My cat had a common skin condition which resulted in raw, itchy spots around her neck. She would not.stop.scratching. I couldn’t put a “cone” on her, because it would have been sitting right on the wounds plus she had to eat & drink while I was at work all day. My neighbour gave me what he called a “false sleeve” - it’s canvas and looks like a cut-off sweater sleeve. I popped it around her neck, rolled it down and presto - she couldn’t scratch. She could still eat, drink, wash her fur & cuddle and the air could get to the wounds to help them heal. She was right as rain in a few days.
That cat one is awesome (they all are) - I’ll have to show my roommate that one.
Up north preparing for an afternoon of canoeing/kayaking/tubing on a river.
Rented kayaks and canoes, but brought our own inflatable tubes.
The rental place would not let us use their air pump and we didnt have one.
After some serious huffing and puffing and not making alot of headway, we noticed that our friend CheapJay had his tube already blown up. Ours all needed Viagara.
“Howja do that?” we said all a bit breathless.
He took one of our tubes, went over to our car that was running, held the air insert thingie to the tail pipe and filled the tube up with car fumes.
BRILLIANT!
He is McGyver.
I was driving my old 1981 Pontiac Phoenix and it wouldn’t start. It sounded like it wanted to start, but juuuuust couldn’t catch.
I was in a parking lot. No cell phone around then. Calling AAA would be a long wait for help and calling my Mom would send her into flights of spasms.
I putz’d around under the hood and figured it was the ummm…doohickey that may be a flap for the carberator. ( Dunno, it’s over 25 years) There was no way I could hold it open and start the car at the same time.
Rummaged around and found a pen with a clip on it and stuck it with the clip holding it in place. Got back in, turned the key and the engine started right up.
THAT move, my friends, I used on several old cars - not always my car - and every freakin’ time I was by myself.
The first weekend Mr. Ujest and I went somewhere, on our way back a hole sprouted in the (something) and a funk blew all over the inside of the windsheild when he turned on the window defroster. I told him to pull over, turn off the defroster (he didn’t think he needed too as he thought it was just build up from not being used since last winter! WHAT! . Popped the hood and I found the hole in the hose, took off my nylons ( back in the car, tyvm) and tied it around the hole. Cleaned up the window funk and made it home ( 50+ miles) with that repair.
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Umbrella repair / safety pins. Arriving for Chicago Matathon - rainy as Hell. Then, umbrella loses two support spars. Pick up Marathon packet, use safety pins to re-link the umbrella liners and spars.
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Convertible maintenance and repair. 2004 era convertible attached top to windshield frame by two articulated hooks. One hook de-linked while driving in rain. Used twine to re-thread hook. Worked until I recovered pins to reattach hook. Also used Gorilla glue and tape to repair/reseal breaches in the top.
I once diffused a nuclear bomb with a tennis racket!
No, wait, that was a MacGiver episode.
I can’t think of anything truly impressive like most of posts here, but for a rather ridiculous school project where we had to build a mechanical hand out of cardboard and other such office items, my teammates were struggling to figure out how to make the fingers. In a flash of not-so-genius, I pulled out a tampon in a cardboard applicator. The two tubes fit together easily, making it simple to make a joint between them, and they were the perfect size for the project.
My male teammates learned more about tampons that day than I suspect many men bother to learn!
Now that is truly brilliant!!
In one of my school classes, we had to do a project and present it to the class each grading period. I LOVED doing these types of independent projects in any of my classes because they gave me a chance to be really creative. I always went well above and beyond the basic requirements and I had a lot of fun creating and building visual aids for the presentations.
For one such project, I painted a circular race track on a square board, with a small electric motor mounted in the middle of the board. I made a two-dimensional car by drawing and coloring it on posterboard and cutting it out. I used about a 12 inch length from a wire coat-hanger to make a lightweight but strong “arm” to attach the car to the motor. So when I connected a battery to the motor, the car–suspended on the arm–raced around the track as the motor turned.
On the day of my presentation, I was assembling the parts of the track, having taken it apart to transport to school. I realized–to my horror–that the wire arm was missing! I knew it had made it to school with me, and I suspected foul play on the part of one of my classmates, but it was almost time for me to present and the arm was nowhere to be found. I racked my brain and looked all around to see if there was something–anything–I could use to replace the arm. I couldn’t see anything at all that would work. I had just about given up and I was feeling very depressed when suddenly it hit me. I took out my spiral notebook and unthreaded the metal spiral from the spine of the notebook. It was a lot “bendier” than the coat-hanger had been, but it was easy to attach to the motor and it was just strong enough to hold my car and swing it around the track.
I remember stapling the hem of a pair of pants too!
My first day of work at my embassy posting overseas, I grabbed my briefcase and stuck a few things in it that I might need. For some reason, I thought that a comb would be a good idea. At the end of the day, I walked out and left my briefcase in my office.
Next morning, I get up and shower and wash my hair, and afterwards realize I have no way to comb it. Not wanting to go to work looking like some sort of lunatic, I did the obvious: that’s right, I combed my hair with a dinner fork.
We spent the day white water rafting in Ohiopyle, PA once, and when we got back to the car we realized the keys were in the trunk. The weather had turned bad and was threatening to rain. Fortunately we’d left the window open a crack, about 1/4 of an inch. Unfortunately the car was an old Nissan Sentra and not the kind with the pop up locks. It did have a latch near the driver’s seat to open the trunk. My wife, the MacGuyver in our family, looked at my sneakers and got an inspiration. We took the laces out of the sneakers, tied them together with a little lasso on the end. Within a minute I’d lassoed and opened the trunk to get the keys out and open the car. It was actually pretty easy once the solution was identified.
Back in college, a friend of mine had an old Fiat that had a rusty gas tank. The rust was always clogging up the inline fuel filter, and every 100 miles or so, we had to open the trunk, reach through a hole, take out the filter, and blow the gunk out. During Christmas break, he and I were house sitting for a teacher who lived down in a valley. One morning, we had to get to work back at the campus, but could not get out of the subdivision.
When we started going up the hill, the fuel pump just didn’t have enough suction to get the gas to the engine because the filter was so clogged. We blew out the filter and were able to make it part way up the hill, but the car kept dying. We both needed the job at campus to pay for school, and we had a huge project we had to finish that day, so we were becoming desperate.
Finally, I suggested driving up the hill backward, and letting Mr. Gravity help the fuel pump. He told me there was no way it was going to work, but finally decided to give it a try.
It worked, and that afternoon, we bought a new fuel filter.
My first high tech job called me to fix a microwave network link early one morning, on a snowy/sleety/wet March morning in downtown Boston.
We believed the signal loss was caused by wet snow coating the outside of the microwave dish’s cover. Like the one on top of this picture. While the building staff was looking for a tall enough, stable enough, ladder, I asked my co-worker what would happen if I just threw a snowball at it. His reply was “Probably nothing…” which was good enough for me. I packed a snowball, hit the cover, the snow slid off, and the signal strength again increased to it’s regular maximum level.
$1000 service call for 2 men x 4 hours each… snowball included.
Had to process some time critical data in a lab over the weekend. I asked the guy in charge to give me the software disks in case things went tits up and I needed to reinstall. Nope, you wont need it.
Sure enough it goes tits up. Thanks Mr guy in charge 
Well, the software is dying because it can’t find a subroutine its calling up. I get out my old floppies and start hacking around in the directories. Finally, after looking around a good bit I figure out the routine its calling but not finding is probably not one I will actually need.
So, I take a subroutine/program and rename it to what the program is calling for.
Run the program, it finds that thing its looking for (but not using) and all is well.
Data was processed without further trouble.
I LOVE YOU! We just had an accident involving a bucket of water and a matress! We’ve been able to get the worst out with the Shop-Vac, but now I gotta try some litter!
Awhile back my husband and I were pulling into the Target parking lot, and heard this awful screeching noise from underneath the car. We stopped, and looked underneath - the muffler had fallen off on one side, a bolt that held the strap on that holds the muffler in place had snapped*. It was still attached and running fine, but obviously driving around like that wasn’t going to work, and neither would towing it behind a tow truck. So my husband went into Target and got some picture wire. Our jack was broken, so I, being small enough to fit under a compact car (barely) crawled under there and strapped the muffler back on with the picture wire.
We made it home safe and sound, and fixed the car with actual car parts later that day (a friend with tools and knowledge helped). But I think my picture-wire-muffler-voodoo would’ve held on for awhile if we needed it to.
*I don’t know what most car parts are called. Obviously.
I had just poured lady friend a vodka tonic, but no limes were to be found anywhere.
Thinking quickly, I cut a large orange wedge orange and squeezed it in. The drink was delicious, and the day was saved.
Shades of 1918! On Model T Fords the gas tank is under the seat, and fuel gets to the carburetor by gravity, which means that on a steep hill, the fuel won’t flow to the carb–so you back up the hill. 
The key here is CRYSTALLINE kitty litter. It’s the expensive kind made of silica. The clay kind might work too, but it’d be really messy.
Yes, we only use the silica crystals (awesome at odor control).
We have a big tub unopened at home, but it has blue dyed crystals which I find crush messily into blue powder and I’d be worried that they may stain. So I may have to see if I can find the plain ones, which is getting more and more difficult for some reason.