Hi.
Having worked on so many different cars, I've seen countless bodges like the
leather big ends. Here are a few of my favourites...
A flexible hydraulic hose made of plastic fuel line. Blew up like a balloon
each time the pedal was pressed. Fortunately, it was a clutch line-rather
than brake- on a Morris Marina.
A very noisy TVR (Triumph) gearbox filled with paint (household gloss)
MGB lever shocks ditto.
A Morris Minor van axle 'silenced' by being wrapped with about 20 old inner
tubes.
A Daimler V8 with 'sills' (rocker panels) made of wetted newspapers (i.e.
papier mache) with a skin of filler over. The newspapers were dated three
years earlier.
A lightweight E-type Jaguar, which had thrown a conrod. The block had been
filled with glass fibre-someone had even made a mould to reproduce the
cast-iron surface-and nicely painted. This 'repair' fell out, followed by a
load of oil and smoke when the car was being warmed up prior to changing to
hard plugs for a hillclimb.
And my most favourite, brought into the Jaguar Driver's Centre (where I
worked), for 'tuning'...
The elderly owner of a Jaguar XJ6 wanted to save some petrol, so he...
Took out Nos. 1 & 2 pistons.
Fitted leather strips, held in place with Jubilee clips, to the bare crank
journals to keep the oil pressure up.
Ground the relevant lobes off the camshafts.
Gutted the two spark plugs, leaving them without electrodes but filled with
epoxy adehsive so they would seal.
Unfortunately, his 'XJ4' never quite ran properly....
Dave Hill
> Folks at world,
>
> I have heard of sawdust, and nylon stockings for gearboxes - the latter
> being more fun. But the best I experienced was a Morris 8 obtained from
> the local scrap yard that was suffering big and small end failures. Being
> skint students we fashioned bearings from leather and re-assembled with
> gobs of molyslip the wonder molybdium bisulphate slick stuff. It ran fine
> so, out of curiosity, we stripped it only to find beautifully polished
> leather bearings. We put it back together and decided to sell it for #5.
> A rather unpopular (rich) student bought it but as he paid his money we
> told him "...it has leather bearings". He laughed as he drove away with
> a shout that he would look after the leather bearings ha-ha. The car ran
> for months thereafter until he went down at which time we lost touch.
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