Biggest Roadside Repair

[Digger51]

Let's hear some tales of fixing what should not be fixed roadside. I'm sure we have some crazy tales in this group.

I will save mine until we have a couple.

[N2TRUX]

Here is a repost from this thread-Heatwave trip

My buddy Keith was delivering my 77 from Stoked Out Specialties in Rockwall (near Dallas) to Houston Thursday evening. We were going to clean the truck up, and get going early Friday morning. Scoti was supposed to follow Keith down, but got called in to work, so Keith went ahead.

For a number of reasons, we didn't get started as early as we wanted on Friday. As soon as we get on the road, we run into a major traffic jam. We finally get through that, only to realize we are low on gas, and haven't eaten anything since lunch the day before. We decide to run to the next location that has food and gas at the same exit.

Waller Texas was where our adventure began. We pulled in to get gas, and while I am pumping it, I here a really loud PSSSHHT noise, and the drivers front corner hits the ground. ???? Keith looks at me like "What did you do" and I'm looking at him like "it wasn't me".

Something blew in the air system. Fortunately, I had insisted that they air system be designed so the truck would roll even with all the air out of it. We pull off to the side and try to jack the truck up to see whats wrong.

The jack is stuck so Keith stands on it while I crank really hard. I hear a pop and then the jack is free wheeling. This is not good! We don't have ajack, and you can't crawl under the truck.

I look around to see where I can get a jack from and see a Jiffy Lube close by. They don't have a jack, but they are nice enough to let me pull in over their pit.

We find that the front airline is close enough to the exhaust to weaken it, and it blew a hole in it. We ask if there might be a place close by that has air line. I was amazed when the called Doyles auto parts and they had some.

While we are waiting for the air line to be delivered, Keith decides to cut the zip ties loose so we can replace the bad line. While doing this, I hear him curse a bit, and then pshhht. He slips and cuts the line to the other side.

Keith thinks pretty fast, and decides to swith the one he cut with the other sides since it's shorter, and use the new line for the longer side. His plan works fine until we try to get the lines back on the bag fitting. They refuse to go on one side, and go on but won't stay on the other side.

We end up taking to bag out on one side to get the line on. We try every trick we can think of, but we can't get the other side to stay pushed in.

After 4 hours in a hot oil change pit, we decide that we have to have a jack to get the other side out and change the fitting. The only problem is we don't have a fitting. We call Houston looking for one, but everyone has already left to go to the show.

I call my wife and have her come pick me up so we can get a jack and more tools. I think that I might have another fitting at home too. No such luck. I go back to Waller and we take the truck apart hoping we can get the fitting to hold, but it won't. We call Doyles to see if they have what we need, and they do.. sort of.

We managed to use what they had, and get everything back together. By now, we are sweaty, very oily, and stinking like a wet goat. We need a shower before driving to Austin.

We go back to my house, shower and change clothes. The truck is leaking a bit, so we fix that, and decide to hit the road. It is 8:30 pm. We first left the house at 11:00 am that morning. This was not going well.

We drive to Austin without a problem. We are staying at Lakeway Resort on the other side of Austin, so we don't get in until late. We finally get in bed, but I can't sleep. At 4:30 am I decide to get started on detailing my truck. At 6:45 we roll out to the show.

The whole time, I am thinking Scoti is already at the show. We roll out of Lakeway and I look over at a car wash and see Scoti. He can tell you the rest of the story...

[Digger51]

Here is one of two:

I was heading from Las Vegas to the MCAGCC (a prize for anyone who knows what that is) with a 7:00 am deadline. This was July and it was easily 110 degrees, maybe more. I end stuck following a tractor trailer rig down California 247 which is a two lane road in the middle of nowhere. After 10 or so miles the truck in front of me spits a rock out that is big enough that I see it immediately and think it is coming through the windshield. At the last second it takes a wicked curve downward and clears the grill bars of the GMC and goes right through the radiator leaving a large hole.

Fortunately, I had a ton of stuff in the bed to make repairs including almost 20 gallons of water. I cut up a soda can and covered the holes as best I could using sheet metal screws and filled the radiator.

I spent almost an hour and a half doing this and during that time a grand total of zero vehicles came by. It was now about 7:30 pm (and a Sunday). To say I was nervous about my prospects was an understatement.

The twenty miles back to Barstow took all of the water I had plus a fill up at a closed gas station. Once in Barstow, around 8:30, the entire town was closed, and I mean closed. I was lucky enough to find a salvage yard that the owner lived in and was able to get this attention and convince him to let me in.

He helped locate the best radiator that might work (late 80's 4x4). Since the hose configuration was not even close I still needed hoses. The guy at the junkyard called his buddy who was the Manager of the local NAPA and convinced him to meet me to find hoses.

This guy spent at least an hour carrying hoses in and out of his store until we had a pair that fit. After some serious surgery with a utility knife, bailing wire and more sheet metal screws the truck was all sealed up.

It was now 11:45 and I had about 115 miles to go. Fortunately, the repair worked perfectly and I made it back before 3:00am.

Those two guys really went out of their way to save my butt and hardly charged me anything.

[Lippyp]

This was not on my truck but was a fairly major repair. My wife and I had driven in our little 1.0L Suzuki 4x4 from the UK to Spain with some friends in their similar vehicle, a journey of about 1500 miles each way for an off roading vacation. As we were dropping down into Spain from the Pyranees mountains I went to overtake a truck, decided not to when I got out and could see past it, pulled back in behind it, hit the brakes and ended up back out on the other side of the road.

We pulled in to the side of the road, and decided we had a sticking brake caliper, so we jacked the car up, whipped the front wheels off, took the brakes apart, blew out the blocked flexible hose, cleaned it up, greased it all back up (with butter!), re-assembled, bled and carried on. During this time it fell off the jack twice as we were in a rough recently cut cornfield halfway down a mountain and fortunately it missed both of us! Brakes were fine for the rest of the holiday.

I would carry more spares and a bigger toolkit next time I did a trip on that scale.

[Longhorn Man]

Hmmm, how about buring up the wheel bearings on a back road in texas..middle of nowhere BFE texas, about 200 miles from home.

Lets see, I went to 'visit' this girl I met and spend new years ever with her. She was about 250 miles from where I lived, but it all seemed worth it. (later she was dubbed phyco b!tch...but that's another story all together)
Anyways, the next morning, when i was heading home. I figured what the heck, the 'ole girl seems to be running good, lets see what she'll do.
After wrapping the speedo needle all the way to the M in MPH (look at the bottom of your speedo) I figured I'd better slow her down a little since I really didn't know this truck very well yet. (Had only had the GMC on the road for a month or so...if that)
About 5 miles later, I feel the steering getting sloppy and I hear a loud metal to metal sound just a moment later. I drop it down to about 20 MPH and limp 2 more miles to a feed store since there was no space to pull over on the road at all.
After getting out, I see my passenger side wheel was not sitting quite right...leaning in at the top like a mo-fo. Kinda looked like this from the front. |---\
Yeah, I was screwed...and broke too.
I camp out with this 'friend' for another night, and she gets me home the following morning...and I have yet to be able to speak to anyone at the feed store.
Well, I finally get the spindle/hub assembly i need, grab a hand full of tools, and head back out there...this is a month later.
I remove the wheel, (which I was almost able to pull the whole hub off with no tools) and slap my pickle fork in there to break the ball joint loose...(did I mention the 30 MPH texas wind and the 30 degree actual temp?) The pickle fork ends up not fitting.
Getting rather 'upset' I kick the truck (which i still regret doing) and the sicker fell off the bottle jack that was olding it. (DOH!)
As I was trying to get the bottle jack out from under it so i could pick it up again, i had a brilliant idea.

The voices in my head Hey moron...use the bottle jack between the pper and lower A-arms and split the ball joints THAT way...you stupid idiot.

I got the truck back up, shoved the bottle jack in there (just barely fit after scraping some rust off the arms) and started jacking them apart.
After jacking a moment, I notice the arms flexing a little, so i grap my fave tool...the 5 pound tap tap, and I wollop on the lower arm.
BINGO!
Another hr or so of freezing and cussing and wanting to just say screw it and leave the POS there, I got it fired up and ready to rumble.
As I was cleaning up and letting the truck warm up, a sheriff car pulls in and asks me if I plan on driving that thing home like that, I look at him like he is stupid and say "yeah...why not?"
That's when he points out the freshly expired inspection and registration stickers.


Bad road trip...real bad.

I told the officer my story, he knew the girl I was talking about and told me that she was trouble and that if I promised not to go back to town, he would let me slide on the stickers.

truck drove like crap all the way home...the carb sucked up a bunch of rust from the bottom of the tank, and it surged real bad as soon as I would hit 70 MPH.

Ended up getting pulled over 100 miles later for doing 85 in a 70. He let me off on that, but only becouse the dead registration sticker and inspection sticker as going to cost so much to pay fines on, and he was right...almost 200 bucks for the two tickets.

[krazy_texan]

me and a friend where coming home one night at about 3 am from the bowling alley in his 72 bug and all of a sudden he starts cussing and pulls over we get out and crawl under the car to discover that the throttle cable had broken so we pop up the deck lid and find a wire coat hanger, we unfold it and attach it to the carberator and stuck it through a whole in the firewall that we made and i operated the throttle while he shifted and drove for 20 miles and the thing that topped it off was that our only flashlight went dead about half way through.

[Grim Reaper]

Zakk over on CK5 had a doubler break on him. He pulled the transfercase out in a gas station parking lot and fixed it then took it to Holister and ran the mini rubicon.
THat's the best I have heard of on a Chevy.

I am aware of two guys that smoked a clutch on a Toyota supra and had a turbo giving them problems. They changed the clutch AND turbo in a hour. Now what makes it really impressive is this was in a parking lot and They pulled the engine to do it (it's easier if you know what your doing. Engine is so close to the fire wall it's a real booger to get to the top bell housing bolts) And to make it really impressive...they didn't drain the radiator. The car was set up as a race car so the heatercoore was not hooked up. Then unolted the radiator and let it hang by the hoses as they lifted the engine out.

[JIMs70GMC]

This wasn't too bad except it was cold. Had a flat on the tow dolly when I left Dean's house in Ohio, we were about 585 miles from home. Luckly we brought a spare, took an hour to change the spare after removing the dolly fender. Had the wives back home call all the Sam's Clubs between Cincinati and Hunington West VA because we wanted to get another tire prior to hitting the mountains. Made it to Sam's about 5 miles from WV 1 hour before they closed. Made it home about 9 hours later.

[da-burb]

This certainly doesn't qualify as a big roadside repair, but it does qualify as a repair you wouldn't want to try 1000miles from home.

Last year my wife and I and the C30 Motorhome went to Pigeon Forge TN for the truck show. The motorhome drove flawlessly 17 hours straight through all the road construction and accidents between Louisville and Knoxville. The next day was just as good as the first. We pull into PF and set up the camper. We had a great time all week. The day we decide to go home it doesn't start. I spend a few hours messing with the points and finally it fires and runs great. I take it for a test drive and all is right in the world. It is late enough that we postpone leaving until the next morning.

We are all packed up and ready to go.....Turn the engine over but no FIRE! arrrrg! We are never getting out of the hills of Tennessee! (insert Deliverance banjo playing here) Off to NAPA for a dwell meter and a new set of points. They have the points, but nobody there knows what a dwell meter is........I install the new points and set them with a few sheets of paper. (yep, no feeler gauges at Napa either) Off we go. Power is down a little, but I figure we are on the road. Coming into Knoxville I let off the gas to coast down the hill and KA-BOOM it backfires through the exhaust. Tweak the points again, man I hope I am going the right way. Off we go again. Now I am barely making it up hills and backfiring down hills.

We make it to the top of the Cumberland Pass. There is a wayside rest there and pull in. I have one more thing to try. I have a Pertronix system in the truck that I brought with for an emergency. This qualified. I cut the wires to the points, the nuts were rusted on the coil. So I installed a set of aligator clips on the wires and ran it out the inspection door of the cap. Hooked it all up and said a prayer to the ignition gods.

There was only one way to test it. vvvvvvva-ROOM it fired. We made it the rest of the way without any more troubles. Lots of power from the big block once again. I didn't shut it off until I pulled into my yard, just in case............

[speesh]

when I was a kid, (about 8 or 9) I helped my dad change a timing chain on a "69 Pontiac on the street in downtown L.A......

[Oborny71]

ugghhhh! i hate breaking down on the road. You guys make me sick thinking about this

[jku72]

None of my roadside repairs have been huge, but there is one component that has failed me more than any other, that is starters. I lost two in my longhorn, one in my Catalina, and one in my burb. The burb one failed in some town in Montana where I had stopped for gas, I unbolted it, walked half a mile with the old starter, paid 30 bucks for a reman, and hiked back, installed it, and was on the way all under an hour. That is why I like small blocks. Cheap available parts. The Catalina was at a country store 8 miles from home, the two times the longhorn starters went i was within 3 miles of home, so no biggie.

[speesh]

I agree with you, Oborny! I hate breaking down too....
but reading threads like this one gives me more confidence because I see we all made it home eventually!
and I definitely love the cheapness and availability of parts !

[CPNE]

This is one of the biggest roadside repairs ever.