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Ghetto engineering

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alien8 Wolfsburg Wizard

521 posts · joined Sep 2008 ·

#730532
So most of us have been guilty of half arsed or down right dangerous mechanical engineering at one point or another to our beloved vehicles.
What have you done, through lack of funds, naivety or just plain stupidity to keep your VW on the road in the past?
What would of made the VW engineers cringe?
Share your best and worst bush mechanic stories.

Pauld Officially Full-On Dubber

204 posts · joined Sep 2008 ·

#730538
used an old as the hills pair of circlip pliers with two pairs of vice grips locked on to it as a rear wheel bearing puller one day, hooked up the coil lead direct from the battery out the passengers door after a short, just a couple that i can say iv done it worked so thats the main thing

polak Everything is alright with enough Vodka :P

913 posts · joined May 2009 ·

#730624
well dont know if non-vw vehicles apply but made a nappy for my dad's truck to pass rego (oil leak before we had time to fix it) out of 4 zip-ties and an old sock filled with kitty litter. number 2 would be attaching mine and 3 other mates shoe laces together, to make a throttle cable in a 1200 datto with a turbo sr20 engine..... i drove it from the blue mountains to sydney with one hand on the steering wheel and the other out the window pulling on the shoe-lace cable. lets just say it was an interesting trip and at no point did any of us even remotely feel like falling asleep.😂 there was more but i cant remember at this stage.... lol


VW - helping put oil back into the ground for over 60 years

Flintstones Custom Title Time!

1,077 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#730639
An old mate of mine back in the day bought himself an LJ torrie and took me for a spin in it.
He was fanging it around the neighborhood giving it all it had. He then parked the car to show me the engine.
Upon opening the bonnet I was in disbelief at the fact that the motor was only held down with wire as it had broken engine mounts!!! 😠😬
Bloody idiot he was.....

polak Everything is alright with enough Vodka :P

913 posts · joined May 2009 ·

#730727
mike was telling me about a beetle he saw and to lower it they had thrown 4 bags of cement in the front of it 😂


VW - helping put oil back into the ground for over 60 years

DaveCarter Officially Full-On Dubber

285 posts · joined Aug 2009 ·

#730772
LOL when i was at summernats with some friends my mate went to Big W and bought some bags of pool salt and put them in his boot so it would look lower then returned them the next day when we were leaving saying they were the wrong type

More pics at http://clubvw.org.au/david_carter1.htm
My beast at Warwick drags:
And at Marulan:

amazeer Bishop of Volkswagenism

3,029 posts · joined Nov 2005 ·

#731269
polak wrote:mike was telling me about a beetle he saw and to lower it they had thrown 4 bags of cement in the front of it 😂
I once bought 6-8 bags of cement and loaded them into the front of my fastback. Not as a poor mans lowering job, but it sure did the trick. Was very hard to turn the thing though.

I dont think I have ever done anything bodgy. As a bushmans fix to get me home maybe once or twice but never as a permanent fix. I fitted a clutch and flywheel at spooks place with a cold chisel because we didnt have a flywheel lock to do up the flywheel bolts, and we didnt have the 8 point torx bit for the clutch. Thats probably the worst of it. Or is removing the rocker gear from 1 cylinder at Kepsey and driving on to Valla worse?

beetleboyjeff Custom Title Time!

1,790 posts · joined Feb 2009 ·

#731271
I remember when my daughter was an apprentice (carpenter), and we went to a friends place about 40km away (where her builder husband had gone to a nursing home with alsymiers) as she was trying to get rid of all his tools that she had'nt been able to sell at a garage sale. We ended up with the 74L bug totally loaded with tools and boxes of screws, nails, and other fixiings - must have weighed well over half a ton - in the front, floors, back seat, behind the back seat, and nursing some stuff. The bug sure was low, and was like trying to steer a truck. I'm glad we didn't have to stop in a hurry.

I have also repaired throttle cables with wire when they have broken (probably 10 times or so over the years), ant the funniest was when my daugher broke one at TAFE when she went to leave at lunch time. She rang me about a spare, and I described how to twitch it up with a bit of wire. She was half way through when the rest of the class came out for lunch (all blokes), and she said she was OK despite their concerns. A few minutes later, she had it fixed, but the tools away, started it and drove off to get lunch, much to thier amazement.
From your ole' mate Jeff

cam070 Custom Title Time!

1,332 posts · joined Jul 2009 ·

#731277
When I wrote off my first 76 beetle the insurance company let me salvage some parts that weren't covered by the policy. So I dropped in some seats that were held in place with a bolt, so they weren't going backwards or forwards. I also pulled out the custom gauge panels I made and replaced them with black painted cardboard to cover the holes.