Last week while I was out for a ride in my ’74 Firebird, I noticed a clunk beneath my feet in the driver’s floorboard. My first thought was that the polyurethane subframe bushings I installed a couple years ago were making a racket somehow, but I had checked them for tightness in the spring. Needless to say, I began formulating a mental flow chart from the moment I switched off the engine. What I found made me chuckle, in a good way.
First, I pulled out my “Wireless ChassisEAR” kit. This is not a cheap tool, but I’m lucky enough to be a 43-year-old man whose mom still buys him tools and car parts for holidays. Merry Christmas to me!
The chassis ears have helped me find a noisy leaf spring eye bushing (a new one, sadly) in the Firebird, a clunking steering rack in my wife’s Mustang, and any number of rumbles and squeaks in my whole fleet. They’re easy to use: The transmitter and receiver are both battery powered, and you clip the transmitter to a part on the car that you suspect is making noise. The body of the transmitter is magnetic, but the kit also comes with zip ties and velcro so you don’t lose anything out on the road. The kit comes with four transmitters, and the receiver will pick up their channels individually. I’ve had all four attached at once before, and I was able to flip through the channels and listen for noises at different parts of the car. Neat!
Luckily, I was able to stay in the garage this time. The car made the clunking noise when I vigorously pushed up and down on the front end. My chassis ears indicated noise in the subframe, but not in the mounting bolts themselves. After a little poking and prodding, I found these two stones wedged between the floorpan and the subframe right under where my feet ride. They look like they’ve been there awhile, so there must have been just the right (or wrong) amount of jostling to create that troubling clunking/popping sound.
I was expecting to inspect the subframe bushings today, or maybe find a compromised floorpan; after all, my almost totally original car has 10 out of 10 floors considering that it’s lived in Michigan its whole life, but only 6 out of 10 floors anywhere else. Fortunately for me, a few wayward rocks simply jammed themselves into the wrong spot, and their removal completed my job in the garage.
Back to the question of the day: What was your easiest or strangest repair job?
Never heard of this tool! Wow. Oddest repair? Used a 1950’s GE vacuum hose extension to fix a tailpipe on my sister’s 71 Bug.
Scotty Kilmer (youtube) has a couple of videos demonstrating this device. It’s pretty neat.
Scotty Kilmer. That may explain why I’ve missed it.
I don’t know if it’s Scotty’s voice, or his manner of delivery (think Edith Bunker telling Archie a story, for those of you old enough to remember), but I think I’ve only ever watched maybe one of his videos from start to finish.
You and me both. Despite that, he’s every where on YouTube…
Yes. Scotty has the gift of using five minutes to explain a one minute concept.
And every video must start with an obnoxiously loud burnout.
It’s like having Guy Fieri for your mechanic.
Oddest repair, shift lever cable bushings in a manual transmission PT Cruiser. Some bits of hard rubber and a few metal washers, and I repacked the bushings, saving hundreds of dollars in new cable.
Easiest repair, playing the rotary engine roulette by buying cheapo non-running early Mazdas, back when people hated them, before the RX7 came out. The time when the car wouldn’t start (typical for a blown engine). No spark, new point and condenser sets, away I went. Score!
I had this happen on my current (’00 Golf) car.
I have to admit I didn’t fix it myself, but I did keep from being stranded
by putting the gear selector in 2nd gear (a compromise, since I thought 1st
gear would be too low for driving on public road the couple miles to my home)
instead of the 3rd or 4th it had been in.
Of course I had to slip the clutch to get it rolling in 2nd, but saved myself a tow.
You are right you saved yourself about a 1200 repair bill. I live in the sunbelt
and the plastic/rubber bits deteriorate in the ozone. My car is 20 years old this year (shifter went 2 years ago) so stuff like that tends to be biggest non-routine maintenance…also had power steering rack go out…so expensive repairs for a 20 year old car.
Around 1989 I was 20 years old and drove a 1975 Volvo 164E. The car died in the middle of nowhere between Los Angeles and San Francisco. These were the days before cell phones so I called my dad from an Emergency Call Box on the side of the road. My dad deduced it was the fuel pump and told me where it was and told me to find something to hit it with. I had a wrench, hit it and all was well again!
At around 26 years of age, a bunch of us from work were in Harper’s Ferry, WV camping on a tri-state, two-river (Maryland/Virginia/West-Virginia, Potomac/Shenandoah, respectively) tubing adventure.
A shear-bolt broke in the driver’s seat making my ’83 T-Bird impossible to drive home. The seat would not stay up in a vertical position. Supposedly, this bolt is designed to break away in the event of a rear end collision. Dubious as this sounds, I had a problem.
Being an mechanical designer/engineer, I grabbed one of the spare inner tubes, put it behind the seat, and went to a gas station to pump it up to the perfect level of recline.
This MacGyver’d solution worked so perfectly that I left it this way for about 2 weeks until I could get to a Ford dealer and purchase a new bolt.
That’s an awful feeling, isn’t it?
I had a similar experience with my old Cortina. The seat back gradually, uncontrollably reclined until I was hanging onto the wheel for support. I got my toolbox out of the boot and jammed it between the seat back and the rear seat. Anmd drove it like that, which was fine until I needed to carry someone in the seat behind me. Meanwhile my wife was making noises like “Don’t let Dad (policeman) see that!”
My daughter’s friend’s dad was a handy kind of bloke. They lived on five acres littered with Ford carcasses. He’d seen this before, and offered to fix it for me. Stripped the seat, found a broken weld in the seat frame and repaired it. And all he’d accept was a pack of electrodes for his trouble!
Oy, there are far too many to list, having daily-driven a ’71 Vega and air-cooled VWs for many years.
The ’64 Beetle suffered a broken clutch cable on the way home from work, so I followed “The Procedure” in the Idiot Book and made it home safe. Also had a wheel cylinder fail on the way to work and had to use the hand brake to make it home (I waited until well after Atlanta’s rush hour was over before making the trip home).
My high school buddy had a ’65 Mustang that suffered a rear brake line failure while we were hooning around in Spartanburg, SC one Saturday. The only tool he had was a pair of slip pliers, so I slid underneath and crimped the hose over so it would mostly hold pressure – that got us home.
Another misadventure we had was when we took his sister’s Toyota Corolla up to the convenience store to whet our thirst. It blew out the upper radiator hose on the way back. Having no tools, Billy had the bright idea for us to remove our athletic socks, which he then wrapped tightly around the hose. We refilled the radiator with the ice from our drinks and made it home okay.
A few of my high school classmates were skipping, no, “avoiding” afternoon classes. While driving down the interstate they had to hit the median to avoid being in a wreck. The car died, they could not restart it, so they hitched a ride back to school.
After school we drove to the scene of the crime. I put the car in park and it started on the first try.
I still let ’em have it to this day. LOL.
Back when I was in college, I was driving home in my ’81 Plymouth Reliant, and the brakes started making an awful squealing sound. I pulled into a service station that happened to be open and they were able to put my car up on a lift right away. They pulled the wheel and there was a sliver of wood stuck between the pad and the disc that was making all the racket.
They removed the sliver, put the wheel back on, and I was on my way after about 20 minutes. I don’t even remember if any money changed hands.
Too bad service stations are pretty much a relic of the past anymore.
I had something similar once where a small rock had got stuck between the edge of the backing plate for the brake pad and the rotor. It made a horrible racket like it was metal to metal. I was surprised when I pulled the wheel and found a good rotor and pads before I noticed the rock.
Key word: service. Not sure even the concept exists any more.
When the rotating headlight knob on my ’70 Ghia stopped controlling the instrument panel lights – they stayed off – I took a spare VW on-off knob from my parts stash and ran the instrument panel wiring to that. It was an easy repair since there was already a hole in the metal panel hidden under the woodgrain trim. I couldn’t control the brightness but it worked!
A few years ago my buddy and I drove a 1968 Ford F350 dualie tow truck from Toronto to Kirkland Lake, towing a 5 ton flatbed trailer. The truck was in well used original condition., with a 391 gasser and a 4 speed. It was the middle of the night. About an hour outside of North Bay the truck just died with no warning. We rolled to the side of the highway. It was dark, surrounded by total nortthern Ontario wilderness. We had no phone and had not seen another vehicle in 30 minutes.
We had a brief discussion about a possible fault, points? Fuel pump? Bad coil? Any such problem would be difficult to fix with no parts in the middle of nowhere.
The truck restarted after a few minutes of sitting and drove another 5 minutes before dying again.
We pulled over again. I stepped out of the passenger side and just happened to notice the fuel filler neck, which was located on the cab behind the door. The fuel cap didn’t look right, it was an old style engine oil cap. Hmmmm……. those caps aren’t vented……. I wonder……. I removed the cap and heard a sucking sound as air rushed into the tank. Sure enough my buddy, in his cheapness used an old oil cap in place of the gas cap he’d lost. The extra heavy load of the trailer caused the engine to consume fuel faster than what little air could pass by the old rubber seal. The tank developed a partial vacuum the fuel pump couldn’t overcome.
We left the cap loose and drove on. I’m so grateful to see that cap, because otherwise I would not have thought of it, and we would have wasted hours ripping apart every thing else searching for a fault.
That reminds me of my dad’s first car, a Renault 4TL. It stopped and my uncle towed it into our drive way. I tried to start it without success. I went aimlessly about the car and touched and wiggled things. At some point I removed the gas cap and there was that hiss. The original cap had no vent hole, just an indentation where it should have been. A manufacturing error that was fixed with a drill.
My 1974 Vega Kammback developed a very loud and annoying buzz between 50-70 mph after it hit 12,000 miles on the odometer. After months of exploration and tinkering, I was able to isolate the loud noise to the key in the steering column ignition switch. The darn 2.3L long stroke OHC I-4 shook so much at speed it vibrated the keys in a sonic rhythm that was deafening! I kept a container of my little sister’s PlayDoe or plumber’s putty in the car and stuck a wad on the key in the ignition anytime I got on the highway!
Easiest repair? Driving a 1975 Ford F750 hauling the last load of fresh chopped corn silage for the day as darkness was not far off, the truck just died. No lights, wouldn’t crank. I popped the hood to find that the battery tray had rotted out and the battery was shorting out on some metal that it came to rest on. I grabbed on one of the cables to stop the short. I was still a mile off road next to a field of corn that hadn’t been chopped yet so I picked an arm full of ears and stuck some under the battery and wedged the battery in place with the rest. A redneck temporary repair, but it got me back to the farm.
Back in the 70’s, my wife was driving our three year old Toyota home from work when a sudden noise started coming from underneath the car. She pulled in to a gas station and the helpful mechanic told her the engine needed a complete rebuild. She thanked him and drove home, and upon further inspection it was determined that the exhaust pipe had cracked, which cost a whopping $10 to weld.
One that comes to mind happened when I was riding my bicycle, I came up a hill and saw a car parked in the road with several people standing around it looking confused. Though I don’t know why they thought I might be able to solve whatever problem was vexing them, one of them asked me if I might take a look at the car to investigate a strange noise. A quick look under the car revealed a piece of lumber wedged into the body somehow; I don’t remember exactly how. So, I pulled it out, gave it to the woman who appeared to be the owner of the car, and rode off into the sunset, hero for a brief moment.
Interestingly, some months later, my moment in the sun erased from short-term memory, a woman buttonholed me in an auto parts store, said she thought she knew me, then, and eventually recalled that I was the guy who provided the brilliant roadside rescue. I graciously accepted her encomiums, and got on with my day with a little more spring in my step.
The right front headlight went out in my 71 Scamp when I was in college. I hit a bump and it came back on. I learned that whenever it went out all I had to do was get out and smack it and on it would come. Then I learned that honking the horn would set up enough of a vibration in the fender that it would accomplish the same thing. If it went off after hitting a bump I would honk the horn and it was fixed. I drove that way for nearly a year before I finally replaced the sealed beams.
Any free repair is a good repair. That chassis listening device is indeed a neat tool. Sure beats driving around with your head out the window.
I’ve certainly had my share of odd fixes and bodges. Old furnace panel welded in a Ford Tempo fender, scratch built lower dashboard for a Lada Niva, dumpster dived couch material for the interior arm rests on a ’61 Pontiac.
I was overhauling a ’59 Dauphine for a friend. The new rod bearings needed a little bit of shim. Needless to say, Renault parts were not available. I used the foil wrappers from a pack of Spearmint gum as shims. Worked well, and I got some tasty chewing at the same time.
(Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the crankshaft overnight?)
Love that song! Irish Rovers, 1967? ’68? Anyway, I suspect the engine oil would overpower the spearmint taste, but I’m not about to prove it!
Easiest and luckiest fix. Service call on the side of the freeway thru Minneapolis, Minnesota. Loaded tractor trailer that had stalled. 3406 Cat engine. The Cat engines had a hand primer pump on the fuel system, there are two check valves in the pump. The pump was notorious for the check valves to work loose and flip. Two bolts, popped it off and there is the check valve out of its hole. Pop a new valve on and we are back in business.
Another quick one was a truck stalled on the highway, bitterly cold, fuel system is gelling up, powered some power service into the fuel tank and fuel filters, got it started but I had to hold my bare hand on the fuel outlet elbow at the top of the fuel tank for about 10 minutes to keep the fuel from gelling in the elbow, driver was reving the engine to circulate fuel, if I took my hand off the engine would start to die in about a minute.
Another truck had intermittent power loss, he had lost the gasket for the fuel tank cap, the gasket was floating around at the bottom of the tank occasionally getting sucked up to the fuel pickup. A lot of the fuel tanks had large fuel fills, big enough to easily put my arm in, that was handy more than once.
Two others with similar problems, one had lost the retainer chain for the fuel cap, well he didn’t really lose it, it was in the fuel tank and the one in a million chance was sucked up the fuel tank stand pipe. The other unit had a similar problem. Found a bag in the tank, it was a small white cloth bag, like what tobacco used to come in. Fished the bag out, find of heavy. The bag contained a complete set of fitting for installing fuel supply and fuel return lines. Well we know where this happened.
Tons of simple fixes over the years and tons of simple fixes that were a bear to find.
I had a pair of earbuds year the CV joint open on my car last year. Somehow they got wrapped around boot and ripped it and they weren’t even mine!
The power antenna on my ’92 Daewoo LeMans, after retracting when the car was shut off, developed this horrible, loud ratcheting “woodpecker” noise for about 2 minutes before stopping. It was loud, and embarrassing. Parts stores in Korea didn’t carry standard mast antennas, and I was too cheap to buy a new power one.
I ended up buying an extra fog light switch from Daewoo for about 4 dollars, and connecting it between a hot lead and the antenna power wire that normally goes to the radio. It popped right into one of the extra blank spaces on the dash, so the antenna was always powered and up. I could retract it for car washes when necessary, and endure the noise only on those occasions.
Our luckiest fix was last spring when my son’s 2003 Buick LeSabre’s V6 turned into a V5 with no compression on #3. We were fully prepared to replace springs, pull heads etc. and when we took off the valve cover I saw that the rocker arm bolts were loose on #3. We tightened the bolts, replaced the valve cover and over the summer he replaced all the bolts with new ones.
Years back, I was zooming along on the Garden State Parkway in my ’71 Volvo, when what sounded like machine gun fire came from under the hood. The engine was missing along with the rattling noise. After stopping, I saw the rocker for the intake valve on #2 was sloppy..way off from the normal tolerance.
I pulled the head, and a cap screw from the SU’s air cleaner came loose and jiggled into the intake port, banging around but not falling all the way into the cylinder..luckily. I replaced the valve, and was off and running for another mass of miles on that very tough little engine.
Had a friend whose 89 Crown Vic wouldn’t start. He thought the car might have been backed into in the parking lot as there were some unrecognized scrapes on the rear bumper.
I turned the ignition key on and didn’t hear the fuel pump. I pushed the button on the fuel pump safety switch and the thing fires right up.
Why is it I never got this lucky when it’s MY car?
Flasher unit on an MX-5
10 minutes on eBay, wait 20 hours and another 5 minutes
Strangest and easiest repair, and which needs a picture to explain.
Back in 1995 the screw-on door pockets on my 1984 Ford Sierra broke off (note to self: don’t pull the door shut via the pocket…). The two mounting screws slide inside ‘tunnels’ in the pocket; the far end of the tunnel is partially solid, except for a small hole which allows the screw shaft to go through and screw into the metal door skin. The wide head of the screw remains inside the tunnel, clamping the plastic to the metal when the screw is done up tight. When the end of the tunnel breaks off, there’s nothing for the screw head to clamp. Looking at the door pocket in frustration, I realised the tunnel was about the same diameter as the lid from my chap stick. Took the lid from the chap-stick, super-glued it over the end of the tunnel, carefully drilled a small hole for the screw shaft, and voila!, door pocket screwed securely back onto the door. Perfect solution and lasted the length of time I owned the car!
I’ve since used the same solution on my current 1989 Ford Sierra’s centre console; still worked a treat 20+ years after I first tried it!
Nice fix.
Had a Chevette ’81 with a habit of the clutch cable firewall spring clip popping loose randomly. I was on a stretch of road the was basically a mile long stretch of up, down, up down rolling swells, and dead straight. So, the clip popped on me and I’m ready with my mini-visegrips, The clip turned itself in a “flying dammit”, never to be seen again, Okay, I clamp the cable into place with the pliers themselves, went on my way, and never touched them again as long as I had that car.
The strangest/easiest repair I have done was on my Former boss’s wife’s Auto Q7. One winter it refused to start, so he pulled it into the shop to try and figure it out. It would sputter a bit and attempt to fire when you first cranked it over, but nothing after that. Letting it sit for several minutes seemed to help. After an extended run of the starter, I happened to notice an odd, high pitched hissing sound coming from underneath the car. Upon closer inspection, the sound was coming from the joint of the muffler and the exhaust. I asked him to crank the engine over again while I put my hand over the tail pipe. No exhaust was coming out.
As it turns out, there was bit of a snow storm the night before and the Audi had been parked outside. The wind must have been coming from just the right direction and packed the exhaust pipe full of snow and ice. After sitting inside for a couple of hours, it fired up with a plume of water shooting out the back of it.
Good to hear your repair job was so simple Aaron. Here is one of my more strange ones.
We had a ’78 Olds Delta 88 with an Olds 350-4bbl engine that started to very run poorly. Eventually it got so bad that it would start than stall out as soon as you put it in gear. Around this time, I get the call that the car left a family member stranded in a parking lot and I had to go get the car to bring it home . I was able to get it fired up and with some two foot driving being very generous on the throttle I was able to limp the car home.
Once I was home I started looking at the carb, suspecting a float problem. I opened up the Q-jet and inside the fuel bowl was a bunch of pellets that looked like mice droppings. I cleaned it out and reassembled the carb, not really sure how they got in the fuel bowl. Sure enough in short order the car was running poorly again. So I pulled he carb again and it was again filled with same pellets. I talked to a few people and no one had any ideas. Then I went to a local carb expert and showed him the pellets I found in the carb. Without hesitation he knew what it was. He told me that the carb was filling with charcoal from the charcoal canister that was failing. Suddenly it all made sense. The Olds was back up and running like a top, and served our family for several more years.
When I bought the Firebird, it would just nose over once I hit about 70 mph unless I removed the gas cap (no idea why I tried that). After a little time with a fuel pressure gauge taped to the windshield, I was able to diagnose both a weak fuel pump AND a plugged charcoal canister that didn’t allow the tank to vent. Now, my aftermarket fuel pump puts out something like 10 psi, but at least it doesn’t fall on its face on the freeway I guess.
I fixed similar problem on my brother’s Cutlass Supreme years ago. When you got on the throttle, it fell on its face, but ran find otherwise. It turned out the fuel hose above the tank was perforated and would suck air, causing it to starve for fuel. Under low fuel demand, it wasn’t an issue. It was an easy fix too, I just had to drop the tank.
Your comment about fuel pumps hits home for me. I went through three fuel pumps on my Torino until I found a done that worked properly. It’s tough to find a quality mechanical pump these days, especially for an engine that isn’t mainstream. I am probably going to invest in a RobbMc pump at some point. They are very pricey, but a high quality piece that is made in USA that will deliver proper volume and pressure. He makes them for Pontiac V8s too:
https://www.robbmcperformance.com/
Thanks for the link, Vince! Most of the parts suppliers don’t even sell a fuel pump anymore for a ’74 non-A/C Pontiac 350; Rock Auto even links an electric fuel pump. I’m using one for an air car, but I just plugged the return port, although running a return line wouldn’t be a terrible idea these days.
Aaron65, thanks for posting this. May have to pick up one of these. I haven’t seen this term posted here, “OPM” it refers to spending “Other Peoples Money”. You may be a responsible party for my purchase. Always good to have people providing their real world solutions and the tools used to help diagnosis a problem.
You’re welcome, xr7 – It’s not a toy you’ll use every day, but it’s handy when you need it. I could say the same about all my home alignment equipment, my MIG welder, my gigantic Sun machine……….. 🙂
I bet the owner of that Olds liked to top off the fuel tank til it’s visibly sloshing at the filler! Don’t overfill your gas tank after the nozzle clicks off. The extra gas you squeeze in goes into the charcoal canister and causes it to fail. Nowdays, that’s an expensive repair!
Nope. This car was proverbially running on fumes. It was one of the family cars in our household for several years and I drove it regularly. It never had any gas, we just would put 10 or 20 bucks in at a time which was never enough to fill it.
Weirdest ‘repair?’ This was on my stepbrother Chris’s ’74 Chevy Vega station wagon, sometime in the early ’80s. Its engine was guzzling oil, like many older Vegas, and was scheduled to get a rebuild with a sleeved block. Meanwhile, my stepbrother was adding oil frequently.
One day he was late for work (local Sears Hardware and Tools Dept.) so he took a gallon jug of oil (employee discount) and, without measuring, just poured it in. Then he tried to start the Vega. The engine started, but made strangling sounds and smoke poured from the tailpipe. The engine was so full of oil that the oil had backed up the breather tube from the valve cover to the air cleaner and thence the carburetor. (He was lucky that hydraulic lock didn’t bust a piston or bend a rod!)
Since he was late for work, he panicked a bit. When he went to drain the oil, he grabbed possibly the worst tool for the job, a huge double-ended adjustable crescent wrench (suitable for heavy machinery) that my dad had gotten somewhere. Since Chris hadn’t bothered to jack up the Vega, and since the drain plug was at an angle, he managed to thoroughly round off it off! He finally gave up and took the bus to work, arriving very late.
I had been helping Chris maintain the Vega, performing tuneups and brake jobs (Did you know that the Vega required a special pair of pliers to adjust the shoes for the rear drums? The Vega didn’t use the standard Bendix-based adjustment mechanism that had been on American cars since forever! To do put new shoes on the Vega, I had to buy the adjuster tool; I think Lisle made it. Proof that inside of every large problem is a smaller problem crying to get out.), so naturally I was invited to participate.
The following Saturday, I went over to see what I could do. I got the Vega up on jack stands and slid underneath to take a look. Chris had really rounded the drain plug off; it was almost a perfect circle. I tried the old trick of hammering the next smallest size socket on to the plug, but the plug was so stripped it wouldn’t stay on. Chris’s crappy jack stands didn’t allow me to raise the Vega enough to get my Craftsman electric drill (Chris wasn’t the only person taking advantage of his employee discount) underneath so I could drill out the plug. Clearly, the situation called for a different approach.
After I thought about the problem for a while, a small light came on. I got the remote starter switch out of my tool box and connected it to the battery and the starter solenoid. I disconnected the hot lead to the coil so the Vega wouldn’t start. I slid an oil drain pan under the oil filter and unscrewed the filter a few turns. I slid out from under the car and, watching carefully, pushed the remote starter switch. As the engine turned over, it pumped the excess oil out around the oil filter and into the drain pan. After about 30 seconds of this, I let go of the starter switch and checked the dipstick. Success! I had pumped all the excess oil out.
I slid back under the car, wiped off the oil filter, and tightened it back down. I disconnected the starter switch from the solenoid. Back up top, I disconnected the starter switch from the battery and reconnected the coil. I added more oil, which was now about one-half quart low. Then I jacked the Vega up, pulled the jack stands, and lowered the car to the ground.
Chris drove the Vega around like that for about a month before it went in for the engine rebuild. (I imagine the rebuilders, when they dropped the oil pan, gave each other amused [or disgusted] looks when they saw the drain plug.) He didn’t tell me if he added any more oil during that period, but I’ll bet he was a lot more careful if he did.
The B series Mack comes to mind. A friend bought an old B series Mack tractor and I went to help on the recovery. Before we even got the thing running we had to bailing wire a split standpipe in one of the fuel filters so the bolt would hold the cover on. Halfway home it blows one of the engine oil lines to the remotely mounted filter. The stain on the freeway shoulder was there for years. I ended up using the other oil filter line and looping it back into the engine, refilled the oil and we were on our way. It can go another 30 miles without filtered oil. Not too much further along it starts to stink of raw fuel and begins dropping a cylinder. One of the injector lines cracked at the injector. Not wanting to loose a ton of fuel and chance an epic fireball I break the fuel line off at the crack and clamp on a goodly length of rubber fuel line and run it back into the fuel tank through the filler. Truck made it home on 5 but we made it.
I’m running on one now. A plastic corrugated hose that part of the PCV system on my car split – huge vacuum leak. Cut the end off a vacuum cap that had just the right OD to fit inside, wrapped the joint with electrical tape, and two hose clamps tightened snug to be sure it stays that way.
55 DeSoto. Typical $50 car in the 70’s. Factory AM radio didn’t work. I’m a mechanic, not a radio repairman. Drive DeSoto over to TV repairman friend. He asks if the radio hums. Check unit. No hum. TV guy tells me to find a 1×3 silver cylinder on the radio. Cylinder visible from under dash on exterior of radio chassis. Pull it out he tells me. Show him cylinder. He snatches cylinder and beats it against cement curb. Tells me to put it back in. Do so & turn on radio. It hums. Music follows. Radio fixed. He tells me DeSoto radio had a stuck vibrator and I now would know how to fix the next one I saw. Never saw one again. My newfound knowledge of how to fix this problem? Totally wasted.
Ooh, I have two more. 1996 Ranger throttle cable pedal-end ferrule broke; no one makes a replacement 95-97 3.0 cable. At all. Anywhere. Junkyard part impossible to find less than $100, and there was only one I could find in the country at all.
So I went to Home Depot and bought a 1/8″ cable ferrule and the crimping tool. After some fiddling around with the frayed end, crimped it on and it works great for about $2.
Same vehicle – replaced a pin in the ignition switch mechanism (it’s single-shear and at the tilt point and works itself out over 20+ years) that kept us from turning the vehicle off (but not on) with a bolt that threaded into the plastic and now won’t work out ever again. That one was free, after all the time taking the steering column apart and back together.
To preface the issue I had, my Cougar was in a project phase for about a year in a half on jackstands while I was changing engines, upgrading the suspension and stuff that just kind of snowballed. After the project was done it drove great but it had a very prominent squeak noise in the front end when I went over bumps, I went around the thing over and over trying to find the source since EVERYTHING left that was original to 1994 was replaced, so the culprit just had to be an incorrectly installed component or loose fastener, right?… Well, no. I found nothing wrong, and lived with it through the summer, which oddly in hotter weather the noise was less pronounced than it was in the spring and what was now the fall, where it was back torturing me.
Something I have gone back and forth on with my car since I’ve had it was using the decorative shock tower covers used on the Tbird supercoupe that cover the ride control actuators – sometimes I like the look, other times not – it just so happened I hadn’t been using them at this moment and as I was jumping up and down on the bumper listening for the sound I noticed the big shock absorber washer would rise slightly as the front end went down. Indeed this is where the noise was coming from, the upper shock mounts! The upper shock mounts that were almost brand new, wtf?
Well it turned out the mounts have a metal sleeve the shock attaches to, bonded to a surrounding rubber core. I have now deduced that because I had the car in project mode for year with the springs at full extension under tremendous pressure that that sleeve had gradually pulled away from the rubber and the large washer was now compressing the rubber to boot, and with the car back running there was now this 1/16” or so of slop in between, and the noise I had been hearing was the sound of the sleeve squeezing along inside the rubber over every bump. Solution? I sandwiched another washer with the ID of the sleeve between the large factory washer and the rubber mount to take up the slop, no more noise 2 years later now. That 4 month annoyance took about 20 minutes to fix, including the time spent rummaging around my toolbox for suitable washers.
The one I always think of doesn’t involve a car, but a refrigerator.
One of my ex-co-workers (who doesn’t have anything to do with refrigerators except like me likes to fix things, even outside his normal relm of work) figured out that the starter relay on his compressor was bad (so his refrigerator compressor wouldn’t engage).
He wasn’t able to get a replacement part till a few days (guess they weren’t in stock at the appliance parts store…or maybe he mail ordered it). Not wanting his food to spoil he characterized the part and figured out that an incandescent light bulb had close to the operation properties and used an alligator clip to a couple wires soldered to a lamp socket containing a bulb, and ran his refrigerator till he could get the part.
Just like on cars (which he also works on, though also as hobby) he was able to get out of a bind by figuring out something that could substitute for a part he couldn’t get right away…engineering improvisation is a good skill that many good engineers have
(especially when you can’t get what you need when you need it)
My sister had an ’85 200SX..the deluxe model ….one of her headlights went out and I figured out that the column switch had bad set of contacts…fortunately there were some options she didn’t have that had unused contacts, so I just used them instead of trying to find/buy an expensive replacement switch block…had to show her how to turn on the lights (engage new set of contacts) but for a poor student that she was at the time, it
allowed her to drive at night and get her car to pass inspection.
The left headlight on my family’s VW Rabbit would randomly stop working. A friend said to try kicking the fusebox, which was on the panel left of the clutch pedal. It worked! Whenever the light stopped working, a light kick or two with my left foot would restore it.
I had this happen on my current (’00 Golf) car.
I have to admit I didn’t fix it myself, but I did keep from being stranded
by putting the gear selector in 2nd gear (a compromise, since I thought 1st
gear would be too low for driving on public road the couple miles to my home)
instead of the 3rd or 4th it had been in.
Of course I had to slip the clutch to get it rolling in 2nd, but saved myself a tow.
You are right you saved yourself about a 1200 repair bill. I live in the sunbelt
and the plastic/rubber bits deteriorate in the ozone. My car is 20 years old this year (shifter went 2 years ago) so stuff like that tends to be biggest non-routine maintenance…also had power steering rack go out…so expensive repairs for a 20 year old car.
Hey, is there a way to *bump* or *sticky” this thread? This could be a fun one that could run for awhile 🙂
Hmm, between “easiest” and “strangest” repairs, I have a few good ones.
For now, let me start with one that’s probably the strangest, due to a death and two stubborn problems that stumped a succession of owners: my ’77 F-100 2WD Ranger XLT longbed that I bought in ’09.
Yeah, this story is very, very long, so feel free to scroll – but it really was a strange, frustrating story.
She was in gorgeous – I mean GORGEOUS – condition, when I saw her for sale in ’09, gleaming on the side of the road in south Louisiana – fresh OE-matching blue-over-cream tu-tone paint job – original camper shell – chrome & trim & interior & rubber so perfect that I figured that it HAD to be modern reproduction parts. At $5,900, for that area it was priced high. But, I thought, for once why don’t I start with a great-condition survivor, instead of fixing up beaters like I’ve always done.
The story was that a guy had bought it for his young son, but the kid turned his nose up at it ’cause it looked like “a Paw Paw truck” – wanted a sports car – so it was for sale. Did a compression check on the 302 & it was good and drove very nicely. Saw that the guy had added an aftermarket intake and an Edelbrock 4-barrel carb, and a modern stereo.
Only catches were that the gas gauge didn’t work, and that the dad had had to replace the starter twice in the last year, and that there was a rust hole in the right-rear corner of the bed, and the A/C didn’t blow cold. I didn’t haggle much because I knew I wouldn’t see such a great truck ever again at that price, and I’m a pretty good mechanic & do A/C as well.
Last thing the kid told me was that he just wrote the mileage down after every fill-up, so that he knew when to stop for gas. OK, I can deal with that.
Get home and I call the phone number on the keyring for some body shop in central Louisiana
Lo and behold it turns out that the original owner was owned the body shop. The shop gave me a number and I find myself speaking with the widow. It turned out that truck was indeed a mint survivor – no repro parts! The original owner had passed away almost 10 years before and she hadn’t had the heart to sell his truck until only a year before I bought it.
She said that he had babied it since new, and had been his “pride and joy.” He had bought it new with all the options, with an eye toward preserving it, because 1977 was the last year of that bodystyle, and it had all the beautiful stainless-steel trim – it was made in July ’77 and was one of the last ones off the line. Even had the rare custom rims with chrome center hubs and stainless steel trim rings that went on to be so popular on ’80s Broncos – 1st year of availability,
It had been in her barn ever since her husband’s passing – until a local guy finally pestered her enough to sell it. The hole in the bed was because after the owner died there had been a sack of fertilizer left sitting there for 10 years in a humid climate.
The reason I’m spending a lot of words building up what a rare find it was is because of the catch… there’s always a catch….
During the course of our conversation, the old lady became upset when she learned that the truck had been sold, and that I had not bought it from the man she had sold it to. She had given him a very good price, in an exchange for his promise that he was going to keep it locally, garage it, take good care of it, etc., and not just flip it.
So then the onion began to unpeel, as she gave me the phone number of this man. A couple more phone calls to two more owners revealed why the truck kept being sold: no one could keep it running. It had gone less than 1,000 miles and was now on its fourth owner in the last year – ME.
Keep in mind that Louisiana, strangely enough, has very few old cars, and no car culture to speak of. Very little mechanical skill here for old cars. They either break and never get fized, or get rolled into a ditch by a drunk driver. (That’s also way Louisiana perennially has the highest auto-insurance rates in the nation.)
Armed with that history, I kept it running for all of ….. nine days – and then it wouldn’t start. Starter made weird noises, seemed to catch, and then to spin.
Well damn. Get towed home. Pull the starter and it looks brand-new – some weird brand & shape – the teeth are torn up, and so are the flywheel teeth behind it. So I buy a correct Autolite/Motorcraft rebuild, figuring they installed the wrong one.
Two days later, I’m driving to my uncle’s to show off my GORGEOUS “new” truck, and then …. sputter … sputter …. Found On Road Dead once again. I smack my head, realizing that I had forgotten the kid’s advice on keeping track of the odometer with the dead fuel gauge. DOH!! But then I smell gas – see a pool on the ground – slide underneath and see a rotten rubber fuel hose back at the tank going drip, drip drip.
I walk half a mile to a parts store for hose and clamps, just as another storm rolls in. Fix the line …. annnd – no dice. Engine won’t catch. Towed home again. Add gas and she starts. Whew. Stupid me. Running out of gas is for dummies.
OK, man – fix the dang gauge!! I crawl underneath … lo and behold, a wire is broken off the sending unit harness and dangling. Cool – easy fix – gauge now works 🙂 Fill up at the station and finally show off my truck the next day, a 150-mile roundtrip. About 20 miles from home on the return leg … sputter …. sputter …. Found On Road Dead. AAA tow truck once again, and I have to make up a story about the ignition, because they don’t want to do repeat tows for the same problem for free!
Grumble, grumble, curse, now I’m getting pissed. Gauge shows 1/3 of a tank. Must be electrical or something. Add some gas from a jerrycan at it starts right up. WTF? Crap.
Next day I decide that if it was out of gas, the sending unit must be no good. I order one, and get in another week of driving while I await the part.
Grind grind, spin spin. The new starter craps out, a few blocks from home. This time my cousin rigs a towing strap and gets me home. Now I’m seriously effin’ pissed. Out comes the measuring tape and I compare starter gears between old and new. Everything looks correct. Then comes the light bulb:
I happen to have a spare C4 automatic trans & flex plate (flywheel) that came out of my ’72 Ford Econoline camper van I’d rolled. I start doing a bunch of laborious measurements and checking manufacturing numbers and realize two things: One, my truck was supposed to have a C4, but instead it’s carrying an ancient, cast-iron, FMX automatic – a heavy dinosaur with a lineage tracing back to the late ’50s full-size Fords. Two, the flywheels don’t match up!
Grumble, grumble – I corral a young, strong cousin and we get down in the mud and mosquitoes and are able to wrestle the trans back enough to pull the flywheel. In chalk is written the numbers, “400.” I run the numbers on the trans and find….. that at some point someone had installed an FMX trans out of a ’79 Thunderbird – which came with a 400 small-block.
I call the widow and she confirms that shortly before he died, her husband had hired a shop to install a heavy-duty transmission to tow heavy trailers for his landscaping sideline…. but he had passed on before the job was done, and the truck returned from the shop but went straight into storage in the barn without being driven.
It was evident that the shop had bolted the Thunderbird flywheel off the 400 engine onto the truck’s 302!! Someone apparently didn’t know that the 302 flywheel had to stay with the motor. Therefore… right from the shop, the throw on the starter Bendix had been wrong, and was in short order obliterating the teeth on each starter, and also the 400 flywheel – but that this was not known until the widow sold the truck 10 years later and the 2nd owner inaugurated the FMX trans set-up.
Right then arrives one of our tremendous Louisiana thunderstorms, and cuz and I have to quit. Lightning and rain all the rest of the afternoon and into the next morning – ankle deep in the yard…. but FINALLY I’m getting somewhere, with this truck of bad luck!
The next day cuz comes back and we finish bolting the trans back up. I go to start the truck and get a solid THUMP/CLUNK – the whole truck shakes – and the engine now won’t turn over at all. I put a wrench on the crank bolt and it won’t budge. Installing the 302 flywheel just made it WORSE. I’m just about to light the truck on fire and be done with it. Another heavy storm rolls in. I pay my cuz and then go inside to drink and cuss.
The next day I come out, sick at the idea that the flywheel and/or starter are jammed, and that we may have to back the trans back off and change out that flywheel. I bump the starter a few more times and check the crank bolt again – and still the engine won’t turn, For some reason I decide to pull out the spark plugs to relieve the compression, so that maybe I can turn the crank. Yeah, muddy, angry thinking by this point. It doesn’t make any sense.what I’m doing. I turn the wrench, the engine moves, and I hear, “splat.” Wait – was that coolant? I turn the engine again as I watch the #5 plug hole -and out comes a jet of clear water.
WHATTTT????? Ohhhhh…… oHHH SH**!!!
Yep, I get inside, crank the key, and a car wash erupts inside the engine compartment. Solid jets of water shooting out of the block as thick as your thumb.
Yeah – it did happen. Open the oil pan and it’s not just oil anymore.
I had accidentally left the air cleaner off and the hood open during the rainstorms. The engine had filled clear to the top. But how? Well….. it turns out that on the 1973-1977 truck, the angle of the hood and positioning of the engine was juuust right. Next time it rained hard I opened the hood and watched…. and the stream of water gushed down the top of the hood toward the windshield and ran back UP the underside, just far enough to drop directly into the carb – like something in a movie. And water does not compress!!!!
After clean-up – turned the key and the new starter kicked right in and I was in business – WHOO-HOO! Now just waiting for the new fuel gauge, and I was gonna be so bitchin’ with my nice shiny truck that had defeated lesser mechanics 🙂
After a few days getting TONS of compliments at the traffic light and getting used to being king of the road, here comes the new fuel sender. Down comes the gas tank. Out comes the old sender. And this B**** of a truck reveals her last secret!:
Ford, in its engineering brilliance has decided to add a 6-inch-long plastic pickup-tube/filter to the metal sending unit intake pipe.
AND IT HAS FALLEN OFF AND IS ROLLING AROUND THE BOTTOM OF THE GAS TANK, CAUSING THE TRUCK TO RUN OUT OF GAS WITH SIX GALLONS LEFT IN THE TANK!!!!!!!
There is NO attachment of any kind that holds the plastic extension onto the metal pipe – it’s just CRAMMED on there, like something you’d find in a Soviet factory (or at Harbor Freight).
So this truck has been running out of gas on every single owner – while the owner KNOWS there should be gas in the tank – causing said owners to quickly go crazy and sell this gorgeous hangar queen – until someone as stubborn as I come down the pike..
Re-install the tank – fire her up – and 10 years later, not a single starter or fuel problem and she’s a reliable old horse.
Let me tell you… I was SOOO angry with that truck, that yeah, I, too considered flipping it. But she was just too pretty. And, my dad, an engineer, had always taught me that “there’s a reason for everything; you’ve just got to find it.”
And solving the curse of the ’77 still, to this day, is one of the most satisfying feelings I’ve ever experienced. Never, never, NEVER give up!!!
🙂
Thanks for indulging this loonnnng memory – I hope maybe it can help someone in the future!
Not a major repair, but my Dad’s new to him 1964 Dodge pickup in 1968 was missing the windshield wiper knob. He replaced it with the headlight knob from his former International Scout which the Dodge had replaced. For the next 10 years he drove it (and I learned to drive the 3 on the tree) with a slightly askance gray “L” knob to operate the wipers instead of the original chunky black “W” knob. I’m sure he would have used the Scout’s “W” knob, except, of course, it didn’t have one. Yup, those are vacuum wipers on the early Scouts. We won’t document the yardstick he used to measure the Dodge’s fuel level due to the bad sender. Or the occasion his “gas gauge” accidently slipped out of his hand, disappearing down the filler neck.