What's your Apollo 13 moment?

Ok.... Your stuck 100 miles from home and have to replace your steering fluid with extra virgin olive oil..... Tights used as serpentine belt..... Lolly stick to fix gearbox.... Beer can exhaust repair....


What is your most off the wall repair.

Bailer twine round a Td5 discovery fuel filter housing as it has cracked and was covering everything with diesel worked enough to get it 5 miles home

50 miles from home in 2a with box stuck in reverse gear after having to reverse a long way on narrow lane.The reverse gear had seized on it's shaft so took the top off the box and with a bar pried it off [it's bush was left on the shaft]
Got too dark to get the selectors back in place so clicked it into third gear and using low box to start off took two and a half hours to get home.[took it well easy as little oil was left in box]
Never did fix it but box worked on for years the reverse gear just slipped up on to it's bearing/bush when it was needed, but you could hear it rattling on it's shaft at times.

A couple of years ago I drove round Wales with one of my half shafts wedged in with bits of wood. The passenger side rear had decided to work its way out, so I wedged it in with bits of wood - driftwood from the seaside, the handle of a wire brush, bits off a fence and so on - until I could get home and get a set of screw-cap drive flanges ordered.
http://www.landyzone.co.uk/lz/f7/driveshaft-end-float-normal-198564.html

3500 miles around Europe in 10 days... no problems... just got close to home filled up 4 miles from home and it wouldn't start.... The Ignition had worked lose somehow and a zip tie was necessary to pull the switch together and allow us to start it and drive home.

EEk thinking about it that was 5 years ago now and its still there !

On the motorway outside Glasgow, middle of the night, the indicator/lights switch on the 2CV decided to fall to pieces (literally). Fixed with insulating tape, and stayed put for the rest of the trip to the Highlands. Turned into a hypothermic camping trip from hell, but that's another story!

And the temperamental fuel pump on the Stage One V8, kept going by the bro in law hanging out the rear passenger door and hitting it with a hammer now and then.

zip tied the gear linkage of a ford fiesta diesel together when it failed one day.....

stuck a bag of zip ties in the glove box for future failures and it carried on for another 80k miles......

once had a front prop uj disintagrate at low speed - didnt do any damage but i didnt have a spanner suitable to remove prop.....

only about 5 miles from home so asked at the farm house for some fence wire and slung the prop between chassis legs and stuck it in difflock.

On my grandads j plate rover 214 he managed to sheer off the rubber bleed valve in the coolant hose to the rear of the engine (those of you familiar with a k series will no how brittle it gets) after a radiator change by over tightening it .

The fix 1 short piece of hollow broom handle and 2 jubilee clips stayed that way until the car was scrapped over 10 years later.

Just some of the improvisations I have used over the years:

ATF as brake fluid (works fine and flushes the system very well).
Fanta orange as coolant as ran out of pee.
Molegrips to hold a starter motor in place after I lost the bolts.
Washer bottle as a temporary gravity feed fuel tank.
Molegrips as a temporary steering wheel (scariest few miles I ever drove).
Seatbelts as tow straps.
Seatbelts as lifting straps.
Scaffold tube as makeshift propshaft (banger racing).
Scaffold tube and a brick pivot to lift car for a wheel change.
Farm jack as a winch (slow but effective).
Choke cable as a throttle cable.
Headlamp bulb as an ignition coil ballast resistor.
Propane as an easystart alternative.
Ratchet straps to fix engine mounts to chassis.
Steering gaiter (Morris Minor) to repair a perished brake servo diaphragm on a Ford Thunderbird.

Shifty1962 said:

Just some of the improvisations I have used over the years:


Molegrips as a temporary steering wheel (scariest few miles I ever drove).

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Ha my other grandad did the same when he was repairing a series 1 and got a call to say my dad was being born, spanner on the nut and off he went to the hospital!

Just outside Glasgow, wipers failed, mechanism inside dash board, I had to be in Weston super mare with in 12 hours. Heavy snow! So it was a bit of string from one wiper to the other in through one window out the other back to the wiper. 8 hours of driving with pulling the string back and forth. With drafts that make a landy seem sealed.
God was I knackered on parade that morning.

Have done the wiper string thing before!
Mini van lectric petrol pump packed up , dad was driving , siphoned some petrol out and put in screen washer bottle , rerouted washer pipes, used manual washer pump to pump petrol into carburettor , got us home 25 miles.

Granada 2.8 gl . Carb blew back and set air box alight on motorway. Pulled washer pipe from t piece and with one arm in the window pushing the switch and the other hosing down the fire, i managed to put the fire out and get home.

Vw type 2 crew cab. Starter motor used to stick on long journeys so i carried a lump hammer by the seat to give it a wack. Going over to ireland fishing, just about to drive off the ferry when the usual happened only this time an impatient driver behind me started to press his horn at me. His face was priceless as he saw me get out of the van with a lump hammer and walk towards him. He never realised my engine was at the back

Broken accelerator linkage on the 2a at the Scottish All Rover Rally in Doune - tied on a length of string and threaded it through the bulkhead vent, drove 50 miles home to Erskine in the dark (Well it got dark on the way, it took a while!).

I fixed the points on my Honda 400/4 with Araldite & fuse wire, strange how you can't get points for a 13 year old bike on Arran at 6 pm on a bank holiday.

Land rover 90 19J, snapped fanbelt, just picked my girlfriend up from work, asked her at the side of the motorway to remove her tights, she did it, shes now my ex girlfriend.

Cable tie over the ball and socket gearlinkage on the montego, it was just ****e that car

freelance said:

Cable tie over the ball and socket gearlinkage on the montego, it was just ****e that car

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I thought that was standard on the Montego

Broken accelerator cable nipple (carb end) on a Fiat 126. I was only 17 at the time, but used a old Mechanno wheel, threading the cable through where the Mechanno axle would normally go and tightening it in place with the grub screw. Worked rather better than the OEM part ever did - never replaced it!

One of my old bikes had a push / pull throttle cable arrangement, the 'pull' cable snapped so I ended up swapping cables around to get me home but it meant that the throttle control was reversed - that was an interesting ride!!