I was just wondering if any Dopers have ever used similar kinds of repair methods as pictured here:
http://thereifixedit.com
I’ve used parts of cyclone fences to make temporary repairs on an old car I owned many years back, around the muffler area.
In high school, we repaired with cut up paper clips and those tiny little rubber bands to fix broken springs on flutes. It’s not a very good fix, but the school had no money for fixes, to the point that we had a duct tape sousaphone.
In college a friend broke the exhaust pipe on his car going over a big bump. We removed the ends from a soup can and then split it down the side; we butted the two stubs of pipe together, wrapped the joint with a few layers of muffler repair tape, wrapped the whole thing with the split soup can, and tied a whole bunch of wire around the soup can to keep it wrapped tightly around the joint. Worthwhile: it held together for a year or so until the rest of the exhaust eventually rotted out.
Stripped bread twist tie= perfect wire to replace missing eyeglasses screw.
My wife used to work in a university’s biology lab. While cleaning out an old storeroom, she found a refrigerator that hadn’t been used in years, but which was still running. When she started to move it, she found another power cord running underneath, so she did a bit of investigating… and she found an immersion heater (you know, a loop of wire which is designed to heat up a cup of coffee or tea) in the drainpan.
Basically, the previous lab manager had a refrigerator which worked, but which wouldn’t drain properly. So, to keep the drainpan from overflowing, he put the immersion heating coil in it to evaporate the water.
It worked, I guess… but can you imagine how many years that heating coil had been running completely unattended in a back storeroom? :eek:
We broke the drive line in my dad’s pickup while camping about 10 miles up an old logging trail. We didn’t have a wrench to remove the broken one, so while we drove in 4-wheel-drive we tied the drive line out of the way with socks and bungee cords. It didn’t work very well and we had to keep stopping to reattach it, but we eventually got back to civilization where we could borrow a wrench.
When I was in high school, the bridge on my guitar broke. Similar to the last pic in the OP’s link, I fixed it with a chunk of plastic from a broken plastic ruler which I filed into the proper shape. It was an orange ruler, not clear like the one in the pic, but the design of the bridge has two pieces of metal sticking up on either side, so despite being orange, it was nowhere near as noticeable as the one in the pic.
Twenty one years later, I still have the guitar, and the little piece of orange ruler is still functioning as the guitar’s bridge.
I once took off my nylons to wrap around a part of the engine that was spewing a gooey mist of funk over the inside of the windshield.
At my last job it came in very handy that I was creative.
One example we had a tester that never advanced paper from the roll properly. Sending it for repairs didn’t fix the expensive always in use equipment. We had to reschedule manufacturing to allow for repairs. The final solution was a number of rubber bands in a chain attached to the wall and a paper clamp on the end of the paper. It was god for about 40 readings, before you had to move the clip.
Did they have a run in them afterward?
I did that with a beer can. There was a slight air leak during acceleration. It went whoosh when I gunned it. it sounded like a futuristic rocket ship.
This thread reminds me of The Marvelous Toy
It went zip when it moved and pop when it stopped,
Whirrr when it stood still
I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will.