The epic bodge thread

Putting this in "off topic" so automotive and non-automotive entries are welcomed.  

Here's mine for the "kick off".  This gem was completed by the previous owner of my son's SX4.  Funny thing is a new mirror was only about $45 on Amazon.

The formula: Broken mirror housing + crudely cut craft store mirror + craft wire glued to the mirror and the housing (why, I have no idea) + white duct tape for a nice finishing touch = replacement mirror.  BTW: The replacement mirror gave a perfect view of a 3 x 3 spot roughly 2 feet out from the passenger's door.  It's complete lack of usefulness earns it bonus "bodge points".  

I give it a bodge score of 8.6 out of 10

I'm pretty sure that the reason no one has posted here, is that you have achieved Bodge Nirvana. 

If you had set the bar a little lower, we might have seen some other people post here.

No pictures because I don't want photographic proof of my hackery. Used an 80 amp inline subwoofer fuse to splice two sections of battery cable together for my starter. Lasted almost 15,000 miles. Then the fuse blew.

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Hmm so that works eh? Was seriously considering it the other day when I cut some corrosion out of my berry cable and made it almost to too short to connect.

@kazoospec I thought it was a bit bodgy when I replaced the mirrors on my Sonoma. Stock mirrors were 8 inch squares, and had been electrical taped onto the truck before I bought it. When they feel off, I bought Napa oem replacements that we're 3 inch squares for some reason. But that white duct tape and craft wire takes the cake.

In reply to RevRico :

At least for a while. In a neon.

I may win with this one.

302 SBF in a friends Econoline that was supposed to be a 351.  Nose of crank snapped off.  No problem, I had an old 351 to drop in.  This is where we found it had a 302 not a 351 so no ancillaries would fit.  Bugger.  But I also had a 302 with a cracked block so we decided to swap the good crank from the cracked block engine into the the good block with the snapped crank.  

Great, except when we went to tighten down the main caps we discovered that when the nose snapped off the crank, it had whipped around and stretched the main bearing at the front so it was oveled.  Bugger again.  Right, this thing needs to be running, out with the die grinder and ever so ever so carefully we relieved the sides of the main bearing cap and the block until the (old) bearings could go in and we could torque things down and it would still turn over.  Yes it made oil pressure and yes it kept running for at least a year after that.

Does this count?

I somehow lost the gas cap to my old Craftsman push mower.  Put gas in the mower, put cap on, mowed grass around the edges.  Almost finished, look down, no gas cap!

I was gonna use some plastic wrap and a rubber band to keep the dirt out and the volatiles in, but I found a cap I'm pretty sure will fit on Amazon for $3.97.  Should be here tomorrow.  Stupid Lowe's wants like $11. for a Genuine Briggs cap.  Screw that!

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I used a washcloth and zipties once. Worked as a prefilter too!

Many moons ago I bought an Austin A40. The previous owner modified this set of Toyota Corolla rims to adapt them to the Austin A40 bolt pattern. They found their way to the metal recycler quickly.

Speaking of mirrors I saw this one out on the street a while ago!

The driver's seat in my Buick was wearing out. So, rather than go with a universal seat cover or pay a lot for a professional upholsterer to fix it correctly, I decided to buy a sewing machine and an old leather jacket from a thrift store and tackle the job myself. And the sewing machine turned out not to be working (although I later ended up having it fixed professionally with good results, and got a bit of use out of it on some other projects). So I took a needle and thread and plowed ahead anyway. About a year and a half later, it's not holding up especially well.

And some more of the original leather - not to mention the springs and foam aren't in the best shape either. I'm thinking now about whether I can bodge a Procar seat onto the stock power slider tracks. I could probably get the heated seat elements out of the stock seat and into an aftermarket one too, although that's not a huge loss in Georgia.

Years ago at our first chump car outing with a 1991 1.8L Plymouth Laser, we had taken advantage of the very generous brake upgrade rules to put 3000GT brakes on the front of the car.  Well, a 300% increase in front brakes called for an equal increase in rear braking power, right?  But we're poor and cheap, so what do we use?  The stock 1.8l front brakes!

Now, in race trim, we removed enough weight that it was about 2" higher than stock ride height even with 2" lowering springs.

We didn't get to test it until the paddock the night before the race, and we quickly found out that if you were going more than 15 MPH and hit the brakes, the car would instantly snap 180°.  It was undrivable.

After noodling around all sorts of things, we ended up putting air in the rear calipers to set our brake bias.  It still wasn't great, but it got through 14 hours of racing that way!

Going over a recently purchased car, I found a fuel tank vent hose zip tied to the brake hose. 

Edit, found a picture

Why is there a GRM bondage thread?

oh wait...

In reply to SVreX :

You can always start an S&M DSM tread.

In reply to Patrick :

I think that's about 8 separate entries, each of which should be scored separately, and any of which may be a winner. 

Thousands of years ago, I crewed for a friend with a GT3 BMW 2002 (which tells you how long ago...). The car was prepped fairly aggressively for the time ('though nothing like GT3 cars now), and had some trick, unobtanium German clutch in it. Early in the race weekend, the clutch failed, so we trailered it home (fortunately it was a home race), and pulled the trans. The pressure plate had a ring of heavy wire that served as a fulcrum for the little fingers that activated the pressure plate, and it had broken, then was destroyed fairly comprehensively. So there we were, late Saturday night, scratching our heads. I observed that the ring looked like heavy coat hanger wire, and joked that we should bend up a coat hanger. We looked at each other, then went to find the heaviest coat hanger we could. We formed it around a 2 lb coffee can (which was about the right diameter), slipped it into place around the pegs that located it, and welded the two ends together. It was about 3:30 am when the car was back on the ground, and not wanting to disturb the neighbours we didn't fire it up, but it seemed to work with the car off.

In the bleary-eyed morning, we fired up the car, and drove it onto the trailer - so far, so good. Got to the track, did a couple of warmup laps, and all seemed well. The car went on to win two races that day (20 min each), and drove back onto the trailer under its own power. Successful bodge - there's very little you can't fix with coat hanger wire, duct tape and zip ties (although todays hangers are far too wimpy to be of much use)!

The most artful bodge I have ever encountered. A 1952 Siata Daina Gran Sport that was hot rodded in 1955 with a Studebaker 232 V8 and freewheeler 3spd with OD. Most of the other work on the car was seriously bottom notch, downright lethal but the shifter! Oh Deity what a masterpiece.

The trans tunnel was primarily composed of aluminum roofing sheaths smooshed into place

And under the tunnel is this majestic bodge

They cut the shifter off the original Fiat/Siata gear box, made a lowered section of the floor and bolted it in place.

Then started cobbling a linkage arrangement to operate the levers on the transmission

Only need two gates? just block the other off

No store bought clevis is good enough for this task, better make your own. Cotter pins? Berk that I got a bag of nails!

In the process of replacing the whole center section of the car I saved the linkage. Yes they used two 1/2" nuts as the "bearing" the other lever was in a piece of split heater core hose as a bearing.

It was magical! What gets me is when this car was modified it was still a very expensive handbuilt italian race car. 

The owner wanted the car brought back to its hot rod state and wanted to keep all of the "eccentricities" so I had to remake a serviceable version of this linkage.

In reply to Jumper K Balls (Trent) :

How nose heavy was that???? Studie v8s are 700 lbs, Fiat 1100 from Siata around 300

In reply to TurnerX19 :

One of the very few things they did right when hot rodding this car was to move the new engine as far down and back as possible. They pushed the firewall back and moved the engine 12" further back and 8 inches lower than the 4 cyl.  

I've patched exhaust pipes with tall boy bud cans and gear clamps. Worked fine. For a while.

A section of my cold air intake is a spaghetti sauce can with both ends open.  Just the right diameter.  

Does painting it black make it less of a bodge?

Turboeric said:

Successful bodge - there's very little you can't fix with coat hanger wire, duct tape, a welder, and zip ties (although todays hangers are far too wimpy to be of much use)!

Fixed that for you.

Reminds me of a story about a Stinson 108 on a vintage aircraft tour.  I believe they were in Thailand and the exhaust manifold on the Franklin engine cracked and the weld repair was successfully accomplished after pulling some wire out of a chain link fence to use as filler rod.

Branching out from Automotive, or even mechanical bodges, I have this gem.

Previous owner of a veterinary clinic I bought had used an electric drill and a 1/8 inch bit as a stud finder. The horizontal row of holes in the wall in multiple locations baffled the building inspector.

I'll leave you to make your own assumptions about the quality of his medicine.

There was a central vacuum system mounted on a pad outside of the building. I used it in surgery for smoke evacuation when using the laser.

When i brought my 65 mustang home and peeled back the carpet I found a previous owners attempt at floorpan replacement. You know that bumpy, paper thin aluminum sheet they used to use on the bottom of screen doors? It was that. Pop riveted in. Big pieces of it. That should be plenty good for a unibody that was already flexy and floppy when they were new, right?

Now for my own. A seem split on the headliner. A new headliner was $40. No problem, except that the front and rear windshields have to come out. And if they come out, i might as well fix the tiny rust hole just behind the rear windshield. Then i will need to paint it which wont match so i should probably fix all the rust bubbles and paint the whole thing so its now a four figure headliner, or I can safety pin it.