Stockings, blue rizla and an egg

[55palfers]

Large can of damp-start

[texaxile]

Tin of "gun gum", for fixing those pesky exhaust leaks , because the hotter it gets, the harder it sets, or rather the more brittle and ste it becomes .

[loughran]

Mars Bar. The toffee from a Mars Bar can be used to plug the hole in a leaking carb float. Can be good for ten years or so.

[WestYorkie]

Clothes pegs. For keeping the manual choke out.

[eldar]

3 foot length of 4" x 2". All in one hammer, jack, handbrake and replacement chassis member.

[slomax]

A tap washer to create an insulated connection. I had a short, which meant I had no electricity - this worked a treat.

[john2443]

Long shoe laces to make manual windscreen wiper motor for when the electric one packs up on the Norwich Union.

Beans tin (empty) and some wire for when the exhaust breaks in half on a Saturday evening in Wales.

Block of wood and a bit of chain to hold suspension up when Morris Minor torsion bar snaps.

[slomax]

Aha! Another one I completely forgot! My oil filler/breather came apart on my Lomax, I used a bit of bicycle inner tube and a beer can (with the top amd bottom cut off) to create a sealed collar with some clips to hold it all together. It fit perfectly and left it like this for the best part of 6 months.

[Camoradi]

Wooden clothes peg to hold the choke out.

...and of course, a spare head gasket. Our family car for several years was a Mk1 Cortina estate which regularly overheated when towing the family caravan. Prior to a house move we loaded the caravan up with all the pot plants from the garden and the contents of the shed, and drove it from Norfolk to Sussex on a Friday evening. Eventually the head gasket gave up at about 9pm on the A24 near Warnham, so we pulled into a lay by and I held the torch while my dad took the head off and replaced the gasket. We did it in a record 35 minutes that night. As we were torqueing the head down another kind motorist stopped to ask if we needed any help, and couldn't quite believe when we told him of the "roadside repair" we'd just done.

[slomax]

Camoradi said:

Eventually the head gasket gave up at about 9pm on the A24 near Warnham, so we pulled into a lay by and I held the torch while my dad took the head off and replaced the gasket. We did it in a record 35 minutes that night. As we were torqueing the head down another kind motorist stopped to ask if we needed any help, and couldn't quite believe when we told him of the "roadside repair" we'd just done.

This reminds me of a story one of my colleagues told me at work. I think he said it was a 1500 maxi - although for the purpose of the story its not massively important.

Anyways, he was running on 3 cyl and then blew his gasket. Instead of repairing it he was offered a 1750 engine for peanuts. Being a student he did the whole engine swap outside his student digs on the roadside, using 2 of his rugby mates and some lengths of 2x2 as an engine hoist. With the engine out he was swapping over all the ancillaries sat on his doorstep. A copper came along and said that it was against the law to do minor repairs on the roadside and he needed to take it to a garage....

His reply "well that's okay, its not a minor repair!" took him over to the car and opened the bonnet!

After the swap he heard a ticking noise for a few weeks that eventually went away. He couldn't work out what it was... Turned out that when he swapped the sump (needed for the speedbumps) he didn't check the clearance. The extra capacity was got from a longer stroke, meaning that he had 4 perfect little scores on the inside of his sump. Lucky!

[PositronicRay]

I swapped the lump out of a MK3 Cortina on my own.

Hire co dropped off an engine hoist, an hour later hire co driver was back because the paperwork was incorrect. I said he might as well take the hoist, job done.
He was gobsmacked, but I had prepped the job.

[Yertis]

Packet of frozen peas to cool down the Lucas Petrol Injection fuel pump, if you're lucky enough to be so equipped.

[Yertis]

Packet of frozen peas to cool down the Lucas Petrol Injection fuel pump, if you're lucky enough to be so equipped.

[Edmundo2]

+1 on the bean can. Travelled around Oz in a 59 Ford Falcon that we thought was a great buy when we spotted it for sale outside a bar in Coogee NSW. Turned out it looked the part but was pretty much original baring a really low grade rotten exhaust that had been routed below the axle rather than over it and as such kept falling apart. We could barely afford beer so bodged it with bean cans and two clamps which worked ok but burned through every hundred miles or so which meant coinciding our peasant spec meals of beans and supa noodles with breakdowns. All part of the fun and certainly made the 700 + mile journey to Melbourne interesting!

john2443 said:

Long shoe laces to make manual windscreen wiper motor for when the electric one packs up on the Norwich Union.

Beans tin (empty) and some wire for when the exhaust breaks in half on a Saturday evening in Wales.

Block of wood and a bit of chain to hold suspension up when Morris Minor torsion bar snaps.

[Nuisance_Value]

battered said:

My Dad and his mates once remade a solder joint on a distributor with the fag lighter. The clever bit was that when the joint oxidised and refused to wet out one of them went into the woods and came back with a blob of pine resin to use as flux. That's smart.

Yep, that is awesome. Beat that Ray Mears.

[Monkeylegend]

I found a pop rivet gun and a couple of old tin cans very useful for repairing the rust holes in the sills of my 4 year old 1965 Mini. A quick spray can and the job was done. You could see daylight through them in several places.

They don't make cars like they used to.

[Vanin]

otherman said:

So lets imagine you're out in an MGB, or a Cortina, or pretty much any 70s/80s motor come to that. What handy things might you take with you in case a roadside fix is needed? I'll start you off with three:

A pair of stockings (ideally with some legs still in them at the start of the journey)in case of fan belt breakage

A pack of blue rizla in case of a sudden need to set the timing

A raw egg, in case of radiator leak.

Over to you good people for more. No actual proper spares allowed.

I thought for a minute you were going to add black bin liner and a slice of orange to the stockings.


https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Stephen_Milligan

[anonymous-user]

What? Page 3 and no one has posted this yet? Standards are slipping.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfFRQ-StpwA

[grumpy52]

Jump leads and welding rods =instant arc welder .
Repaired broken ramp on car trailer when miles from home .

[OvalOwl]

NNH said:

Some chewing gum so you can use the foil wrappers to replace blown fuses...

The gum itself, of course, can be used to plug holes in the radiator when it finally goes from dripping to pissing out mode after a month of topping the coolant up.