Craziest thing you've done out a necessity

I posted something in another forum and it got me
to thinking. In a pinch we've done some crazy
things. What's the craziest thing you've done in the
heat of battle to "get it to run until we're done"?

Every year we used a Farmall H on a Grain-o-Vator
auger cart. I think there was something wrong with
its starter. I never remember it running without
pulling it. Each morning during harvest we pulled it
and then it sat and ran all day in the field. I'm sure
rebuilding that starter would have been cheaper
than the fuel.

When I owned a bus company I had a new (to me)
bus that was still on sub duty. I couldn't get the carb
right so it would start good. I still have no idea how
the carb got that messed up in 47,000 miles.
Anyone that tried to start it would run the batteries
down getting the 429 going. I could always get her
going but it still took cranking for its first route of the
day. Once it was running that day it was a jewel. I
was scheduled to have surgery to remove three
sections of my colon. A driver was scheduled to
take that bus out on a night route that night when I
was in the hospital. On my way to the hospital I
started that bus and it idled all day so she could use
it that night. Once I was healed I fixed that four
barrel Holley! The majority of the issue was the
smog equipment. That's all still in a box in the shed.

One time, I worked cows barefoot in a muddy barn because my pull on boots wouldn't stay on. Turns out,It's much easier to move through deep muck barefoot.

And if you get a nettle in your foot the mixture of mud and manure takes out the sting. Don't ask me how but it works.

I was carrying a load of corn one time and the throttle linkage broke. No tools no phone service only thing I could find in the truck was a roll of insulated wire and a claw hammer. I loosened the engine cover ran wire to throttle arm, hooked the wire to the claw part of the hammer made it to the elevator and back to the farm.
Ron

Probably not the craziest thing I've ever done,but I had a new injector pump put on my old F250 one time,by the dealer. It wasn't long before the throttle plate broke off it. I clamped a pair of Vice Grips on the throttle rod at about a third throttle and drove it back to the dealer about 8 miles away.

While on a "THT" Tractor Hauling Trip, I blew a right rear tire on the car hauler. While changing the tire ,I spilled the lug nuts and could only find 1 to put her back on. So I grabbed 1 lug nut from each of the three rims to secure the rim. I might be crazy, but I am not stupid. Just sayin.

Once in a sub-zero cold snap when my car had to sit outside over night, I let it idle all night so I wouldn't have to worry about it starting in the morning.

When we were kids a friend had a 60 Chevy with three on the column. The spring that makes the gas peddle back off either broke or fell off the car. I tied a piece of baling twine to it with an old screw driver for a tee handle to pull the peddle up so he could shift. Talk about walking and chewing gum,,,,,,he did make it back to town for parts. gm

When I worked 3rd shift and it was real cold I would go out on break and start my truck and run it for a while everyone was laughing thinking I was foolish but guess who was laughing the next morning and people were asking can you jump my car.

Summer trip to lake Powell in UT with the whole family. Out in the middle of the lake with a big block Ford engine and it starts clattering. I shut it off, and guessed it was valve train. Took off both valve covers and found one of the tangs of the pushrod guide laying in the valley near the return to the crankcase. I was able to get the pushrod out, and motor over to shore where there was a nice beach. Family decamped.

I had a tool box with me, and lucky had the blade of a hacksaw stuck in the bottom. I was eyeing my slip-joint plier as it looked like one handle of it would go under the hold down bolt and provide some support to the side of the pushrod. Well, of course, it's tool steel even though it wasn't an expensive brand. By the time I got it cut and shaped with the hammer(+3 hours) it looked pretty bad, but it fit on there, and I stole a longer bolt from somewhere else on the engine to hold it on. It lasted 3 days out on the lake until I got back and replaced the all the guides with new.

Bunch of us were out snowmobiling when a sled quit. No spark. Between the bunch, we had enough tools to get the flywheel off to find a broken wire. No one had any tape but one guy was chewing gum. I used that to fix the wire & we rode the rest of the weekend with no problems.

while plowing snow with my Jeep the throttle cable broke so I tied a piece of twine to the throttle lever on the carb and ran it thru the firewall so I could finish my plow route. Another time with the same Jeep I broke a rear spring while hauling firewood out of the woods so jacked it up stuck a piece of firewood between the axle and the frame and used a length of chain to keep the rear end from moving.

Some things in the mine I worked at but not going to say because of msha!

Cannot just answer this one very easy since I have been a lot of places and done a lot of crazy stuff. Done to many crazy things on motorcycles to even start talking about them. Now since I have lived here one crazy thing I did a few times was pull start a tractor with another tractor and did it by my self. Many times the tractor I needed was the one that would not fire up. Had a 1935 JD-B and an A/C B The JD would fire up almost every time but the C would not so I would pull the AC out in the field and then let the B go on its own and run back to the C get it in gear and fire it up jump back off then run to the JD and stop it unhook them and park the JD and do what I needed to do with the C. Both where hand start tractors

In 1977 I was on a stretch of the Alaska Highway. I ran out of gasoline before I arrived at the closest Service station. Happened to have a Propane Bottle with Tiger Torch. Removed the Torch, placed hose in inlet of carb and ran her for the next 25 miles.


Bob...

When I got married for the 1st time.

my first marriage,lol, but id have to go personally with painting the side of a barn by using a 36 ft extension ladder..... perched in the raised bucket of a loader, i was much younger in those days and was bullet proof, now its a wonder i survived that

Had an 1986 Olds, driving on 6 lane free way in morning rush hour traffic, right rear wheel starts to vibrate. Not near any exit so pull over to extreme right and start to slow down, there is a big clunk as right rear drops to road and wheel passes me on the right and continues down the embankment to disappear out of sight. Good thing is I have a full spare in the trunk and I was able to get the jack under the bumper. All the lug nuts were gone so had to take a lug nut off the other 3 wheels. I was so afraid of someone rear ending me that I did not search the ditch for the missing wheel. Went to auto wreckers looking for replacement and he said the fancy Chrome wheels on the Olds were a hot item as kids were putting them on the Chev S10s. I had just come from the train station where the car had been in the parking lot for 3 days. I suspect someone had started to steel my wheels and were frightened off.

Two quick things come to mind,a broken throttle return spring on a Freighterliner,the cure was a tarp strap,and out on the Pennsylvania turnpike, a broken fuel tank strap,a 2 inch ratchet strap got me home.

Well,at least they didn't have to keep running outside all night to start theirs. Or jump everybody else's cars.

I used to get reamed good pretty regularly for things that I did while fighting house fires. One time we needed to advance the line in the attic of a big colonial house in order to be able to get to where we could see the glow of the fire. The guy backing me up refused to come with me, claiming that it was too hot. It is a very serious infraction to go on alone, so I grabbed his air pack harness and dragged him. Another time we arrived mutual aid to a big rambling structure and were assigned to search a second floor apartment where there was supposed to still be someone in there. When we got to the top of the stairs, at the entry door, I could see the glow of fire through a little gap between the floor and the wall. I sounded the floor with my axe and it was solid so we went ahead and searched the three rooms, in smoke so dense that we could not see an inch. we kept sounding the floor as we went. After the search they asked us to take a line in which we did. After about three minutes of working the 95 GPM nozzle through an opening in the wall at ceiling level, the heat and crackling sound were still increasing. I told the lieutenant that I didn't like it and we needed to get out. He said OK and we skidaddled. As we were going down the stairs the engine horns all started sounding the everybody out signal. We were the only ones still in there, and the place was going up like a roman candle. Too many hidden spaces due to remodeling over 200 years, and too many pansies on some other hose lines. Another time we arrived mutual aid at a rather small house, and a guy that I knew on that towns dept. was at the front door just spraying water in. I asked him why he was not going in and he replied that it was too hot. I took the nozzle from him and said "lets go". Well, it turned out that he was right. I went in just a little way and I was getting burned. I wasn't going to admit defeat, and I got down so low that my mask was on the floor while I worked the nozzle, It took probably five mins. of that before the fire finally slacked down a little. I had burns right through my bunker coat and all around my face mask through the nomex hood. I got a second bottle of air and went in again, and had the ceiling fall on me and then had one leg drop through the floor. When I got back to our station the chief looked at my air pak, helmet and coat and just shook his head and walked away. Every square inch whether yellow, silver, black, or chrome was black from the steam born soot. Those were the days!

wow--that is so similar to what i have done twice---got my dozer stuck in the mud when cleaning a pond and my other dozer couldn't pull it out---so set the throttle on the pull dozer just below where the tracks would spin,jumped off and got on the stuck dozer and put it in gear and got out--lowered the blade and set the brakes to stall the pull dozer (torque converter)
jumped off and got back on the pull dozer and idled it down, only mistake I made was to slam down the safety lever to get on and forgot it would put the transmission in neutral, I was standing on the track and the strain in the pull cable pulled that 25000 lb machine backwards like a slingshot--had to take a flying leap backwards off the track to get clear!!
didn't make that mistake the second time for sure!

Hey brother--know exactly what you mean--I was inside a fully involved old farmhouse working our way inward under a ceiling full of flames when suddenly the hose line went dead--me and my 2 hose line backups dropped the line and bailed out thru a front window--chief had ordered the pump operator to shut down not realizing we were inside.

A fab shop I worked for many years ago, the "manager" bought a very used 400 ton mechanical press, had it shipped from Detroit to Texas.

You look in the dictionary under useless junk, it's picture would be there! LOL

After having a pit cut and poured in the slab, a penthouse added to the roof for it to stand in, rewiring, replumbing, 10,000 hours of riggers, electricians, outside contractors, his "bargain press" was finally ready to power up.

It ran a few months, then the home made fiber back gear that drove the crank gear flew apart, massive damage, bent shafts, broken 3" studs, major mess, my job to fix it...

Had to take the flywheel down with the big forklift, which was about 1/4 the capacity it needed to be, and about 6' short of the height it would go. The solution was to build a pallet and shipping container cradle to make it reach, stack steel plates on the back of the lift to keep it from tipping over, and as many volunteers to hang on the back as necessary to keep it down!

Once the flywheel was down, the rest of the behemoth had to come down, one piece at a time, working off ladders, forklift with a pallet across the forks, whatever necessary to get 'er done!

Come to find out all this had been done before by the previous owner. Quality workmanship was not a priority!

But we got it back together. Didn't have anything to torque 3" nuts with other than a big pipe wrench and a cheater pipe, so I scientifically heated the studs one at a time with the rosebud, screwed them in, ran the nut down and tightened all I could get with the pipe wrench and cheater.

Amazingly it all worked! Nothing fell or got dropped, no amputations, concussions, and only minimal PTSD! Thank goodness OSHA didn't walk in!

But that press was jinxed! Shortly after a worker managed to find a way around the light curtains and get his arm crushed! Then a few years after I had moved on, I heard they crashed it. This time they didn't have anyone willing to repair it, so it was sold for scrap.

Amen

Ralphy on A Christmas Story comes to mind/

Just remembered another one. Buddies on our way to hunting in the way back woods. Took my old 1 ton chassis camper on Ford with rear dual wheels.

The dual wheels have a certain chamfer in the stud holes that have to match up. Facing in, facing out, facing in, facing out on both flanges around the hub. Well, the prev idiot didn't align them right, and going over rough road the last of the studs finally gives way, and both wheels leave the hub. I'm sitting on the axle, in the outback, no way a wrecker could come get us, and it would cost a billion to get on the wrecker anyway. Fix it in place.

So, we get some lumber under the chassis and work the jack around until we could get the hub up enough so the oil sloshed back to the other side of the ring and pinion gear. Pull the outer center bolts and pull the axle. Pull the nut and hub off, and drive out the busted studs on the hub. Set it on a couple of rocks, and let the jack down.

Go around to the other side. Same job, jack it up, pull the wheels, pull the bolts and the axle, pull the hub and knock out FOUR of the eight studs carefully so we don't booger the threads. Put the duals back on with 4 nuts in the correct orientation, let the jack down.

Back to the other side, jack up, pull hub, hammer FOUR studs into our hub, put it back on the housing, put axle and bolts in, orient the duals and put four nuts on that side. Let it down, and we are off!

Lasted the whole weekend until we could get to an auto parts store on Mon. I was pretty sure we were gonna loose it again on the rough road, but they held rather well. On the way home, of course the ole 292 started to overheat because the heads were cracking again. I sold that thing for scrap after that trip from hell. Didn't get a deer either.

Hmmm? I once bought a Freightliner that had a tarp strap on the throttle linkage. Worked okay on the trip home until the temperature started dropping. At -10 that throttle was hard to push!

I was in college in the mid 60's driving a 55 mercury. one cold night [-30 or so] I brought my battery into my dorm room. Got a lot of strange looks. But when the old Merc fired up the next morning,[ think it was a Friday] I wasn't so dumb. Next cold nite several batteries got to come into the nice warm dorm.

As a kid, we were coming south thru Minneapolis when the tail pipe falls off the muffler, making a terrible sound. Dad stops at the grocery store and buys a large can of peaches. We then find a park with a nice curb. We sit down and eat the peaches-after parking it half on the curb-he then proceeds to cut the bottom off the can, and then slice it top to bottom. He then crawls under the car and used hose clamps around the can to temp it back in place. Fixed it right once home!

There used to be a pretty good size industry here in Detroit, just repairing those old presses. I saw some in shops that dated back to 1910. My dad used to make pitman arms for a lot of smaller presses. There were companies that specialized in press repair. I think all that is pretty much gone, a lot of equipment just gets melted down anymore, or sold overseas. The last plant I worked in, they auctioned off nearly 100 Makino 880's. Some had just a few hundred hours on them. They went to Turkey. ( Makino = large mill)

(quoted from post at 09:04:22 10/02/16) Cannot just answer this one very easy since I have been a lot of places and done a lot of crazy stuff. Done to many crazy things on motorcycles to even start talking about them. Now since I have lived here one crazy thing I did a few times was pull start a tractor with another tractor and did it by my self. Many times the tractor I needed was the one that would not fire up. Had a 1935 JD-B and an A/C B The JD would fire up almost every time but the C would not so I would pull the AC out in the field and then let the B go on its own and run back to the C get it in gear and fire it up jump back off then run to the JD and stop it unhook them and park the JD and do what I needed to do with the C. Both where hand start tractors

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I've done that a number of times also...always check to make sure my shoes are tied first! Once I was pull starting the D17 diesel that had a FarmHand F10 loader on it, no bucket. I hooked the chain to the front angle iron so it would pick it up as I pulled it and wouldn't dig in the ground. I also put the pto in gear and the valve in position to lift it as it started (note: these are not spring loaded). I pulled it with my CA, it started, and I jumped off the 17 without releasing the valve....went and jumped on the CA and kicked it out of gear and noticed the loader still going up. It had one rear wheel of the CA off the ground by the time I climbed back on the 17....

Headed back home from picking up some parts and was over an hour from home when I heard something dragging. I pulled over and found the tip of the exhaust pipe dragging the ground because the holder had broken. Thankfully there was an old coat hanger lying in the bed, because I used it to tie the exhaust back up.

The funny thing was I bought a new hanger the next week, but it was nearly a year before I ever got around to putting it on.

Beyond that, I've done a lot of different stuff to get a customer going just long enough to finish a job, or get a machine to a place where it could be taken down to work on it.

Lug bolts sheared on 1 ton dump while spreading salt in snow storm.

Picked the one side of the truck up with the skid loader and slowly got the truck on my skid loader trailer. Had one of my guys sit in the dump truck on the trailer and run the controls on the salt spreader while I pulled the truck on the trailer around the parking lot.

Got the salt down, hauled it back to the shop and replaced all the rear lug bolts.

My crazy brother bought a '69 Chevelle convertible without an engine when I was about 19 years old. It was about 20 miles away and he had no way of getting it home. Being young and extremely stupid I let him talk me into him towing it home with a 25 ft chain and me driving it! It had no brake lights and drum brakes with no power!! Miracle that we made it home without killing someone or getting locked up.

You guys have some great stories, I had so much fun reading this thread, I wanted to add mine. (not as glamorous as some of yours)
We had a tan minivan my kids named "Dan's Tan Van" The windshield washer fluid stopped squirting out one day. I found the two ends of the broken hose and thought how they looked quite the same size as the ball-point pen I had in my pocket. Sure enough! Popped out the ink tube, cut off the ends and shoved the ww fluid hoses into each end. I had electrical tape, so wrapped that on each end. It worked!

The best part was the pen was a clear one, so I could watch the fluid shooting through it. It felt pretty good when I saw that.

Had throttle cable break on a ford taurus while driving on interstate. No problem, I turned on cruise and drove on to next available gas station. I stopped and checked to see if I could repair the cable, no luck, so I popped the hood and turned up the idle up to make the engine idle at about 2000-2500 r.p.m.. This in turned allowed the car to idle to about 30 MPH which is the speed for when cruise can be activated and I can tell the computer to speed up or slow down from there. I drove it another 40-50 miles that way in and out of towns until I found a place that was open on a Saturday afternoon with a cable in stock to make the necessary repair.