Macgyver moment

[pwmcguire]

My accelerator canble broke at the pedal. I had a friend put a pair of vice grips on the end of the cable and he literally bent over in his seat and operated the accelerator. I told him when I was going to shift and he let off the gas and I shifted. I drove maybe 5 miles like that.

[orygonian]

"Knew someone who used pet flea and tick shampoo, to get rid of the crabs."

[dhaavers]

Front heater control cable broke...cut off an orphaned aluminum ski pole to
attach in it's place for the passenger to operate (also possible for the driver,
but had to take eyes off the road & reach down to the opposite floor area).

Worked fine for the next 3 years to get a guy through grad school...
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86 White Wolfsburg Westy Weekender
"The WonderVan"
<EDITED TO PROTECT INNOCENT PIXELS>

[borninabus]

ok, my best McGuyver moment took place early in my VW career, i was probably 19 or 20.
so early, that I didn't even have AAA

taking a slow turn in my 71 KG and one of the "german" ball joints i had a shop install about 20K prior failed.
fortunately, it was in a parking lot.
unfortunately, all i had was mcguyver materials.
the standard VW rescue kit: factory tool roll & jack, wire coat hanger (remember them?) and duct tape.

using only the factory tools and jack, i was able to use the weight of the car & wire coat hanger to pull the torsion arms back together by looping around the torsion arms several times.
then, to get the ball back in the socket i stuck the factory screw driver through the looped wire and twisted the wire kind of like you do a safety wire, but inbetween the arms.
once it was thoroughly sucked back together i let the screwdriver rest against the shock to keep the wire from unwinding.

this held the failed ball joint together for the trip home and then back to the shop, about 5 or 6 miles.

pretty sure mr. mcg would have been proud of that one
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88 Van WBX, A/T - 13 JSW TDI 6M/T - 2012 Touareg TDI Sport

[Typ3nut]

When I was a youngster I had an old Ford Galaxie, beater with a heater, that one of the valve spring keepers had fallen off and was inoperable, so upon removing the valve cover found the keeper but was unable to get the valve up far enough to reinstall keeper without removing the head. Removed the spark plug and put a good amount of nylon 3/8" boat rope inside cylinder then put piston to compression stroke to push valve all the way up to reinstall keeper. Pulled rope back out reassembled and on our way again.
Same rope was also used when fan belt broke and used temporary to get home to fix.
Ah yes ! the "Good Old Days" before AAA

[awreed]

Ignition switch went out on my 72 Super many years ago. Ran a long wire from the voltage reg. under the back seat to the coil until the new switch came in. Drove around with a red wire running from the door outside the car, and into the engine bay for a week. In order to turn the car off I'd have to unclip one end of the wire or the engine would not shut off.

New switch came in, installed it-- same problem. Turned out that a push on connector on the fuse panel had simply broken. The old switch was fine.

It took me several more years of troubleshooting, but I eventually learned to look for the simplest solutions first before blindly replacing parts.

[Petfisheric]

A long time ago while I was driving my 66 bug from Tennessee to New Hampshire I had an issue with my accelerator. I notice as I was going down the Interstate, somewhere in PA, that when I let off the petal the car would not reduce speed. Well this wasn't a problem for the next hour or so but I finally had to get off the interstate to get gas. Well after easing it into the closes gas station by shutting it off every time I needed to push in the clutch I got out to find the fast idle plate had broken and rotated around to keep it at WOT. So I rotated it back in place and used dental floss to hold it in place. Made the rest of the trip like this and drove the car for about a month until I go a job and could buy parts to fix.

[Cusser]

Way back, had a '68 with dealer-added AC. Driving down the road, the stud for the distributor clamp was pulled out, as also used as an AC bracket mount. So I'm stuck on the road, no spare parts, what to do?

Answer: I unscrewed a fender bolt with the 13mm wrench, has 8 x 1.25mm threads, threaded that in to hold the distributor down so I could continue.
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1970 VW (owned since 1972) and 1971 VW Convertible (owned since 1976), second owner of each. The '71 now has the 1835 engine, swapped from the '70. Second owner of each. 1988 Mazda B2200 truck, 1998 Frontier, 2014 Yukon, 2004 Frontier King Cab. All manual transmission except for the Yukon. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335294 http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335297