nh7cy

I dedicate this thread the ingenious roadside save.

I'll start with one of mine.

My friends and I were on our way to Santa Cruz in the n/a one weeknight when the bolt holding the alternator tensioning bar came off. The high pitched squealing coming from the loose belt let us know that something was wrong. We were 20 miles from the nearest town, and at that hour, everything would have already been closed. Pulling to the side of the road I checked under the car and confirmed the bolt was indeed missing, the bar was held in by the one remaining bolt. Scouring through my car I found a broken piece of coat hanger. Using this, I looped it twice through the hole where the old bolt once was and wrapped it tightly together using my pliers. It survived 250 miles without stretching until I was able to replace it with the proper bolt and would have easily held up longer.

Will Feather

Mighty Shilling

I have a similar story...

this was at midnight in December... about -10 degrees out. cold as hell. driving down the road, belt starts squealing. I thought it was because it was so dern'd cold out... the same bolt you talked about backed out... the alternator light comes on, and I lose power... pull into a bank parking lot, and call AAA for a tow. thought I had major electrical issues, or the alternator had seized.

So, I'm poking and prodding in the engine bay, freezing my ***** off with no light to see anything other than the light from my cell phone (the hood light mysteriously didn't work). so I eventually reach down to the alternator belt, and it's loose... so I call my home roadside assistance, and dispatch dad with some tools. I jack the car up and call AAA to cancel, as I wanna save all those tows for real break downs. dad arrives 20 minutes later with tools, and I pull off the metal belly pan, only to realize the bolt ain't in there... and we had no spare bolts...

Luckily, I looked at the belly pan, and the BOLT IS STUCK IN ONE OF THE LOUVERS! I fish it out, and then bolt it back up, get a jump, and drive off.

And then there is my friend's MacGyver repair... He was backing out of a parking spot, and the piece of rebar that holds the parking blocks in caught his radiator support... thus, twisting it and pushing his radiator out of place... little does he know, now the lower radiator hose was riding on the power steering pulley... it saws thru, and he's SOL. he pulls off the hose at home, cuts a half inch off, and then wraps the severed section with saran wrap... then duct tape, then more saran wrap, and more duct tape... put the hose on, made sure it cleared the pulley, and ran it until he got the initial problem fixed...6 months later... he might still be using that hose...

KuHL 951

This is an old one from two years ago I posted while miles from home and the CV's were screaming after a fast drive with the locals. We were going up the coast for 7 days and this was Day 1 in a very non-German car town.

Tenacious_G

Another alternator issue, on the track my alternator chewed a hole through an errant coolant hose that found its way too close. Andy K cut the hose in two places on either end of the hole, then used a 16 mm socket to connect the hoses together. Then he cinched the hose tight around the socket with some type of wire that's used to fix CF racing bicycles. Then he wrapped it in duct tape. When I got the new hose, I took the tape off and found it was free of moisture! nine-4-4 receives my vote of confidence for the MacGyver Award!

yellowline

Duct-taped a heater core hose and drove ~5 miles home. Not much else you can do on an early car.

Hitting the AFM when the car idles poorly is also a great ghetto fix. Can't wait to install the AFM I bought...only 10k miles on it.

Calmchaos

On my way to pick up my friend, about 20 feet from her house my alternator tensioner fell off because the bolt holding it to the block snapped.
I had enough juice to drive to her house, she ended up driving us around in her old Camaro.

When we got back I decided to jack up the car and try to fix it. Luckily I found a golf spike remover which happened to be the PREFECT shape and size to wedge it between the alternator and the oil pan.
It held tension on the belt long enough for me to get home, and it fell out the exact second I shut the engine off.

I'm sure the car did it on purpose because it was my friend's ex girl. Not to mention while I was under the car she tripped on the jack and almost killed me.
She thought the whole day was funny as hell.

nh7cy

that sounds a whole lot like Good luck Chuck

seriously though, its kind of good having a couple of girls in the car when something alternator-ish goes wrong, when it happened to me, we were stuck in traffic and had everyone staring at us. thats about when the girls thought it would be fun for the girls to lean out the windows and start singing out loud..

it covered the noise alright!

MyBlackCar

That is truly ghetto in the best way. And I thought nothing could top my friend's makeshift heatshield that was installed by the PO made out of Costco chicken bake (I even recognized the crumbs).

I had the bolt problem with the A/c tensioner. Luckily, I caught it during the belt tensioning teardown. God bless blue loctite.

JayP

These repairs are in the manual if you grew up on old British roadsters.

PorscheDude1

When I first started driving I had an 84 GTI Rabbit, the water pump belt broke.

I remembered an old trick someone had told me which worked.

I just happened to be near a supermarket, I walked in and bought some pantyhose. Needless to say I got a strange look.

I then took my newly acquired pantyhose and wrapped it around the pulleys as tight as I could and tied them off to make a new water pump belt. This new nylon belt got home 30 miles away.

sharky47

^^^^^^
That is freaking awesome.......I'll have to remember that - does it work for timing belts?

PorscheDude1

You might have to get studded pant hose for it to grip the gear.

pjburges

Found a rip in my CV joint boot while on a drive through south Texas (middle of nowhere.) I caught it quick enough at the gas station that not much of the grease escaped because I happened to have some window and door caulk and I caulked the tear shut and its never broken back open (its been almost 10K.)

I distinctly remember taking my car for its first drive after I got it out of the junkyard. It had no fenders no hood no paint etc etc. I went for a drive through the nicest part of Austin (Westlake Hills) and the belt cut through the coolant hose (I could smell the burning rubber.) Running out of time, I quickly pulled up a driveway to this rather nice mansion that had a great looking 930 and a brand new GT3 sitting in front of a 5 or 6 car garage. I parked in the drivethrough entryway next to the sculpture fountain, walked of the white marble stairs and knocked on the door. I asked for some duct-tape, and the man who lived there just started laughing his *** off. I fixed my leak (which was had leaked all the way up his drive) and was on my way. It held up for about 5 or 6mi till I got home.

Mamooguy

This summer, during the first section of my road trip (Toronto --> L.A.) I was near the north face of the Grand Canyon when I noticed the unmistakable scent of exhaust fumes, plus the car was running way louder than usual. This was in the midst of an extremely long driving day (sixteen or so hours, Bryce Canyon (Utah) --> Grand Canyon --> Los Angeles), and I was in the middle of nowhere -- plus I had a nonrefundable Priceline.com hotel booking in L.A. I had to make.

I pulled over, looked at the exhaust, but it seemed okay. Then popped the hood and saw the problem: the exhaust had separated from the spot where it meets the Y-pipe -- I'd just had it done before leaving Toronto, and clearly the mechanic hadn't torqued the bolts properly because ALL THE BOLTS WERE GONE, as was the gasket.

Well, fine. I drove the right wheels onto a curb to give me some clearance underneath, and grabbed my socket set. First of all the exhaust was nuclear frickin' hot, I kept burning my hands (and melting my disposable latex gloves). Secondly I didn't have any replacement bolts. Third I didn't have a replacement gasket.

For bolts, I scoured the car and removed them from spots that looked able to withstand a missing bolt (I think I only needed three). For a gasket I pressed a piece of paper against the end of the pipe, letting the grime form a stencil, cut it out with my trusty Swiss Army Knife, then used it as a template to make a gasket out of a scrap bit of cardboard (from a small box containing the 12v spare tire air compressor I bought before leaving home). I put it all together and started up again.

The whole way to L.A. I kept expecting to smell the cardboard gasket burning, but by some miracle it didn't burn. Taking it to a Porsche mechanic for servicing, he said it was singed like hell but hadn't actually burned -- which was lucky, because I also have an oil leak that drips onto the exhaust pipe.