A thread on MacGuyvering repairs fills up with Jeep owners? This is my shocked face.
My own recent MacGuyver episode is with our washing machine. Over time the main dial (that you push in and turn to the selection) got more and more sloppy. Eventually it wouldn’t push past the “click” and turning went thru every selection, trying to start each cycle before reaching your choice. I pulled the front panel off to remove the timer module, and discovered the plastic tabs it was mounted on had broken (from the front panel and the timer). I got a drill and 3 screws, and drilled pilot holes where the mounts used to be. After remounting it with actual screws, lockwashers, and nuts, it is far more sturdy than the original design. This also saved a service call and replacing the front panel and timer module. Total cost? ~0.00. Just screws from the box in the garage and a little elbow grease.
My fond memories of how much my sons and I enjoyed the show kerfluffled me.
I hope this thread sticks around for a long time. At least long enough to tell my tales about how one gets surgical dressings to stay on the underside of a scrotum. It involves sweat socks and pantyhose.
BBB, your post made me realize that in the process of John DiFool calling me out for spelling MacGyver’s name wrong, he spelled the name wrong in a different way. So I was joshing him, not you. And sure, let’s hear that scrotal dressing story
Ain’t nothing unmanly about art and art supplies. I used to be a graphic artist before I morphed to web development. I’m mostly all digital now, but I went through a lot of art supplies back in the day.
Reminds me of my own minor art supply MacGyvering. I was in College going for an art-related degree, and I had a night job cashing out checks at a restaurant. I had a fair amount of downtime, so i’d practice sketching in a sketch pad. I had a piece of sandpaper taped to the cardboard back of the pad i’d use to sharpen the soft lead of the art pencil. A waitress saw me sharpening the pencil and was amazed that I would think of doing that for some reason.
Also, If you have been driving in icy weather, they can get frozen shut. Most gas stations have hot water for tea. Get a cup and pour it on it. Worked for me.
That happened to me this past winter. I had to ask the gas station clerk to come out to my car and push the fuel door release button as I manually pried open the door.
The closest I’ve come in recent history is when our kids locked some interior doors in an AirBnB we were in. If that happens they can be unlocked from the outside by turning a latch through a pinhole with a tiny flathead screwdriver.
Of course we didn’t have that. The best option I could find was some disposable wooden chopsticks and a steak knife: I whittled a chopstick down into a crude tiny flathead screwdriver shape and was able to unlock the doors. Quite satisfying!
I had a '65 VW bug turned into a Baja style off road vehicle with big tires and hopped up motor. It was my toy for playing around in the Coast Range mountains of Oregon.
The accelerator cable was a solid wire, not a cable, that runs from the carburetor in the rear through a tube that comes out on the front floor board and attaches to the gas pedal. The wire has a little nubbin on the end that hooks into the pedal apparatus and when you push on the pedal it pulls on the wire and the carburetor.
Well I was way the hell up in the mountains and the little nubbin broke off. The car would idle just fine but that was it, no gas pedal action. I flipped the pedal back and there was about 1/2 inch of the wire sticking out of the tube, the rest was broken off. I had a small pair of vice grips and I grabbed the end of the wire and locked the vice grips on it. Then I took off my right shoe and sock and using my bare foot, between my big toe and second toe, I pulled up on the vice grips which then pulled on the carb and made the car go and I got home.
Never went anywhere again without a spare throttle cable.
4-wheeling many a moon ago in an old ('71?) FJ-40 we lost the clutch cable (not a hydraulic clutch), we hooked up para-cord to the clutch activator. It ended up wrapped over a roll bar and back to the driver. This does NOT work. Too much stretch in the nylon cord. Just in case anyone else wants to try that. Got home without a clutch.
For our wedding we wanted some small tables to put flowers on either side of us. Had no small tables. And they would have to be carried up to the top of a ski area in a gondola. Amazing what you can do with a bit of plywood some aspen tree branches and some zip ties. Instant 3 leg tri-pod table.
I was driving home from a magic gig (about 2.5 hrs away) and heard something dragging underneath my car. I pulled into a gas station and found that my undercarriage was dragging. Somehow the clips that held it up came off. I had over 2 hrs of driving to go, it was a Sunday evening, and I didn’t want it to drag all the way home. I remembered I had some paracord in my car so I dropped one end through the engine compartment and tied it to the front of the undercarriage. Then I pulled up all the slack, hoisting up the undercarriage, and tied it to a bolt that was accessable at the top of the engine compartment. I made sure nothing was in the way and that the cord wasn’t touching anything hot. Then I drove the 2+ hrs home with absolutely no problems. In fact that fix held for a week while I waited for the appointment with my mechanic to get it fixed.
One handy tip for those of us who may have to do emergency repairs to our vehicles is keep a small, clean tarp to lay on the ground. A blanket may work but if the ground is wet it can soak through.
I had a similar thing happen where a mount broke off my exhaust system on the way to work and it was dragging on the highway. I had to pull off to the side, laid down the tarp, found some wire or something to temporarily rig it up, and was on my way to work with dirty hands but my biz casual clothes were still pristine.
Another time I was taking the off-ramp to work and I saw a guy by the side of the ramp with a flat. He was driving a Jeep Commander, which was a huge vehicle, bigger than a Grand Cherokee. I carry a 2 1/2 ton jack because the jacks that come with spares are barely adequate, so I figured I’d give him a hand. The spare to the Commander was conveniently bolted underneath the Jeep, behind the back bumper. So that tarp definitely came in handy. I had him on his way in 10 minutes, and he thanked me saying he was on his way to the airport to catch an important flight for a job interview and he might have been late if I hadn’t stopped. As a bonus, a co-worker happened to drive past and see me-- at my job at the time they had monthly ‘Hero Awards’ for employees who do things above and beyond their job description. She nominated me and I won $50!
I was driving my Suzuki Samurai (small vaguely Jeep-like SUV not sold in the USA) to work in Grand Cayman. I heard a bang and awful racket from under the vehicle as I lost all power. Engine was running fine but car wouldn’t go.
I got out and looked underneath where I saw the U-joint had failed at the end nearest the front of the car. The drive shaft, still attached at the rear end, would fling around driven by the turning of the rear tires. And with each revolution the drive shaft would hit the road and the underside of the car.
I pulled out a shoelace and carefully tied a loop to use as a sling to hold the drive shaft more or less horizontal. I shifted the car into 4wd mode to get power to the front wheel and like this I limped the car a couple miles to work.
Once at work I got a socket wrench and just removed the drive shaft entirely. I dropped it in my back seat and drove the car as if it was a front wheel drive for a long time until I replaced the drive shaft for $50 at a junk yard.
Over the past week I have been adding an extension to a small deck. I had cut slots for new (longer, canitlevered) joists, and placed the new joists in place. However, I wanted to waterproof them with a bitumen paint before fixing them in place. So I started pulling them back out, and three of them wouldn’t budge. After finally shifting one, I unleashed my inner MacGyver - I nailed a block to the underside of the joist, grabbed a jack from my son’s car, and fitted it between the block and the bearer, and cranked the joists out. The most time-consuming part of the whole process was getting the jack out of the tiny little cabinet in my son’s Demio.
