Silly stories or jerry-rigging

So I think I need to take five and maybe gain some perspective on my project. Any of you guys got stories of silly stuff you had to rig to make your mav work? Going through a bunch of it now. Stuff always seems funnier looking back on it haha

 

Used a 1 liter plastic pepsi bottle as a catch can to pass tech.
Hey it passed....
I'm sure I have others just cant think of em right now...

 

I was out at the lake one day back in the high school days. I locked my keys in my Maverick. We were an hour from home and didnt have a cell phone back then. I saw my quarter window wasnt latched shut. I tried to squeeze my arm in to unlock the door but couldnt quite reach it. I saw the latch was held togethor with a roll pin where it pivots. I thought if I could get that roll pin out I could open the window farther. So I found a couple sticks and a rock and tried tapping out the roll pin, no luck kept breaking the stick. I walked around looking for something stronger. I found a plastic fork and broke off one of the prongs. Used the rock to tap it down into the roll pin and got it out. With the pin removed the quarter window would open a little farther, enough to get your whole arm into the car and get the door unlocked.

The lesson here is make sure you latch your quarter windows or I'll break into your car with a rock and plastic fork.

 

^^^ Go McGyver

 

Ya, the girl i was with out at the lake went from being pissed off to impressed,

 

i had installed one of those cool looking stereo amp fuses that i had laying around into my main power feed wire to the car. i didnt check what amp fuse was in it. it worked great for a few days. i never drove the car at night with it. the first time at night was to drive up to a night race at the local drag strip. it starts up fine. i turn on the lights no problem and set off to the track. about a mile down the road every shuts off. the fuse had blown. i pull over. pull out the fuse and find that its a 40 amp fuse. my eletric fan had turned on and was just enough with the head lights on to blow the fues. so im stuck on the side of the road with a cool custom fuse holder with no fuse to put in to it. i had a metal tube thing on my key chain for one of those disconect key chain things. it was about the same size of the fuse. i put it in and it worked. off to the races i went. i replaced that 40 amp fuse with a 100 amp fuse and havent had a problem scence.

 

I did that once, just pulled a 20 oz plastic bottle out of the nearest garbage can to get me through the night.

My entire car is Jerry-Rigged. So lots of stories...

I am actually pleasantly surprised every time I go to fire it up, and it actually STARTS!!!

 

How about this one, happened a few months ago.

http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=75192&highlight=locked+keys+car+wife

 

Before the maverick, my first vehicle was a Chevy Luv pickup with a scant 4 cylinder in it.

It was even more Jerry-Rigged, cuz I was way poor back then.

My soon to be brother in law in passenger seat (not at ALL mechanically inclined). We hit a red light in left turn lane, and engine died. I had a good idea what it was, due to how it died and I couldn't hear the electric fuel pump anymore.

I hopped out, grabbed a chunk of wire out of the truck's bed, and a nail I found in the intersection, popped open hood, took wire, bit off a piece of the insulation, and stuck it in the battery terminal and jambed it in there with the nail. Ran the wire out of engine bay, over my door mirror, and down to the fuel pump, bit some more insulation off, and twist-tied it to the hot side of the fuel pump.

Truck was back up and running before the second green light came up.

Brother in law was flabbergasted, and for the first time in his life, without words!!!

got home and found a blown fuse and fixed it up right!

 

And this truck...it was so old, the keys had all worn down to where there were no more teeth on them. So i had a panel in the dash with a bunch of flip switches. One was the starter, one was horn, one was "power on", etc. To get into the locked truck, I hopped into the bed, pounded on the rear window with my hand to flip the lock off, slide open the window, and reach in to unlock the driver door.

To start the truck, I had to flip several switches in a certain order. If you hit the wrong switch, the horn would blare, the radio would come on, or the starter would turn over without starting ("power on" switch not flipped). So it had a built in security device, alarm, and was just plain impossible to start and drive if you didn't know what you were doing.

AND, you had to flip the START switch until it started, then flip it off, or starter would stay engaged.

That thing ran FOREVER!!!

Glad I got an education and a job so I could buy something a bit safer and more reliable.

 

Back when I was doing the 3G alternator swap it took me forever to find a MEGA FUSE in stock at a parts store.

Finally found one at Autozone, they didn't have the holder though. I was like no biggie I probably have bolts and then I can just tape the fuse ends so it doesn't short out.

I look through my bolt containers and there is not even one bolt that matches the darn hole size on the fuse.

By this time it was like 2 am(stores were closed) and I really wanted to take the car out(I was like 17 an I needed to go to a party), so I start pacing back and forth. Then I notice an old phone line thingy on the side of the house.

I have no idea what it's for but I yank it off and what do you know the MEGA FUSE fits perfectly in it. Like if it was made for it.




Since then I replaced it with one of these:
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-140-AMP-12-...254?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43a8afb8e6

 

In the early 70s I was riding with a friend in his VW bug. Engine stopped right in the middle of our town's busiest street. We pushed it to the curb and popped the hood to take a look. He was clueless about engines. Didn't take long to figure out there was no spark. Further investigation found the points rubbing block had broken off in the distributor. We walked a few blocks to the nearest Pep Boys and bought a new set of points. Didn't have a timing light or feeler gauges so I folded up a dollar bill 4 times and used that as a feeler to set the points. 35 years later he still tells people how I got his car running with a dollar bill...

 

Alex, is that the CD liner from a HIM CD?

 

They're actually promo stickers for their Venus Doom album.

I won five in an ebay auction.

 

I read this on the way outta the house tonight.... Was thinking how lucky I was that so far I hadn't had to jerry rig anything... then tonight my throttle cable broke. Ducttape for once wasn't working... superglue woulda though just didn't have any....... anyway I took some extra wire I had in my trunk tied it around the throttle and ran it through one of the many holes in my firewall. I pulled it by hand and limped home. Actually worked so well that if i could rig something up to shift(since my hand was taken up by pulling the throttle) I might just keep it!