anybody here Mac Guyver a tool in a pinch ?

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moparmat2000

moparmat2000

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Anybody here have to rig up a tool in a pinch that broke because you either didnt have the time to get a replacement, or store was closed?

In my instance, i was using my ole trusty weller heavy duty soldering gun. I bought this thing used many years ago with both light bulbs missing, no tip, and a bad cord for $1.00 at a local flea market. Figured oh well its just a buck right. Well after giving it a good overhaul and a new tip some years ago it has never let me down until this evening. The tip broke while using it. It was getting a bit thin prior to this, but it was too late on a sunday evening to go looking for a soldering gun tip, and i wanted this project done.

I fashioned a new tip in a jiffy using a pair of plyers on an old wire coat hanger, installed it and finished the job. LOL. Now it took longer to heat up than the original type copper tip, but nobodys gonna be open at 9pm on a sunday night. I will go replace with the correct tip tomorrow, and keep a spare tip in my tool box from now on.

Matt
 
Awesome.

I've given up at my new work, on ideal circumstances. I've had to hack things together to get them to work so many times, I've almost forgotten about my tools at home or how I set things up, myself. lol

I recently had to use vise grips to hold a stripped air bleed/ purge plug on to the top of a gas powered fluid pump to feed water to a diesel powered pressure washer, to clean a locomotive. I clamped it on to the handle that you pick the pump up from and the handle of the vise grip was positioned just above the bleed plug that was stuffed into the stripped hole. Never leaked once, during it's use for 3 hours.

I just recently threw away a ladder that was band-aided with OSB on one of the legs. Saw a co-worker in his seventies using it, watched it rubber band each time he stepped on that side. That's how people break femurs and get strokes and die. Sometimes doing things the right way pays off. We cut it up and bought a new ladder.

My favorite hack that has gotten me out of a pinch, as of late, was my roadside rear control arm repair tool. My friend was driving a bit fast in his Grand Prix (POS) and stuffed the rear wheel into a curb in the ice. I started driving and the back end was swimming after we swapped the spare.

I pulled over and saw that the rear control arm adjustment rod was bent to hell, holding the camber and castor way off, so I pulled the scissor jack out of the trunk and let the car straighten itself. Worked like a charm.
 
I've also built a lot of my body tools from stainless, plastic and persimmon wood. Built a mini bullseye pic for fixing trim and built my tig pedal from stainless scratch and a chrome foot gas pedal, but I don't count those as improvisation.

One of the coolest things I've ever seen work was someone who repaired a knocking rod in an old Plymouth flathead six using emry cloth on the crank, with the pan off and rotating the crank until it was smooth, with an undersize journal bearing installed. He drove it for another 30k.

Just goes to show, that if you know what is going on, you can get things to work that allegedly should not, according to most.
 
I've done the same thing with my old Weller only I used a piece of copper electrical wire.
 
I used a motorcycle exhaust system with muffler as a cheater bar to break the fan blade loose when doing the water pump on my Dakota in a parking lot last night. The exhaust came off the buell blast in the bed of the truck.

Does that count?
 
I had an axle seal on my Barracuda's 8.75 fail at a race one weekend. Had no way to drive home the new seal. Ended up using a 2 inch to 1.5 inch galvanized pipe reducer bought at the Depot, which worked perfectly! Now a permanent fixture in my tool box
 
changing a clutch,on a Datsun 620/L20B/overseas RHD five speed. (Heated engine: A87 ported head/280z pistons/228/238@ .050 Crane cam) Late at night,no dummy shaft to be had locally. Did a quick measurement on pilot beating & friction disc, input size. Took my pool cue,cut and used a D/A sander, for quick work. It worked,for me.
 
I used to work on a wooden roller coaster, and we had one board that needed to be renailed and you couldn't climb to it and it was awkwardly placed to climb down to, so I could get about 6 feet above it, but not get any closer - and then decided to make a 6 foot long hammer. It was a big success, and only worked for that instance, but i kept it as a cool display.

This particular photo was me 75' up in the air, after catching a washer and nut i had dropped and needed to repair something. A coworker threw it up from the ground, and I caught them both first try. What a fun/scary job.





That's the hammer in question with the vice grips to show size. I made it out of some 2x6 and an old sledge that fell apart in about 10 minutes just to finish up for the day.

 
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