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Post Your Strange Trail fixes That Work!

I had an engine fire in my old 90 GMC one day. I was up a goat path that someone called a road with no hope of getting any help. I had the fire under control in short order but it melted the wiring off the starter and everything near it. I poked around the bed of the truck in the load of scrap metal I had picked up and found a 25 foot extension cord. I fixed my wiring "temporarily" got home and forgot about it. WHen I pulled the engine out this year I found all the hacked wiring and couldn't believe there wasn't another engine fire.
 
We had a heater hose that got a hole in it so we took a small maglight flashlight apart. Cut/trimmed the hose and stuck the empty body of the maglight into the hose and used zip-ties to tighten it down! :waytogo:
 
I've had a recurring problem with the oil filler cap on my 6.2. I was up playing near Pike National Forest a while ago when I noticed a lot (more than usual) of smoke coming from the hood. I'd somehow managed to lose the cap this time.

So, I took a pop can, cut the top of it (the drinking end) and using zip-ties and US Army-style "200 mph" tape, fitted a cover for the filler pipe.

It worked pretty well, too. By the time that the oil and engine heat had made a mess of the tape, I was sitting in front of a NAPA. :woot:
 
Didn't happen on the trail and not much of a fix, but I held a windshield wiper that kept falling off on with a piece of coat hanger a couple of weeks ago. I know I need to fix it with something a little more permanent, but its still on there and still working.
 
Toywrecker said:
Didn't happen on the trail and not much of a fix, but I held a windshield wiper that kept falling off on with a piece of coat hanger a couple of weeks ago. I know I need to fix it with something a little more permanent, but its still on there and still working.
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Welcome to CK5 Toywrecker.
 
YES.....welcome Toywrecker! I've used coathanger to hold up exhaust before and ended up leaving it there for years before.....but when I do fixes like this now I get it corrected as soon as I have the money and resources. :)
 
Had to rebuild my Rochester 4BBL once while hunting.

I had rebuilt it a week before because the fuel bown just started overflowing at a STOP one day. Bought a rebuild kit and installed it. The following week I packed up and drove 300 miles. Got to the top of a mountain and smelled gas. I shut off the engine and fuel was leaking all over the now extremely hot Intake. "WTF?!?!" I thought. I went to grab my toolbox and got that sinking feeling as I realized I forgot to throw it in with all the other gear. The fix, after scrounging under seats was to open the carb up and figure what the problem was. Pliers, and a single Phillips was all we found in the way of tools; but I only needed a pocket knife for the slotted screws to get everything apart. Turns out the only thing I did not replace was the Phenolic Float- I figured it was OK cause I only worked on brass floats in the past and I though they must have gone to plastic to keep them floating, where the brass ones get a hole and are done. After checking the float angles I noticed the Plastic float had swollen and would get hung up in the channel. Pulled it back out and scraped a few hundredths off of each side. Rubbed the whole float down with some Irish Spring, that I keep under the seat in it's box as a deodorizer, and polished it all up to help seal the float. Went hunting. Same trip, the AUX tank would not pump, so I crawled under to the switching solenoid and re-plumbed the fuel line directly, bypassing the solenoid. Still was able to fill both tanks; but had to crawl under to switch them out.
 
Sector shaft nut - fix....

Long story, short:

I lost my Sector Shaft nut (the nut that keeps the pitman arm attached to the steering box) in the mud.

NorCal_Chris came up w/ the fix....

First, he put plastic washer, hollowed out just big enuf to fit over the sector shaft, under the pitman arm.
Then, he backed it up w/ a stretched keyring. (think snap-ring.)
Then, a baby zip tie went on. For added support. :D

Finished it off w/ some tight layers of duct tape.
Can't forget the miracle tape.... :waytogo:

I wheeled the wee out of the truck, and the fix held.
Actually, I drove her most of the way home that way. (very slowly)

The last few miles were on an a VatoZone snap-ring-fix....

I know I'm the only person this will ever happen to,
but I wanted to post the fix, cuz I thought it was genius....

Redneck, ghetto, MacGuyver, Trail-genius... :thumb:
 
transfercase fix

so my transfer case is starting to leak on the front output shaft, main case seal and drain plug seal. im going to rbuild it in june eithr way but im really srtapped right now. will lucas oil help stop them temporally? they are small leaks.
 
loch1202 said:
so my transfer case is starting to leak on the front output shaft, main case seal and drain plug seal. im going to rbuild it in june eithr way but im really srtapped right now. will lucas oil help stop them temporally? they are small leaks.
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Capatain random...
 
loch1202 said:
so my transfer case is starting to leak on the front output shaft, main case seal and drain plug seal. im going to rbuild it in june eithr way but im really srtapped right now. will lucas oil help stop them temporally? they are small leaks.
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... So how did you fix it on the trail?

I just remembered one, My buddy twisted his steering gear box off his heep frame. We grabbed some rope and tied it back in place. He is really good with knots. He cinched that bad boy down real tight.
It made it back to camp and onto the tow trailer.
I'm looking for photographic evidence.
 
I have performed welds with a jumper cable and flathead screwdrivers in the clamps before. :haha:
 
A friend told me how he cooled his tow rig with his cooler. Towing over long passes in the summer pulling a trailer he kept overheating his trans. with no help in sight. After resting on the side of the freeway once again to cool down he decided to try and get his trany cooler so he got a long hose and set his cooler on top of the job box and ran the hose from the drain on the bottom of the cooler then ran the hose to his transmission cooler and let her drip. as long as the fans ran spraying water onto the trans cooler it droped the temp significantly allowing him to get over the passes without stopping accept to add more water to the ice in the cooler.
 
Did not read this thread so excuse me if this has been posted up before.

PCM literally smoked and left me half way thru a 13 mile trail. It was an aftermarket TBI system. After my buddies and I spent all day winching and swapping in fresh batteries, we only traveled 1 mile in 8hrs of work (it was a tough trail).

My buddy and I came up with an idea over the camp fire with some beers. We installed a low pressure electric fuel pump designed for a carb that was still mounted to my frame (why....I don't know). Then I cut my harness up going to the injectors and wired in 2 jumper wires with the injectors wire in parallel. One wire to 12V and the other to a CB mic to work as a Ground trigger. With a friend in the pass. seat, have him go ape crazy tapping the switch on the CB mic to momentarily cause the injectors to spray fuel down the throttle body. I worked the throttle blades and with some practice we got is running. It was a wild ride but we did the last 5 miles in 2hrs or so.
 
79chevyk10 said:
Did not read this thread so excuse me if this has been posted up before.

PCM literally smoked and left me half way thru a 13 mile trail. It was an aftermarket TBI system. After my buddies and I spent all day winching and swapping in fresh batteries, we only traveled 1 mile in 8hrs of work (it was a tough trail).

My buddy and I came up with an idea over the camp fire with some beers. We installed a low pressure electric fuel pump designed for a carb that was still mounted to my frame (why....I don't know). Then I cut my harness up going to the injectors and wired in 2 jumper wires with the injectors wire in parallel. One wire to 12V and the other to a CB mic to work as a Ground trigger. With a friend in the pass. seat, have him go ape crazy tapping the switch on the CB mic to momentarily cause the injectors to spray fuel down the throttle body. I worked the throttle blades and with some practice we got is running. It was a wild ride but we did the last 5 miles in 2hrs or so.
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An excellent example of a successful SWAG.
 
I lost fuel pressure and figured out it was something in the tank. Not wanting to drop the tank alongside the road (Oh crap, I just revealed I wasn't on a trail), I started to focus on the fact that my fuel pressure was actually about 2psi. Now that's not 50-something like it should be, but it's not 0. So I got on the laptop and told my Megasquirt that I had the world's smallest fuel injectors. By tweaking this number I was able to get an idle at about 90% duty cycle. Just off idle it would hit 100%, so I couldn't accelerate at all and idled home at maybe 15MPH.

When I dropped the tank in the garage I found a split in the rubber hose between the pump and the sending unit. It was spraying fuel inside the tank and only sending a tiny bit up the fuel line.
 
Blue85 said:
I lost fuel pressure and figured out it was something in the tank. Not wanting to drop the tank alongside the road (Oh crap, I just revealed I wasn't on a trail), I started to focus on the fact that my fuel pressure was actually about 2psi. Now that's not 50-something like it should be, but it's not 0. So I got on the laptop and told my Megasquirt that I had the world's smallest fuel injectors. By tweaking this number I was able to get an idle at about 90% duty cycle. Just off idle it would hit 100%, so I couldn't accelerate at all and idled home at maybe 15MPH.

When I dropped the tank in the garage I found a split in the rubber hose between the pump and the sending unit. It was spraying fuel inside the tank and only sending a tiny bit up the fuel line.
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This is the only trail fix EVER that involved a Laptop, and reprogramming your EFI system....
 
The strangest fix (ghetto Fab) fix I've seen was on this older Chevy frankentruck. He busted the rear drive shaft yoke. So some guys at the party took the yoke off his front shaft and slid it on the rear driveshaft. How far he got or how long it worked I cannot say but it got him out the driveway. I'm actually embarrassed to say I witnessed such a thing.
 
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