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Strangest bodge/repair


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Many years ago, my late mother-in-law had an old mini with a large hole rusted in the back below the boot lid. So I prepared some papier mache, filled the hole, put on a bit of filler to create a crust and spray painted it. The car was then sold. Father-in-law wanted me to use his Daily Mirror for the makings, but I do have standards - wouldn't use anything less than the Daily Telegraph.

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This just came up on Facebook a few months after a repaint.

 

"The wood porthole inners started to stain with water. (We now have a fantastic skilled joiner who has just made us a bed settee.) He was willing to take out the wood inners and see if he could put them on a lathe and get rid of the staining.. We then saw that the inside of the porthole was going rusty. Aqua steeled it. Decided to check the porthole screws and guess what? Some of the screws did not match the holes so what had they done? Hacksawed off the screw head and glued it back into the porthole thus letting water into the inside of the porthole and wetting and staining the wood inners. "

  • Horror 1
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20 hours ago, Hudds Lad said:

 

if you plug a cable with a male end into it is it not a socket?

like this one but imagine the blue bit pointing downwards

image.png.96d31282a8d62fe07f904edefaf87ab4.png

That's a plug — the 'male' bit refers to having pins, rather than holes in which pins can be inserted. If you can touch the shiny bits, it's a plug.

Edited by tehmarks
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Effective repair but unusual technique - 1988, hire boat from Chas Hardern, Saturday evening we found the engine bilge full of water as we went into Adderly Top Lock. Chas came out and found a weld between the Uxter plate and the swim had sprung. He put some vaseline over the leak (by reaching through the weedhatch so it was on the outside) and said he'd be back in the morning.

 

Following morning we were moved, without starting the engine, to a boatyard in Market Drayton. Chas about to weld with the seam in the water when the boatyard owner produced a 30 foot long beam from a dutch barn, stuck one end under the uxter plate and told us to stand on the other end. Voila, split seam clear of the water and welded, and by 10am Sunday morning we were on our way. 

The boat, from recollection, was a 32 foot Springer - 4 berth boats are a bit bigger these days 

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1 minute ago, magpie patrick said:

Chas about to weld with the seam in the water when the boatyard owner produced a 30 foot long beam from a dutch barn, stuck one end under the uxter plate and told us to stand on the other end. Voila, split seam clear of the water and welded, and by 10am Sunday morning we were on our way. 

I may have a photo...

  • Greenie 1
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Post survey on our butty I decided to replace the floor supports which sat on the elm bottoms and keelson with angle iron across the boat.  Course we were living on her.

I measured up. Made some brackets to fit to the footings and fired up the welder.

First brackets went well, however part way into the job there was a cloud of steam from the end of the rod and the arc went out.

Inevitable had happened, and I had gone through a pit.

A great deal of thought later and the cat litter tray with top cut out was held by my wife over the footings, a helper then used a stirrup pump to empty the water out.

Minute level went down I slagged up the hole and welded up the bracket, then put a concrete patch over the whole lot.

It lasted 13 years, until we re footed the whole boat.

And yes I did fit the rest of the brackets the same day, we were young and reckless!

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Back in my youth, i was travelling in a friend's car when it begsn to misfire really badly.

 

We had a quick look, but couldn't  find anything obviously wrong.

 

My mate was a member of the AA, so he called them. 

 

The AA man investigated and found the sprung loaded graphite connection on the centre of the distributor cap had lost its spring loading, so wasnt making a good connection with the rotor arm.

 

He replaced it with the cut down end of a pencil, as a "get you home" repair, and gave my mate strict instructions to replace the distributor cap ASAP.

 

A couple of weeks later my mates car started misfiring badly again...

 

Guess why? ?

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5 minutes ago, cuthound said:

Back in my youth, i was travelling in a friend's car when it begsn to misfire really badly.

 

We had a quick look, but couldn't  find anything obviously wrong.

 

My mate was a member of the AA, so he called them. 

 

The AA man investigated and found the sprung loaded graphite connection on the centre of the distributor cap had lost its spring loading, so wasnt making a good connection with the rotor arm.

 

He replaced it with the cut down end of a pencil, as a "get you home" repair, and gave my mate strict instructions to replace the distributor cap ASAP.

 

A couple of weeks later my mates car started misfiring badly again...

 

Guess why? ?

 

One summer the Fiat Panda we then owned started making a really irritating rattle. The source was a crack in the tin cowling over the exhaust manifold used to heat intake air to avoid carb icing. It being summer, I removed and binned the un-needed cowling, making a note to replace it before the cold weather. I promptly forgot, and didn't remember again until the car ground to a halt with an iced up carb in a snowstorm whilst crossing the high Pennines via the A66 on Christmas eve.

 

MP.

 

 

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For my sins we had a contract to turn out to AC invalid cars, the blue fibreglass ones with the sliding door. Really old folks on here will remember them but not fondly.

 

They used to breakdown with monotonous regularity. The servicing arrangement was with a national company who seemed to have trouble keeping them running.

 

The engine was a weird thing that ran backwards to reverse the car. When they stopped working it was often the points in the crude distributor that had warn the heel off the fibre part. There were two sets of points, one for forward, the other for reverse.

So all we did at the road side was  to swap the wires on the points so that they would run forwards, only. We always had to tell the owner not to drive into anywhere that they would have to reverse out of to avoid having an invalid trapped in their car.

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On the Norfolk Broads in 1971 we seriously holed the hull of our hired sailing boat below the water line. We took the person whose fault it was and forced him to sit with his backside in the hole while we sailed as quickly as we could to the nearest boatyard which was about a quarter of a mile away. The yard immediately winched the boat up by a couple of feet and nailed an offcut of plywood over the hole while we had a beer in the nearby pub; here's a photo of him doing the repair.

 

Broads7104r.JPG

 

Within an hour we were on our way again and it didn't leak a drop for the rest of our fortnight's holiday.

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7 minutes ago, Keeping Up said:

We took the person whose fault it was and forced him to sit with his backside in the hole ...

 

The yard immediately ... nailed an offcut of plywood over the hole ...

 

Was he allowed to move his backside first??

Edited by David Mack
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When do Haji charter flights Nigeria to Mecca with a DC10 a seal on the hub cap was broken while changing wheels and no spare available. Fix get on the PA and ask the cabin girls who has stick on nails "I do" shouts one good let me have the glue. The glue is like super glue cut both ends of the "O" ring with a razor blade at 45 deg stick ends together and away we go! Add job to list of "must do list" on return to Gatwick. Normal items on list are clean toilets, replace seat covers, clean carpet, bomb the cabin (pest control spray) to kill off Afican bugs etc etc.

 

When in the back end of nowhere mend and make do is the name of the game, like going to local garage with main wheels to inflate to 205 psi took about 5 hours to pump up 2 wheels lol.

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When we brought Tadworth from BWB it had a split in the chine angle which had been “repaired” by putting a piece of sponge over the hole wedged down with a block of wood on top and a broom handle cut down and wedged under the gunwhale. As it had held up on the barrel run we did a couple of loads of coal before getting it slipped and welded up.

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