What was your best DIY road side repair?

[MagillaGorilla]

Here is mine.

While traveling at night my alternator belt blew. I was able to get off the highway and into a parking lot. I don't have a toad and there was nothing around me that I could walk to.

I keep a battery charger in my MH. So I hooked it up to my chassis battery, ran a cord through the "dog house" on my gasser, fired up the gen set and plugged the charger in. Not only was I able to get all the way to my destination that night, I was able to drive the MH to a shop the next day and had all new belts put on it.

I have a few more stories but that is the best of my road side repairs.

[mdecastra]

I was driving a Van with a leak in the head gasket. Anti-freeze stuck the oil pressure swith to full and my oil filter was shot off. Was out of town and did not want to tow long distance. New oil filter shot again so I was stuck.

Drained the oil out of the engine. Put transmission fluid in the engine. Started the engine and watched the oil pressure gauge top out. Filter stayed on, and after about 15 seconds the oil pressure went down to nothing.

Immediately turned off the engine, drained the oil pan, installed new filter and new oil which allowed me to drive the van home and replace the head gasket.

[BrianinMichigan]

This is a little long....


We did 1700 miles in less than 7 days. We left Michigan on Wednesday the 25th. We Headed for Indianapolis for the evening. About 25 miles North of Indy we ran into a hail storm. The hail was about the size of a quarter. It busted holes in the bathroom vent and the refrigerator vent. The hail was coming down so much it was deafening inside the MH. I was shocked that the windshield did not break. After finding replacement parts in Indy we headed out on Friday morning for Pittsburg State University where my son was competing in a BAHA competition. We drove all day to get there for the next morning. Just North of Carthage MO. With the wife driving I start hearing a ticking noise from the engine. I jumped up to look at the oil pressure gauge and it was all over the place. We shut down the engine and pulled over on the freeway. I discovered that oil had blown all over the underbelly of the MH and all over the passenger’s side and rear of it also. I checked the dip stick and there was no oil on it. While I was waiting for the tow truck my son borrowed a car and brought a few gallons of oil. It took 6 quarts of oil to fill it back up. ( it takes 7.5 to fill it.) When I started the engine oil came blowing out of a switch assy which the oil pressure gauge is also a part of. ( a brass tee that ties into the engine oil port has this switch and pressure gauge sending unit on it) Well I thought that this was going to be an easy fix. The tow truck got me into Lamar Mo about midnight. While it was still up in the air on the tow truck I attempted to unscrew the switch. I had to use a pair of vise grips to grab it and it was tight, with a little more force and SNAP, the brass “T” that the switch was screwed into broke off flush on the engine block. After a few + words I gave up for the night. The tow truck driver was hooking up the driveshaft and he managed to break the bearing cup on the “U” joint. It was not a good night. He went into Joslin the next morning to get parts and all they had was the “U” joint. Once he got back he had brought a set of easy outs with him and proceeded to remove the broken off brass. After a few minutes he is cussing up a storm because he broke off the easy out. By now my nerves are shot and so are my wife’s. Well the easy out broke at the top and not flush like I was expecting. He tried to get out the easy out but the vise grips kept slipping. After a half an hour I gave my hand at it. I tapped on the side of the easy out while I was trying to back it out and it popped right out. So with that out he pulled the drive shaft and took it to the shop to put in the “U” joint. I attempted to pull out the brass piece with the next bigger easy out but it was not budging. I finally made the decision to thread a bolt into the brass so I could get home with it so I could fix it there. In my case of parts and pieces I found the perfect bolt and pushed it in hard while I was turning it with a ratchet. It threaded in with no problem. I backed it out, put a couple of steel washers on it and then a rubber washer, wrapped the heck out of it with Teflon tape and screwed it back in. I had the wife start the engine while I was looking and no oil leak. RELIEF! I ran the engine for 5 or so minutes and still no oil leak. SUCCESS! The driver showed up with the drive shaft installed it and by about 3:00pm Saturday afternoon we were back on the road. I had no oil pressure gauge and the switch that blew was for turning on the electric fuel pump. The mechanical pump worked fine all the way home except for the hills where the carb was a little starved for fuel. All of the way home I kept checking for an oil leak and nothing. Made it home with no more problems, What a shakedown trip for the first one of the year. Thanks to Jim Elliot and Randy/High5 for their support and advise because otherwise I would have went nuts.

[Dachristianman]

Had a 66 Mustang. My heater fan switch went out in the dead of winter around midnight after my swing shift at work. I repurposed a piece of wire (turned out to be some piece that operated my tail lights) and ran it from the battery to the blower motor. Worked fine until the splice grounded itself to some piece of metal under the dash and the entire wire heated up, glowed a bright orange, filled my entire car with smoke, and started dripping hot plastic on my leg. I slammed on the brakes, stopped in the middle of a large intersection and ripped the wire out. Was too tired to get a new piece of wire, so I hooked everything back up and drove home...toasty warm.

[ugh]

Wow. No one has a story of using panty hose or bra to fix something. It seems to be the norm to tell those kind of stories. Oh well..

[Carm]

Way back in the 70's. Recently broken up with a girlfriend, driving across town to visit my best friend. 2 blocks from his place I heard a popping and pinging from under the hood: V-belt! The alternator light came on and I lost power steering. I knew that I'd also lost the water pump.

I coasted up to his place and stopped on the street right in front of his house. Jumped out of the car, looked around, and there in the drive-way is my ex-gf's car. Looked at the house: in full view through the big picture window in the living-room is my best friend and my ex all wrapped up on the couch!

Luckily I was prepared. For car trouble, anyway. As quietly as I could I got the tool box out of the trunk and the spare V-belt I always carried, and that was the fastest and quietest belt replacement I'd ever done.

I got the hood closed, engine started, and as I was very carefully driving away I glanced at the house again. They were still doing whatever they were doing and hadn't noticed me performing a kamikaze car repair just outside the window.

I lost touch with my 'friend' after that, haven't seen or heard from him in over 40 years.

[Passin__Through]

My previous trailer was a PUP. One day while enroute home from camping, the passenger-side leaf spring decided it had had enough of bouncing around on our excellent and smooth Kalifornia roads (:R) and broke. I stopped when I was warned of smoke coming from the wheel well. I jacked up the trailer box and, in order to provide clearance between the tire and the wheel well, put a chunk of firewood atop the axle next to the spring mount and secured it with duct tape. A pair of ratchet straps, one to the front of the frame and one to the rear provided enough support to keep the axle in place and allowed me to tow the trailer the final 20 or so miles home. Speed was kept to 45mph for safety.

[jyrostng]

years ago I had a 84 Midas class c on a ford van chassis, 460 motor, the week before it started popping back through the carb, the timing was off so I changed the timing chain thinking it had jumped a notch. The following week we headed from Dallas to Ponca City Ok. for a motocross race. about 30 miles into the trip, on the expressway, it popped back a couple of times and died, I made it to the shoulder opened the hood, a cop showed up and told me I had to move it asap or they would call a wrecker. I popped off the distributor cap while the cop stood there and grabbed the rotor and it turned easily. the pin in the distributor gear had sheared off, I put a cotter key in it and it started and we drove to the nearest auto parts to get a split pin. recently on a 454 in a p30 I had a lower smog pump lock up, I had a spare and got it changed in less than a hour, I even had the new belt that burned off when it locked.

[is_it_friday_ye]

While hauling the 5th wheel a couple years ago on the freeway, my truck lost almost all power slowing me down to about 10 mph, conveniently between exits. I drove on the shoulder until the next exit (I refuse to work on something on the shoulder if avoidable) and the truck stalled at the top of the exit ramp. My DPF had filled up and never gave me any warning and I drive the truck hard too. I let it cool down for a few and got it restarted and pulled off the road and loosened the exhaust before the DPF and it fired right up. I drove home with a pretty much open exhaust and when I got home, deleted the ****. It has been perfect since (probably 50,000 miles).

[ugh]

I was driving down to Florida in 1992 on south bound lane and I saw a car hood opened and there was a small fire near the carb area and it was on the north bound lane. This was on a 4 lane highway, I pulled over and ran across the highway and grass median with my fire extinguisher. I put the fire out before it got out of control. I asked the man what happen, he said that the car stalled and he was using his lighter as his flashed light. I looked in the car, there were two kids sitting in the back seat and his wife was sitting behind the wheel. Not a very good move on his part. The worst part, the car started right up and they drive away. Whatever.

[DSDP_Don]

I had a childhood friend that we hung out with in our early 20's. He was a nice guy, but never very prepared. He invited us to go fishing at a local lake one Saturday. We were suppose to be at his house at 8:00am, by the time he was ready to go, it was 10:00am. As we were launching the boat, he got a flat on the boat trailer.....you guessed it, no spare. I ended up plugging the hole with a rubber worm. It worked well and got us home.

[MagillaGorilla]

While driving the MH my lights would flash and the gauges would all spike, then it would go back to normal. Also engine power would cut out when it happened. Just as I was taking an exit ramp off one highway onto another it happened again but this time it was a total blackout and nothing came back on. It was nighttime, I had now power, no motor and no lights. Oh and I was going up hill.

Somehow and I don't know how, we made it to the top of the hill, took an exit, coasted down the off ramp, into a traffic circle that had not a single car in it, through to the other side and safely into a parking lot. If you could see where this happened you would never believe we made it to where we did.

When I opened the motor access panel in the front of the RV I found the problem....rather quickly. My battery box had decided it no longer wanted to go on vacations with us so it left us. The battery was just swinging by the cables. When the positive touched any metal it arced out and that was what was causing our problems. So with the limited tools I had with me and some ratchet straps I made a new battery box and secured it to the frame.

the positive cable end had melted off so I had no good way to connect the battery to it. Thank God for Visegrips!! I used a pair like they were terminal connectors. Started the RV up and made it to our destination. Then 2 days later I drove it home the same way. I fixed it the right way later that week.

[draboo]

Driving thru Salina,KS a few years ago, temp was 102F. We needed more interior cooling, so I found a hardware store that had a portable floor model AC unit. I went to pay for it and found my credit card was gone. I panicked, ran out of the store and back to the motorhome, which was a '92 Fleetwood Flair in not so good condition. I opened up the door and took one step up, lost my balance, fell backwards and pulled the door right off of the motorhome on my way down to the pavement. I was beyond angry, almost actually seeing red. I picked up the door and almost smashed it on the pavement, but thankfully some little voice way back in my head told me that wasn't a very good idea. My DW was trying real hard on to laugh. After I calmed down, I went into the hardware store, purchased the AC unit, some sheet metal,tin snips, and self tapping screws and rebuilt the door and rehung it in the parking lot,while sweating profusely. Oh, and my credit card was in the cup holder. But I DID lose my debit card 2 days later!

[rollingslow]

Spun a rod bearing in a 64 ford in mountains droped pan fixed it with a small peace of foil between cap and bearing drove it several weeks before i sold it

[MrWizard]

RLS7201 wrote:

MrWizard wrote:
not if the relay is energized by the weak chassis battery
and may RV's have weak converters that do not charge well, with very low amps
the 40amp or more converters NOW common, did not use to be common

an RV with a Diode isolator is not going to charge the chassis battery period
the jump start function is only momentary
although with a good converter, a jumper cable between house positive and chassis positive, would do the trick

It depends on how the diode isolator(s) is/are configured. Some will charge the chassis battery.

Then there are jumper cables to tie the two battery banks together.



Richard

diode types charge everything from the alternator
there is NO back feed configuration to run power from the house side to the engine side
and i have yet to see the house converter connected to the center feed post of a diode isolator so it could charge everything when on shore power

and yes jumper cable hot to hot
i think I mentioned that in a previous post