Mrs. Evil Captor and I were driving in the mountains of Tennessee when smoke started billowing out from under the hood. My automotive skills told me that this could indicate a problem. Inspecting the engine, my keen eyes noticed that the cap for adding engine oil was missing. Someone, possibly me, had forgotten to put the cap back on when he added oil farther back down the mountain, and now there was engine oil splattered all over the engine, makng smoke.
I looked arund and finally found what I needed to make a repair in the trunk. I took a crew sock and wound it in to a very tight ball, then took the advice I have heard SOOOO many times in my life and put a sock in it.
The repair I did was borderline suicidal, but it worked long enough to get me to the next town. I went into a deep pothole and broke the c.v. axle in my old escort. Of course the car wouldn’t go as it would just spin the broken axle. I jammed the broken axle so it wouldn’t move with the lug wrench. I actually made it about twenty miles to the next town, but the car really pulled to the left.
I had an old Honda Accord with the driver’s side door inoperative. I took out the passenger seat to make crawling in that way easier. Any passengers had to sit in the back, one with plenty of leg room. One day, I can’t get it to hold an idle, it’ll start, but as soon as I let off the accelerator, it dies. Look under the hood, one of the many vacuum tubes coming from the carburator is dangling. Can’t figure out where it should go, so I stick the end of a cap from a bic pen into the loose end of the tube. This allows me to drive until I find a mechanically inclined friend to un-intercourse the carburator.
A couple of fixes leap to mind.
First was at the Can-Am races at Laguna Secca in the early 70’s. A guy had an MGB that had a busted throttle cable. Grabbed some wrenches, and moved the choke cable over to the throttle shafts. The MG driver (just some guy I didn’t know him) got to drive home with a hand throttle, and cruise control (choke cable had a feature that if you turned them clockwise they would stay in position and not return)
The second one was even better.
It was 1984. I worked for a off road racing team. I was left to mind the store in LA while everybody else headed for Baja for the 1000.
I got a call the next afternoon that the team had stripped the dual side drafts off one of the pre-run trucks* to use on the race car. They wanted me to pull a set of dual side drafts off the shelf and bring them to Baja and get the pre-run truck back in action.
So I grab some tools, and a set of carbs. By the time I reach Ensenada it is after 9 PM and the team has dropped out of the race. A party is going on. Needless to say I did not bolt on the carbs that night. Much fun was had that night.
The next AM after a team breakfast everyone else bugs out except for myself, the team manager (whoose truck it was) and a PR guy. I start to bolt on the carbs. I get them all bolted up and discover that on this particular engine the water outlet goes from the head, into the intake manifold, then into the thermostat elbow, out to the upper rad hose. I have the head, I have the intake manifold, I have the upper rad hose. What I don’t have is the thermostat housing. The new carbs and manifold don’t come with a thermostat housing, you are expected to re-use the old one. What is worse is that this brand of truck (Mitsubishi) was not sold in Mexico, so I could not even buy a replacement.
We try to call the race car transporter on the radio to no avail. They have that unit in going home gear, and have the radio off.
Now we could have towed the truck home, but that was the loser way out. I pondered, and thought. Finally I started looking at the spare parts boxes for the race car. The race car used a different upper rad hose. I tried it on the rad, and noticed that the end of the hose stuck right down into the opening where the thermostat should live. Light Bulb!
I grabbed a fresh tube of red RTV silicone. I spooged the entire tube around the hose and filled the thermostat cavity around the hose. When I was done, the PR guy asked me what now? Go get a couple of beers I replied. Two or three Dos XX later the RTV had skinned. We filled the rad with water and left the cap off.
The team manager drove the truck back, and the balance of the weekend.
On Monday I told the guys in the shop about what I did. They called Bullshit. When the team manager showed up that afternoon, they ran to open the hood so they could call me a liar.
When he saw I wasn’t lying, the head mechanic turned to me and said
made my day.
*In off road racing, they don’t always follow a set course. So racers go down early and “pre-run” the course so they know where to go on race day. Pre-run trucks are modified street trucks that can survive the Baja and have some zip and power doing it.
I had to move the car a few feet up the driveway, but had part of the fuel line open, well much of it. I connected the fuel line to the return directly (no fuel for the carb), which was the only quick way to do it, and started the car and ran it off propane attached to a vaccum line
I was invited to pre-run the 1000 back in '84 or so. I had, and still have a pretty much box stock '76 short bed Chevy 4x4 with BF A/Ts. Would it have been possible?
Probably, or possibly. It would depend on the course that year. Our pre-run trucks carried something like 50 gallons of fuel, and three spare tires each. They were 4 wheel drive, had different gears along with larger tires, suspension upgrades, and modified engines. On the inside there were racing buckets with 5 point belts.
So could you pre-run a course with a box stock truck? Not nearly as fast or for as long as we could.
1956 Pontiac. I’m heading up north with some buddies for a fishing trip when it started to rain buckets. That was when the wiper motor gave up the ghost. (Actually, it was more of a pump. They worked off vacuum.)
The fix was to remove the radio from the dash board so that Dale, riding shotgun, could reach through the dash and manually pull the cables: left-right, left-right.
In another instance, an Army buddy lost the keys to his 1964 Chevelle somewhere in the sand at Virginia Beach, NC. A long walk back to Raleigh was avoided when we hot wired the car. I had been aware of the theory of hot wiring for quite some time, but I was still shocked by how easy it was to put it in to actual practice.
You find that you need gas in a vehicle that runs, and the one with the gas doesn’t start. Cut off six feet of garden hose. disconect the fuel line on the non functional car. Slide the hase a couple inches over the fuel line, and seel it with duct tape. Put the hose into the gas filler hole in the running vehicle. Turn over the dead car engine until the fuel pump transfers about 10 gallons of gas. Take off for parts for broken vehicle.
Last night there was a hard frost in sunny Orlando, and my windshield’s visibility was nil. I don’t have a scraper, so I searched in my car for an alternative, not wanting to go back into my house to find one.
Now, I have a Kia Rio and didn’t get a stereo at all – not even the speakers – so when I go on long trips I take a boom box and cassette tapes (which doesn’t waste batteries as much as CDs.) Found one that I hadn’t brought in from my last trip.
So I used the “tape” end of a cassette to scrape the ice off my front hood: it worked well and there isn’t evidence of scratching ::::knock on plastic:::::. I hope the Dread Zeppelin tape isn’t too damaged by the ice.
