Feats of Ingenuity. Got any favorites?

[island911]

Originally Posted by june82000

..

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

So he is doing an oil change in the street!

Don't be silly, he's get'n her ready for some driveway casters ! ...which gives away my nomination for the arm-chair "engineering" prize.

[Chas White]

My favorite thing (‘though I don’t have a pix) has to do with when the people at Mitsubishi were designing the Zero. They came to the conclusion that the control inputs, while OK at landing speed, were too great at operating speed. So rather than go back and redesign the whole thing, they made the cables thinner. The faster you flew, the more they stretched. … And it worked. No more of those dizzying attitude changes

[NeedSpace]

here are some of mine...

gas tank was rusty, still wanted to drive it. it worked well and didnt spill.


my weld to my shift linkage didnt hold. i was 20 miles from home. took this clamp off something in the engine. i only had 2nd, 4th and reverse, but i made it home without a tow truck.

[masraum]

anyone nominate the eram and cool collar yet?

[Noah930]

Not sure where the pic is, though I recall snapping one after the fact:

I was driving from Boston to the Cape one wintry night. It was about 10 pm and it was raining. I had just left the city when the windshield wipers on my 14 year-old Nissan died in mid-swipe. Suddenly I couldn't see squat, and I was in the middle of a curving transition road. Driving while looking out the side window, I got the car stopped at a gore point without hitting anything. Turns out the wiper motor was working, but the linkage was no longer connected to the wipers themselves.

Determined not to rely upon AAA, I took an old tennis racket out of the trunk, cut up the string, and tied it to the ends of the windshield wipers. I opened the windows a crack, and ran the racket string from the wiper tips, around the A pillars, and into the cabin. Like a puppeteer I would use one hand to alternatingly pull on the ends of the string to make the wipers swipe back and forth, while driving with the other hand. And that car (transmission) was a stick, no less. I figured if there was any time I could get away with that with minimal hassle from the State Police, was at night in the rain. It was an interesting 70 miles home that night.

[Jrboulder]

Not that clever but...I was 17 and I had this okay 944 but it had a bad rubber clutch disc hub. A new clutch kit was like $700 and a disc alone was $300.

So I ordered a remanufactured Ford Bronco II clutch disc and drilled out the rivets to space the hub out about 1/2" with nuts and bolts. Before that I had only changed oil and stuff. I put this thing in over a long weekend.

Best $30 I've ever spent on a car.

[Cloggie]

[june82000]

First off all, I don't know of any real reason a teenager needs anything more than a basic cell phone that they can talk/text on. By the way, do yourself a favor and get the unlimited texting for $5 more. Anyway... And just because you own nice things doesn't mean you have to waste money in the process. I've been providing phones for about the last 5 years for my 3 teenagers and I admit, they got me once or twice with the 'Dad, my phone broke" scenario. I of course had the insurance ($7 per phone/per month with $50 deductible for each incident - what a rip!). After the 2nd, 3rd, 4th broken phone, I began to think that there has to be a better way. Yep! I am now an expert in fixing and re-building cell phones! I've got a ton of spare parts and basically new phones that I've acquired over the last few year so I am ALWAYS ready for that next broken phone. I've picked up phones (similar models mostly) at yard sales, thrift stores, auction sites, etc. for next to nothing really. It's actually kind of fun. And NOTHING can beat the satisfaction of when your kid hands you their broken phone and within 10 minutes - voila! - a new to you basic phone !!!

[A930Rocket]

I have a friend that broke a fan belt on his car. Had his wife take off her panty hose and cobbed up a new belt. Lasted just long enough to get home.

[billybek]

I had snapped the accelerator cable on my VW Bug and was 40 miles out of town.
Pulled the cable back to the inlet air side of the fan housing and ran it out the deck lid and around to the drivers window.
Once back on the highway I rolled up the window to clamp the cable. Cruise control on a 73 Bug!
Got some looks at the lights back in the city when I pulled on the cable to rev the motor....

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by A930Rocket

I have a friend that broke a fan belt on his car. Had his wife take off her panty hose and cobbed up a new belt. Lasted just long enough to get home.

I tried a lot of things to get the panty hose of of my girlfriends back in the day but that is one I never tried.

[NeedSpace]

Originally Posted by june82000

First off all, I don't know of any real reason a teenager needs anything more than a basic cell phone that they can talk/text on. By the way, do yourself a favor and get the unlimited texting for $5 more. Anyway... And just because you own nice things doesn't mean you have to waste money in the process. I've been providing phones for about the last 5 years for my 3 teenagers and I admit, they got me once or twice with the 'Dad, my phone broke" scenario. I of course had the insurance ($7 per phone/per month with $50 deductible for each incident - what a rip!). After the 2nd, 3rd, 4th broken phone, I began to think that there has to be a better way. Yep! I am now an expert in fixing and re-building cell phones! I've got a ton of spare parts and basically new phones that I've acquired over the last few year so I am ALWAYS ready for that next broken phone. I've picked up phones (similar models mostly) at yard sales, thrift stores, auction sites, etc. for next to nothing really. It's actually kind of fun. And NOTHING can beat the satisfaction of when your kid hands you their broken phone and within 10 minutes - voila! - a new to you basic phone !!!

I am curious if the phone breakage has decreased in frequency? My kid and her friends got in the habit of breaking the phone when they wanted a new one. MY response was. Bummer your phone is broken, only 13 months until you can get a new one....

[Scott Douglas]

My brother bought a tub and hauled it home in the back of his pickup.
Here is how he got it out all by himself.

[emcon5]

I had a 85 Toyota 4x4, carbureted that the throttle would stick WFO occasionally after driving at full throttle. Since it only had about 80 HP, I was a full throttle quite a lot. It would usually vibrate free after a few seconds, so I just lived with it. One time it stuck in the hills north of Calistoga, and I had to put in the clutch to slow the stupid thing down.

Bought a screen door spring and some zip-ties in a hardware store in Calistoga, and rigged a throttle return spring from the throttle linkage to the fender. Solved the problem, and was still in place when I got rid of the truck about 5 years later.

Another time, at the track, one of my friends was told he couldn't race because he didn't have a crank-case breather/catch can, so I made one out of some extra fuel line and a Gatorade bottle, zip tied to the fender. Passed tech, and the ungrateful SOB beat me in the race.

[Z-man]

Some demonstratinos of ingenuity (or not) that I have found on the interwebs over the years:



American iron?


From Hungary - my nationality...


IKEA - the Mecca of Ingenuity...




Mass transportation in Eastern Europe:


File this under "You're doing it wrong!"

[Steve Carlton]

Reminds me of this- probably got it from here.

[onlycafe]

many years ago, my bmw 2002 fuel pump crapped out about six miles from home. at two o'clock in the morning the chances were slim that anyone i called would be willing to come out so i emptied the windshield washer fluid reservoir and siphoned gas out of the tank and filled the res. rerouted the washer hose to the carb throat, and by using the washer stalk on the steering column was able to drive home undeterred.

[porsche4life]

That's pretty damn genius!

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by onlycafe

many years ago, my bmw 2002 fuel pump crapped out about six miles from home. at two o'clock in the morning the chances were slim that anyone i called would be willing to come out so i emptied the windshield washer fluid reservoir and siphoned gas out of the tank and filled the res. rerouted the washer hose to the carb throat, and by using the washer stalk on the steering column was able to drive home undeterred.

We used to route the washer hose into the glove box and pour uhmm, "different" stuff in the reservoir.

[sand_man]