the intermediate shaft back together. So I strung it around the gearbox and intermediate shaft then locked with a little master lock.

It worked…we made it back to town…. swerving the whole way but we made it. For some reason his parents were not impressed…..I don’t why ???

doverarjim · May 16, 2003

I wish I could remember what kind of soap worked the best I think that it was Lava but I just can't remeber. The soap would form a plastic like goop over the hole, it had some type of reaction to the gas so it stopped the leak.