What's the worst bodge up you've ever come accross when woking on a car or what's the worst bodge up have you ever performed
A couple i've come accross
About 20 years ago i used to help a 1 man band mechanic friend, when i was home on leave from the merchant navy. Someone had dropped off a failed MOT Austin Maxi saying it had failed on the sills and reqired 2 new sills. We started to remove the old sill and found news paper stuffed in and painted over with underseal. Not a unusual bodge but we removed most of the paper and found the date was the week previous!...A nice attempt to try and fake the MOT tester.
Or the customer who had just purchased a Land rover with a almost dead engine which sounded like rock crusher we found that the oil light had been connected to the ignition light so went out when started
Plenty more where these came from!
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Many years ago, the wire feeding the heated rear window on my Chevette frayed and broke. My fix was a paper clip, which worked pretty well for the next 8 months.
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when I was a student a friend bought an escort on which most of the inner wings were painted cardboard. And he had had it checked over by an 'expert'
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I did so many daft things to my first car (Astravan) to keep it running that I can't remember half of them.
Here's some that I can:
Radiator fan wasn't cutting in, so ran a wire directly from it to a switch in dashboard.
Had to replace rusting fuel-tank. Got one from scrapyard, but it turned out to have different fittings. It had two lines to the engine, while the original only had one (solution = plug one with fuel-resistant bodyfiller stuff). The connection for the filler pipe was also very different. This was probably my worst bodge of all. In order to connect the fuel tank pipe to the filler cap I used a series of different sized rubber piping (the type used for engine cooling systems) held together by jubilee clips. Every now and again these would work loose, and the first I'd know was petrol pushing over my shoes.
When replacing the engine at one point, my dad also put an oil cooler pipe on the wrong way round, which resulted in it piddling out and half-knackering the new engine. That was more of a cock-up than a bodge though.
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Years ago, a friend of mine, who was a motor trader, bought a 6 cyl. Granada at an auction for not much money. It wasn't running properly on all cylinders, was blowing out blue smoke, and made some odd noises. When the engine was stripped, he found that one cylinder had a wooden piston with a bit of old baked bean tin nailed to the crown. The wooden piston itself was quite nicely made, with a neatly fitted gudgeon pin!
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Years ago, a friend of mine, who was a motor trader, bought a 6 cyl. Granada at an auction for not much money. It wasn't running properly on all cylinders, was blowing out blue smoke, and made some odd noises. When the engine was stripped, he found that one cylinder had a wooden piston with a bit of old baked bean tin nailed to the crown. The wooden piston itself was quite nicely made, with a neatly fitted gudgeon pin!
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That a good one !
It makes me think why they went to the effort of doing this when, given they already had the engine in bits they could have put a new piston in anyway, the main rub with repairing engines is the time/difficulty of getting them out and back in again.
My bodge story is not dissimilar, when I was an MOD student engineer, a friend of mine had engine trouble with an old straight 6 Ford Zodiac. In oredr he could drive it to the breakers yard to get hold of some parts, he built an engine with one piston/conrod missing to get him there !
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Mine is, after working very late one nite, a mate offered me lift home in his Lada. He said it was leaking oil, I had a quick look under the bonnet, and saw that a bolt had come out of the front chain case. The only thing i had to hand was a pencil... Yes you guessed it i broke it in 2 and shoved 1/2 in.
It lasted about a week so he shoved an other 1 in! He got rid after about 3 pencils
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In my impecunious youth I had a Ford Anglia (F reg) where the rear brake cylinders leaked fluid all over the brake shoes and drums. After fitting new rubbers to the cylinders I had the problem of oily shoes and drums. I borrowed an oven baking tray, filled it with syphoned petrol, then put in the shoes and set fire to them. I reasonably thought that asbestos wouldn't burn and that the steel would take the heat OK. When the flames died out I cleaned off the soot with sand paper and fixed back the shoes. Absolutely fine - braking was OK and I don't ever think I ever needed to change the shoes again. I somehow don't think I'd do it again today though.
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A mates brother and some friends once went touring Africa in Landrovers. In some village somewhere he saw a garage so thought he'd pop in for some parts, and while waiting he had a look at a local Landrover that had been in a rear-end shunt. Looking underneath, he saw that the box-section chassis outrigger that supports the back bumper, had been replaced/ rebuilt by welding in lots of tin cans that had been hammered flat!
Thats not as good as the wooden piston one though!
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Chicken wire and newspaper were once popular hidden bodywork components of Mk 2 Jaguars. I wonder how many of those now advertised at unbelievable prices still have some lurking underneath?
Neighbour of mine once flattened out some baked bean tins, pop riveted, smoothed and painted them over to form new front suspension strut top mounts on his Anglia. He then proudly showed me his handiwork. Would have been less effort to get the job done properly...
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In 1949 my parents took temporary lodgings on a small farm in Pembrokeshire. The farmer had an ex-military Willys Jeep as many did in those days. He drove everywhere flat out with the windscreen down, which at age 10 I thought incredibly stylish although my parents weren't keen. All four wheels were slightly bent, and the brakes only retarded the thing when he pumped furiously on the pedal. I found the handbrake, with a length of cable attached, in a hedge one day. The farmer, a big man and I now realise not all that nice despite his macho glamour, treated his animals in much the same way. I once saw him put a mad cow to flight by bashing it on the snout with a lump of timber. I learned to milk cows by hand with brown rats swarming around my feet. The children who lived up the road had a goat and could only speak Welsh. The whole place seemed amazingly exotic after Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) which we had just left.
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A "cut and shut" BMC 1100, carried out by an acquaintance who was a self-taught welder with minimal experience.
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L\'escargot.
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Grease nipples were sometimes lubricated with P40 to eliminate free play for the MOT!
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The Pembrokeshire Jeep is I suppose a case of neglect. A bodge up would have seemed like luxury to it. For a bodge down, how about the taxi in Lagos twenty-five years ago which stopped with a puncture. When the driver opened the boot to get the spare, all one could see was the road, the spare being secured to the side of the boot and the boot floor having been removed to repair some other part of the structure. I had wondered why the driver made me take my suitcase into the back seat with me.
Some bodge downs are trivial but really make a difference. Cheap plastic petrol filler plugs are a case in point, with modern cars needing an airtight seal to balance the fuel system properly. Although they will run with a non-sealing stopper, Ford Escorts for example run much better and use much less fuel with a proper lid. It's amazing what people can get used to driving. And some bodge-ups are part of the car. I once dismantled an early Lada 1200 engine and couldn't believe the cam followers: lumps of cast iron weighing what felt like about half a pound each. No wonder the ball posts on which they rested had all worn flat, aided by general filth and oil starvation.
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I had a Renault Dauphin circa 1960 with 6 volt electrics. Glow worms had more oopmh in them. Being in Cyprus (1971), a friend had a Turkish friend who could sort it out for me. Just put in a 12 volt genny, battery and then sell it to a Greek. No problem. I managed to px it soon after. Strange car, the clutch had no return spring so I got used to toeing the pedal upwards, wonderful on hill starts.
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friend of mine did some work in johannesburg a couple of years ago. A toyota hi ace taxi stopped at the side of the road to pick up passengers. The driver had totally stripped the interior so as to fit as many people in as possible. The driver's seat was re-positioned as far forward as possible, which meant removing the steering wheel. He was steering with a spanner.
let me be the last to let you down....
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Six years living in East Africa gives me plenty of options for sharing bodges that I have seen. Favourite was a double cab in Mwanza (NW Tanzania). It was LHD (rare in that part of the world, as most imports come from Japan), and there must have been about seven of us in it. Towards the end of our journey (having visited a 'warehouse' that was little more than a pile of bricks, and being promised that it could be ready in 'just a few weeks') it became clear from the conversation that we needed petrol. So we cruised into the petrol station, and the driver reached across the middle passenger and me to get what I initially thought was a jerry can from in-front of me.
Actually, that was the petrol tank - a 5L plastic bottle, with a pipe poking into it and a bit of plastic to stop the petrol slopping out. When realisation dawned on me what was going on, I sat very still (not sure how that would have helped reduce combustion, but I felt better) and was very thankful when we arrived back at the hotel.
Bodges, like the wooden piston, are sometimes the only choice - a relative runs a safari business and crafted a wooden piston in order to get a truck back to Nairobi with punters on board. And another relative drove several hundred kms with a string in his hand to control the throttle, after the throttle cable expired. Needs must at times...
Jono
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Actually Jono_99 is talking about good bodgeups, not bad ones. Poor countries where spares are expensive and hard to get breed some pretty ingenious and unfazeable rule-of-thumb mechanics. Vehicles that will run at all are at a premium and the health and safety legislation is sketchy and sketchily enforced. Although the standard of driving in the third world is better than often represented, barrelling down a dirt road at 80mph with 14 other people in a plywood box built on the bed of a Peugeot 404 pick-up isn't really to be recommended, but very large numbers of people were doing it in East Africa a few years ago, and probably still are although most of the 404s will be dead by now. Incidentally I always thought the wooden piston wheeze (with plug removed) was a standard WW2 get-you-home Jeep bodge.
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Another good bodge, just remembered: an artist friend and loyal Citroen driver put two years on the life of his much-loved early Ami 6, bought new, in which he went everywhere at astonishing speeds. The floorpan after a few years rusted away from the frame along both inner sills until it was hanging like a hammock from the front and rear. He installed lengths of hardwood along the inner sills and encased them, a marine-ply sheet and the floorpan in fibreglass resin. As good as new and perhaps better. I don't suppose it would get through an MoT now but it did then - when did the MoT test start anyway? Perhaps there wasn't one in the late sixties.
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404 pickups dead? -- not here in West Africa. I can see one being bodged up for sale from my living room window (actually the guy seem to be a pretty good welder) and I saw a resprayed very smart one for sale only yesterday on the roadside for around £800. However, a couple of weeks it was probably like the dozens of others around with nose up in the air and the back nearly touching the ground with overloading.
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I had to use elastic hair bands in France once because the throttle return spring broke on my Polo, had to wait a few days to get one from VW dealer in France, by which time it was nearly time to go home so I left it till I got it home.
I have also insulated a bulb (ABS) on the dash set and linked it with the engine manegement light (so it would go out) on a Carlton....that car went to scrap eventually.
A bodge I didn't do, was to find a broken vacuum pipe on a throttle body on my Polo GT previously broken by a garage, and superglued back into place, with the small rubber pipe that goes onto it also super glued into place, the super glue had clogged up the hole too thus meaning this switch didn't work. I fixed it at no cost, but it was a bit tricky. They also had the fuel filter on back to front and had not refitted the bracket to hold the fuel filter.
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Using Brillo Pads as exhaust baffles and trying to sew together a split rubber gaitor
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I don't know any to touch that lot. However a girl I knew a few years ago took her 1.0Ltr Metro Mk2 in to a 'reputable' garage for a new clutch. When it came back it had a massive crack in the aluminium clutch housing, I guessed that they bashed the flywheel loose in situ missed and belted the housing. The problem is that's what one of the engine mounting's bolted to.
My brother bought a Mk2 transit years ago, he called at a petrol station opened the side door (sliding type) and it promptly slid off and onto the floor. He took it back following other unwanted features becoming evident.
Steve.
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Office Hack - someone (apparantly a PCV mechanic - I shudder to think) welding aluminium casing holding a pully wheel on the Alternator drive system. Thing gave out. Led to car being binned along with the hack policy......anyone want an old M reg Astra, MoT expires in three weeks.
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A certain trader of my acquaintance (not me I hasten to add) once took a Rover 214 in px, only to find the obligatory HGF. Deciding he would have his money out of it, he drained the oil and cooling system, refilled the sump with fresh oil untainted by water, disconnected the hose from header tank to radiator, stuck a cork in it and reconnected, filled the header tank with fresh water and antifreeze mix, untainted by oil, leaving the cooling system itself completely bereft of any fluid.
He then shipped the car off to the auction where, showing no evidence of the head gasket problem, it duly sold at a profit. How far the new owner got before the engine seized, we never discovered.
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One of my aquaintances, who was a nursing tutor, had an Austin A35 estate which had corroded sills. He got it through the MOT by filling the sills with plaster of paris bandage, most commonly used for broken limbs. It smoothed to a lovely snooth surface for painting.
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merchant navy. Someone had dropped off a failed MOT Austin Maxi saying it had failed on the sills and reqired 2 new sills. We started to remove the old sill and found news paper stuffed in and painted over with underseal. Not a unusual bodge but we removed most of the paper and found the date was the week previous!...A nice attempt to try and fake the MOT tester.
mum did a very similar thing about 8 years ago with some ice cream tubs and that wonderful gaffa tape on the bottom of one of the doors on the commer. Its still there and has passed every MOT since!!!
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Temporarily not a student, where did the time go???
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A workmate's wife who was a nurse, asked him to fix a Morris Minor for her friend. He found that the front number plate was hanging by two nappy pins. When he took it up with his wife she commented "Well she is a midwife!"
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Worst bodge - a Rover badge onto which they attached an abomination. And called it City Rover.
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A friend of mine had a dodgy exhaust on his Escort Mk2, so I force fed my cat to get the tin, top and tailed it (tin NOT cat!) to give me the middle bit only, cut down the side and attached it to exhaust with 3 jubilee clips and gungum!
My own Escort Mk2 suffered a knackered horn, so I simply drilled and screwed on a horn from a Mini 1275GT, fed the 12v live to it and it worked a treat.
Renault 11 headlight unit had a corroded earth connector, so I ripped off the spade connector on the earth wire coming from the chassis, and trapped it between the outside of the bulb holder and the light unit. Worked a treat. Though that unit was replaced later as the reflecter was badly corroded.
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I did that to an exhaust of a fiesta whilst on holiday in France.
I've also attached some baling twine that w found by the side of the road to the carb throttle on a Mk 1 escort, drove it to the next village with me sitting in the back seat, arm out of the window pulling on the string to the drivers instructions to provide the go peddle. Bought some choc blok in a shop and used a section of that to put the throttle cable back together.
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I read often, only post occasionally
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I bought a Mitsubishi Galant (1978) about 1987 from a dealer offering really good trade-in prices, and it looked quite good. About a month later, I heard a funny noise when I closed the driver's door. The inside of the door had filled up with rain water. The nice paint job was helped by a quick filler skim on the outside and underside of all the doors. This had blocked up all the drain holes. I drilled new holes and dried out the insides of the doors. A good anti-rust treatment and mastic underseal kept the doors fine for the next six years that I had the car. There were also problems with the engine, but that's another story. That "I've been had" feeling is most unpleasant. Needless to say, I told all my friends.
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Needless to say, I told all my friends.
Funny that isnt it, I've had many bad, expensive things happen to several of my cars. But no matter how embarrasing and how badly your pride is dented, it usually makes a good story to tell your mates in the pub!
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I kneew you didn't notice things, it was replace by a welded on metal repair 2 years ago.
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I kneew you didn't notice things, it was replace by a welded on metal repair 2 years ago.
How do you get entries in the right place this was in reply to cub leader
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no i didnt notice might have been because i was at uni. was a good bodge though
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Temporarily not a student, where did the time go???
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This one is a family favorite. I have start off by explaining a bit about the person involved my father inlaw He's a exceptionaly fit and active 81 Y/O Yorkshireman & ex farmer but has lived near norwich for the past 20 years.He is a bit of Fred Dibnah charachter with a collection of over 30 tractors and assorted steam plant.
He has a total aversion to A/ spending money on buying cars & B/ Spending money on cars once he has them
When i first met my wife he was running a ex GPO escort van. The back doors would not shut, so he had a length of bailer twine from the hand brake to the back doors, He then proceeded to show me the logic of this, that when the Hand brake was off it tensioned the string. When on released the tension thus enabling the doors to be opened. He took me to one side and suggested that the Ford motor company may be interested in the system. I then pointed out what about hill starts!
We AS a family were a witness to the failure of the system. They had come up for a weekend visit we were waving them off, he was reversing off our drive & stopped sharpish to let a car pass when the back doors opened and deposited the contents of the van on the street... Never a dull moment with him!
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Bought a Standard ten, found broken front spring had table leg inserted to lift suspension.
Ford 'pop' 100E pushed rear spring hanger through boot floor. Jacked up car (so spring hanger was below floor level) piece of 7-ply under spare wheel, spare clamped down very tight until next MOT.
Heard of dealer selling Maxi with noisy fifth gear fitting gear knob with 4-gear H pattern (may be apocryphal).
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1972 Triumph Dolomite 1850
My car started to run very roughly & found head gasket blown & the head had warped enough to crack inlet manifold. Not having much spare cash my Stepfather offered to put put me in touch with 2 "lads from the pub" who were good with cars & would sort it out.
Firstly they removed the head and refitted it using a new head gasket, and then a second hand inlet manifold was fitted but would not mate up cleanly with the head - quite a noticable gap at one end! (as the head was distorted) - so they simply smeared firegum (exhaust sealer paste) over the mating surfaces and gently tightened up the bolts so that the manifold was efectively "set" in paste against the head. When the paste was dry they carefully smeared the white paste with dirty oil so it was not noticable.
They told me - you have about 300 miles before it blows again,just trade it in immediately for something else.
I traded it against a Mk3 Cortina & the dealer didn't even lift the bonnet, just drove it around the block and said that it "sounds fine" !! Which it did ....but not for long - presumably
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Many years ago I repaired the inner wings on my Mk 1 Cortina at the top of the suspension strut where they had rusted through with body filler and painted the repair. They looked quite nice afterwards.
Didn't last very long, though!
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Its not a proper bodge up, just temporary, but we were once in my Dads Rover 820Si (which was about 1 year old at the time), driving home from my aunties late on a Sunday night in torrential rain. There was a noise and the wipers stopped dead. A plastic part in the wiper linkage had snapped, just like on his previous Rover.
So we tied a piece of string to each wiper arm and me in the front seat and my brother in the back, took it in turns to pull the strings and clear the windscreen. Not quite as effective as the wiper motor, but it got us home...
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Mini estate mid 1960s. Rear brake pipe under car corroded and leaked. Fiited bolt into T union where feed went to rear brakes. Leak stopped. As rear brakes don't do much work on Minis at the best of times, no noticeable impact.
madf
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My first car as teenager - Trabant 601S Lux - Being gravity fed two stroke, it required you to mix petrol with oil inside the shallow fuel tank inside engine compartment, by violently swirling flamable mixture with a plastic stick right above exhaust and pipes of its 600cc engine. The engine was air cooled, which basically means it was pipping hot all the time. And the car panels were made of epoxy strenghtened carton board.
The vehicle was powered by 6V battery and featured no radiator, fuel or water pump, oil pump or filters, timing belts or chains, valves, disk brakes or calipers.
These were all factory bodge ups.
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Mini estate mid 1960s. Rear brake pipe under car corroded and leaked. Fiited bolt into T union where feed went to rear brakes. Leak stopped. As rear brakes don't do much work on Minis at the best of times, no noticeable impact. madf
Having been a passenger in a Mini where the driver lost the back end by braking hard during a corner (I think the pressure reducing valve wasn't working properly), and having seen how little rear brake force Minis normally produce, I think your bolt in the tee connector can almost be viewed as a safety enhancement.
Number_Cruncher
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I've had more laughs from this thread than the one with the jokes...and they are pretty good!
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Yes mike i agree little did i realise when i started this thead it how amusing most are, but one thing i've noticed it's genaraly older people that are responding... Does that say that bodging is a dying art/craft? Mind you some of the so called "enhancements" i've seen fitted to corsa, saxo's and the like any bodger would have been proud of!
So come on any modern day bodgers? Under 30
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Not to my knowledge, but a local guy was told he needed some welding doing on his for the the MOT. He used silicone sealent and hammerited it silver. :)
Indistuingishable to the naked eye.
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Not to my knowledge, but a local guy was told he needed some welding doing on his for the the MOT. He used silicone sealent and hammerited it silver. :) Indistuingishable to the naked eye.
I heard of someone using chewing gum to replicate a welding bead.There is also the old trick of mixing iron filings with filler so that it will attract a magnet.
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A while ago I needed a cheap short term car and ended up with an L reg Xantia TD which had done over 200k. Shortly after buying it the windscreen wipers packed up on me so I started dismanting and discovered that the linkage pivot had broken apart with wear but there was some white fabric wrapped around it - when I unraveled it I was rather surprised to find it was actually the elastic from a ladies bra!
I was unable to fashion a lasting repair re-using the said bra and instead got a linkage from a scrapyard for £15.
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"I was unable to fashion a lasting repair re-using the said bra and instead got a linkage from a scrapyard for £15."
These old Xantias are expensive to keep going aren't they?!!
Mind you, anyone with an iota of sense would have gone to M&S and bought a very cheap bra and effected the repair with that - much cheaper than £15 at the scrappies!!!
(My wife, reading over my shoulder and wondering why I am posting about bras has pointed out that a M&S bra is more than £15 - so perhaps you were right after all - and you wouldn't have the embassassment factor, in M&S, of asking for a bra to fit a Xantia!! - "is that for the TD sir, or the normally aspirated?")
Phil
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This is my favourite subject, I have loads.
Some of the more memorable. Fiat uno had a leaking exhaust. Fixed with an Irn-bru can, some catalloy and a couple of Jubilee clips. Passed an MOT like that.
Same Uno developed a leaking rear brake cylinder. Brakes were "fixed" by clamping rear flexihose with a pair of mole grips. Drove around for 6 months with those mole grips attached to the car.
Leaking head gasket on a citroen AX (water into cylinder) fixed using 3 bottles of Radweld. It actually worked (for a while)!
Learned these kind of tricks from a mechanic friend of mine. When he later came to visit me in the States, he bought a novelty license plate that says "COWBOY". Its now Tie wrapped (how appropriate) to the front of his tool chest at work.
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Oleopneumatic, naturally.
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"but one thing i'venoticed it's genaraly older people that are responding... Does that say that bodging is a dying art/craft?"
Yes its a dying art and craft. It was passed to us by our fathers, but not passed to our sons. I have not "bodged" anything car wise for 20 years. It all gets fixed by a garage now.
When I first started driving, under my fathers guidance I always had a bag in the boot containing a full set of tyres, bailing wirre, electrical wire, insulating tape, some baked bean tins, tin snips, gun gum, instant gasket, nuts bolts screws washers of all sorts. Anything could be fixed. Change an exhaust? only when there actually no metal left to repair would that be the case.
Did anyone actually buy a car where grass started to grow through the paint where the body had been filled with mud?
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TourVanMan < yes its RF reborn >
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Tyres? I mean tools of course!
Now i dont even have a spare tyre!!!
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TourVanMan < yes its RF reborn >
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TVM
When I had a Fiat Regata I came upon another one for spares for £25.
We went to Ireland for Christmas that year and I filled a couple of lin bins with spares from the donor car, including and alternator, starter, hoses, HT leads, dizzy etc etc plus all my tools.
And Murphy's law worked a treat, I never needed a single thing!
H
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I guess things get fixed properly (yes, I know that's another thread!) these days because youngsters just aren't so hard up as some of us old timers seem to have been...
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This one not stricly a bodge but highly amusing A plumber friend need a car/van quickly after his old van had failed it's MOT so he bought the 1st thing he saw with 12 month MOT a old nail of a Volvo 240 estate, After deciding it was not for him he decided to trade it in. So he thought he'd clock it. He went under the dash to remove the speedo cable, where he found a label attached and on it was writted "Oh no not again" someone had beat him to it!
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At university 6 of us shared an Austin A30 that cost £5. We rebuilt the drivers door post and the entire cill with sheet metal from an old fridge and pop rivits liberated from the engineering department, finished off with Woolworths paint.
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Around 1980 myself and five(!) friends were out on the town in a Morris 1100. The driver pulled suddenly to a halt and informed us the engine was overheating badly. A look under the bonnet revealed the fan belt was gone (presumably snapped). Back then there was an urban myth that a woman's stockings made an effective temporary repair for a broken fan belt, so one of the female members of the party was persuaded to donate hers. It took us ages to wrap them around the various pulleys but finally we proudly set off. After about 5 yards there was a plume of smoke and a shower of fine nylon dust particles signalling complete stocking disintegration. Myth busted.
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A visiting relative complained his wipers weren't working, and he'd have to drive home in the rain. No handbook, found blown 10A fuse. Replaced, blew again. Measured current around 20A, fitted 20A fuse, it held with no apparent problems for ten minutes or so. Told him to get it sorted properly ASAP, this was a get you home measure! Week later, partial short circuit in heated drivers seat, burnt hole in seat, trousers, and bum. You can't stand up at 70 MPH in outside lane. Volvo.
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I'm 32... so don't quite fit under your stick.
My first car was a renault 21. Something went wrong with the passenger door latch and for a week or so it was tied shut with some bailer twine. A dab of oil on the lock sorted it out.
My first W123 Merc came with a hole in the front pipe. I didn't have a chance to get this fixed before I was going home for Christmas, so made a tomato sauce from tinned tomato, added some exhaust paste to the tin, two jubilee clips and was looking forward to testing the MOT with it... when the car was nicked.
Friend's Volvo 440 spent its last month with the back box attached to the pipe by a baked bean tin. That was a pig of a job, I don't think she was ever sufficiently appreciative!
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Back about '77 on a 1968 Sprite, poured neat touch-in paint into an araldite mixture and applied to leading edge of rusted-away front wing retainers. Not only worked but looked nice and shiny as well. Also, just before selling it on, effected a cure to the leaking petrol tank by rubbing the affected area with a bar of soap. Don't know how it worked, but it did.
About '86 on a 1970's Datsun Bluebird ( Puff, the Tragic Wagon )managed some ace pre-sale bodges: bonnet and one or two other areas riddled with small rust holes, but was double-skinned. Enter large can of expanding foam - as used to fill big exterior gaps in buildings etc. Taped over holes - except the largest - fed in foam, removed tape, sanded off excess by-now-dry foam and then used aerosol paint. If it ever fell into a harbour it'd probably float.By the way never cleaned this car, but just before flogging it gave it a good scraping and then used about 8 cans of aerosol to do the whole car. Actually looked not too bad, and sold it no bother. Saw it about 3 years later, suitably done with what looked like brush-on masonary paint. TRD 78S, where are you now ?
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"TRD 78S, where are you now ? "
V5 last issued 24/11/87.
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no, plate summed up them rotbox bluebird estates ,best place for it now it will be a bean tin
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Bought a bargain price Ford Z-car banger. Was expecting high performance (6 cyls) and disappointed by its pace. As a first step, renewed the rusty spark plugs in the car park of my mate's flats. The bodge on this car was that the vendor had closed up the spark plug gap on no.2 cyl to conceal a holed piston - by preventing the crankcase full of fuel mixture from igniting. Without closing the bonnet, I started it up to see what effect the new plug set would have, there was a loud bang, and the dipstick was elevated twenty feet in the air, missing my spectating mate's nose by not much of a margin.
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Seemed to spend a lot of time with a tube of Plastic Padding (is it still around?) in my 20s. Never did anything too dangerous but worst MoT bodge was the side of a GTX can pop riveted to the rusted floor of a Dyane 4 and carefully finished off as undetectably as possible with judicious use of the magic PP. For the same MoT the foot operated washer pump wasn't working the night before but I discovered it could be primed for one-shot use and rightly guessed the tester would only use one shot to check it worked. The tyres were borrowed from a nearly new Dyane 6. I remember a passing policeman sticking his head into the lock-up where I was still fiddling about at 1 am for an 8 am test and he went off laughing when he saw what was up.
Much later in Africa I had a 2CV rear brake line cut by a flying stone and went to a village mechanic who said he could repair it no problem. An hour or two later I picked it up and didn't notice until a few days and several hundred miles further on, he had simply cut the pipe off and welded up the end so I was left with three-wheel braking. Forgot to mention it when I sold that one to an African shopkeeper.
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I work in Sudan and it's ture to say bodging is alive and well here
A recent trip in Khartoum taxi confirmed this it was one of those 60's peugeot like a austin cambridge (404?)I'm certain it had no springs on the back, the driver was fighting with the steering at modest speeds only 1 headlamp and 1 cycle type lamp in the middle of the bonnet, it stank of petrol the gear lever was a steel reinforcing bar and on top of this it had to be push started out side Khartoum international airport.... Could you imagine this outside Heathrow!
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My Mini started to jump out of third gear. Early Minis had a gearlever that went at an angle into the gearbox, so I attached a sprung-loaded hook to the heater housing which "captured" the lever when third was engaged. A solenoid operated from a button on the end of the gear lever released the hook. Worked extremely well and certainly long enough for me to save up to have the box repaired.
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foot operated washer pump wasn't working the night before but I discovered it could be primed for one-shot use and rightly guessed the tester would only use one shot to check it worked.
Yes, I have to do the same "priming" on my Escort with the headlamp flashers, as they run in a 5v low impedance circuit and thus need a bit of a clean to get them going!
Reason is I got fed up with switching to dipped beam after main beam, only to discover all my lights bat sidelights went off! No amount of cleaning the contacts would help, so I put all the light switches through some logic code on a PIC microcontroller and now it turns dipped beam on whenever main beam is off if the headlight switch is 'on'. Ford put slightly different wiring into the flasher circuit so I don't loose dipped beam when I (can!) flash the headlights. I know it would have been easier to just to hotwire dipped beam to the main headlamp switch, but that would just be too easy (and use more power than neccessary) :-) !
I'll fix the flashers properly when I get time, but to be honest I'm never in a situation when I legitimately need to use them.
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Mike Farrow
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This was the report upon stripdown of my old Lagonda 3-litre Special, high chassis, referring to the previous work of a firm of Vintage Specialists ? as they called themselves.
The crankcase is beyond economic repair, having been ruined as follows. After the crank had been ground and new bearings made, it had been found that the main caps had been filed. Instead of shimming them they had simply split-pinned all the nuts finger tight. With crank vibration the nuts cut nut shaped holes in the bearing caps and the bearings turned in their housings, being broken up by the locating dowels. One stud had a shorter thread than the rest and broke away the part of the crankcase which held it, and that half of the main hung clear of the crank. Eventually one of the shells turned so far in its housing that it shut off the supply to the adjacent big end.
It was of course the big end which announced trouble, but not, extraordinarily, until after several thousand miles, not driven gently.. And that lot had charged me £150 as I remember, which was not washers in the fifties.
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2 cars accident-damaged cars I put back on the road had split welds in and around the boot floor area once I had 'straightened' the rear valance out with a club hammer.
one I poked aluminium foil in the seam and sprayed it all, the other got white silicone sealer in the seam (the car was white so it saved me buying the paint, spraying etc etc).
one of the cars is definately now a bus brake drum (or similar) the other is still around apparently and has passed several MoT's since.
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"Shortly after buying it the windscreen wipers packed up on me so I started dismanting and discovered that the linkage pivot had broken apart with wear but there was some white fabric wrapped around it - when I unraveled it I was rather surprised to find it was actually the elastic from a ladies bra!"
Imagine : Man walks into M&S and askes to buy ladies bra. Saleslady asks, "What bust?" Man replies, "The windscreen wiper".
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You will be pleased to know bodging is alive and well as my next door neighbour will testify he's just had his car back (Peugeot 405) from the mechanic down the pub!
heater fan was not working something to do with faulty reostat now has a dirty great switch ponting out of middle of dash looks like its from a 60's rover and fan is on full blast when the fan is switched on!
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In my youth I had an Austin Maxi. the throttle return spring broke and I couldn't/wouldn't/didn't get a replacement.
I used rubber bands - as found in the street, dropped by the postman - as a return spring.
There was one tiny detail, when the engine got hot, the rubber band would melt and give full throttle until I turned the engine off. In those days, I lived in West London and worked in Basingstoke, after a few miles on the M3 (empty in those days) the rubber band would fail and I would have full throttle all the way down the M3 - interesting - I would stop on the exit slip road and replace the rubber band, which would normally last until I got to the office.
I am ashamed to say this went on for a couple of days (or more) there were lots of rubber bands in the street.
On the M3 if I came up to a group of cars and couldn't get past, I would switch off the engine and de-clutch, when the road cleared, I started the engine and engaged the clutch.
Happy days!
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I can remember my father 'repairing' a Vauxhall Victor with cover sills held on by pop rivets and self tappers, covered in loads of bitumen-based underseal so the MOT tester didn't know.
We also had a transit which dripped its oil on the exhaust when the engine became hot - after 20-30 miles driving. He tried all sorts of bodges on that one but never quite cured it.
A final bodge which came to mind was a worn UJ in the drive to the front axle on a landrover. The cure - take the driveshaft out on MOT day, and put it back the next.
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Reminds be of a bit of advice I was given as a youngster: 'if you're desperate for a rubber band, follow a postman'. What you do with it is your business of course.
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In the 70's my then girlfriend's Triumph Toledo's ignition lamp came on and stayed on. Typical of a knackered generator. She belonged to the RAC, so called them out. The hero solved the problem by removing the warning lamp from its holder....
In my old Spitfire the rod that acted as the hinge pivot for the clutch arm dropped out through the bottom of the clutch housing when I was driving, as I discovered when I next tried to change gear (Ah, that's what the 'clonk' was). Luckily, I had a phillips screwdriver with me and I found the the shaft from this made a reasonable new hinge, if a little sloppy as it was a smaller diameter than the original. Better still, the handle, which was still attached, stopped it from falling out. I drove round like that for months (until I needed to use the screwdriver, in fact)
Very accessible, those Spitfires.
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Many years ago as an impecunious student I had a Rover 2000. It passed three MOT tests with an exhaust consisting mainly of tin cans, the inner side layered with exhaust paste, held in place with jubillee clips. Sills and inner wings were fabricated from flattened out oil tins pop riveted in place covered with a liberal layer of mastic. Methinks the tester tapped it twice with his white stick and passed it.
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After changing the engine on my Range Rover i had a slight hic up when the balancing rod between the two carbs fell apart, i had to drive with a piece of string to the second carb and pull it to match the first carb that still worked off the throttle until i managed to get hold of another rod.
When the heater plug switch failed on our series three derv Land Rover i rigged up a trigger switch from a electric strimmer as this was all that i could find that was man enough to carry the current, or was until it caught fire and the missus demanded that i sorted it out properly.
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bedfordrl .Trigger switch for strimmer,this moves you into the premier division of bodgers,very good.
many years ago landrover chassis holed seriously,filled with concrete complete with reinforcing bars,covered with tin and underseal to pass not 1 but 2 mots then it failed on another bit
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Common flawed logic-'if it can take 240v it must be alright for 12v'.
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Not a bodge on a car, but on my first proper motorcycle, a 1955 BSA B31 350. The kickstart return spring was an old inner tube, or maybe an aerolastic, can't remember which. It worked all right though.
I also had a Triumph TR2, of 1955 vintage,same as the bike, and the bonnet catches were made of Meccano. Also a 1935 MG PA, complete with Ford side valve engine, which had a domestic switch for the lights.
A modern car doesn't have such charcter, thank goodness.
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