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Successful bodges I have known

I shamelessly steal Lars posting to trigger what I hope might be an interesting thread.

Lars said

In the late 40s.I worked in a G.M. garage in Australia,another mechanic had a 39 chev.which started to use a lot of oil.Having pulled the engine down he found a loose gudgeon which had worn a wide groove in the cylinder.He could not afford to recond.the engine,so he filled the groove with solder.Everybody told him it would never vork.I worked in that place for another 8 months,he drove the car to and from work every working day and it didn't use any more oil than before the gudgeon came loose.I still find it hard to believe!

>>>>>>>>>>>>

My dad was born in 1901and was in his forties when I came along . Her worked in a garage in Brighton in his teens and early twenties and this was one of his favourite tales. One of his first jobs was to take a pre-first war Douglas apart and find out why it only ran on the front cylinder. Simple, the rear piston had overheated and the rings were well and truly jammed in their grooves.

It was a cheap bike and - to dad's amazement - the boss found a nice bit of oak and turned up a new piston on the lathe. He wound asbestos string coated in graphite into the broad grooves he'd turned into it and drove the blind bored cylinder back into place with a wooden mallet.

Reassembled, it started and ran just fine and was sold within a few days. Some weeks later, the owner reappeared having driven the bike all over the south of England on holiday. Although the compression ratio was only about four to one and combustion temperature correspondingly low, eventually sufficient of the oak had burned away to bring the compression ratio to the point where it would not run on tickover. So the owner had removed the barrel to find out why.

Apparently they all stood dumbstruck in a line and roundly condemned the previous owner .......

Regards,

Kim Siddorn.

Reply to
J K Siddorn
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I've had one of those - it was a fairly routine bodge immediately post-war. Ours was the deluxe version, with a chunk of aluminium screwed to the crown. Supposedly the wood choice is important, as you need something that chars at just the right rate to make a carbon seal. Never heard of it on a bike though.

My favourite bodge was a wet-linered engine with a cracked liner (some boat engine, on Windermere). The crack was turned to be along the centreline, where there's no thrust force on it, rubbed with Oyltite and then clamped up with a big Jubilee clip ! To tighten the clip, the block had to have a core plug knocked out and then replaced.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

There is a similar anecdotal tale of a fellow who bought an old British bike as a non-runner having spotted the bust ignition wire. He wasn't too worried about the engine as it had plenty of compression when he kicked it over. Sure enough he got it home and repaired the wire and the bike started but sounded like a bag of spanners in a cement mixer. A subsequent strip down revealed that the "good" compression was due to the old valve spring bolted on top of the piston.

Ever been had? Another tale centred around some gas pipe workers who were laying a major new gas pipe. A few locals were approached with an offer to connect their homes "unofficially" to the new pipe thus avoiding any gas bills. The price was rather high at £1000 each but the prospect of free gas forever was very attractive and many paid up. Their gas was laid in and all went well for a few months when the gas failed. Eventually their gas supply pipe was traced back to the main where it was connected to a couple of large gas bottles in the hedge.

John

Reply to
John Manders

"John Manders" said . A few locals were approached with an offer to

Human stupidity is only exceeded by cupidity ;o))

Regards,

Kim Siddorn.

Reply to
J K Siddorn

My mate bought an Austin 16 years ago which was only running on 3 cylinders. He bought it cheap but was hoping that it would not be to expensive to repair.

We tried all the usual things, then a compression test revealed no compression on no 4. OK off with the head to reveal..............no piston or rod. The big end had run out the journal, so they took the rod and piston out and clamped some shim steel round the journal to keep the oil pressure in.

Ever been had !!!

-- Pete Aldous

Reply to
Pete Aldous

One of MG's 1930s speed record attempts was done on a German autobahn and one of the teardrop-shaped cars with a 6 cylinder engine.

After they'd bagged the record for its capacity class, the mechanics dropped a couple of pistons and re-ran it to get the record for a smaller capacity too !

Reply to
Andy Dingley

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