Tell us about your hatchet repair jobs.

[dave21478]

I'm sure we have all done some nasty repairs that would make other cringe in our times....
I'm actually rather proud of what I did the other day due to its horrificly high level of shonkyness.
A friend opened his vans rear door and a gust of wind caught it and ripped it clean off. Top hinge smahed to bits, bottom hinge ripped out of the bodywork. Its a cruddy old van anyway and the hinges are no longer available without spending serious bucks, so a little improvisation was required.
Step one was to lash a plate over the jaggy hole left where the bottom hinge had mounted. I painted it by dipping my gloved finger into the hamerite and smearing it over the repair.


The smashed top hinge proved to be unrepairable as it was made from some soft cast metal. Time to replace it, but what with....hmm, a scrabble in the "hinges" box turned this up.... Nice.


The overall result is aesthetically challenged, but functional-ish. The axis of the hing pins arent in line anymore so the door wont open fully without trying to twist the top hinge off.


The vans owner is dead chuffed though!


Anyone done worse?

[bigrod]

I once glued a brake shoe retaining pin in place. In my defense, I was in the middle of the Swiss Alps and there weren't too many motor factors around. It did the job and got us to Naples.

That repair lasted over a year until the car was finally foisted upon some poor unsuspecting Czech bloke.

Another bodge I heard of was during that trip, one of the other teams repaired a burst coolant hose with a couple of slices of parma ham and some wire they foiund at the side of the road. That got them the last 600 or so miles too, but I'll be damned if I know how!!

[goochi01]

The rear exhaust hangar snapped on my 3 series when I was on my way to work once. I fixed it with a plastic bag around the hook of the exhaust and car. It worked though!

In fact it worked so well, when I got home in the evening I had completely forgotton about it until my mechanic pointed a week later out that some prat had "bodged it" Ahem......

[briandamaged]

I once repaired a 6" rusthole in a Mk3 Cortina floorpan by fibreglassing an ally plate over the hole, smearing a whole tin of underseal over it then emptying the contents of a Hoover bag over it to make it look old. Passed the MOT.....though it would have been quicker to weld it!

[kevfromwales]

broke both rear exhaust mounts on the sunny due to ignoring a loose joint (half the exhaust fell off on the high street!)

had to take my mate's hot daughter back to uni that night, so I 'improvised' a repair using a length of scrap oil cooler solid copper pipe wrapped around the exhaust pipe

it was still in place when I swapped the sunny to the local banger racer for my lada - I only found out today he's now flogged it on, and I bet my bodge is still in place!

[Neil]

C15 with a one piece rear door!

They are super rare over here...

[Mystery Machine]

While on a laning weekend in North Wales, my motor started overheating. Blocked rad was deemed to be the cause, but what can you do when you're stuck in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere?? 60 miles from 'base camp' and many many miles from any motor factors!



With some basic tools, we got the floorpan out, got to the thermostat (after removing the power steering pump) and cut the centre of the stat out to allow the water to flow as freely as possible.

Thinking we'd solved the problem, we refitted it all, topped up the water and started it up. Within a few minutes water started leaking from the thermostat housing! We'd torn the gasket!

HERE'S THE BODGE REPAIR: Remove p/steering pump again, remove stat housing and insert a new gasket carefully crafted from an Asda burger box which was in my fridge in the back of the Delica.



While I was doing this, my mate was wiring up the AC fan on the front condenser so that I had extra cooling if needed (switched on by connecting 2x bullet connectors together near the centre console!)

This genuis solution got me through the rest of laning weekend and all the way back to Bristol. Fully loaded with kit and 3 passengers.

A new radiator was fitted soon after getting back home, but the burger box gasket lives on to this very day serving its purpose well.......

[Lopez]

I crashed my Sierra into a lamp post. Crushed the bumper, flattened the wing, headlamp pointing at the floor. This was in the middle of summer at about midnight.

I needed the car looking half tidy the following day as I had to drive it to university in Swansea and I had no MOT (yeah yeah, I know!) so was worried about attracting Police attention

So I limped home, got up at 5 am, drove up the mountain to a layby and performed emergency surgery. I hammered the slam panel straightish, put the headlight back in place (now that it fitted in the recess again!), bashed the wing out from inside with a jack handle, and tied masses of black wire around the bumper, a bit like an exoskeleton.

Then I duct taped over the dented area of the wing, a bit like you see in spy shots of new Ferraris' etc in Auto Express. I sprayed the duct tape cladding in the correct shade of Lacquer red and hey presto job's a goodun. At a passing glance the car looked normal, although a mate of mine observed that it "looked a bit like an ice cream melting in the sun"

[keithyboy]

Nov 11, 2008 21:20:56 GMT @briandamaged said:

I once repaired a 6" rusthole in a Mk3 Cortina floorpan by fibreglassing an ally plate over the hole, smearing a whole tin of underseal over it then emptying the contents of a Hoover bag over it to make it look old. Passed the MOT.....though it would have been quicker to weld it!

I did that on my MKII Escort's inner wings but I used genuine road dirt out of the gutter.

I once put a new sill on my Capri but ran out of time to finish the welding on the seam inside the door shut. I glued the door seal over it in case the MoT man took an interest.

I recall spending about 3 hours attempting to fix my Orion's back box. I cut a section out of a plastic bucket, glued a piece of tinfoil to it to protect it from the heat, covered the foil in instant gasket, and then pop riveted it over the hole in the box. It lasted about as long as it took me to do it.

[J.P]

I had a particularly bad rust patch on the floor pan of the Metro. Right by the rollcage! I was going to a trackday and I wasn't sure how much scrutineering they would do.....So i fibre glassed it and got it all smooth!

They didn't do any scrutineering anyway so it was all good! However I put it on axle stands last week (for the last time! -Scrapping! it!) and below the fibre glass had rotted so bad the axle stand went through the floor at that point! Lesson learned!

[briandamaged]

I jumped my then-current Mini Clubman over a hump-backed bridge one night in the summer of '86....the 'CRRRACCCKKK' noise as it hit the deck told me that All Was Not Well, which was confirmed by the driver's door flying open every time I braked.

Next day we looked at the completely rotten floor, inner AND outer sill and base of the A-pillar which had a 2" gap almost all the way to the transmission tunnel. Then we ignored it, tied the door shut with bailing twine (thank the Lord for pop-out rear windows on Clubbies) and I drove it like that for another three months, entering/exiting via the passenger door.

Damned comfy little Mini, that was...it seemed to float over the bumps....... RIP COH131K ;D

[surprisingskoda]

i have a cable tie holding on a bmw brake pipe where the plastic snap-clip has broken.

it makes me shiver everytime i think of the irritating little whine it made and how the cable tie is the only thing stopping it doing that now. who knows how long it'll last though - it's a bit of a racy bodge and should not be attempted at home.

other than that - i just let them break.

[Brigsy]

A water hose split badly on my old mk2 astra gte, gaffer taped it up got me home no bother! Also ratched strapped the exhaust of my 11t to the rear axle when the hangers snapped, worked for quite a while until I fixed it.

One of my best bodges was on the m1 nr Leicester forest services in my r5gtt, the alt light came on so pulled over to investigate, ring terminal had snapped off the +12v feed. Only had a small socket set so stripped back the wire with my teeth, twisted ithe wire round the stud on the alt, clamped it between 2 washers. After dong 500 miles with it like this, left it be as it was working fine. Lasted 4 yrs, at lest 50k miles until I took the car off the road for restore.

[joda]

3 months or so ago the exhaust snapped at the back box on my fusion, off with the back box and into the garage

hunt about for pipe came up woth an old moped frame (raleigh wisp) so it was cut to leignth, hammered into the box, spot weld and gungum, back to the car, fitted it up the exhaust, angain gungun and silver foil tape, and good as new!!

all done between 7.30 and 8am before my work!!

still fittted and still working!

[IDY]

On my old Sierra estate I cable tied on the fuel line as I managed to break most of the clips.

On my current Sierra the middle box in the exhaust split, ended up repairing with some body mesh and half a tube of 20 year old bathroom sealent - lasted a couple of months before the rest of the exhaust started to fall apart

[markwix]

On an old golf mk3 winter hack I 'repaired' a section of sill,wheel arch and inner wheel arch with a piece of lead roof/chimney flashing.

Easy to manipulate into shape, a skim of filler and Mr MOT was none the wiser. Will probably outlast the car!

Coke can and jubilee clips for small holes in exhausts? We must have all done that!?

[lufbramatt]

my fuel filter is currently held on with zip ties and a chunk of grey foam pipe insulation to stop them chafing through the casing, managed to mangle the braket getting the old one off, oops

[eddbmxdude]

We were driving the Fiat 128 around and the exhaust fell off because the rubbers had perished. We had a bit of rope in the boot so we wrapped it around the middlebox and trapped one end of the rope in the passenger door. We then pulled the rope as tightly as we could and trapped the other end in the drivers door. It did the job and held the exhaust on for a few days. We had to climb in through the windows

[cobblers]

I used a old carling can and half a dozen cable ties as a structural repair when the flange snapped off my cat, no point doing it right, the cat was only on the car one day a year. Passed an mot and amused the tester

[jikovron]

this was my effort,,,,,,i wanted to make the crash damage less noticeable on my car but with no money i pulled out some filler(with no hardener)/box tape/and some cardboard,,,,,

filling the dent with card,,,,,then slopping on the filler,then realising it wont harden gave me a dilemma either cling film or parcel tape(parcel tape was deemed more structural) then a quick coat of paint returned it to show room condition

before (with the wing pulled out from behind the wheel )


after the "repair" you'd never have known (it's actually quite embarasing but there we go )