I believe the winner of Jalopnik's Worst Car Hack competition has to be the fuel pump finger tapper.
There are, however, a number of other worthy entries.
I believe the winner of Jalopnik's Worst Car Hack competition has to be the fuel pump finger tapper.
There are, however, a number of other worthy entries.
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3 May 2007 at 12:46 am
My first car was a Datsun 180B that had a serious cooling problem. Driving it down to Torquay one summer the gauge was constantly in the red, so we did everything we could think of to help cool the motor down. Chocked up the bonnet with some wooden blocks (and then tied the bonnet down with bungee straps), to increase air flow over it. Soaked rags in water and laid them over the engine, hoping that evaporative cooling would do the trick. Pulled the pipe off the windscreen washers, and pointed it at the engine so I could squirt more water over the engine as we drove.
Needless to say, that car died a smoky, oily mess just a year or so later. A friend borrowed it one night and came back hours later than expected. The police had stopped him and given him a canary. But he _did_ manage to get the police to help him bump-start it afterwards. :)
Same friend had a petrol-pump fail on the way back from a fishing trip. He hacked a hand-pump from his boat into the petrol line (one of those black rubber balls that you have to squeeze), and his brother had to lean out the window, squeezing that pump all the way home.
My next car was an old Cortina. At one stage, the gear lever ripped out of the top of the gear box. I was too much of a poor student to buy a new gear-stick (the plastic threads on the joint were completely stripped), so managed to get by for a while, sticking my finger in the top of the gear box, and pushing the lever around. I could only find two gears like that, though, so I did end up shelling out for a new part.
3 May 2007 at 11:16 am
Matt, that all sounds remarkably like several episodes of the ABC's Bush Mechanics...
3 May 2007 at 5:17 pm
Those old tick-tick Lucas fuel pumps often used to jam once they'd got some hours on them, and the best way to unjam them was to whack them. I once saw a Morris Minor with an elaborate arrangement of bungee cords suspending an 8 inch shifter just above the pump. When the engine started to cough, the driver just bounced along the gravel verge for a bit.