Post your "MacGyver" stories...(doesn't have to be car related)

[hughdogz]

Hey Guys,

 

I posted one of my "MacGyver" stories in this thread and I thought it would be cool to hear other ones too!

 

In case you don't know who MacGyver was, here is the Wiki clicky.

 

Story #1:

 

I had a '78 Celica that I drove across the country (Portland to Chicago for college). Somewhere in Idaho, I spent the night at a rest area, not knowing that I had my foot on the brakes (all night) and it drained the battery.

 

Luckily, I was on a big downhill slope, so I tried compression starting it, but no luck, there wasn't enough juice left in the battery to energize the coil...sheit!

 

Then, I thought long and hard...where can I get some "electrons"? I remembered that I have some D-cells in my Mag-light flashlight. I taped six of them together in series with some good 'ol duct tape. Then used some speaker wire to connect them to the battery...

 

Went to compression start it again, and Voila!! Instant Success!!

 

Story #2:

 

Same '78 Celica, same road trip...

 

I was getting bored on the "long haul" and thought it would be fun to see how close I could get to empty on fuel before filling up again.

 

So I'm really near empty, and I pass an oasis...it says next gas 48 miles. I want to play the game...so I think, "sure, I can make that"

 

I get to the next oasis and it is *ABANDONED* ...Holy Cow...I think I'm dead (still somewhere in Idaho near Idaho Falls? on my way to Yellowstone). The next gas is 30 miles. I get another ten miles or so and the car starts sputtering, so I pull over...

 

I figure there must be some more gas in the tank that the fuel pump cannot reach. I pull out the Haynes manual and it says I can access the gas tank through the access panel in the trunk. Sure enough, I see the fuel pump inlet is about 1 inch (~2.5 cm) above the bottom of the tank, and there still some fuel!

 

I disconnect the the fuel pump and drop it down into the remaining gas...it starts back up, and sure enough..I made it to the next station!! Whoo Hooo!! (even then, the station is closed, but I wait until it opens the next morning...)

 

To this day, I'll NEVER try that game again, LOL...

[xxjoeyxxeb]

Good stories, I'm sure we will get a lot of these.

 

I had a report to turn in one day but my household stapler was out of staples.

 

I got to class, and no one had a stapler.

 

So I went out to the hall and took one off of a poster and pushed it through my sheets, and voila! a stapled report!

 

Does that count?

[MJLamberson]

I have a hard time waking up in the mornings... I even bought what claimed to be "The Worlds Loudest Alarm Clock!" But it still couldnt wake me up after a Friday night, so whats a guy to do? I wired my alarm clock to trigger my house fire alarm. That sure did the trick... Only I probably should have told my family what was going on before 7am when everybody thought the house was on fire. Good thread idea btw.

[proxlamus©]

my headlights were improperly wired and I melted the wires and blew the fuse..

 

 

It was about 2am and all the parts stores were closed.. so I went to the grocery store and bought an electrical extension cord, I cut the plug off and wired the lights to the battery directly till I could get home. it worked

 

 

 

 

This reminds me of a recent WRC event where the throttle linkage was broken so the driver used the co-drivers shoe lace and hooked it up to the throttle to continue racing. now thats ingenuity!

[rustrocket]

When i was trying to get my 79 corolla home, the guy who had the car before me had the battery cables colored wrong, and when i tried to jump it, i blew the fusible link. Of course, i went to my local kragens and couldnt find anything!

 

As i was driving around in my friend's car, i saw an audio store...I went in there and got an inline fuse for a stereo system, and then put it in place of the fusible link. And on the bright side, those stereo fuses are like $1 and take 5 seconds to replace!

 

# 2

 

Maybe not MacGyver, but still funny.

 

When i was little, my parents would pay me a depressing sum to scrub the linoleum floor in the kitchen, probably about 15x25 surface. However the dirt was very stubborn and each square foot too me about 10 minutes. I got tired of busting my butt for not a whole lot of dough...So, i drilled a hole in the top of my giant scrubber brush, put a bolt through from the bottom and tightened it from the top with a nut, and then attached it to a drill! Not bad for 9 or 10 years old.

[m4xwellmurd3r]

A few years ago I saw someone talking about driving a car without using the clutch, so I decided to start practicing to see how easy/hard it was in my 62 bug (stock 1200) and it was REALLY easy. it would go in and out of gear no problem. downshifting was a pain, but besides that it was easy. Fast forwards about 5 months later and as I'm shifting into 3rd gear GUESS WHAT. clutch drops to the floor. the cable had snapped, and I have no spare and no tools. so what do I do? I stop using the clutch and use that bit of practice to use. Stopping/starting was a bit tricky. I had to pop it into neutral then shut the car off, then lurch start it in 1st gear to hope it starts ok.

 

another time, the throttle cable snapped at the carb, so I had to rig in a way to give me decent throttle without any gas. luckily I had duct tape and a broken fan belt so I sort of jammed the throttle part way open and I was off on my way.

 

once when I was playing paintball I had lost the striker buffer in my gun (it keeps the bolt assembly from moving too far back, which causes the bolt to allow almost 2 balls into the breech, which causes chopping and a big mess) so I had to make one out of duct tape. the really sad thing was, it worked BETTER than the actual part, so I never bothered trying to find the buffer.

 

my board in my EM-1 had fried on me, and I was going to go to play the next day (this was at 12am when it fried) the only other board I had was a special upgrade board for a different gun, that uses way more juice, and doesn't even have remotely the same plugs, so I hacked all the wires, hacked off the capacitor (and hoped the board only needed it to ramp up the noid output without causing problems if it's gone) then soldered all the wires together. I didn't plan on ever using that baord in my EM-1, but the funny thing, it worked WAY better than the stock board, and since I had all these pretty settings I was able to make the gun run almost twice as efficient as it would be if it was using the stock board.

 

oh and I had a stereo that would malfunction because I sort of punched it when I was a kid, it had two circuit boards mounted perpendicular to each other with metal rods linking them. I took a pen and jammed it into the gap between them and BAM no more screwups anymore. that was great.

 

the starter relay in my Z is messed up for whatever reason so I'm currently using a big screwdriver to turn it over lol. (I think the relay/30amp fuse is corroded or something)

[Tony D]

I was running down M55 between Tawas and West Branch one summer day, and saw the only other Microbus for at least 25 miles broken down on the side of the road.

 

I stop, we exchange pleasantries as we have seen each other on the roads from time to time...

 

Turns out he has dropped #3 Exhaust Valve and is dead in the water.

1500CC Single Port? Sure! Well, I just happen to have what you need...

 

In my 'Milk Crate of Parts' I have spares. So with that Milk Crate upside down, and with 2 2X4's on the top for additional height we pull his engine on the roads shoulder. Pull his Left Head, and agree, he's done on #3.

 

Swap on a junkyard head, junkyard jug with similar balancing numbers, reinstall it with old gaskets and some RTV, and in less than 2 hours he's on his way...

 

But not before the MSP rolls up on us as we're bolting on his rear bumper. Gives us a stern lecture and wants to know what the deal is...we tell him and he doesn't believe us! Show him the parts...still disbelief that we changed a head and piston on the roadside with a $39 Sears basic starter tool set and parts I just "Happened" to have in the van at the time.

 

*******************************************************

#2, rolling away from the San Antonio Z-Con towards the Houston Space Center, we come over a rise on I10 and I literally run into stopped traffic. A 1999 Toyota Pickup to be exact. Fan is into the Radiator on the Z. Car is running but not leaking. AFter talking with the guy for a while I realize now I'm puking green. Overheating. BAH! No real damage on his car, and I give him $300 to go buy a better tubular step bumper from JC Whitney--he's happy and I'm screwed.

 

Do the "Start, run up to speed, COAST" drill to keep it from overheating in traffic as I dive off the next exit. I find the local post office...about the only place with Free Parking I see. Under the trees of the post office, utilizing my trusty leatherman, I remove the grille, the lower radiator shroud, and get the fan turning (it was bound on the shroud). But something is buzzin... Oh, the fan IS hitting the radiator. What is a man to do? Why, flip out the knife blade and then surgically remove the same bit of tip from the fan blades for clearance. Then drive the car from Houston to Mobile, across Georgia, up the Blue Ridge Parkway, through Michigan up to Copper Harbor, down through Wisconsin, and back to California. The last leg being done in a marathon of driving as my wife was working night shift, so I drove all day and she drove all night. I slept some place near Amarillo, and awoke someplace near Flagstaff. Continuous driving, 24 hours daily, stopping for maybe 20 minutes every couple of hours to refill (and er...drain) fluids in the vehicle.

 

Did I mention I was towing an 800# trailer, and my wife and son were in the Fairlady Z 2+2?

 

In West Virgina I noticed some 'green junk' at a fuel stop. Turns out the head tank was weeping coolant and it was evaporating leaving the dye on everything. 1/2 Tube of Aluma Seal fixed that issue.

 

And in Michigan, when there was access to an Oak Tree, I took the chains that locked my spare trailer tires to the underside of the trailer and 'clearanced' the crash damage back to almost straight. I have photos of that process somewhere...

 

********************************************************

Oh, that list could go on....and on!

[skib]

I had a crappy rental house back in the day, I was probobly 9 or 10. the U bend in the kitchen sink rusted threw and leaked, so I wrapped it in seran plastic wrap and some duct tape.

10 years later that pipe still dosent leak:biggrin:

[Jaspendlove]

took a VW air pump. cut the wires on the bottom, connected the wires from the BMW pump. Tested it to see if it worked. it did.

 

had to use some hoses from checker to re-route the incoming air from the filter to the pump and a rubber hose from the pump to control valve

[Evan Purple240zt]

took a VW air pump. cut the wires on the bottom, connected the wires from the BMW pump. Tested it to see if it worked. it did.

 

had to use some hoses from checker to re-route the incoming air from the filter to the pump and a rubber hose from the pump to control valve

 

What?

[Jaspendlove]

^^LOL. THAT WAS THE SIMPLE VERSION. HERE IS A LINK OF A DIY ON WHAT I DID.

 

http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=286145&highlight=p1423

[PETEW]

Me and the friends went out for a night of bowling and drinking . It was a BYOB bowling place, so 3 cases for 4 guys should be enough. I wasn't drinking since I was the designated driver (I maybe had 2 all night) so it was really 3 guys drinking. Needless to say, they all got really smashed and I was the only sober one of the group. Luckily they are all entertaining drunks , and everyone was enjoying watching them make asses out of themselves.

 

Well, except for the Puerto Rican guy next to us who didn't know how to bowl and threw the ball backwards almost hitting his friends. It was funny, but no one else was laughing; no one but the three drunks next to them. He comes up to my one buddy and says " You think that is funny." My friends reply, while laughing is "Yeah, hilarious!" At that point I thought it would be best to get them out of there quickly.

 

All four of us get into my 1986 Dodge Daytona Turbo Z Shelby model (which was a very tight fit mind you since we are all over 6' and in the 200 to 200+ range) and head for home. Everything was going fine when suddenly the car goes dead. I still have lights, and other electrical but no engine. I pull the car to the side of the road, and get ready to go out. I am not anxious about doing road side work in the cold fall weather and it is starting to mist now. I tell the guys to hold on and I will see what I can do.

 

I must say that this car belonged to one of the guys before and I bought it from him when I went to college. It was cheap, and decent looking so I got it. Needless to say the other two guys were riding him like a cheap rent a mule. Telling him he "Sold me a piece of junk" and "How could he do that to me." I decided to go out and see what I could do for his sake and mine.

 

Well I popped the hood of the car and started looking in the dark. The car would crank over but it wouldn't start. I knew I was looking at electrical or fuel related issues, but which one. I couldn't see anything on the country road in the dark, and no flashlights. Suddenly, I saw the problem. The stupid cap cam off of the coil of the car, and was fixed just like that.

 

Hey, I never said I was Mcgyver, but you would have thought I was when I got in the car. Nothing like 3 stupid drunks to give you a nice ego boost. I got all the "Man Pete, you are the man!" and "How did you figure that out!" all the way home. So there you have it. In drunk eyes I am the man!

[TXZ1956]

I had a 1971 Plymouth Duster 340. No where near stock. Talk about quick!! Anyway, I had a velocity stack on the carb and I was installing a pro comp hood scoop. Now the velocity stack just touched the hood. My problem was where to cut the hood to match the location of the carb. Into the kitchen I go. Get peanut butter and smear all around the horn of the stack. Close hood. Open. Perfect "marks" on where to cut.

[GabeRoc]

i'm a college sophmore with a reputation for working on cars from time to time. a friend of a friend (now my good friend chris) has a car that won't start and hasn't started for about 6 weeks. I go over to look at the car, a dodge shadow. Chris tells me that it clicks (ah ha! i can fix that!) I try the key, battery has gone dead. Owner's roommate, dan, has a car and agrees to give a jump. He pulls over, pops the hood and I hook up cables. After hooking up the cables I lean over the hood and suddenly the car is 'idling' at about 1800 rpm (nice speed for jumping) Dan looks at me with concern and I tell him I put a nickel under the idle screw. (a great trick, btw) after a bit of charging I try the key agian, sure enough the solenoid is sticking. Now at this point in my life, for some reason i didn't own a hammer. so, 1/2" ratchet and big socket. On the Shadow the starter is really close to the radiator support frame, so i hit the frame with every back stroke.

 

*wab wabba bab* "try it" nothing

*wab wabbada wababababab* "try it" nothing

*WAB WABBABABABABA WABABABABAB!!* "try it" starts right up.

 

Chris gets out of the car looking like a dog being shown a card trick. "did you just fix my car by beating on it?" "yep"

 

an easy trick, but man was that look priceless.

[S30TRBO]

I was with my friend in his 280Z after leaving Manassas Cruise-In. It's about 10pm or so we are driving along before getting on Rt66 and one of the heater core lines busted. Now he always carried a tool box but this ONE time I told him to leave it out since we were going to show the Z at the cruise-in. We ended up bypassing the line and used a road sign to cut the hose and a penny for the clamps. Take that MacGruber!!

[jasper]

20 yrs ago.....long story short..ARI.......Changed a set of POINTS with the end of a dipstick ( aka screw driver ).

[Tony D]

Running a Monaco with a 440 out back on 80 acres, doing jumps and all, a fire broke out under the hood.

 

I was half-dazed from bouncing off the roof after a couple of whoop-de-doos and said 'Rick, I think the car is on fire!'

 

We get out, pop the hood, and FOOF! Back of the engine starts on fire. Rick says "I'll go get a fire extinguisher!" and starts to run to the house. I make the comment, "But I gotta Pee!"

 

He stops dead in his tracks, about 20 yards from the car, turns around and yells "PI$$ ON IT!" and starts running back to the car, unzipping...

 

I'm like... huh? What? As he jumps on the front bumper screaming 'PI$$ ON IT PI$$ ON IT!' As he starts hosing the fire... I joined in, and wow...it worked. Smelly steam cloud arose and caught us full-on in the face, so we're leaning backwards as far as we can so not to get pee-steam in our eyes. Really made directional control hard. Rick slipped on the bumper and fell backwards, unable to immediately cease his fire retardant effort, he wet himself thoroughly in 'rain' of his own making.

 

I completed the task, actually got the fire out that way. The radiator was low, so we 'finished' in there. And decided that Dukes of Hazard was done for the day. Parked the car up front on the driveway with a 'FOR SALE $400' and it was gone that weekend.

 

Whoever bought that Red Monaco was in for a suprise when they opened that radiator cap...

 

Contrary to what you are thinking, there was no drinking involved in this endeavour. it started innocently enough with the phrase "I got to take down all those damn poplar saplings out there, it's going to take all day!" "Well, why don't you just run the Monaco out back over 'em...they're not that big, that front bumper will snap em all off in a couple of passes. Then just drag em all out with the tractor later and burn the lot of em!" The beginning stages were so fun, we got carried away and started ploughing the field in earnest...

 

Whaddya gonna do? It was an overcast day, and there was nobody else aroudn to play with, and we'd already shot the Cat-in-the-Hat the prior evening.

[Tony D]

Bandung Indonesia, I'm in the Hotel Horison. NO internet connection. No phone jack to do a dial up. HAVE to submit my reports so I can get paid...

 

Pull the bed back from the wall because the telephone line goes underneath there somewhere. Find a jagged hole in the wall with wires sticking out.

 

Hmmmmm....

 

Look in my Backpack, find an RJ45 coupler, and split it in half using The Leatherman. Take the wires and strip them, cut into the live phone wires (meh, it's supposedly 48vdc, so I'm told...how bad can it burn?) and splice my connector into the line.

 

Connect to the internet via an AT&T dialup locally. I'm amazed that Bandung's 56Kbps line dialup is like 4X faster than what I can get in SoCal.

 

Later in the day, there is a knock on the door...Maintenance. They have to come in and check the phone wiring, the neighboring room can not call out... (so thats what my interruptions and kickoffs were...)

 

What, I say, you mean to tell me THEIR phone wires are in MY room?

 

Just the access to them. (Access, it's a freakin jagged hole in the drywall/lath!)

 

Tell the guy, "Come back in 5 minutes, I have to finish my shower." (I am fully clothed in the doorway...)

 

Feverishly remove all apparatus. Let the guy come in, he 'can't find anything wrong' (ignores, or doesn't car the wires are stripped almost an inch clear!)

 

He leaves, I hook back up to the OTHER two pair of wires I thought was a likely candidate, and I'm back to the Internet.

 

Somewhere I DO have a digital photo of that array! Duplicated telephone 'access' at the Intercontinental in Puerto Ordaz in Venezuela (where I also crashed their corporate server three times hacking into an open LAN port by removing the plexiglass panel using my trusty Leatherman, and hooking directly into their server...)

[Tony D]

The boss and his better half decided they were going to 'monitor our movements' in the companny trucks using the Teletrac system. Bunch of hypocritical B.S. was laid on us about the system.

 

I find out how the system charges the users, and it's by 'starts and stops' of the vehicle. Tracks using Cel Towers and Triangulation. The decision is made by myself and the other lead technician to fight back...

 

Anyway, I set up a flasher relay to make a semi-short in the incoming power line through a load resistor, making the power dip to the transducer. This makes it think it's powered off. When the flasher loaded up, it clicked off, and the power was restored. This worked great, and I installed it using pericing probles from my meter set.

 

Eventually (the third day) I got a solid state flasher and set the thing up so it would be operating bang bang bang bang!

 

End of the first month comes, they get this BIG bill. Everybody's readouts are printed out, and they are like a page long. My partner and I literally have a PILE about 4" thick of computer paper. Reading out 'start stop' It was over 650 events in a day! They send out the technicians. Several times... They go over our vehicles. Several times... They put a larger transducer in Tims Truck (twice) because he randomly was 'dropping out'... (Manual actuation to kill the transducer, then reapply when we know we are in a different cel zone...making us 'dissapear' for 7 miles, or show up in another town through confusion in the system!)

 

This goes on for 3 months of the trial period. Progressively larger bills because I have trimmed the timing down to maximize the start-stop readout. Too fast and yo uskipped events, too slow and you weren't getting as many as possible in the timeframe allotted... Big news was they thought we were screwing them on time, but realized that with the records they were keeping it became apparent we were GIVING them time off the clock that they SHOULD have been paying us for...and they were PAYING a huge fee to the system because of the 'start-stop problem'... Even with all the chicanery we did, we made SURE that the first start and last stop were at least 5 minutes of 'clear operation' from the last 'Operation Backlash Event'...

 

When the technicians came to pull the things out of the trucks (there were two technicians to remove all the systems from all the trucks-6 trucks in all), they just couldn't understand it--"All the problems with this, we've never seen this before!" Then we showed them the little relay boxes we made, and told them everything we had done over the past three months. They were rolling out of their seats laughing so hard it wasn't funny! Never use a wire tie with a serial number on it as a 'failsafe tamper proof seal' on a simple inline dual bayonet fuse holder!

 

Best part was on the final day, and they both kinda looked around and said "Er....you need those boxes any more? They, ahh, they got the system on our trucks too...this would be funny as hell to install and screw with em!"

 

MUAHAHAHAHAHA

[DavyZ]

He stops dead in his tracks, about 20 yards from the car, turns around and yells "PI$$ ON IT!" and starts running back to the car, unzipping...

 

I'm like... huh? What? As he jumps on the front bumper screaming 'PI$$ ON IT PI$$ ON IT!' As he starts hosing the fire... I joined in, and wow...it worked. Smelly steam cloud arose and caught us full-on in the face, so we're leaning backwards as far as we can so not to get pee-steam in our eyes. Really made directional control hard. Rick slipped on the bumper and fell backwards, unable to immediately cease his fire retardant effort, he wet himself thoroughly in 'rain' of his own making.

 

AAHAHAHAAAaaaa! :lmao:

 

That was great! Sooo funny!!

 

My sides ache from laughing

 

Davy