Solving the impossible problems...what have you done?

NCWayne

Well-known Member
I was cleaning out a B/S carb tonight for a friend of mine and after soaking everything down I was blowing out all the ports with compressed air. I hit one port and felt something hit my finger rather hard and wondered what had hit me. When I got done I realized that a welch plug had blown out. The bad thing is the hole it went in wasn"t but .350 in diameter, and the smallest plug I had, that was saved from an old carb kit, was too small, and the next size I had was a engine freeze plug that was WAY too big. Called around and no one had anything smaller than 3/4", nor could they find a source for anything sized that small. Basically I was out of luck....at least for a minute or two that is.

I had called Dad to see if he knew anywhere to get a plug that small and as I was talking to him I was looking trough a bin full of misc junk, and ran across an old thumb tack. That"s when the idea struck. It was the right shape, but how to make it smaller? My lathe is currently down, but even in operation isn"t precise enough to turn the tack from .500 plus to the right size...not to mention I don"t have a chuck capable of holding something that small.

What I wound up doing was chucking the tack into a small drill chuck, that will handle bits down to 0" using the nail portion of the tack. I then put the chuck in my milling machine where I could spin it at high speed. To cut it I put a bit off of the lathe in the vice and then used it to machine the tack down to the correct size. I had to take it slow but in the end I got the head of the tack to the correct size to allow just a slight interference fit. Once in the hole I took a punch and gave it a light tap to flatten it out and tighten it up.

When I first saw the plug missing I thought I was screwed up royally, but with a little "redneck ingenuity" I got the carb back together without any problem, and hopefully will have it back on the engine and working tomorrow.

So, what kinds of impossible problems have ya"ll solved by "redneck ingenuity"?
 
Solved a lot in my time!
But one instance that comes to mind happened some years ago. I had a load of wood on a 57 Ford pickup and taking off from a stop sign, an engine mount tore loose. the resulting roll of the engine put the fan into the radiator. Didn't have money for a new radiator, but did have a 64 Dodge Polara with a good radiator, BUT, it lacked about two inches being wide enough. Scratched around through my "stash" of nondescript metal and came up with two pieces of one inch angle already drilled full of holes as they were for a metal work bench. Took care of the spacer problem, but then the top radiator hose outlet on the radiator was larger than the one on the truck. As luck would have it, the top hose from the engine just would slide inside the top hose from the Dodge. I applied a generous amount of Indian Head shellac to the smaller hose and slid it inside the larger, put a hose clamp on it, and dove that truck about two more years.
 
Owning a lath and miller hardly makes it a red neck repair. A true red neck repair would have been to chuck up the tack in a drill and clamping that down (vise comes to mind) and using a file and doing a few to get the right size.

Rick
 
Yeh, too many hillbilly repairs to count. One I've kept is the small transmission drain plug on my Farmall H. Somebody said Why just weld a nut to it, and take it right out. Took all day and the next, and too many nuts to count, but I finally got it. Haver it saved on the wall, remind me to keep at it, keep at it, keep at it....
 
You got that right. I've always said that there are some real hard tasks that simply take a lot more time to accomplish. Then there are the simply impossible tasks that take a bit longer.

Jim
 
I had a large oak fall on an outbuilding, roofed just 2 years ago. No place to get my large loader in, and I wanted to avoid damage to the roof under the trunk. A contractor friend looked, scratched his head, and gave me the number of his favorite tree service.

The tree guy came out and said no problem, he'd have a large crane out on Monday. Up my driveway to the top of the mountain? Might want to get the crane guy out first. He came out Sunday evening and said no way would he risk his expensive machine for such a small job. I agreed with him.

After that the tree guy was out of ideas, but eager to have his crew help me if I could figure it out. Yeah, right.

I don't climb, but I put a wire rope 60 feet up another tree, over the fallen tree, to one uphill where I didn't have to go so high to set a snatch block. Tractor supplied tension on the wire rope to lift sections off the roof. A comealong doubler running on the wire rope allowed us to pull the sections off and lower them next to the building.

The tree came off with no further damage. The guy who helped me will heat his house for a winter. Wet weather finally left and I can get in to replace the shattered framing. Even most of the copper pans can be reinstalled. I like oak lumber, probably why the tree didn't fall farther. Branches hanging out the other side of the ridge were 40 feet long.
mvphoto158.jpg


mvphoto159.jpg


mvphoto160.jpg


mvphoto161.jpg


mvphoto162.jpg
 
I've done gaziilons of repairs using junk and guess work. The most common one was back when I was still working the road in the Central Adirondacks, back when there was still a lot of logging. I'd be out riding the roads at "O dark-thirty" and come on a log truck broke down. Seems to me it was GM's that would lose a throttle return spring pretty often. Anyway, Back then we used a lot of heavy rubber bands to secure stuff in the Troop cars, back before the state started spending like crazy on whatever they needed. 3 or 4 of those rubber bands would get a driver and his load to the city and the mill. Gotta more than a few cups of coffee from truckers I met up with later for that!
 
Being that I'm a cheap SOB, I have been doing some redneck engineering myself this week. I decided that I would like to have a snowblower for my aging Kubota B2150.
yep a 60" 3pt unit would work on it and pair up with my FEL.
I have had a nice little IH #10 7x13 well cared for grain drill for sale for a couple of years.
I went to a couple of places, and new ones were around $2K.., and they didn't want my drill in trade. Went to my friendly CaseIH/Kubota dealer, and they had a used front mtd for the same price as a new 3pt., and it would have to be modified for my tractor, and they wanted boot money to trade. One of the owners, long time friends of mine, said follow me. Went down to the storage shen and way up on top of the pallet racks, sat a new/old Kubota branded Befco front blower. Beside it was a wooden box with a whole bunch of new/old mounting kits. Lots of teliscopeing pto shafts, bearing carrier, lift cylinders etc. Only thing that wasn't there was the Befco quick tach male half, but he had one off an older Ford compact.
S-o-0-0, I have been engineering, cutting, welding and painting my brand new/old snowblower drive and mtg. system. The trade price was $ even up. There are two people very happy now, me and my dealer friends, as these parts had been written off as obsolete, and a third will be the new owner o the drill. Win-Win-Win.
Loren, the Acg.
 
I've managed to make a living farming all my life despite everybody telling me that according to MSU,I shouldn't even exist.

Does that count?
 
NCWayne
For the next time or to stock up, here's a source for welch plugs;

http://www.hubbardspring.com/all-category.php/category/37/hubbard-welch-type-expansion-plugs

It sure is handy to have the tool to improvise.

Steve A W
Welch plugs
 
Made a firing pin for a double action revolver once by cutting the butt off of a drill bit('cause it was hardened).

Then chucked it into an air drill, clamped the drill in a vice, turned the drill on, and held a file against the drill bit stub until it was the right size and shape. Then cut it to the right length. Works like an original.

Actually, it's a collectible revolver that I'll probably never use, but I still wanted it functional.
 
Have done alot with next to nothing to work with. Have to when ya got next to nothing. Took a job working for a contractor in pontiac few years back. Picked up the nickname " McGyever" real quick.
 
I came across a great one while disassembling the steering arm on a Super A. The center ball seat had been replaced with a large nut. Its corners had been ground off, making it a cylinder the same dia. as the seat. The openings on each end of the nut served to cup the tie-rod balls. The balls had nearly worn themselves to the middle of the nut but it worked 'till the day I found it.
 
It was a freebie for a friend of mine, and making it took me less than 5 minutes.....after spending 15 minutes trying to find something to work....
 
Years ago while porting and polishing a set of small block chevy heads. They were a brand new turbo heads that were cutting edge for the day. I ground through into a pushrod hole. Looked at it and it appeared the size of a 30.06 casing. I cut the necked down end and the primer end off and loctited it in the head. Worked perfectly.
Ron
 
Buddy had already checked on a kit for this thing and it included a total of 7 parts. After checking at three places he came to the conclusion that everybody was wanting somewhere around $10 per piece....and several of the pieces, like a new pin for the float was really not needed anyway. Like many kits nowdays it had all of the parts you don"t need, and none or the parts you really do need....and was expensive to boot.....
 
Not impossible, but sure complicated the job! Tile was too high and too low for these grab bars-Mens and Womens were both the same! ADA requires an exact height, so moving it up or down was not an option!



Took 2 hours-job was 10 miles away so lots of windshield time in it! I picked up some paint grade wood, came to my shop to make the lumber 3/8" thick then cut 2-4" disks with my hole saw in the drill press. Sanded them smooth, then once back at the job had to figure where to cut the 'flat spot' so they were symmetrical. Now they need paint! Oh well, the pay is the same!


 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top