Another vote for “kludge,” and for me it’s always been associated with a somewhat questionable software fix. The u rhymes with “boo.”
Yay. I huv boon soying hit korectly.
I usually say jury rigged or bootleg. The latter term is not used widely though. I picked it up from my some of my black friends but I don’t know where they got it.
I voted “Jury rigged”, but kludge works too. Hack works also, but mostly in programming or at least computers in some way.
If you pronounced it “jerry rigged” I wouldn’t think twice, but written it would look weird.
If I wanted to excessively PC, I might say “differently engineered”.
Kludges must be software. Not even computer hardware can be a kludge.
Jury rigged is my usual term for temporary. It doesn’t have to be shoddy. The US Army term is “field expedient”, which I like as well.
If you mean things like this http://whitetrashrepairs.com/, I recall afro-engineering from my youth, but nowadays that’d be “redneck style” or “Git-r-done” , as in “Hey look at that git-r-done car over there.”
Am I the* only* one who uses the term gonzo maintenance?
If I wanna say shabby and unprofessional repairs, I say something to the effect of half assed. If i wanna say temporary and made from materials at hand but still as high quality as I can do I say kludge or jury rigged.
Having this discussion with Dr. Matrix, I said I always heard “jerry rigged”. He explained that the real term is “nigger rigged”. I had never heard that expression before in my life. The Doctor was shocked. I had to remind him that I was black and people probably refrained from using that term in my presence.
I’m white, mid-40s, and I’ve never heard that term before. Maybe it’s regional?
I believe the “jury” in “jury-rigged” comes from the French “jour” for “day”–like “soup de jour” is “soup of the day”. Something jury-rigged is supposed to last the day. “Nigger-rigged” is derived from this.
I suppose it’s possible that the offensive connotations of “nigger-rigged” might someday wear off, in the way that “dutch oven” really, truly isn’t meant as a slander on Dutch people as too cheap or poor to buy a real oven, or how no one thinks of a “French drain” as a mild slur. But honestly, I can’t bring myself to say “Indian giver” or “gypped”, though I’m not bothered with others do, so I REALLY don’t see myself ever being comfortable with “nigger-rigged”.
Close enough for jazz. 
And the similar “Good enough for government work.”
I think you’re find slurs where none exist. French drain may have been named after a guy, and the etymology of Dutch oven is not certain, but it seems that being cheap is not necessarily one of these
Aside: is this a common stereotyping trait of Dutch people? I’ve heard many other ethnicities being called cheap, but not them. I’ve heard of the supposed etymology of Dutch treat, but don’t think that’s right, either.
I’ve heard the every time you see a leatherman in use, a mechanically savvy person is repairing something…poorly.
Around here we would say “bondo’d” or “bondo job” where instead of a proper repair, you would slap on an inferior material that for all intents or purposes did what a “real” repair was supposed to do. But, around 1990 or so, MacGuyver’d took over.
Thinking more about it, when something is improvised from a tool that is meant to do something else it’s commonly known here as being “bastardized”, as in “I bastardized that pair of plyers by using a piece of pipe on one of the handles, so it does (whatever)…”
I’ve heard “Jerry rigged” a lot here, as well.
We always used nigger-rigged when I was growing up too in a very poor part of the South with a subset of a much poorer black population that resembled the 3rd world. It wasn’t really a racial slur and it was a compliment in a way. You would see tin roof houses held together by rope and stopped from falling over by some old industrial jacks. It just meant putting together the best solution based on what you had at hand and improvising. That is pretty admirable.
In New England, I have had jury rigging for the same idea,
I agree completely. Don’t say gypped either. I didn’t know where Dutch Oven came from (I just assumed it was popularized by the dutch), but I won’t use Dutch treat. Jew someone down is also on that list. The “nigger-rigged” squicks me out just to write it…
I see you’re not familiar with my work.
I’m most likely to say Mickey Moused, so I voted for Other … but I don’t think any of the choices in the poll are UNacceptable.
Possibly the crowning achievement of my entire life was when my dremel, which came with about 403 attachments, did not have an attachment that did exactly what I wanted, so I Mickey Moused two elements from two different attachments together into one and added some other stuff, and used that with great success.