meoff

Just curious amongst us what kind of crazy repair you had to do to your car to get home? Myself I was driving from Indiana to Utah camping the whole way and while I was in Utah broke a valve spring. At our camp spot with no access to air or electric as it was a primitive camp. I got that cylinder coming up on compression stroke and pulled the spark plug and fed rope into the cylinder and then brought piston up till it stopped by hand. Then I was able to remove spring retainers change the spring and reinstall. Worked like a champ and got me back home to Indiana. I was young and cheap but It worked! I'm sure there are crazy stories and just hoping everyone else will share theirs!

oldcutlass

Over the years, axle bearing, Ujoint, water/fuel/oil pumps, timing chain, collapsed pressure plate, radiator, wheel bearing, brake springs, points or condenser, alternator, generator, starter, hoses, etc... A lot of stuff happens in 40 years of driving all over the country.

cherokeepeople

here ya there.just one of many.back in the late 80's was at a swap meet in sioux falls.bought a 66 toro that ran and had to drive it 150 miles home.well one of the tires was low so stopped at the first gas station to put air in it,well the valve stem partially broke off when i went to put air in it,thought well $hit this aint good.so as we are setting there i look in the swap meet trailer and one of our chairs had a screw loose.so i took it out.filled the tire yamked off the valve stem and screwed it in the hole that was still there.got home and that tire held air for over a week like that.

Koda

2 cycle oil jug with fuel line jammed inside hole in lid as impromptu gravity fuel tank when fuel pump quit. Red gas can on bumper for when gas tank rusted out. Drove home on the parking brake when I blew a master cylinder. Jammed a stick in a busted hydraulic hose to keep SOME brakes once. Did the heater hose bypass once when I blew one of them. Nothing really impressive yet.

gs72

Ok I know this isn't car related but... me and some friends were riding dirt bikes in the CA Frazier park area. It is a rocky high mountain area with limited access to 4 wheel vehicles. Anyway one of my buddies falls and drops his bike on the rocks, and a sharp rock punches a hole in the oil filter cover. So his bike is pouring out oil as it runs. I'm looking at the leak and then at his goggles and i get an idea. We take off the cover (held by three screws) remove the filter and throw it in the bushes ( ya I know it's not an enviro freindly practice but we are 22 miles from camp and towing is not an option) then we take his goggle lens put the oil filter cover over it and cut out a gasket. The google lens act as a shield between the damaged cover and the crankcase and lasted long enough to get us back to camp. He ended up keeping it in his bike tool kit from then on just in case.

scottv442

back in 1992 i was rolling thru upper michigan on my way to the east coast for vacation when i clipped a deer and "soft" rolled the car into the opposite ditch. tow-truck righted the car and hauled it to the closest town (iron bridge) where we jacked up the roof with a floor jack, installed a new windshield, changed the oil and antifreeze, crossed our fingers and fired the car up. it smoked like crazy for about 5minutes then ran smooth and easy.

started to head back west to home, but the car ran so good and i was already 1000miles from home, that i turned back around and continued east to my vacation spot in NS. for three weeks the car ran fine and i made the 3000mile return trip home with just a little rain getting in by the doors.

car looked like ***** but ran as good as new.

rand5204

Was trailering my '70 W30 back from New Mexico to Wisconsin in about 1990 with my matching color 70 Vista Cruiser as a tow car when the water pump failed on the VC. Middle of nowhere Iowa and the middle of winter. No chance to find a new pump anywhere. Pulled the pump from the W30, got some RTV for a gasket and put the pump on the VC. No problems all the way home.

frankr442

83 Cutlass driving home from work, when the left rear lower control arm nearly broke in half. About 1" of solid metal on one edge right in the middle, and it's bent in a V shape. Backed up slowly and it straightened out. Country road, no houses, no cell phone.
Found a branch in the woods that fit nicely in the arm (non-boxed) and with about half a roll of duct tape, made a splint that got me home.
Duct tape and coat hangers, never leave home without them.

oldolds88

I used the windshield washer jar and pump to keep the float bowl full of fuel.

Tedd Thompson

Broke a a fan belt on my 46 Chevy pickup in the desert east of no wheres Ravendale Ca. I could only go a mile or so before it would heat up and have to stop and cool it down. I came across a broken down hay bailer that had probably been abandon for fifteen years but had a mostly white sun bleached fan belt that was stiff and originally fit a flat grove pulley. I did get it loosely on by bypassing the generator ( no tightener because it is on the generator) but the water pump would rotate enough to keep the engine cool enough to travel some 54 miles to Susanville only on the battery. A trip I will remember for ever.... Tedd

meoff

Very cool stories/replies! Keep em coming! Another road trip I was on it was raining and nasty and the windshield wiper motor quit! Was in the middle of nowhere so I tied a string from one windshield wiper on driver side came through the car and out the passenger side and then tied to the other windshield wiper on passenger side. I unhook the linkage and was manually able to rock my arm left and right to operate wipers! This time I think I was somewhere outside of Denver Colorado heading back to Indiana! Once again it got me home!

Mike77

Our Renault engine froze solid in the mountains during a ski trip. -35*F over night. Opps.
Jacked the car up real high and built a fire underneath while everyone went skiing. Baby sat that fire most of the night. with plenty of Rye Whiskey to keep me warm. Next morning I fired it up. Water pump was leaking out the blow hole. hammered a plastic wire nut in the hole. Drove 200 miles home. The plug blew out about 10 blocks from home. But we made it.

Local Hero

My brother called me to say that he sheered all the bushings off in the steering column of our Dad's 75 Chevy Blazer with a three-on-the-tree on his way to high school. It was stuck in third gear and couldn't be shifted. He was in a downtown city location with tons of traffic lights and stop signs.

I was able to use 4-wheel low gear in the transfer case to get it rolling, then push in the clutch and yank it out of 4WD once I got it moving. I had to do this at every stop until I got it home.

Koda

Man, I think I would've swapped the hitches first and pulled with the W-30. Welded hitch?

rand5204

Koda,


Yeah, the hitch was welded and the W30 wasn't running. The water pump worked great though.

rustyroger

Used a tree branch to locate the front axle on an old Land Rover when a road spring broke

Managed 40 miles in an old Ford Cortina (UK) doing this, with a manual washer pump. Then the pump diaphragm quit - crossing a railroad .

Other get-you-home fixes include wire coat hangers in place of stolen plug wires, hammering a metal brake pipe flat after a rubber hose failed, cutting a potato in half and wiping it over the windshield when the wiper quit one rainy night.
My Dad stuffed tires with straw to get home after two punctures, this was in the 1940's, I doubt it would even be possible with modern tires and wheels.

Roger.

Mark in MN

Not me, but my advise.... My older brother (mechanical challenged) was recently married and had little money so of course I would get a call any time something went wrong with his Vega. One Saturday he called because the exhaust had become disconnected near the middle of the car and was dragging on the ground. I suggested he grab a wire coat hanger and tie it up, then bring it over and we could fix it. About an hour later he arrived having succeed in making it almost 20 miles. He hadn't followed my advise completely and that was a good thing. Rather than a hanger he had grabbed some extra electrical wire from a home remodeling project, and then proceeded to tie the exhaust up using the driveshaft for support. The wire was worn over half way through and the drive shaft had a one inch wide area polished to a mirror finish with a slight copper tint.

Fun71

20 miles off the pavement on a 4WD trip in the mountains and one guy in the group had the flex fan contact the radiator, cutting a large arc into the rearmost row of tubes. My friend and I used needle nose pliers to fatigue fracture the tubes on each side of the cut, then roll and tightly crimp the tube ends. Filled with water and he was able to not only drive out to the pavement, but he drove another 50 miles on the highway and got home with no water loss.

As we were working on the radiator, the vehicle owner turned to his daughter and said "This is why I go wheeling with engineers instead of accountants."

lonncarr69

LMAO!!! This is good!!!

cherokeepeople

i can do ya one better.back in about 88 or so we went up to yankton south dakota to get a jeep cj5.took my buddy's 82 chevy diesel wagon with the car trailer.jeep ran but hadn't been on the road in a couple years.get just about to the south dakota/iowa border and the diesel decides to blow a head gasket.settin there thinkin what the hell now.i just happen to walk around the back of the trailer and notice the jeep has a hitch.so we pull the jeep off hook it up to the trailer and load the wagon.man that was a load on that jeep.drove about 30 mph all the way home,but made it.

young olds

I haven’t done anything to crazy but I had a tail pipe hanger brake at the weld on the way to a friends house, took my T-shirt and tied the pipe up to the frame so it wasn’t resting on the axle. Going to the same friends house I noticed the smell of hot oil and my oil pressure dropped on decent turns, limped it the rest of the way there and checked it out. Oil pressure line had a hole in it pumping oil all over the intake, to late to go get a new line so I soaked paper towels in super glue and wrapped up the hole then taped it didn’t leak and got me back home. When we were teens my buddy had a 62 comet and the wipers went out one winter while we were driving around. He had a can of de icer so I rolled my window down and sat on the door spraying the windshield.

cjsdad

Went hunting with my brother-in-law and first time off road with my '85 Dodge W150. The vacuum system for the front diff connector failed because some ignant fool (me) had used plastic tubing and not vacuum tubing. I took the shifter fork out of the front axle and put a screw into one side of the diaphragm to lock the front axle engaged. Put the screw in the other side of the diaphragm to disengage it when I got home. I had another occasion to lock the front axle and left it that way until I traded it off some 12 years ago.

Same truck, different story, I was driving to Flagstaff to help a good friend pack to move. Driving through a heavy snow and the wipers quit! Took the cowl off and found the nylon connector between the wiper motor and the tierod had failed. Bent a piece of a coat hanger into a hairpin shape to keep it in place until I could get a replacement at Gotto Zone the next day. This was the occasion to lock the front axle as well.

66 POST

3:00 am on I95 south somewhere near the VA/NC line on my way to NHRA Div. 2 race in Rockingham . Oil light comes on my temporary tow car while my truck is in the body shop - It's a rusted out 1978 wagon with a 403 I just picked up. Make it to an exit and closed down gas station. Full of oil lifters are clacking like he## it needs a pump. Jack it up to take a look , no way the pan is coming off and besides I can see the 3/8 exhaust manifold bolts have rusted down to nothing just waiting to get wrung off. Drained the oil and drove a thin chisel into the oil pan corner. Took a hack saw blade wrapped in tape and cut the sump on three sides - took forever-and bent the flap down. Snuck the pump out and banged the pickup on the ground to dislodge the timing gear plastic from a previous t set repair. Hammered the flap back in place and held it there with a bottle jack , brazed it up and smeared it with red silicone. Made it there and back then used as a shop car for a year or so then clubbed it , blueprinted the 403 and sold it to Mike Mayhew NHRA/IHRA M/SA ------

jcdynamic88

had a thermostat stick closed on my 66 425 returning from lake george n.y. and with a good feeling one of the t-stat housing bolts would break guaranteeing it to leak i removed the top hose from the t-stat housing and jammed my jack handle in there to permanently open it, still like that 20 yrs later

Insinna

Had an 88 Jeep Wrangler... broke rear u joint in the middle of nowhere...ended up taking out front drive shaft and removing a joint and pounding it into the rear shaft.. using the front bumper for a bench and headlights to see..... amazing what we can do when we need to

oldolds88

I like this one too

Koda

I HATE me some vacuum operated 4x4. AMC style, to be precise.

cjsdad

You couldn't just put the transfer case in 4-HIGH and make it a front wheel drive?

Tedd Thompson

X2 I have done this in a jeep on the Rubicon. We pulled the rear drive line and were pulled through a few tough spots by friends. This jeep had lockers all the way around and this helped a bunch on the front.

On a different trip same jeep we had the through bolt break and we lost most of the spring leafs in the passenger front. I spent about a hour back tracking running my hand through ice mud holes feeling for springs. I think I found all except one. We then turned a bolt down to fit the spring king pin with air tools and a file, longest bolt in the box but larger in diamiter (front bumper was a air tank for the locker) beat it on and bent it over with a hammer No nut needed. No problem just part of the excitement of the trip.

If you ever get to go on a 4x4 trip on the Rubicon rule of thumb never ever leave your rig if you break down. It will be stripped to the frame before you can get back to it with your part to fix it. But if you stay with your ride the guys coming from behind you will spend all day and supply you with any parts they have just to get you back on the road. Strange rule of the road.... Tedd

Insinna

​​​​​​Four wheel drive wouldn't engage ... vacuum can had hloe in it....was a great heep .... I mean Jeep...lol

cjsdad

Dood, that sucks!

Oldsmomick

Driving back home from the Wisconsin North woods in my grandfather's Vista Cruiser. The car lost power and quit on the side of the road. No tools to speak of (and no help in sight), he pulled the distributor cap and saw the rubbing block on the points was gone. He found a band-aid in the car, wrapped it around the points and got that 350 purring again...all the way to Chicago.