Question of the Week: What’s Your top Temporary Fix That Turned Permanent?—WINNER’S UPDATE
WINNER’S ANNOUNCEMENT:
Happy New Year! We’re back to announce the winner for our Question of the Week, where our victor will accept a $25 credit for a hat or T-shirt from the BaT Gear Store and the acclaim of their peers.
Our question this week was: What’s your best temporary fix that turned permanent?
Thanks to everyone who participated! We brushed the dust off our idle laptops—asleep from the holidays—and got right to work reading your responses, which featured various amounts of JB Weld, baling wire, food and beverage cans, and other random objects for perfectly cromulent fixes. This week, we’re leaning on the most-liked comment (our People’s Choice!), and awarding the prize to BaT member @sinclair:
Image: TFL
Now, let’s take a look at some other popular nominations from this week’s discussion thread, starting with a comment from BaT user @BigBolt :
I’m looking forward to reading stories from zip ties to duct tape (or gorilla, usually) to baling wire and the channel locks shown in the intro photo.
Mine, though, was good old JB Weld. Between sessions on track, my race car’s radiator sprang a leak. My wonderful wife graciously agreed to drive into town and buy this stuff she’d never heard of. My quickie repair took less than twenty minutes, and I didn’t miss a session that day, including the main race. And since the radiator never dripped another drop—that fix was permanent.
“The beer can I flattened to wrap around an old Volvo exhaust. Most 240 owners know exactly where that bend in the pipe is located. Sure can’t beat beer cans, baling wire and duct tape for solving many of life’s little problems that crop up from time to time.”
@Ranchero65 says:
Not mine, but in the family. Many years ago, my granddad had an Imperial with a 440 engine.
Somewhere along the line, something happened, causing the alternator tensioning device to be inoperable. The quick fix was jamming a screwdriver between the AC compressor and the alternator, handle down on the AC, shaft vertical, with the blade jammed against the side of the alternator. It turned out the screwdriver was the exact length needed to properly tension the alternator belt. Years later, after Granddad’s death, the car passed to his oldest son, my uncle. At a family gathering, we were all looking at the car, reminiscing, and my uncle opened the hood and pointed to the screwdriver, still in place, doing its duty.
“My best temporary fix that turned permanent? Turn the music up every time your passenger starts complaining about the power seat controls not working.”
Just don’t forget to temporarily lower it down when looking for that one coveted parking spot!
@SteveIOMTT wrote in with a number of fixes this week, and this comment was the most-liked one of the bunch:
#1:
It was -10°F at 2am on a Saturday, in the country on a two-lane state route somewhere near Le Roy, Illinois, when the problem began.
We were on the way home from a rock and roll job. We were surrounded by bare fields with a wicked wind blowing when the headlights and even the dash lights began to get dimmer and dimmer. It was apparent that we didn’t have long when the engine began to run a little rough.
We pulled into a farmer’s lot, which had a utility light that gave us just enough sickly-greenish light shining through the van’s windshield to see the engine with the in-the-van, between the seats, engine cover raised.
The 1968 Dodge Tradesman was powered by a slant six. The engine leaned right (aft looking forward) like one bank of a V-12. The alternator was pretty much on top of the engine. The problem was easy to see: the alternator’s adjuster bolt was long gone.
We were getting really cold as we had very light jackets and no hats or gloves. The van had only a cardboard headliner. It was like an icebox. If we couldn’t fix the problem, we were going to get really cold, and the snake might die.
We had no tools.
Luckily, Bill, the head roadie, was a slob. Bill never cleaned out the van. I scrounged all over the van, glovebox and all.
Collecting the disparate trash (like in Apollo 13), I was able to wedge a shoe tree, an asphalt shingle, and a used paint roller between the engine block and the alternator. A coat hanger (they used to be made out of 1/16” d wire) held the bundle in place.
We made it home, and the snake was relieved.
Bill was to have the van repaired the next day, before the next night’s gig at Eastern Illinois University. But like Afroman, Bill got high instead.
We drove the 120-mile round trip to the job with no adjuster bolt.
The wedge held.
“Wasn’t mine, a co-worker owned a ‘77 Ford Pinto “Cruising Wagon” with a sunroof. She popped open the sunroof on the freeway and it flew off. Where are you gonna get a replacement? After that the car was often seen, parked, with a big golf umbrella protruding through the hole in the roof.”
@C.Flint writes:
There must be other VW owners who had no money and marginal mechanical skills back in the day. Our 1967 Squareback was a NH car so you know it was pretty rusty in 1977. After too many cold days and nights driving with no heat coming through the “heater” vents, I came up with a plan. Flexible steel duct tubing (you know the kind with the circular ridges) of the right size could wedge over the heat exchanger outlet. The tubing could be snaked through the rusted out body and led forward to the drivers seat. We now had a deluxe 2-position convenience which could either defrost the icy windshield or warm the feet…but not both at the same time! This got us through two winters before selling the car to a friend with a farm in PA. Unfortunately, my repair did not prevent the seat from falling through the floor pan while his mother-in-law was passenger on rutted country road.
“I bought a Toyota to tide me over until I could afford a Mercedes. By then, Mercedes didn’t build anything I wanted to drive. This actually worked out quite well.”
That’s it for this week’s question of the week! Thanks again to everyone who participated, and congratulations once again to our winner, sinclair.
We’re shifting gears to our annual BaT Awards, so that means QotW will be taking a brief intermission. In the meantime, be sure to subscribe to the BaT Awards category page so you don’t miss out!
ORIGINAL POST:
Welcome to the BaT Question of the Week! For those unfamiliar, here are the rules: we ask an automotive-themed question, and the author of our favorite answer from the comments is awarded a $25 credit to the BaT Gear Store.
This week, we’re asking: What’s your best temporary fix that turned permanent?
As dyed-in-the-wool car people, most of us have cobbled together stopgap repairs at some point, uttering those famous last words: I’ll fix it later. Yet somehow, those offhand fixes end up working well enough and become part of the car’s perpetual existence.
You get the point, so we’ll get right to it this week:
What’s your best temporary fix that turned permanent?
Tell us about it in the comments, and give a thumbs-up to any other nominations you deem worthy. We’ll announce the winner on Monday.
Late one snowy night in Seattle, the battery finally ate through the last bits of the floor pan underneath it in my 1970 VW Beetle convertible, and fell to the ground. I was close to the Dick’s Drive In Queen Anne location, so I walked over for a Deluxe and fries, to noodle on the fix. As I noshed, I stared at the tray the food was on. Spoke briefly to the bored guy at the counter, told him my situation, and he said, “Take it.” It was still in place when I sold it many moons later. P.S.: those trays also worked well for sledding down Queen Anne Hill in the snow…
Triple duty for the food tray, including serving up a rapid trip down the hills! Congratulations, sinclair! Be sure to check your email to claim the prize.