The bodge. It’s a British term for a questionable repair that works for at least some period of time, an act we’re all too familiar with thanks to experiences with questionable vehicles. Today we’re asking you what your best bodge of all time is, and we’re kicking things off with mine.
Back in 2016, I was driving my new-to-me Crown Victoria to…a date, I guess? Hindsight may be 20:20, but I’m still not sure what the mission was that night. Anyway, several miles into the journey, I heard a quiet *twang* that was quickly followed by every dashboard light illuminating simultaneously, attempting an impression of the main Veld stage. My serpentine belt tensioner had sodded off, taking the belt, water pump drive, and alternator drive with it.
Limping the car home entailed a procedure of revoking mechanical sympathy, but once under the harsh fluorescent garage lights, I could see that the serpentine belt bearing self-destructed, the pulley had gone crooked, and a nice chunk had been removed from my timing chain cover. Do you really think I’d replace the timing chain cover on a $500 car? Hell no, it was time to break out the bodge.
This tired 4.6 needed a patch, and a patch was made by slathering a cut piece of sheet steel with JB Weld, slapping it on the timing cover, then covering the whole thing with more JB Weld and pray. Add one junkyard serpentine belt and tensioner, wait for the epoxy to cure, and season for taste. Problem? No problem.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this ended up being a lifetime repair. Although I heaped thousands of miles on that Crown Victoria, its 4R70W four-speed automatic transmission switched professions to Powerglide somewhere around Niagara Falls, bringing about the end of the last automatic daily driver I’ve owned. It’s funny to think that more than 17 feet of red menace is now several Maytags, but that’s the car cycle, baby. Needless to say, I’ve learned and grown a lot since then, to the point of proactive replacement rather than roadside incidents, so this bodge will stand as my greatest for a while. However, I’m sure our creative readers have stories of even better bodges, so let’s hear them.
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First year ’90 Miatas used the spring-loaded backup light switch as the detente to stop the transmission shift fork. If you shifted into reverse too fast and strongly, the shift fork could go past the switch and it would get stuck in reverse. On my way through the Louisiana bayou country I was about to cross a pretty iron bridge and thought it would make a great picture. I slammed it in reverse and it got stuck.
To fix it, I backed the car down from the bridge and angled it over a drainage ditch. I laid down the floor mats and shimmied under the car, removed the transmission switch one flat at a time with a big ole crescent wrench. Then I jammed a stubby screwdriver into the hole and was able to coax the shift fork back into position.
During this tricky, sweaty, mosquito-infested operation, a local Cajun walked by and helpfully informed me, “Hey Sonny, there’s gators in that ditch!”
I once bypassed a leaking coolant flow-through intake manifold with scavenged parts from the heater hoses and feed tubes on an old Triumph Dolomite. Cut the copper pipes with the saw blade on a Swiss Army knife and joined them with electrical solder and a pipe lighter. It held up and got me through France until the next weakest link failed in the Alps.
Are you Richard Dean Anderson?!
Ah the days of non-hyper-pressurized systems. A few years back, a plastic nipple (I have no idea what it’s actually called) on the intake of my Mustang (for a hose to the core) started to disintegrate just barely at the top. Unfortunately, the top had a lip that made it possible for the hose to stay on with a constant tension clamp below. Without that lip, I could get a mile or so before the hose blew off again due to the pressure. Ended up having to replace the entire intake; new one has a cast aluminum nipple though, so that’s something.
It was my best McGyver moment.
Once wrapped a split radiator hose with plastic grocery bags and topped that with torn t-shirt strips. Radiator cap on first notch to avoid pressure buildup. This was around 3am on a rural backroad, so asking for help was not an option. Took 3ish hours to get home instead of the normal 1, and filling the empty 40 (only thing we had) from the alleged creek was excruciating, but we made it without popping my Subaru’s head gasket.
-I always keep radiator hose repair tape in my vehicles now
I had the idle bypass on a BMW 633 fail while traveling. I stopped at a hardware store, bought a plumbing valve, grafted it into the hose, then slowly adjusted it until the idle was right!
It worked so well that we never replaced it, and it was still there under the hood when I sold the car years later.
Became a paying member to share this story…
2019 Golden State Gambler 500. I was with a buddy in a 1998 Audi A4 2.8 5MT lifted with welding and sitting on 27″ snow tires. On the second day we are heading to another checkpoint in a convoy, and we hear a pop in the engine that runs down the underside of the car and out the back. We pull over and see that the belt tensioner and an accessory belt blew apart. The mounting boss on the tensioner is still on the engine, but the rest is gone.
We circle the wagons and get a solution. The belt drives the A/C, Power Steering, and Alternator. We choose to leave the car without A/C and power steering, and rig up the largest zip ties I’ve ever seen as the alternator belt. Everyone is trying to find a nearby O’Reilly/Autozone/etc for us to head to, but we were determined to finish. We drove with that set up for around 100 miles before the voltage dropped so low the car wouldn’t run. The ratios on the crank to the alternator was underdriving the alternator, and we weren’t generating enough current. We did the last 20 or so miles swapping batteries with other cars, charging them on the shoulder, and pushing our car with other cars. In the end we made it to the finish line, and called AAA.
Didn’t get back until 2am, had to be in work at 6. Took a Lyft to work, and ordered a new tensioner and belt at the office. Picked them up on the way home, and the car was fixed before dinner Monday.
An excellent adventure.
I lost one of two belts on my ’85 Vanagon on a drive back from Doug Bar in Hell’s Canyon of the Snake once. The belt that broke drove the alternator and water pump, but an identical belt drove the power steering and nothing else. So we swapped belts. This road is what most folks would call a “4WD track”, and a 2WD Vanagon was challenge enough [i]with[/i] PS! we made it back to the edges of civilization, but still had 45 miles of nasty, twisty canyon two-track to go when I spotted some bailing twine (the plastic stuff) hanging from a fencepost. Putting on my best kludge hat (kludge is what I was taught to call and improvised repair) I made a belt from the twine my passing it around the pulleys several times, then wrapping the twine around the loops until it was completely covered. Tightened it up, and I had PS again! My buddy, along for the ride, was highly skeptical of this kludge, but I swore it would get us home. 45 miles later, as I pulled in the driveway, it broke.
Years ago at a Miatas at the Gap event (Deals gap 318 turns over 11 miles), we had pulled off at the Damn overlook when a kid comes roaring up the mountain in an older NA miata. Slams on the brakes at the overlook and jumps out and opens the hood.
Come to find out his throttle stuck! A true brown-flag moment for him.
We’re all gathered around the car. I grab the throttle body and with my hand I can feel that the cable is frayed and getting stuck it it’s outer sheathing.
It’s a Saturday, we’re miles from nowhere, no cell, nothing.
I reach into my trunk of my 2004 Mazdaspeed and pull out the bungy cord. Note – the factory 17″ wheel that came with the car are too big to fit in the truck where the mini-spare is kept. If you get a flat and have to use the spare, you shan’t close the trunk when you put the bad tire in. – hence the bungy cord.
I used the bungy cord as a return spring, wrapping it around a shock brace.
I told the kid he could have it on only 2 conditions:
He gently drive back down the mountain into town and get a new cableHe not sue me if it breaks and he dies.
I never got sued – but I suspect he didn’t immediately go get a replacement, just enjoyed the weekend.
Now I always keep a bungy cord in my miatas 🙂
I was driving a 74 Maverick hand me down from Grandma, to sister to brother to me. Needed inspected and had no right to pass. Did a few tweaks but the best was getting the horn to work. Figure to metal straps on both sides of the steering wheel arms that when pressed together completed the circuit and the horn blew. Well the rubber piece got pulled off and the metal pieces never wanted to part. So 4 McDonald’s straws with a small hole trimmed in the right place and duct tape the covering and Voila working horn.
FYI if you smash your front end and the shop says they can’t align your headlights because the adjustment screws and harness are bent? Pull up to a wall at night about 10 feet away. Turn on the lights and you will see a section where both headlights are brightest. Bend the harnesses with a large screwdriver until those bright spots are even to each other.
I remember when owner’s manuals and driver’s ed courses actually covered how to properly aim your headlights. Judging by what I see when I’m driving at night these days, they no longer do.
I think Driver’s Ed is just a 15 minute YouTube video now.
Even more humorous is that I can see you being 100% correct in say 20 years – the “base” drivers license that most people will get will be the “able to take control in an emergency if the auto-drive glitches/fails” capability level, and it’ll be accessible by watching some videos and taking an online quiz at the end.
(To get a full, drive it yourself all the time license, hopefully, it’ll be more similar to that which we’re familiar)
Driving home from work one day, my Oldsmobile starts making a terrible racket. Turns out the fan shroud had come loose and was now bouncing off the spinning fan. The bolt holes in the shroud plastic had long since worn away into slots, so even with proper tools, no amount of torque was holding it in place.
Luckily, I had zip ties and a knife.
Threaded the zip ties through the bolt holes in the core support and some newly stabbed holes in the shroud plastic. Still holding untouched six years later.
A couple years ago, my bestie and I were at the track and I was getting a mildly sticky throttle. Get back to the day garage and find the throttle cable sheathing is melting onto the cable. So quick run to Tractor Supply for a length of cable then we cut the melted parts out, restrung the cable and replaced the missing buts with the bodies of a sharpie and a bank pen like a macaroni necklace. Wrapped it in a bunch of tape, reinstalled it and ran the whole next day just fine!
Citroen Ami 6. Vacuum advance was shot so I ran a piece of IV tubing through the firewall and clamped it off with a vein clamp (I was working as a porter in a UK hospital) To start the car you had to suck on the tube the right amount, then crank it. Every 20 minutes you had to have another pull on the tube due to other leaks. Lasted 6 months before the big end went south… Same car went to its grave with a 10mm wrench acting as a suspension bolt connecting front and rear springs (and a lovely pillowy ride it was too)
I duct taped the big vacuum line going to the booster back together on our 94 Cougar Gambler 500 car after it tore when I got air over the top of a hill, then semi-lawn darted it into the ground. It held for several hundred miles with no leaks at all. We almost did a second Gambler with it taped together because it worked so well, we both forgot that it even happened and only remembered last minute.
A bodge job that irritates the hell out of me is this old Tahoe in the neighborhood. The left rear taillight lense was busted, and instead of getting a used one for $10 at the junkyard, they bolted a piece of 4×4 in there and mounted a brand new generic trailer taillight in there along with a red reflector. W T literal F?! Everything is intact, so you could easily bolt in a proper replacement, so they spent more time and money on a half-ass repair than they would’ve on setting it right with OEM parts. I want to buy the lens and set it on their truck so badly, but it would probably be a waste.
Or just actually fix it yourself under cover of night! They probably wouldn’t notice for weeks, and then would furrow their brow in confusion for weeks more. The mental image would make you happy every time you drove by it.
I once replaced a motor mount on a friend’s ’90s Infinity. It was a car that lived on the street, and I noticed it was missing two center hub cabs on the wheels. Pretty obvious, to me anyway. So while I had it, I replaced the missing ones with perfectly good used ones and never told the owner. I always wonder if she ever noticed that the car looked whole again.
Haha. I borrowed a coworkers Focus for a day. Both the sun visor retaining clips were broken. The visors just hung down a bit and bounced around. It was driving me nuts.
Went to a pick n pull, 15 minutes and $6.00 later they were both replaced.
I never mentioned it and she never seemed to notice (even though they were a slightly different color of plastic)?
I don’t think she even knew they were broken in the first place.
Some people can’t be helped.
(TBF she’s 5’4” I’m 6’3”)
I welded a stripped two-piece axle flange on an AMC-20 with a couple of batteries, jumper cables, and some 6011.
Used the windshield washer reservoir and pump as a fuel pump to get a car off the road and on a trailer.
Filled a very loud NP435 with a bunch of really thick oil additive (Motor Honey or some such crap) to make a bearing quiet.
Brazed a crack that started at the output bearing boss on an SM465 without disassembling it.
Welded multiple tire rods, drag links, and driveshafts back together on the trail.
Welded a smog pump port closed in the head of a Ford 300 on the engine.
Several helicopter related ones that I won’t commit to paper.
Great stuff! This is what I came here for. I kinda knew the stuff I shared would be blown out of the water when I posted it, and was not disappointed.
There are a few “bodge” jobs in place on my ‘94 F150:
1. The tailgate latch mechanism is held together with zip ties. Darn old plastic parts aging out is my biggest issue with the old girl.
2. A piece of beer can is JB-welded to the inner cowl, patching up a hole that was letting water into the cab.
An honorable mention goes to my dad for rethreading some bolts on the ‘71 cub cadet he gifted to me to accept metric nuts instead of just buying the damn SAE nut ( I guess he REALLY needed to get that yard mowed immediately). This is especially funny because of how meticulous he is with everything else.
1988 Mazda RX-7 Convertible – a few years ago, getting the differential out to fix a pinion lash issue, while trying to loosen one of the nuts on the two large studs holding the rear subframe to the unibody, the stud snapped instead. Now, this stud is welded to the unibody, over which is welded a whole lot of convertible-specific bracing, so getting to the top of it to pound it out and figure out a replacement was going to be a ton of work. Instead, I had to very carefully cut off the stud at a certain spot, drill it out exactly on-center, tap it and get the strongest bolt in the original size of the stud as I could to repair it. The fix itself has been working for years now, and based on this brief description it doesn’t sound like much of a bodge…. but the janky parts really come in the details of HOW I was able to get the drill as straight and aligned with the stud as possible, centered, and the hole drilled and tapped in this tapered stud.
https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generation-specific-1986-1992-17/repairing-rear-subframe-studs-janky-way-1129151/
It wasn’t me, but my Dad – in 1987 we had an E-150 conversion van. He bought it new in 1985, and it was decked out. Oddly enough, in 1985 “loaded” didn’t include AC. A couple years later my folks decided to start economizing so they could put a down payment on a Lake house, and the decision was made to sell the Van. After a few months of trying, no one wanted it without AC. Thats when Dad decided to shell out for aftermarket AC installation.
Fast forward 6 weeks and it was time for the annual family vacation. This year was a camping trip to Sleeping Bear and Torch Lake. We decided to stop in Royal Oak and pick up y Grandma (Dads Mom) and bring her along. SO – we left Cleveland on Friday evening headed for Royal Oak.
Normally, we’d make the trip door to door and have a but under a quarter tank left when we arrived. This time, we had the AC running. Dad forgot AC is a bit of a gas hog, so instead, we ran out of gas on 275 right around Detroit Metro.
We were on the side of the highway for about 2 hours, and no one stopped.
Finally, Dad opened the side door of the van and said aloud “What would MacGyver do?”. It was at this point where is foot bumped into the can of Coleman Lantern fuel. A lightbulb went off. He asked my Mom “We got a funnel?” (which, being packed for a camping trip, we did).
Despite my Mom’s protests (“its going to explode!” – “Dammit I hope so or else we arent going anywhere”) Dad put the Lantern fuel in the tank. Mom made me sit on her lap up front (in case we had to bail, she could make sure I got out first, I guess?). And it worked like a charm. Got us to the next exit and a Marathon station. Made it all the way to Charlevoix and back to Cleveland.
When we got home, Dad gave the van a tune up and it ran just fine from then on. Sold it 6 weeks later and the buyers (a friend of a friend of a friend) kept that van another 5 years, and had no trouble. Lantern fuel – who knew?
Nice! That is interesting as I have heard that unleaded can be used as a substitute for Coleman fuel in a lantern. I was always curious if it went the other way. Now I know!
From what Ive been told in the intervening years, its only about 50 octane so it will work, but unless you’re in a pinch I wouldnt recommend it (and on anything run by an ECU, I have not earthly idea if it’d still work) – so, YMMV (quite literally)
And going the other way – using regular unleaded in a lantern – that will work as well, but you have to worry about carbon buildup/ fouling your mantles
There is currently a small piece of wood holding the battery in place, in my wife’s Lexus ISF. Does that count?
Current car: the dealer had holed the heater core hose. The hose was at that point not obtainable. I put in a brass pipe coupler and new hose about the right diameter on the other side. It worked for 100k miles until it got replaced by the now available hose.
1972 Super Beetle. I was installing a used set of dual 40mm 1bbl carbs (the Kadron kit) and bent one of the linkages on the left carb. When I tried to straighten it, it snapped.
I bought a Dremel and made a new linkage out of the heaviest coat hanger I had. It was thick enough that I could make a groove around it for a snap ring to (IIRC) hold the end of a very mild spring. That fix stayed in place until I replaced the engine after a small fire. (Just to be clear, the bodge did not cause the fire.)
Not as impressive as anything else posted so far, but it always felt good to keep an exhaust going a little longer on any variety of beaters I owned with a soup can and a couple of screw clamps.
For a fair amount of people with newer cars, this seems to be a common modification of choice. Wait, what? Those are actual over the counter parts??
Same with my TJ. It was four years or so ago and I didn’t have time to replace the exhaust system properly before a trip. As you described, I used an aluminum can and hose clamps, and slathered the inside of the can with high-temp epoxy. My fix started to leak this summer.
Time to eat some more soup!
87 Acura Integra. The moonroof was leaking through the screws that held in the trim. I pulled everyhting that I could loose to discover that the inner roof was mostly rust and the space left behind by older rust. I still had tk stop the leak, so I bought a can of Great Stuff and spray foamed the roof.
Doing a run in an armored truck that went to a number of small banks in rural Indiana outside of Bloomington, having a nice enough drive in the countryside when the engine quit. 80’s Detroit with an electric solenoid safety fuel cutoff. Pulled out my Leatherman tool and formed a couple of paper clips and a rubber band into a linkage that kept the electric shutoff pulled in the “run” position but still let the engine shut down when the kill knob on the dashboard was pulled. Finished the day with no fuss, and the thing stayed that way for another week until the shop got the part in and got around to fixing it.
Or the Land Rover Disco I where the little plastic screw-in plug on the top of the radiator cracked. (It’s used to burp air out of the cooling system.) Found a brass plumbing plug and an O-ring at the hardware store that fit. Worked fine — never did bother to replace it… just refreshed the O-ring once or twice because the genuine plastic plug was in short supply and stupidly expensive.
1984 Dodge Charger (the extra lame one in white with the 2.2 and an automatic). Lightly rear-ended somebody on an on-ramp (stupid Dallas Central Expressway short-ass ramps) and shattered the entire substructure that held the headlights. Weirdly, the plastic outer layer was fine. Didn’t have the money to buy a replacement part at the junk yard so I built my own out of a 2×4, two pieces of plywood cut carefully to hold the headlights, and some 12 gauge copper wire to tie the whole mess to the underlying metal tube bumper. Worked like a charm – you could even adjust the headlights properly. The headlights would vibrate slightly, but that was only annoying when out in the country and I mostly stayed in Dallas. Lasted a couple years until I traded the thing in on a turbo LeBaron.
The repair was done quickly so I could get back on the road. The people I hit tried the old “you trashed the whole back of our car” bit and, when the insurance adjuster came to look at my car he straight-up asked “are you SURE you hit them?” Never heard from the insurance people again.
The night before my wife and I drove cross country, I decided to change the oil as I always have on previous vehicles. I just picked up a used Hyundai Veracruz (which was an awesome SUV before anyone gives me shit), which had a paper drop in type filter with a plastic housing.. Ok, a little different.. but I got this. Turns out its incredibly easy to over-torque the plastic housing, resulting in hairline cracks. How does one realize there are **hairline cracks** since you cant see them? Oil shoots out and sprays your entire god damn garage, thats how. The hood was open so I could start the engine to get oil circulated, and recheck the level, which then allowed me to paint my garage space brown.
My wife was not impressed.
That sounds awful. The Veracruz however, I agree, was not. Highly underrated. Always thought they looked nice, and was always impressed with how narrow the panel gaps were on these.
Buttery smooth bullet-proof 3.8L V6 w/ 260hp had trick dampening w/ lots of sound deadening, and it moved plenty fast. The equally dependable 6-speed auto shifts were silky, never hunting for gears. It had moderate body lean, which was its weak point, and the suspension wasn’t anything special. It went down the road like nicely, nothing sporty about it.
Interior had leather padded touch points everywhere, good tech for the era, and a bunch of well thought out lux details. It was nothing special, just a very good all around SUV for cheap. I drove it to Colorado every winter for ski trips and it was incredibly stable in heavy snow (AWD).
This era of Hyundai was my favorite, as half their products were just as good as anything else (sometimes better) but they were still considered a value play. I wish we had a brand that was in a similar place today.
1998 Accord, well used and abused. Bought for $1,700 as a winter beater. Front fenders were made of body filler. One day a chunk fell off and with a little more poking a bunch more did. Bought a cheap boat fiberglass repair kit at Canadian Tire and went to down. Passenger wiper was held on with medical tape.
2004 Impreza winter beater, purchased from my mom as a winter car. Smacked the low bars on the back of a straight truck not expecting him to stop. Found the closest Impreza in a wrecking yard and bought new front end parts. Silver car with a dark blue front end. Pulled the rad support back to mostly straight, bunch of washers and random bolts to get the hood to latch somewhat close and called it a day.
Years ago, I had a 1982 Toyota Celica Supra with the A43DL automatic transmission (I know…). I got a little overzealous in my efforts to baseline it and snapped off a couple transmission pan bolts while attempting a filter service. Since I was new to wrenching, I didn’t have the experience or tools to extract the bolts. Instead, I ground them down and as a temporarily permanent fix using the smallest c-clamps I could find. They were installed where the lip of the transmission housing and pan meet, near the areas with the broken bolts.
It worked until I traded it in to a dealer for a 1993 XJ6.