Top tips for “get you home” repairs.

[JackyJoll]

[Trinity765]

Duct tape, cable ties, elastic band, chewing gum?

[KungFooBob]

Bit of jb weld will fix that.

[DefTrap]

I'm over 40k miles into a JBWeld get-you-home fix on the moighty 406.

[Skub]

It's a cracker.

[Felix]

I had a bit valve stem in one of my pistons

[Kneerly Down]

I thought the old one was cooks matches and paper clips for distributor arms, but that doesn't do much for modern vehicles.
Now it's more alligator clips, a reel of cable and low-temp solder connectors, plus a small cooks blowtorch for said connectors.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I'm over 40k miles into a JBWeld get-you-home fix on the moighty 406.

Carbon fibre is nought but JB weld with fancy string in it anyway.

[DefTrap]

Carbon fibre is nought but JB weld with fancy string in it anyway.

TBF this was JBWeld splodged into a leaking core plug (accessed by feel only down the back of the motor and firewall), which I fully expected to fail fairly immediately given the likelihood of access causing a poor repair and also numerous subsequent heat cycles.

[Mr. Dazzle]

My brother did exactly the same fix on a Ford Sierra, lasted about a week

So there you are, the spectrum of success is quite wide.

[mangocrazy]

I've used epoxy putty to good effect in the past. When screwing into floorboards I came across a 'hard bit' and instead of backing off and thinking about it I persisted and screwed into a central heating pipe. Epoxy putty came to the rescue there and the 'fix' has lasted well over 20 years. Apparently you can get putty that's specific to the task in hand - I just used one size fits all stuff.

https://jenolite.com/metal-epoxy-putty/

[Demannu]

Carbon fibre is nought but JB weld with fancy string in it anyway.

TBF this was JBWeld splodged into a leaking core plug (accessed by feel only down the back of the motor and firewall), which I fully expected to fail fairly immediately given the likelihood of access causing a poor repair and also numerous subsequent heat cycles.

Bodgers!

Many moons ago I owned a s2 LR that blew the rear head core plug. Went to work, punched out a 4 mm thick ally disc, a bit bigger than the hole, carefully dished it (let's just say it involved a ball pein ok). It was then offered up into place with a broom handle and lightly tapped for seating, then the dished bit was given a decent thwack to spread it. Ne'er a days problem after! There was also the ti Clevis pin mod as well!
Tim Fry eat your heart out!

[ZRX61]

I remember a bloke who holed a piston in the Mini he had up for sale with a buyer due. Popped the head off & epoxied a piece of 1/8in aluminum plate to the top of the piston. Slapped it back together, & fired it up. It ran. Shut it off.
Buyer shows up & bought it.
Buyer heads off in his new car. Only got a few hundred yards before a horrendous noise indicated all was not well. Managed to limp it back to the sellers house & got his money back.
The plate had come loose & turned 90deg in the cylinder.

We had the piston & very bent plate sitting on the shelf of horrors in the college engineering dept at Cambs

[Yorick]

I remember a bloke who holed a piston in the Mini he had up for sale with a buyer due. Popped the head off & epoxied a piece of 1/8in aluminum plate to the top of the piston. Slapped it back together, & fired it up. It ran. Shut it off.
Buyer shows up & bought it.
Buyer heads off in his new car. Only got a few hundred yards before a horrendous noise indicated all was not well. Managed to limp it back to the sellers house & got his money back.
The plate had come loose & turned 90deg in the cylinder.

We had the piston & very bent plate sitting on the shelf of horrors in the college engineering dept at Cambs

I saw a bodge where someone dropped a bolt through the hole and stuck a nut on the inside.
Then ground the bolt head flush with piston head

[ZRX61]

I saw a bodge where someone dropped a bolt through the hole and stuck a nut on the inside.
Then ground the bolt head flush with piston head

A village idiot I knew bought an H2 that was only running on two pots. It had spark, but the exhaust smelled *odd*

Turns out the smell was from the tennis ball stuck on the middle rod melting when that cylinder fired. Apparently this was a fairly common trick on 250cc cylinders. Someone recently told me he'd come across the same *fix* on a Suzuki 500T.