Feds

I spent tonight bypassing the neutral safety switch on my cherokee.

I ran a new wire to the starter solenoid, in through the heater fan grommet, up to an old emergency stop switch I confescated from a job site (because it is not maintained), and spliced into the power window wiring to power it all.

This, of course is on my bush buggy, so prettiness is not required. On my RX-7, I went so far as to get a hose nipple and a pipe cap to block the feed for the air injection to the cat.

Then there was the ottawa meet where I fixed my brake line with compression fittings, or the other one where we fixed a pulsation dampener with a dime and some JB.

So, in an effort to spice things up around here: What are your best ghetto fixes. Post pics if you have them.

R.P.M.

iTrader: (3)

Oh man...sooo many stories.

I tried putting an FC front end on an FB once...with alot of zip ties




I had a 1991 Protege GT about 3-4 years ago. It had the N/A 1.8 BP engine which took out my GT trans twice and trannies are hard to find for those. So I bought a buddies MX-6 GT with an F2T 2.2L turbo engine. Figured I might be able to swap the torque monster F2T engine into my Pro.
I asked around on ClubProtege forums and everyone said a swap like that couldn't be done. Not enough room, engine and trans wont fit bettween the frame rails ect.
So of course I do it anyways. I got the engine to fit, had everything in the car ready to go. Axles, shifter, rad, FMIC, exhaust.....and then the wiring nightmare was needed to get it running. Well I pretty much gave up on it and sold the car as a roller to a kid in Newmarket who just wanted the engine.

theory

iTrader: (5)

While removing the transmission crossmember the bolts broke in the transmission. In a desperate attempt, which is never good, I drilled it out, used threaded Weld Tabs with some JB to secure them in the pockets on each side where the crossmember bolts to the tranny. I then just used some bolts that threaded into the weld tabs to mount the crossmember.

Lasted a solid season, will be replaced this winter properly.

Terrh

iTrader: (7)

This summer just after doing a transmission swap in my GTR (stripped 3rd gear out... oops).. I went to milan dragway, didn't realize that unlike st. thomas they actually prep the track.

1st launch attempt was ~9000RPM clutch dump, and the car dead hooked. went like hell in 1st, shifted into 2nd but I couldn't find the gear.. coasted to a stop with a scraping noise coming out the bottom....

I managed to rip both of the passenger (left) side bolts out of the trans mount, one broke and the other actually pulled through the mount.

Unbolted the one that was still attached to the car, managed to get the other bolt out with my fingers (no stress on it, so it was easy to unthread), found a bolt that fit and a 3/4" thick piece of steel with a slot cut into it and made a new mount end.. Come to think of it, it's still like that right now.....

Terrh

iTrader: (7)

oh, probably the best "ghetto fix" I've ever done...

shortly after christmas, 2004 (I think, might've been 2003) the starter died in my '84 b2200 diesel. I had no money and nowhere to work on it since I was living in brantford, so I push started it and then didn't turn it off again until sometime in march. Zero work required and even the coldest days of the winter I didn't have to worry about it starting in the morning, lol

Feds

Wow. Just wow.

coldfire

iTrader: (1)

wow you guys are nuts, haha.

i honestly can't think of anything ghetto i did with the RX-7. i am the type of person that will put a rubber cap on an unused intake manifold nipple, but fill it with high-temp silicone first, AND use a stainless steel screw band.


i have however ghetto fixed a head gasket on a Honda civic once.
i did it outside on the side of the street.
didn't even take the timing belt off, just left it loose without even marking where it was sitting.
and we didn't resurface the engine head either.
slapped it back together and somehow it started and ran. compression on the one cylinder was about 30psi less than the others, but that car ran for 2 years and then was sold. who knows, maybe it is still running!

JIMMY54

iTrader: (2)

I've had a few adventures...rear suspension arm tore off body (still attached to axle) So ripped out some speaker wire and tied it up and onto the passenger seat.

2 weeks ago on the way home from barrie in my winter car, the alternator bracket broke and bent/broke all the fins on the alt fan. Found a bungee cord on the side of the 400 and some rope....Tied it back on. Drove all the way to brampton like that.

Trots*88TII-AE*

iTrader: (11)

Sure as hell wouldn't be doing that at $1+/L diesel nowadays!!!

I had to use duck tape once to keep a balljoint/control arm together for a ride home. I'd say anything with duck tape can be considered Ghetto.

23Racer

I have hundreds of them. Some of my favorites;

At Mosport in 2001. We put some long 1/2" Moroso wheel studs in the rear hubs. As usual we were running let so we put the wheels on the car and went to the track. Went out for first practice and the car wouldn't roll and acted like the parking brake was on. Pulled it apart and found that the larger knurl on the new studs was holding the rear rotor about 1/8" further to the outside and we had burnt the outer pad to almost the metal and created enough heat to melt the seals out of the rear calipers. I drilled out the rotors using a borrowed drill and a 9/16 drill bit. I ran into Scarboro Mazda and Al lent me a pair of rebuilt calipers he had on the shelf. Ran back to the track and went to put them on. #$%@ they were for the vented rotors and I was using non-vented rotors. Think, think, think...., took the burnt out pads, chiped of the remaining brake pad material drilled a hole through where the locating pin was and used the pads as a spacer plate with the new pads. We could use the calipers and race. Went out and the brakes worked fine and finished second in the race. No duct tape, but pretty ghetto.

At Mosport in 1992, 24 Hour Toronto Star Firestone Firehawk Race. We rolled the Suzuki Swift in Qualifying. Banged out the panels and installed a windshield the morning of the race. Held the window in with (TA DA!!!!!) duct tape and started the race. In the 3rd hour I was sandwiched between a Civic and a Camaro and riddemn into the wall on the back straight. I managed to drive it back to the pits where we ended up replacing both control arms, taped over the holes where the headlights were, replaced one of the driving lights with 1 off of a crew guys car and went out again. 2 hours later it started jumping out of gear and we found the rear motor mount had broken. brought the car in and used racers tape and tie wire to hold it all together. We finished the race and finished 8th in a 27 car class.

Montreal 1995, Honda Civic race. I was crew chiefing for a friend. We kept him out all night in the fleshpots of Montreal. He went out to the mock grid at 7:30 in the morning for an 8:00 am grid. Started the race from the second row, got to the second corner and drove stright into the wall and pin balled from wall to wall. Knocked off 3 corners. He had to drive the car back to Toronto, so I ended up having to straighten the control arms with bottle and floor jacks. Fixed the torn boots with duct tape and tie wraps and used tie wire to tie 3 of the rubber brake lines back onto the car. The rear line had been torn off so I remember the vise grip trick, folded over the line, clamped it between the jaws of the Vise Grips, wrapped the whole thing up with duct tape and tied it to the chassis. He managed to get the car to the shop and it was repaired in time for the next race. It was later written off flipping end over end in Turn 4 at Mosport and as far as I know is still sitting behind a body shop in Woodbridge.

I have tons more about ghetto fixes to my street cars like fixing my fuel line by running the rubber hose from the back of the car to the front along the passenger side underneath duct tape or holding doors closed with seatbelts, but enough for now.

Eric

Terrh

iTrader: (7)

awesome

rd_turbo

iTrader: (4)

While on my last year of race supprt for Kenworth at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb in Colorado Springs with the suspension setup that I designed for their race truck with coilover front and airover rear monotubes, toward the end of the last practice day, I ran out of options for changing the spring rate on the rear shocks and the air springs that I had brought with me didn't have the characteristics that I wanted to go to. The spring perches needed to come up so I could change the rate of progression. I needed some pieces of tubing, so I went into town and found a local fab shop that only had square tubing. I picked up a couple of pieces with the right inside dimention to fit the OD of the damper bodies and brought the piston up. Then I needed to change the mid-stroke rate and needed to reduce the air volume inside. Since I didn't have the tools to cut the rubber sleeve and recrimp it, the only way I was able to reduce the air volume was by adding a quantity of water inside the air spring. It worked like a champ in terms of balancing the front and rear of the vehicle.

Feds

The genesis of the thread. I am particularly proud of the princess auto tarp repair tape holding the wires to the dashboard.

Nick86

iTrader: (1)

Awesome thread. Over the years I've had a myriad of sub $400 winter cars that have been kept alive with contraptions that would make MacGyver proud. One stands out though...

I used to own a 1990 2wd Subaru Loyale Sedan. The car was supposed to be white, but rust was the primary colour. I bought the car for $100 from my Mom's co-worker who was terribly concerned he had ripped me off! lol

Anyway, at the time I was a Bishop's University and would drive home to Montreal once every 6 weeks or so for the weekend. On one weekend in February I set off along the highway not knowing that my rear subframe had the strength of wet paper due to rust. To cut a long story short, the subframe colapsed at about 120kph causing the right rear to rest againt the springs blowing out the tire in short order. I changed the tire to the spacesaver at the next wigh stater, but about 2 minutes later it too exploded. Undeterred, I drove the next 60kms without changing the tire. There sure wasn't much left of that thing when I got home! lol

I now had 48 hours and $7.12 to fix it. The rear cross member on Subes of that generation was a hollow tube that run across the car in front of the rear wheels, and it had split in between the two mounting points for the rear trailing arm. I ended up taking a sawzall and cutting away the bodywork to gain access to the open end of the "tube". I then went to the hardware store and bought about 15 pounds of 3 foot long rebar and some foot long "tent peg" Style nails. After jacking the car up and lining the tube pieces up I proceeded to stuff all the rebar in the tube wedging it in place. I packed in the "nails" with a sledge hammer and sat the car back down. Success! Theat crossmember lasted the rest of the life of the car and I still think it was stronger (and heavier lol) than the original!

rd_turbo

iTrader: (4)

That dash and Hurst shifter got me all horned up

Black91n/a

So how do you ghetto fix it if the silicone is sucked into the engine? There's a reason they're capped and not plugged.

Terrh

iTrader: (7)

Did you take pics of that and post it here? I seem to remember.


this thread is actually "ghetto mods" and we sorta got off topic.

my favourite "ghetto mod" of all time (and I got alot of **** for it too, to this day I still don't know why, is my wooden motor mount pucks that are STILL IN MY 10AE today. My stock mounts were shot... lock nut + bolt + chunk of 2x4 cut to the size of a motor mount puck = works wonderfully. I should take some pictures. 5 years later they're still going strong! Nice and solid, too.

Nick86

iTrader: (1)

I probably did actually! I took some pics of it at the time (non digital of course) but I have no idea where they are now.....

OMG your wooden mounts are still going strong? Awesome.

23Racer

This goes back to my youth. I was a starving High School student driving my 1964 Ford Galaxie with its booming 223 Silent Lash 6 cylinder. I had it on Cragar 5 spokes with F70x14 and G50x15 Playboy Astro GT's on it. I wanted it to be so cool, but like all students I didn't have any money. One day at the dump (don't ask), I was there when Attersley Tire was dumping off a load of junk. I looked over and there was a worn out set of Mickey Thompson Indy Profile tires in an L50x15 size and a rusted out twin pipe muffler from a Spitfire GT.

Of course I scooped them up and put them in my truck to take home. Quickly I replaced the good Playboy's with the bald M/T's. To clear the fender openings I had to buy some shackles and put them at the highest settings. Real nose bleed and a rake that required you to keep your seat belt on to stop from sliding out of the seat under braking.

For the mufflers, I hack sawed them apart and decided to make duals. I found an 8' length of 2 inch steel pipe in my dad's shop, now I just needed a y pipe. Think, think, think.... BINGO a plumbing Y-pipe as used to join 2 kitchen sinks together. Some hack sawing, some muffler tape and duct tape to make the joints and BINGO a dual outlet exhaust system dumping out in front of the rear tires.

So, that night I pushed my Fog Hat Fool for the City 8 track into my Sparkomatic player, cranked it to 11 through my $9.99 Consumers Distributing no-name 6" speakers and went out to impress the babes. I spent the night winding it out in 1st gear and the car sounded like some mad Triumph TR6, but I thought I was cool anyways.

Eric

Feds

I know those words, but this post doesn't make any sense

also:

These'd look sweet on the jag

http://hamilton.kijiji.ca/c-cars-veh...QAdIdZ83665597

23Racer

Oh Jamie, you are just to youthful and full of life to understand those words. Only us old geezers truly understand the power and might of Foghat's Fool for the City. It got me many babes, especially cranked out of my garbled 8 watt 8-Track player. It was second only to Fleetwood Mac Rumours, anything by Budgie and Scorpion's Speedys Coming.

The best babe music was Manilow's Copacabana and Striesand's Evergreen, but it always made a bit of vomit appear in the back of my mouth.

Snrub

iTrader: (1)

Lol. Until then Wosca never had a tech inspection and had never kicked anyone out of an event.

All hail the king.

orion84gsl

iTrader: (5)

When I was removing the shutter valve from my intake mani, I needed something to plug the hole, since as we all know, vacuum leaks suck. (teehee, see what I did there?) I couldn't be bothered to go to the hardware store to find a suitable plug, so after some careful eyeballing I pulled out the "trusty" (read: POS Jobmate) rotary tool and cut down the shaft from the valve and used JBweld to hold it in the hole.

When installing my rear speakers (stock-6", replacements-6.5") I had to cut the holes larger to fit the basket. So I used the trim ring to trace the proper size, then used shears to cut the metal into little pointy pieces. Unfortunatly because of the angle I was working on I couldn't actually remove most of the metal, so I just took a hammer to the edge and pushed all the jagged metal towards the inside of the hole. One of these days I'll take the speakers out and actually cut the metal out.

One ghetto tool was created when I was changing my trans fluid over to Amsoil. I didn't have a hand pump, and again, couldn't be bothered to go buy one (seems to be a pattern). So I used two funnels and two brass fittings, one a straight and one a 45*, jammed the bottom of one funnel into the fittings, and held the other funnel over the first one and poured the oil into it.

theory

iTrader: (5)

When I replaced my speakers with my dads stock pontiac speakers he had lying around I need to make an adapter. But I had no metal... I looked around and found two plastic pail lids.... Yup I did it. I cut the lids and for 2 years 2 blue plastic pail lids are what keeps my speakers in place. I'm not proud but it works, I need to make some out of metal one day...

Nismo Convert86

iTrader: (7)

Just think Jamie, if your Heep was engineered at all they would have installed the button from the factory like Toyotas; this thread never would have started.