The most "ghetto-tastic" thing you've ever fabbed for a car.

"Big Fella" race car door.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: E30 aero with narrowed Late Model Monte Carlo nose

more pics, please

Shifter made out of an auto trans flywheel spacer and a spherical bearing.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: E30 aero with narrowed Late Model Monte Carlo nose

looks more like an IROC Camaro than Monte Carlo..

Quick release window net made out of an old snowblower chute crank

In reply to novaderrik:

It could be - I don't remember which nose it was exactly. It was $88 from Pitstop USA and I took about a foot out of the middle to make it fit.

JoeyM wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: E30 aero with narrowed Late Model Monte Carlo nose

more pics, please

Most ghetto was a roadside repair on BABE rally so I dont know if it counts but...

One team with a particularly crappy toyota something or other (corrola, tercel) had been complaining about low power. Finally as we're climbing the hills through right hand gap the car wont climb anymore. We get it to the side of the road and pop the hood and the car has NO intake plumbing, just the MAF sitting right over the hot exhaust. Obviously a little cool air should make things better. We scrounged the other cars and found a few empty soda bottle and some tape, a sock over the end of it all for a filter, job done :)

The drivers of the car were very impressed with how much better their car ran after that.

I'm pretty pleased with the direction this thread is going :)

JoeyM wrote:

kevlarcorolla wrote: Toilet plungers used for diff covers in my chain drive Geo,perfect still after approx 50 races.

this is your ice racer, right?

Yep,lots of other ghetto'ness on it but these stand out.

I made this portable air conditioner from an Igloo cooler, Ford heater core, a bilge pump, and a inline blower.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Shifter made out of an auto trans flywheel spacer and a spherical bearing.

My handbrake lever is a Honda Accord automatic shifter, with the curved section of a Park Avenue column shifter welded to it.

It's not ghetto, it's functional. Ghetto is something that is half-assed and not really functional, like a chunk of rope out the window to move the wipers.

I would also classify as ghetto the practice of using 20 feet of braided hose for the brakes and/or fuel system instead of using hardline where appropriate.

I was in my SVO and accidentally got into a sort of street race with a Turbo Coupe. Shortly afterwards, my throttle cable snapped. I ended up 'fixing' it on the side of I-696, at 1 AM...with the string from a Crown Royal bag.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker: That looks good.....

Not something I've done but I found it while trying to bleed the brakes.

Someone took an 8p nail and stuck it into the rear circuit in the master cylinder instead of replacing the rusted through hard line on the rear axle

I'll have to get Curmudgeon to post up some picture of the clutch linkage we built for the ThunderTurd Lemons car. Trying to convert a bell crank clutch to a cable clutch. It was an erector set. We basically kept adding metal until it stopped flexing.

It couldn't have been to getto though. It lasted longer than the rest of the car.

nicksta43 wrote: Not something I've done but I found it while trying to bleed the brakes. Someone took an 8p nail and stuck it into the rear circuit in the master cylinder instead of replacing the rusted through hard line on the rear axle

that's just dumb. it's easier to just flatten the hard line before where it rusted thru and roll it back on itself so it doesn't leak.

That doesn't work very well. I just cut the line off at the nut and then weld it shut.

I mean, I have seen that as the best way to make a plug, I've never done that on my Golf when a line broke and had to wait three weeks before I had time to string new lines.

novaderrik wrote:

nicksta43 wrote: Not something I've done but I found it while trying to bleed the brakes. Someone took an 8p nail and stuck it into the rear circuit in the master cylinder instead of replacing the rusted through hard line on the rear axle

that's just dumb. it's easier to just flatten the hard line before where it rusted thru and roll it back on itself so it doesn't leak.

When your a POS scumbag used car dealer, trying to pass of Katrina flood cars to your customers the 8p nail was a very stealthy way of increasing the profit margin by saving the 12 or so dollars it would have cost to fix the issue correctly.

I had the truck a week when the freaking diff cover RUSTED THROUGH, I've seen cars sit in the junkyard for 15 years and the diff cover never rusted through.

Toyman01 wrote: I'll have to get Curmudgeon to post up some picture of the clutch linkage we built for the ThunderTurd Lemons car. Trying to convert a bell crank clutch to a cable clutch. It was an erector set. We basically kept adding metal until it stopped flexing. It couldn't have been to getto though. It lasted longer than the rest of the car.

Yeah, that was a bodge from hell. It ran so close to the exhaust that we bent a piece of roof flashing to use as a heat shield and for some reason wired it to the linkage. Push the clutch (which worked smooth as buttah, as Toyman says it's the only thing on the car that did) and you'd hear the aluminum screeching against the exhaust.

I knew my old beater Audi must have something, was just able to remember it. When plumbing in a fuel cell to negate having to replace the rusted out gas tank I did not have the correct fitting for the return line. An air compressor quick connect fitting worked for years. There was also a 2X4 that took the place of the failed rear window motor.

We have fab'ed up plexiglass windows as replacements for either broken glass or failed regulators on many occasions, though that is less ghetto than the trashbag fix

JoeyM wrote: all my sheetmetal has been "found" (i.e. trash) material water heater ==> hood water heater ==> rear panel oven ==> rear deck a/c air handler ==> door a/c air handler ==> quarter panels hood ==> floor file cabinet ==> floor patch panels (hood was short) stove ==> rear deck card table ==> front transmission tunnel refrigerator ==> rear transmission tunnel box fan ==> grill shell upright freezer ==> firewall and upper cowl

And inspired my vastly inferior rocker cover repair!

I took a Lada Niva dash from this

to this with no money in

I had a snow chain snap and leave a piece flapping all over the place so I unwound the spiral from a notebook and used the wire to repair it until I could make it to a gas station that had bolt cutters with which to excise the broken section.

Way back in the day when I had my S14, the bumper was held on for a while by nothing but two gigantic 3'x12" zipties wrapped all the way around the bumper beam and top part of the bumper.

Well heck, that reminds me of when I held my rear suspension together with a ratchet strap and just shoved the excess strap into the hatch.

And then left it that way for something like six or eight months

Then I finally yanked the broken Panhard off and went back to the Watts... because my new exhaust system wouldn't fit with the Panhard bracket in the way.