Road side fix.....

[Ellectronico]

[[email protected]]

I wouldn't recomend it either - BUT - it got me home....

Melted the speaker wire though
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Ryan

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1963 Beetle
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[Ellectronico]

[busfreak_71]

[busfreak_71]

Ok, I got one, but, It wasnt me who did it, it was a good friend of mine who is a retired VW mechanic. He had his fuel pump quit on his bus, so what he did was he took his jerry can and a length of fuel line (remember he is a mechanic so he has lots of junk in his bus) then he took out the drain plug in the bottom of the spare tire well, then pluged the fuel line from the tank, then stuck the fuel line in the jerry can then primed the line full of fuel (think siphoning) and stuck the line through the hole in the tire well (how he did this without spilling fuel all over the place ill never know) then hooked up the line to the carb. This worked for a week or so untill he got a new pump...
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'71 Tin Top Westfalia
'99.5 Bora TDI
'85 Jetta Coupe
'85 Mercedes 300SD

Resident Off-Grid hippie and diesel advocate.

[fred69vert]

I was too young to drive, but this is a funny story.

When I was a kid (in the 60's), my parents had a beach buggy. Not a VW, a 1945 Dodge 3/4 ton army surplus truck. This thing was something else. It was also the first road vehicle I ever drove (but that's a different story).

Every summer weekend (it seemed) we would go to the beach (Bogue Banks, near Morehead City, NC). Now the gas gauge never worked on that old truck. One Sunday afternoon, on the bridge between Atlantic Beach and Morehead City (old 2-lane drawbridge), The truck ran out of gas. Now we've been fishing all day and you can guess how we are dressed. Dad took off walking down the bridge to get gas, and Mom started directing traffic. The funny part was my sister. She was 14 at the time, and MORTIFIED!!!! She was hiding under a beach towel in the back of that truck scared to death that someone from school would see her!!!! I didn't matter. We had the only truck in the county that looked like that one and anybody who knew her would have known that truck.
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I'm not losing my hair, it's just retired and relocating further south.

1969 VW convertible, "Heidi"

[jshaddvw]

i was on my way to albuquerque nm from phoenix az in my 70 bus. when i got into flagstaff my shifter broke. it was the pin that goes through the bottom of the shifter. so i found a sheet metal screw in some of the junk i had laying in the back and put it back together. it worked ok but it was pretty sloppy. when i got to albuquerque my clutch cable broke and luckily my dad had put an extra one behind the spare tire when he owned it about 3 or 4 years before. so with my roadside tool set that i keep for such occasions my buddy and i fixed it in about 20 min. we also fixed the shifter permantly while we were there. my brother works at kubelkar and they let us use there welder and we welded a piece of steel rod to the shifter. it works better then before.

[[email protected]]

[pwilson]

This happened a few years back, maybe a year out of high school tops.

My buddy had a Neon, mid 90's I think. Well, we were about 10 or 15 miles from either of our houses and many more from our other friends house. The Neon had been acting up a little lately but that was no surprise with the way we treated it...

So, we get done doing whatever it was we were doing and go to leave. Try starting the car and it just turns over. Try starting it some more and it eventually would start, but not run for more than maybe ten seconds.

We call his brother, a few years older and generally more prepared for this sort of thing. Luckily he was only a few minutes away and had nothing else going on.

After checking various things and finding nothing out of the ordinary we take off the air filter and spray in some ether. Car runs slightly longer. 'What if we keep spraying while it is running?' Car runs... If we are continually spraying starter fluid into the air intake.

Being young and foolish we decide to jury rig it so we can get it to run like that the whole way back. A quick trip to Wally World and we now have a large hose clamp, flexible dryer duct, and maybe a dozen cans of starting fluid. In order to get this all to work we also had to remove the hood, and keep the passenger window open on this winter night in suburban Chicagoland.

Aside from the looks, the cold, the fumes, the spray back, and the occasional burst of fire out of the duct this very unsafe not recommended idea worked better than it ever should have. For a while...

Luckily there was no explosion or fire or any other such end, it just stopped working. Although the car did 'work' (and I use this term VERY loosely) long enough to make it back had we been able to use main roads. Of course we had to take back roads to try to avoid Johnny Law so we only made it maybe half was back.

The night ended at about 3 in the morning after being towed the rest of the way back by his brothers 4runner using a tow rope.

[Jimmy111]

My !974 Love bug.
1982...
Driving down I-15 from Las Vegas to LA. BAM! something exploded. smoke everywhere...
pulled over and stopped and looked at all the oil everywhere.... decided to wait for it to cool (110F) and then looked at the motor. Spent 5 hours trying to find out what the problem was and finally realized that the 2 pistons and rods near the trans had shattered...... Dont know what happened.. Removed the pushrods and drove it at 30mph 100 miles back to LA... When I took the engine apart... was amazed that it went even 1 mile!

[Stuggi]

Must be the time when my fathers Volvo V70 ran out of power and locked itself. The newer V70's have the battery in the back, and the boot doesn't have a lock, so we had to wrestle ourselves in there and jumpstart the battery so we could get the boot opened. Then we wheren't able to get the car jumpstarted, so it ended with me and my father customizing clamps and compartment to take a 110Ah tractor battery instead. Cool thing we broke down at our summerhouse (which is 4 km's out in the forest with no electricity...), where we had some tools to be able to do this.

Funny thing is that it's totaly possible to fit a tractor battery twice the size in a 2003 V70 without doing any mods that aren't reversible, and it doesn't take more than 30 mins
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1970 Beetle
1969 Panelvan

Orange VW Fest!
Pulled out of a Lake Fest!

[Cusser]

Not roadside, but got stuck crossing a dirt road alongside Lake Pleasant (AZ) soon after a big rain, so the road passed UNDER the now-higher lake. No issues getting to the location, but coming back, bug got stuck in the middle of the covered dirt road, couldn't go forward or back, engine still running, even though tailpipe was underwater, with exhaust belching out. I knew not to turn off the engine which would've enabled water to get in, and a few minutes later a group of college students came by and helped me lift its rear to where the ground was more solid, and I could then back it out. I crossed a few feet away where the water was deeper but the footing was more solid, no issues.
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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

[[email protected]]

Another time - had my first bus diagnosed as "dropped a valve." Well - more really recessed valve. Decided to "de-lung" the engine to get it home. Removed lifters, and push rods, and drove home on three cylinders. 10 miles total.
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Ryan

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1963 Beetle
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[Air-Cooled Head]

My roadside fix should have been simple, except;
A) No tools in the car
B) No brains in the head

Driving home from a show and hear a strange, sorta "hollow" noise. Stop the car, check the engine compartment and all looks well. Couple miles later, the noise again. Pull over, check engine compartment w/ motor running and all looks well.
Almost home and suddenly, the temp guage starts to rise as the amp guage drops. Immediately pull over and stop the motor. I see that my fan/pulley (T4 motor) is hanging on by 1 bolt. No biggie, I think.

Since I'm only 2 miles from home, I call a neighbor to come get me. At my house we pick up some bolts and tools and head back to the car. Where I discover that I've got 3/8 drive sockets & 1/2 ratchet.
Back to my house for the correct wrenches, but the neighbor has to go to work. So I call another buddy to take me back to the car. Where I discover that none of the bolts I have will work.
Back to my house for more bolts and back to the car, again. Where I discover that a T4 motor in a T3 car leaves about 3 inches of room to work. I try to insert a bolt, but it won't go in. It's broken off. So I put in 1 bolt, and since I can't get the wrench on them, get them finger tight.
Car starts right up and I make the 2 miles home. Only took like 4 hours!
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Everything known to man has been written.
Readers are Leaders!

[fukengruvenoval]

I worked for a tree service during high school. Eventually they grew large enough to have a few International bucket trucks and I got to run a GMC dump truck with a log lifting crane. But the first year I worked there my partner and I had to work with a 1979 dodge 1 ton that was VERY tired. Anyway, we were driving down one of the main streets in town when the entire gear shift lever (all two feet of it) come right off as my partner shifts to 3rd. All that was left was a 3/4" nub down by the floor. I suggest he try to limp it to a welding shop but with a full load of wood chips and full sized chipper behind us, we couldn't get through traffic in 3rd. I rummaged around the glove box and found a good sized pair of vicegrips, snapped them on the nub at the floor, and shifted while my partner got us to the welding shop.... That repair lasted a month or so until the shifter came off in my hand. This time we were prepared and never slowed down. He snapped the vicegrips on and we went back to the welder and got things patched up for good. That repair lasted until another guy from the company fell asleep and drove the truck into a granite rock cut. If he hadn't slumped down on the seat asleep the steering column would have skewered him like a shish-ka-bob!

More recently I was in a campground in Vermont with my westy. There must have been some carb problems because for some reason I decide to take the carb apart to check the seals, needle, and seat. Well, sure enough I lose the pin the float swings on. Two hours of looking in and around the engine with my (none-too-happy) wife was to no avail. In disgust I took a pair of wire cutters to a spoke on my bicycle, snipped off a piece long enough to replace the missing pin, and reassembled things. That was a few thousand miles ago. It still works like a charm!

On the same trip I was suffering from a severe eye infection and bladder infection. We cut the trip off early to get back to Canada for our free health care. Everything was going fine other than my ailments until we got to the US-Canadian border in Cornwall, Ontario. We were 3 cars back from the booth when the bus just died. After a few tries I realized it was the electric fuel pump. The border guard must have thought we were a suspicious sight - a husband and wife in a "hippy van" with runny, red eyes. Anyway, long story short they were very good, helped me push the bus through the crossing and even called a cab so I could get to a NAPA. About an hour later I came back, new pump in hand, and installed it right in the parking lot at the border. Always entertaining with the 24 hour surveilance and armed guards.
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Check out my video series at www.youtube.com/midnightoilgarage

[10/60bug]

My wife and I were on a "first Spring cruise" in my '61 beetle, when it died at a drive in restaurant .....6 BIG bikers were there and offered to push start me.. They pushed us all over the lot, NO LUCK! j I opened the decklid and the FUEL PUMP PIVOT PIN was sitting in the rear pulley tin!
About 20 minutes later, after
removing the pump, greasing and replacing the pin, and peening the fuel pump body, we were set, (so I thought! )
Because we had left the ignition on, the 6 volt battery died, and the helpful staff of bikers had left! I got to thinking and took my small floor jack out, jacked up the left rear wheel, turned the key back on, and SPUN the wheel forward while leaving the trans in 2nd gear... It started like a champ! I then slipped it out of 2nd gear, lowered the bug and put the jack away..drove perfectly all the way home!

[Fletch75]

A friend of mine and I worked at the same place. Had a 45 minute drive one way so He helped with gas and we would just take my 74 bug. The little end piece broke off of my accelerator cable at a stop light half way there. Found a pair of needle nose vise grips in the trunk. My friend locked them onto what was left of the cable, layed upside down in the passenger seat and worked the throttle. At first I had to tell him when I was going to shift. After a while we didnt even have to speak, he drove a standard too and knew when to let off the gas. Through intersection after intersection, Highway and everything. Was really wierd not having control over the engine but worked flawlessly.Got some very interesting looks. Dont come by friends like that everyday..

[my59]

Driving to VT years back from NJ with a friend in his 64 beetle. Starts to rain, and the drivers wiper starts to flop around, shaft stripped out. We try wrapping tinfoil around shaft and tightening clamp. Works ok until tin foil strips out. We keep stopping and redoing the 'repair' .
Rain changes to heavy snow in Mass. Tin foil no longer will cut it. Finally he commits to a better solution. Vice grips clamped on do the job just fine.
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my59: Well son, my grandfather died before I got to drive it, so does that answer your question?
our79: sunroof bus w/camper interior and 2.0 FI
Other:'12 Jetta, '77 Benz 300D, and a 74 MG Midget.

[Racerx6466]

In one trip from Hemet to San Diego and back
a) The line for the external oil cooler let go. Thank god someone stopped, drove me to Escondido, waited for autozone to open and even bought breakfast. Older guy who had a vw in high school that regretted selling. Fixed on the side of the 15 south
b) Get to San Diego and I'm driving down by the beach and throttle cable breaks. A different autozone has the stock solid 61 cable. Fixed in Campland by the Bay
c) Drive all the way home and stop by subway around the corner from my apt. Get back in the car, go to put in in first, and the red urethane shift coupler split in half. Idled it home and bought the correct coupler from the local VW shop. Fixed in garage
Looooonnnngggg trip
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I was thinking of getting a second job strictly to pay for my car habit. My wife thinks I may have a problem.....
Need correct parts for my 61 Ragtop, if you have em', Guarunteed I need em'! PM me

[jwd722]

My roadside fix came about the same time this thread originally started.

My accelerator cable broke off at the pedal so I took the circle thing (obviously I don't know what it's called) off my keyring, hooked it to the hole on the pedal and twisted the cable around it.

Worked great. In fact, after reading this ressurected thread I realized it is still that way, some 8,000 miles later!

Guess it's time for a new cable!!