Macgyvering

[mark18mwm]

When I was in the Air force in Frankfurt Germany my room mate had a 68 bug. One day the throttle cable broke at the pedal end. With both of us being C-130 crew chiefs and used to doing whatever it takes to get home we broke the pedal off and clamped vise grips to the end of the cable and stepped on the vise grips to accelerate. worked so good he left it that way. Later the clutch cable broke, we drove the car for about 6 month with no clutch ,in Frankfurt (which has just as messed up traffic as any large city any where)traffic, until the car was due for it's annual safety inspection. The Germans have no sense of humor about that stuff and that and we knew it would never pass so that was the death nell for the poor bug.

 

[Zedexseven]

I needed a t70 torx at 7pm on a Sunday, I ended up finding a 13mm hex shank, ground a notch in each flat and made my own Torx bit, worked fine, held up to a 3/4" impact gun

 

[Speed4Life]

Where the hell do you find dryer lint in a place you want a campfire?

I pack it with me. Grab it from the dryer, throw it in a ziplock. It weighs nothing and burns like a mother.

 

[tcianci]

My in laws called me one night, it seems that they went to leave a restaurant where they had dinner and their 77 caddie wouldn't start. I wasn't far away so I came by and determined that there was no spark. The car had an HEI distributor and I took the cap off and determined that one of the wires from the pickup coil had broken due to the vacuum advance moving the "breaker plate" and the wire getting fatigued. I scrounged around on the frame of the car until I could scrape up a wad of undercoating and used it to hold the broken wire in place. I was surprised as could be when the thing actually started and they drove it the 2 miles home!

 

[ctjohnson]

Thought of another one. On a raft trip through canyonlands in Utah and 2 days in the shear pin snaps on the little outboard. Used a leatherman to cut and file a small carabiner to fit. It's still in the motor to this day.

 

[mygarageone]

One time we were in the back country of Colorado , had to climb some pretty good hills to get there. Anyhow , there was a guy broke down U-joint . No tow ropes nothing but a 100' heady duty extension cord in my truck . Used it and it was used there after for it's intended purpose for yrs .

 

[eyeballengineer]

There was a good party going on one Sunday out at the local sandbar and when I tried to borrow my buddies jet ski to go the battery was done dead, toast, kaput. So I took it out fit my jump pack in as best as I could( seat wouldn't close all the way) hooked the leads up and rode all day like that.

 

[truckaddict]

was towing a trailer one night and the lights died on it. Got pulled over by the cops and told i couldn't toe it at night without indicators. It was empty so he was okay with seeing the single lights off the truck. I looked at the wires, nothin obvious so i thought plan b... two flashlights. Cop tells me nope, has to be red......red linner from a pair of workgloves, electrical tape, couple zip ties and the cop just laughed as i drove off. lights are still attatched as a future plan b

 

[James Aiello]

A group of my friends and I were driving a rented mini van back from the Brickyard 400 late at night. I kept complaining about the smell of gas but everyone ignored me... so... 2 hours after our last fill up our tank was close to empty they figured out why I smelled gas.... we must have hit something in the camp grounds on the way out. So I grabbed my bag pulled a bar of soap and went looking for the hole in the tank. It was about a 1/4" or more. Wrapped a old shirt around my arm (dripping gas) and rubbed the soap into the hole till it stopped leaking... Made the rest of the 4 hour drive home and he took it back to the rental place in the morning. No problem.

 

[vankaye]

Had a '75 Chevy van with "3 on the tree" I wanted to convert it to a floor shifter so I dissembled the column shifter and cut the hole in the floor to mount the new B&M floor shifter. But the linkage was the wrong type so I drove the van for a few days while waiting for parts by reaching through the hole in the floor and grabbing the selector on the side of the transmission!

It was a real ***** because I had to bend so far down to reach the selector there were always a few seconds that I couldn't see the road between gears.

 

[finn]

just started my job in Chicago in 1975. Borrowed my dad's 69 Ranchwagon to move to the city. No money to speak of and no tools. Ran over a steel plate with the edge of the rear tire, flipped the plate and punctured the gas tank. I was about 50 miles from my apartment, in some little town near Grayslake, and didn't know anyone in the Metro area at the time, so I waded into the swamp and cut a piece of tag elder to make a plug to stop the gas gushing out of the tank. I slowed down, but was a pretty bad leak still. There were no freeways and it was the July 4th weekend so traffic was heavy, with lots of lights. I was real nervous whenever I hit a red light because air conditioning wasn't real common back then, but cigarette smoking was, and smokers would toss their butts.

At each stop I'd leave a 5' circle of gasoline.

Boy was I stupid.

 

[MFortie]

Starting a vacation with my family and a buddy and his family - us in our motor home and him in their Ford truck towing a fifth wheel. His truck had a manual ****** and about 100 miles into the trip, his whole shifter comes out of the boot. Think it was held it with a snap ring (been a lot of years and I'm not a Ford guy). We were in the middle of the desert east of San Diego (think it was a Sunday too), so not much around.

We pulled over to the side of the road to figure out what to do. I pondered for a couple of minutes, then grabbed a ratcheting tie down (the 3" wide ones), slit a hole in the strap while he pulled off the shifter boot. I had him put the shifter back in place, slide the strap over the shifter rod, feed it down to me through the boot where I wrapped it around the trans, hooked the two ends together, and cinched it down.

We continued on our trip and finished the weeklong vacation (think we went to Durango, CO that trip) , and got back home just fine with that repair.

 

[bob from indiana]

I used shoestrings and a key ring to get a friends Datsun home after an electrical meltdown
melted the throttle cable. We hot wired the points ignition and rigged a throttle pull. The hood was in back of his Dad's car. The look on his wifes face when we drove in was pricless. The Datsun was her car and she was not to impressed with us just then. We were laughting as we had to work together to drive. He was working the throttle pull and I was driving the stickshift car. It took a few times to get it figured out. 1-2-3 shift.

 

[d430]

Used a shoe string for a throttle cable with a 6-pack ringer for the handle, vise grip window crank, vise grip kick starter, trailer jack (w/trailer hooked up) for a tire bead breaker, my boxer got out of the yard so I used my belt for a leash to brim him back, made Gatorade ice cubes for the 5 gallon cooler in summer so it doesn't water down, you just get more cold Gatorade, etc

 

[Bill Ramsey]

In the middle of the lake with an outboard running off one of those 6-gallon fuel tanks. Engine wouldn't run because it was sucking air around the fuel line/fuel tank connector. No problem. Bite a chunk off a plastic grub, poke a hole in the middle - voila, makeshift o-ring. Sealed the connection and we ran around and caught fish all day.

Spend enough time in a fishing boat and necessity will teach you every Macgyver in the book.

 

[Throbbin Rods]

Ex father in law had a 67 Scout and it all of a sudden would fall flat on it's face when he pushed the gas pedal. There was a small plastic cam that rotated with the throttle and actuated the accelerator pump. He was broke so I brazed up a big gob of brass and started filing and using the dremel. Got the shape right, then I drilled a hole and used a tiny file to flat spot the hole to match up with the shaft. He said it ran better than it ever had

 

[35chevypu]

black tape to hold a distributor rotor on a ford six together, pen housing to fix snowmobile throttle cable,stick in weep hole in water pump to get back home,vice grips to hold 4wd actuator engaged 2 miles in woods on s10 pickup.more I cant remember but comes down to do what you gotta to get home.