Silly stories or jerry-rigging

blew a 30 amp fuse once...pulled the fuse and stuck one of the blue fork connectors in the fuse holder, fit just like the fuse...got me home (5 hr. drive).

 

on another note:
a friend of mine blew a round glass fuse on his outboard motor. it was for the electric shifter. he took a foil gum wrapper and wrapped it around the fuse and then put it back in the holder...smoke rolled out of the lower unit. we towed it to the dock and took it to the shop. the bill was $350...the guy told him it would have been about $40 if he hadn't burned up all the electrics in the lower unit...

... ...

 

OUCH!!! That's some expensive jerry rigging...

I did the wire-to-throttle once, just to get it home. On that same old truck I had.

 

yep...you need to know what blew the fuse before you...hard wire... it...

 

Good stories guys!

I used to work for Frito-Lay a long time ago ... driving a truck similar to what most bread vendors drive ... a huge under-powered under-braked aluminum box on wheels.

Friday, during rush hour, ... 15 miles from the shop, the throttle cable pops off the carb. It won't do anything more than idle. I look it over, and see it is just worn out, and won't stay on the ball on the carb. I get a paper clip and loop it around the cable enough to somewhat hold it in place.

The bad news ... it only works for about the first third of the throttle travel before the cable pops off again. This limits me to a top speed of 25-30. Did I mention that the truck is a stick?

I limp this pig back to the shop, and the trip takes about 1.5 hours in traffic. With everyone anxious to start their weekend, I have never been cussed out by so many other drivers in one trip in my life ...

 

Another one ...

My first car, 1965 Mustang develops a radiator leak on the way to a date. I guess we weren't going to the movie that night after all.... it was cool to just hang out at the house.

Girfriend asks if there is anything we can do, or do we need to have it towed. I had read a tip in a magazine, and I asked her if they had a pepper grinder. ....Whaaaaaa!?!

This sets a whole chain of events in motion, that gets the entire family and a couple neighbor outside to watch me grind a bunch of pepper into my radiator. They were all pretty sure I had lost it, and were questioning if I should be dating their daughter from this point forward.

Let it idle for about 5 minutes ... the leak stopped.

I did drive the car home that night ... no problems.

Managed to drive it for about another week until payday, and got a new rad, too.

 

I have used pepper before. works pretty good. Never replaced the radiator.

 

pepper , potato chips, and eggs esp are great for that, i have driven for years with a radiator omelet!!!

i love my "old" 78 Bronco .... lets see..... whenever i drop the rear driveshaft... i just throw it in the back seet and put it in "front wheel drive", the switch for the rear window shorted one day and caught the connector on fire while driving, luckly the "dash' was off for a stereo upgrade so i jumped the curb into a parkinglot, shut her off blew out the fir and unplugged the connector. replaced the switch that weekend with a old spare at a buddies...... ill post some more later..

 

Me and my coworker/friend drove 3 hours to go pick up a flat bed T800 KW got there it wouldn`t start because of no fuel. After looking it over it looked like it had a bad connection on the injector pump solenoid . We were sent down in a regular pick up with no tools instead of the sevice truck that we always drive wich is overloaded with tools. My buddy found a rusted broken razer blade in the bed of the truck so we cut the wire stripped the end and tied it around the stud . The truck fired right up but now it wouldn`t air up enough to release the brakes . Looked it over for leaks and found a busted brake chamber so I drove to town called the boss for the credit card number got some pipe plugs and an ajustable wrench. Got back to the truck backed off the parking spring took off the air lines and plugged the ports. Drove it back to the shop with no problems and yes it is all fixed the right way now

 

Before plastic air lines on air brakes, I took line apart and stick a dime in fitting, put back together an ran it till I could repair correctly.

 

Hmmmmm......the first thing that comes to mind is I was test driving a gmc pickup that had an intermintant stall.....i was the manager of the shop and the tech complained he had drivin it enough and it didnt stop running. I was cleaning some rear brakes for another tech...busy day and had a can of brake clean in my hand. I took him with and no cell phone as I thought it was in my pocket but was not....we drive for about 20 miles and about 2 miles from the shop it finally stalls....and it will not start again....we let it cool downb for about 20 min and im really abxious to get back to the shop but we use this dowwn time to diag the problem as a loss of fuek condition....i spraued some brake clean down the air intake and it fired up.....but once again stalled....i was at wits end was about to walk back to the shopvto call a tiw truck when a got an idea.....i made my tech timmy get in and fire it back up as I lay under the hood and controlled the throttle by hand while I sprayed brake clean down the intake track and he steered...we made it back in about 10 minutes of slow driving with a couple stall outs and many hoots and hollers some praising our"genius" others our stupidity....lol fun day.....

 

Well lets see, back in 1986 had planned a big day at the beach, loaded up the 1975 Maverick Grabber I had at the time with all the supplies I thought I would need for the day, you know cooler loaded with Bud, baggie same way, towels, sunscreen, all the stuff you need for a good, long day at the beach, went to the gas station and filled the tank for cruizing later on that night, man I was ready!!
On the way through town, about five miles from home, I stop at this stoplight and just beyond it there is a railroad track. not a terribly bad (rough) one, but like one of the smoothest ones in town, it has a slight curve just after it and the water of the bay on both sides of the road, very scenic drive going toward the beach so thats why I went that way, well after stopping at the light I proceeded to cross the railroad tracks doing maybe 15 MPH, just after crossing right at the slight curve, I found myself with no steering at all, luckily my brakes kinda pulled to the right so I started to slightly hit them in order to "steer" the Maverick off the road, got out to see what the problem was and eventually found that the ball had pulled out of the power steering cylinder, walked up the road a bit to a pay phone and called my dad to come help, he got there in about fifteen minutes or so and had no idea what to do, after he took a look at what the problem was he thought for a second then said "lets try something, get a hammer and pliers from my truck, and look in the bed of it for some wire", I gathered up the tools and found a welding rod, I crawled under the car, following instructions from dad and put the ball back in the cylinder, hit it firmly with the hammer and wrapped and tied the welding rod around the whole thing and drove back home with my dad following me, worked great and got me home, as for the trip to the beach, I was able to go to the junkyard and get the stuff to repair the Maverick and drive it to the beach that night.......but that was dooomed also, yeah, it broke a tranny line and dumped all the fluid at a stoplight on the way home at 2 AM, but thats another story....to be continued..............

 

I have a good one i woke up one morning late for school rushed out to the garage only to have a dead batery from leaving my lights on the night beafore i had jumper cables but no one was around. i could push it off but no hills near by. but i noticed our old treadmill in the corner so i jacked up the rearend slid the treadmill under till it was barly touching then turned it to full speed. got inside and poped the clutch and made jerry-rigging history.

 

Thats awesome !

 

Thanks for the laugh ... great way to start the work week.

I push-started a Suzuki Sidekick solo twice after a starter failure. This was on level ground, but it only weighed around 2600 lbs and the motor was a 1.6 liter.

It actually pretty easy compared to some other push start efforts.