[LizardQueen]

I cut the tongue out of my leather shoe and wrapped it around the end of the push rod, shoved it back in the hole and bolted it down.

LOL, that's a good one! I'll have to tell my dad about that. He's a master at using oddball items to repair cars with.

My dad had an old Buick that was rusted out around the bolts that held the body to the frame (it was pre-unibody - 1966 I think). The car body would bounce up off the frame when he hit a bump.

So he cut out the rusted metal, then drilled a hole in a plastic hockey puck and used it as a giant washer around the bolt, and squeezed tile grout around the puck to hold it all in place. I think he drove it for another 5 years like that.

::sigh:: We all miss that car. He didn't sell it until I was in college (1982). It was like a family pet.

LQ

[TexasCowboy]

"I'll have to tell my dad about that."

Ask him if he's ever put sawdust in one of those old 4-11 rear ends to quieten down the pinon howl.

[TexasCowboy]

"I'll have to tell my dad about that."

Ask him if he's ever used a cigarette paper to adjust the clearance between the pinion and the ring gear, or used a dime to set the points.

Or used a grapefruit shoved over the fuel pump to keep it from vapor locking.

Or put clothespins on the spark plug wires to make the fire jump to worn out spark plugs.

There's so many things we used to have to do because we didn't have the money to take them to a garage.....and cars were a LOT simpler then!

[Boiling point]

I once owned a 1960 chevy Impala. HUGE car. I called it "Puff the tragic wagon" I thought it was possessed by the devil because for what seemed like no reason at random times, it would down shift itself and the gas peddle would go all the way to the floor and you would burn rubber and take off like an MX missile. This was a pre computer anything car and I couldn't figure out what was causing it or the reason the transmission would down shift at the same time the peddle went to the floor. One day while doing a U-turn, half way through the maneuver, it happened, causing me to do a couple donuts in the middle of the road before it settled down. I HAD to figure it out before it killed me. By using one of those long railroad pry bars, I was able to lift the drivers side of the engine up off the frame. Broken engine mount. Under acceleration load, the engine torque would lift the engine up, pulling on the transmission and throttle linkage, causing the out of control acceleration. It would continue until the torque could no longer hold the engine up.