roadside repairs with makeshift tools

if you're ever 4-5 hours from home and your front crank seal loses a big chunk of it's lip and starts puking oil. AND you're fixing it in a denny's parking lot on a saturday afternoon, a gutted full size maglite flashlight head is the perfect diameter and, very nearly, the perfect length for a seal installer. a borrowed harmonic balancer puller/installer and some ingenuity, i was good to go. at least i had a bag of tools and a friend with me. what did YOU have to do on the side of the road?

I stoped to help this guy with a busted radiator hose on a honda with the nearest gas station 150 miles away. He had some silicon and I had electrical tape. With a layer of each 10 layers thick and melted snow he made it 500 miles home.

i did a small radiator leak on my old jeep with some tar i scraped off the road and put on the block to heat up a bit and smeared it on the hose then covered it in duct tape, didnt leak a bit after that

I've had to sooo many wierd things to big rigs in past jobs, just to get them back to the shop, it would fill lots & lots of pages.

Most common quicky, trailer brake leak. Pinch off air line, back off brakes, limp to the shop.

Bypass A/C comp with shorter belt.

had a good one today. 98 Olds Bravada with a NASTY miss on #2 & #3. Found bad plug wire on #2, AND that's all they could afford to fix. Least it's now running on 5 cylinders. And told them if they keep driving it that way, they were gonna burn up the cat.

After I hit the deer, I just pinched off the leaking tubes on the radiator until I installed a new one.

4 months later, still driving on it. New radiator still sitting in the garage.

transfer case ran dry of fluid

no jack

borrowed monkey wrench and a swiss army knife and a straw from jack in the box and i had it running and moving freely again, oh and some fluid from shell...

not on a jeep but ratchet strap an a-arm(broken tie-rod end) to the handlebars on a four-wheeler and rode 8 miles out. No problem going up hill but a terrible time going down hill.

used a mountain dew bottle to catch ATF on my t-case(no SYE) after I busted a u-joint on my driveshaft at coal creek last year. 15 miles back to the truck in 4-wheel drive(front wheels only pulling) and the t-case lost very little fluid.

Not too many of those repairs on my Jeeps, though I have done idler pulleys, belts, brake pads, and other minor stuff like that.

A few years ago my old Mercedes burst a hose clamp which was buried beneath the a/c compressor, and I ended up having to remove the compressor, the bracket, the alternator, and a few other key objects to get at it. I was in a Wal-Mart parking lot, with a thunderstorm coming in on the horizon. Had it fixed in the nick of time. The compressor, a honking big piston York, of course never went back on, and eventually found its way to one of Eagle's picnics, whence I hope it has provided some member with on board air.

In past years, I've had a few carburetors apart on picnic tables, bodged in junkyard voltage regulators, mismatched alternators, and various odd things, and once slam-shifted a Peugeot for about 250 miles with a broken clutch linkage. Did you know that a little slice of vacuum hose will stand in for a broken distributor point spring? There's an esoteric bit of lore that nobody will probably ever need again, but I throw it out there just in case you're traveling across country in an antique.

I once got my old Gladiator pickup the last few miles home on bar and chain oil after I had miscalculated my oil supply (it burned a quart every 25 miles).

I blew the QD off of one of my tranny lines and lost about 3-4 qts. of DexIII along a 2 mile section of dirt/gravel/rock road. My Jeep stopped going (slipping clutches/Torque converter). Happened to have a hose clamp and a pair of garden shears in my back seat.

Cut the hose, clamped the break, and waited for 2 hours for a buddy to bring me 4 qts. of Dex III 20 miles from the nearest pavement. All my tranny hoses are cut and clamped now. No QD's for me. No leaks since, 3 years and 30K miles later.

I once had to zip tie together the tranny linkage on my 83 Cherokee WT. Pulled into work and it let go, Jeep was stuck in D. Unfortunately I parked in a spot with a planter in front of it, otherwise I would have just driven straight out and home, then fixed it.

on a hunting trip with a buddy, the upper rad hose blew (later revealed head gasket failure causing excess pressure) we had been pushing through 2' of snow for 45 minutes on this old trail. so hiking back wasn't gonna be fun.

of all my tools, I didn't think of bringing anything to remedy this situation... but I remembered I had an old E-tool (army folding shovel) under the rear seat. dis-assembled it, punched the fittings from the shaft. so with 27 zip ties, a couple litres of drinking water, melted snow and a stop at a stream, I had a repaired upper rad hose and a way back home... even got pics when I got home.

beakie said:

on a hunting trip with a buddy, the upper rad hose blew (later revealed head gasket failure causing excess pressure) we had been pushing through 2' of snow for 45 minutes on this old trail. so hiking back wasn't gonna be fun.

of all my tools, I didn't think of bringing anything to remedy this situation... but I remembered I had an old E-tool (army folding shovel) under the rear seat. dis-assembled it, punched the fittings from the shaft. so with 27 zip ties, a couple litres of drinking water, melted snow and a stop at a stream, I had a repaired upper rad hose and a way back home... even got pics when I got home.

Click to expand...

man, that's a good one. last year i saw a guy with a broken d35 axle shaft in a wrangler who had chained/ratchet-strapped his hilift across his right rear tire(to the frame) to keep it on. he had used two pieces of some kind of rusty pipe cut in half and slipped over the hilift bar to act as "bushings" so they would rotate in the proper direction against the tire. it got him several miles out and off the trail. very cool.

Things I've used as roadside fixes:

- Had a gear linkage bushing fail in my Peugeot 505 on the freeway, leaving me with no way to select gears and part of the linkage dragging on the ground. Found a wire coathanger in the trunk; crawled underneath, and tied the dangling part of the linkage back onto the secure part. Drove it nearly 400 miles like that, but had to stop twice to re-secure the wire.

- Throttle cable broke on my Renault 5, but the spring on the carburettor still worked. Tied two shoelaces together, then attached them to the broken cable. Ran it in through the driver's side window and drove it with a hand throttle. Did about 175 miles on that one.

Ten High said:

last year i saw a guy with a broken d35 axle shaft in a wrangler who had chained/ratchet-strapped his hilift across his right rear tire(to the frame) to keep it on. he had used two pieces of some kind of rusty pipe cut in half and slipped over the hilift bar to act as "bushings" so they would rotate in the proper direction against the tire.

Click to expand...

The scary thing is that you can actually buy a tool for exactly that set of circumstances. Seems like an attempt at fixing the symptom rather than the cause to me...

I had my trackbar bracket snap off the axle. I used my winch cable on one side of the axle and a ratchet strap the other side, to keep the axle centered. I managed to limp it 25 miles to Rawbrown's place to have it welded back together.

Exhaust clamp holding tailpipe to rear hanger let go just as getting off expressway, popping tailpipe off muffler outlet and dragging aft end of tailpipe on pavement. Used adhesive tape from first aid kit to temporarily rehang tailpipe to rear hanger (front hanger still intact) and allow me to drive 3-4 miles home to fix properly.

-Ed Rico

out in the desert a buddy broke his drivers side wheel off jumping a chevy truck. snapped the spindle clean off. 3 ratchet straps and 2 pieces of deadwood we found laying around and he had a snowmobile type skid to drive back to camp on

a buddy jumped his xj breaking 1 front axle shaft,1rear ujoint and the rear end yoke we pulled the front drive shaft took a ujoint from it and put it in the rear shaft then took the front end yoke and put it on the rear using a leather glove as a pinion seal. he drove it close to 75 home but had to stop a few times to refill the gear oil