Rigged up repairs that lasted for a long time???

The best one I ever saw was on a Ford 861 Ford tractor. It would have been in the mid 1980s. Things where going a little better for us and The old Ford 861 that was used a lot in hay was burning oil real bad. I had bought it in 1978 for $1000 at a sale.

So I tore it down to do an overhaul on it. Usually a set of bearings, grind the valves, and new piston/rings/sleeves and you are good to go.

When I took the number 4 rod cap off I found a thick piece of leather wrapped around the crankshaft journal. There was no rod bearing even in the connecting rod. Just this heavy piece of a leather belt wrapped around the crankshaft with the cap bolted tight on top of it. I know it was a belt as the back side was black and there where some punched holes in it out in the middle.

This tractor had good oil pressure and did not have any kind of engine noise what so ever. It just burnt oil by the gallon.

So I had to completely remove crank shaft. It was junk. It was so worn under that connecting rod journal that they could not weld it up and guarantee that it would not break.

So I found a good used crankshaft and replaced all the connecting rods.

I had used the tractor for 8-10 years with that leather in the rod cap. I did not pull it real hard as it usually ran the rake and small square baler in the summer. In the fall I used it on augers and elevators. So it never was pulled like it would have been while plowing.

The tractor is still running good. I sold it a few years after I overhauled it to my BIL. I replaced it with a JD 2020 diesel tractor that I still own and use.

So what have you guys found rigged up that was working fine????

Never found anything but when dad retired from the Army in 71 he started looking for a farm to buy. He found this place in 72 and in 73 he started milking cows. At first he had an AC CA but was able to borrow equipment from my BIL and his dad. In 75 dad got a package deal on a JD R, MH 60SP combine, field cultivator, disk, plow and drill. The bushings were about shot on the spindles and I was home on leave from the Army and helped him "fix" it. We pulled the spindles and drove the bushings out. Dad then cut one side of the bushings, wrapped tin around them and drove them back in. He borrowed reams and we reamed them to size and buttoned it up. The steering was still good in 83 when he retired from farming and sold off the equipment.

Rick

I find that really hard to believe??????

My grandfather did it on an A JD that ran for years pulling the tobacco setter (transplanter). Of course the A is not a precision insert like the Ford... If a guy has done enough rigging he gets pretty good at it..

I use bronze plumbing pipe for bushings. I"ve got a rubber hose on the suction side of a power steering line where battery acid ate thru the steel. I found a bent push rod in my Dad"s tractor 20 years ago and just hammered it straight. All going strong.

Jay I agree with you. I would not have believed it if I had not been the one that took it apart. The only thing I can think of is that the oil soaked leather acted as a cushion as well as a wear surface. The leather was trapped in the rod by the crankshaft. It was wider than a normal bearing would have been it completely filled the journal width wise. Also the governor was set about five hundred RPM lower than it should have been.

It is still a mystery to me all these years later.

I have heard of guys doing it to a car to just trade it off. They would leave the spark plug out until just a short distance away from the dealership. It would last for the short time they needed to trade the car.

I worked with a guy who did that to an old Volvo car. My friends dad used to cut up pop cans to shim bearings. I once rounded up a slightly flat crankshaft journal in a Farmall A, then shimmed the bearing to fit, worked well! I was coached by a very fine old shade-tree mechanic.

AHHHHH for the sake of some rusty pieces of bailing wire and a roll of quacker (Duck) tape. Life is good.

Had a neighbor who's dad told him how to fix a worn out babbit rod bearing in a Chevy six with a piece of leather. Said it worked till they sold the car.

Mark

Story I've heard all my life was of my Great Grandfather who had an old Ford car with an inline 4 cylinder. Something, never have heard any exact problem, happened to number three so he simply removed the piston and rod, made a wooden plug to fill the hole, and buttoned itback up. I don't know how exactly many years he drove it like that but fom all accounts it was quite a few.

Beyond that I've had to do more than my share of rigged up repairs over the years to get customers out of a jam. Funny thing is, in some cases, some of the 'repairs' have lasted longer than the origional, right way ever did....

Dad told me of many a Model T Ford that burned out #1 rod because of parking or driving up too steep a hill, had that rod shimmed with leather and ran for years with that repair.


Another was walking through a local tractor salvage yard and saw a JH "H" with the head and block removed, but the rods and pistons still attached to the crankshaft.
What caught my eye was that one rod was cut off about mid point and an old 6 cyl chevy castiron piston and top half of the chevy rod welded to thr JD rod. Apparently the old chevy and JD H are the same bore. Who knows how long it ran with that welded halfbreed rod / piston assy.

Along the lines of your split and shimmed bushings, my uncle "fixed" the stripped threads in his WD 45 front spindle and nut by hacksawing a cut through one side of the nut, squeezed the gap shut in a vice and welded the cut together. This made the nut a bit smaller and rethreased back on the worn spindle threads. Worked for years.

Dad bought a 4010 years ago from a farmer who told us he had just split it to fix the pin in the pto.Ten years latter the pto gave problems and we found his fix was a large nail stuck in and bent over.

In 1964 I bought a 54 ford f600, with a knaphide grain bed on it. the feed store I got it from wore out the original motor, and had put a later 292 in it. by 79 I had worn out the 292, and was wanting to use it to move my family from Illinois to washington. I put a crate 312 in it, 6 new 20" tires, loaded it up and headed for Washington. In Mound City Iowa, the 2 speed quit, I opened up the plate on the 2 spd and found that a small fiber pin in the drive had sheared. I drove the old pin pieces out with a drift pin, made a new pin frim a hickory claw hammer handle, tapped it in place and took off for Washington, that was the fall of 79. My dad and I used it for years, for a dump truck, and wood hauler, also pulled an equipmunt trailer with Dad"s 450 case dozer on it. Dad done coustom dozing here in the Graham area. Iloaned the truck to a cousin of mine, and he managed to throw the rods out of the 312, and I had to tow it home. I sold it for scrap in 89, and the hickory pin was still in the 2 spd.

Had a tie rod end come apart on my Allis 160 when I was out on a job at a friends place about 10 years ago. The kind of end that the bottom cap unbolts from and has a spring holding the bushings in. Made a new top bushing out of the end of a garden hose connection with a bench grinder and some teflon tape. Still in the tractor and works just fine.

I met a guy that had an old Plymouth. One piston broke, so he pulled the rod & piston, plugged the oil holes to that rod and drove the car on 5 cylinders for years. Got him to where he needed to go.

One of my favorite sayings- "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary repair!"

A bricklayer I worked with patched up all the rust holes in his old car with leftover cement and wire mesh,he smoothed it out pretty good and painted over it,it looked good for quite a while!

I pulled a 5 HP push leaf blower out of the scrap yard. It had a seized rod on the crankshaft. I took it apart and filed down the crank with a hand file, then emory paper. Reattached the untouched rod and have been using it every fall for the massive leaves we have for the last eighteen years. Still going strong.

Jim

Lol, then I give the person who thought of doing that alot of credit!

I had a small pair of vice grips holding the bail clip on the sediment bowl of my grandfather's D-19, for about 8 years! Kept forgetting to buy a replacement bail clip!

i wore out the clutch peddle bushings on my old '83 1 ton chevy,back in the early 90's, the dealer was no help, so i made a set of shims for it out of a old coke can that was laying on the floor of the truck,that fix is working to this very day

I just got done reading the book, Grape's of Wrath. Its was during the dust bowl and about the people migrating to the West Coast. They talked about making repairs on their old cars along the route. It was interesting how they would pull a pan and replace a rod or piston they got from the junk yard or something. They would do so right along the side of the road. They would save the old oil and put it back in after the repair was done. Then continue on down the road until something else broke.

Knew a guy once who wasn't real big on maintenance- starter solenoid was out, so he drilled a hole through the handle of an insulated screwdriver, and hung it on a little baling wire hook near the starter- so it would always be handy for a "screwdriver start" (shorting across the terminals, for the uninitiated among us).

Here all this time I thought that my grandpa"s repairing a hole through the side of the block in his big tractor, an IHC regular, with a 6" x 8" patch cut out of a coffee can and liquid solder that lasted for at least 10 years was a significant example of long lasting field expedient repairs and it won"t even make the top ten in this post!!! I do remember reading about the AA/Fuel Dragster meet at Bakersfield in 1966 being won by a car running on 7 cylinders with a damaged crank throw that had a folded oil rag held on that crank throw with two hose clamps to maintain oil pressure; but I do realize that this story I merely read, but did not actually personally observe, will not qualify for consideration of any recognition in this post! XLNT post and comments!!!!

Hi, during WWII, my Dad talked about about using a piece of horse harness to replace rod bearings, only because parts were almost impossible to buy. He said to soak leather in a bucket of oil for a day before cutting to size and installing.

JimB

I had the joystick controller on my Western snow plow quit working on a Saturday
night and had weekend routes to plow. I took it apart and found the "spider" contact
was broken. I cut the ends off a beer can, folded the center part so it was double
thickness, and formed my own.
Never did buy a new one. Scrapped the truck about 8 years later.
I currently have a Farmall BN with a "welded" block. It is welded from around
the front bend, to around the rear bend. In two separate beads/locations.
I scratched the paint off and found out that while it looks like a welded bead
its actually silver solder or similar. Quite soft and silver in color.
Runs and works just fine, but I did pick up a different block for it.