Well now that I have been royally entertained by your stories, here're a
couple of mine.
Number One.
There we were, out 4 bying in the Rover 2000TC (which, BTW, are great off
road boonie crashers) when _bang_, huge noises from the aft nether regions.
A quick inspection shows that the bolts which hold the forward diff mount
have departed the vehicle, and the only thing holding the front of the diff
off the ground is the now overstressed driveshaft. We are 30 miles from
nowhere (OK, it was only about 10 miles, rights of the storyteller ya know)
and seeing as only horses use this trail, help is unlikely. Tools in the
car: sharp knife, bit of string, a handsaw (for the life of me I can't
remember why) and a lot of beer.
So we sit down, drink some of the beer and whittle away at sticks while
thinking.
The solution: First we get the car up in the air by using deadfall trees to
form a lever and fulcrum, and more stumps as jackstands. Then we use the
handsaw to cut down a bunch of sapling, which we cut to length and wedge
across the car above the trailing arm pivots and below the diff mount. The
final touch are a few trenails whittled out and pounded home where the
bolts used to be with a rock. Get the car down on the ground, drive it back
and fore a few times. Seems fine, so back in the car we pile and proceed
further into the bush (we came to party, by god we're gonna party). This
bodge lasted almost 2 weeks.
Number Two
Had to go from Kelowna to Vancouver (in British Columbia, for those who
don't know), about 450 miles. My Renault R-8 had been giving the rod
bearing rattle of death, so I dropped the pan and did a quick R & R of the
bearings. Problem is, no pan gasket, can't get one and we have to go. (BTW,
it's winter)
Driving the car shows that all is well except for the cloud of oil fumes
that follow us everywhere (the car is full of 3 people and luggage for 6)
and we get about thirty miles to a crankcase of oil. The engine holds three
or four quarts of oil, so we'll need about 45 quarts of oil to make it with
our total loss oiling system.
The solution: We go to the college chem lab and liberate some tygon tubing,
glass tubes, rubber stoppers and a tubing pinch cock and build a IV for the
car. Drill a hole through the oil cap, insert rubber stopper and tubing. Do
the same to a gallon jug, connect the two and invert the jug and tape it to
the roof of the car with roll of 200 MPH tape. Cut the bottom (now the top)
of the jug to make a flapped lid, fill with oil and put a garbage bag over
top to keep out the weather. Adjust pinch cock and drive around until we
can get about 70 miles range before the red light comes on.
Next, it's off to the recycled oil place for a bulk purchase. We can only
get about 10 qts of oil in the car, due to storage problems, but we plan
our route so we will run out close to an oil source.
Made it to Vancouver no problem except for being stopped once by the police
(he thought the car was on fire, given the cloud of smoke out the back)
Number Three
Same Renault. It had an aftermarket steering wheel, on which the splines
were very worn allowing the wheel to be moved without affecting the
direction of travel.
The solution: Leave the nut off, and jam the wheel on over a couple of
layers of notepaper. While driving, be carefull to always push and _never_
pull on the wheel. This worked fine, except the wheel sometimes popped off
while we were 4 bying (To my mind, if you can't drive in the bush with the
car, what the hell good is it?) due to bumps and holes in the "road." It
was also great for dealing with passengers who criticized your
driving...just hand them the wheel and say "Here, you drive." Shut 'em up
everytime.
I could go on, but I think you get the general idea. I am not a man to be
stopped by mere details, most of the time. OTOH, I have mellowed over the
years, I don't drive in the bush as much and I care alot more what my
transport looks like. I just don't seem to have the oppourtunity to create
bodges that I used to.
Yer Bodgeness,
Vern
_____________________________________________________________________
Vern Klukas I'm a little teapot
vernk@carver.dataflux.bc.ca or Short and...
ug141@freenet.victoria.bc.ca or
inkspot@carver.dataflux.bc.ca
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