This post and hopefully many others to follow will aim to show, that, with a bit of lateral thinking save a few coins without compromising the safety or driving experience.

 

I do not condone any action/temporary part that decreases reliability or increases chance of secondary failure.

 

I hope that most of the suggestions will be, This fix got me out of a "fix" until I could make the approved repairs.

 

Remember these are proved fudges rather officially prescribed solutions. Think nylons for alternator belt

Dont know if this counts as not really a bodge.. But i got fedup with the mechanical fuel pump on the favorit so i filled it up with engine oil and made a loop of pipe from the out to the in so it constantly pumps oil around itself to stop it seizing...
then i fitted an electronic fuel pump at the rear next to the tank and now the carb primes itself (no pumping the lever in the rain). Eventually i will remove the mechanical fuel pump, but need a blanking plate made up.

As soon as you mentioned nylons, they look better on girly's than Felicia's.............

My first car had a fault on the dashboard where the bulb for the indicator lights didn't work due to a fault on the circuit board. It had passed two MOTs at the same garage and then failed because of it the year after.

I asked the tester if it needed to be the bulb on the dashboard that had to work with the indicators, or whether *any* bulb would do. He said the latter, so I went home, tapped into the wiring loom with a couple of diodes and a spare bulb and attached that to the top of the dash.

When I went back for the re-test he didn't look happy and failed it again because there was nothing to tell you what the bulb meant, so someone might not realise it was the indicators on. I wrote "Indicators ------>" on a piece of paper and stuck it next to the bulb which got me my MOT.

Later on I found the bad track on the circuit board and fixed it properly.

>" on a piece of paper and stuck it next to the bulb which got me my MOT.

 

that is pure genius.... Win

I recently had to change a length of piping and connector for the windscreen washers. Old age and had become brittle and leaked. (a bit like me really )

I went to the local Skoda dealer and after looking up the part numbers and giving me a jaw dropping price, I went to my local pet shop and bought exactly what was required from their selection of aquarium accessories.

Quick lock connectors, 1metre of air pipe and 5mins later, clean windscreen.

On one of my old Austins I took a length of copper brake pipe and coiled it around a copper coolant pipe that ran behind the manifold and soldered it in place then cut the washer hose and connected it to either end and hey presto - preheated screen wash.

It had a manual screen washer rather than electric so the speed of flow was slower, I don't think it would work with the quick and sustained delivery of an electric pump.

@ RedStudio. Now that's got me thunking.

Winter setting heated squirties.

I would need them most at start up = engine is cold, 10 mins before top hose is warm. non starter..

Ah Hah... Exhaust manifold, copper small bore pipe. boiling washer fluid on my frozen screen. non starter.

If there was an exotic solution to instant de-icing your winscreen @-30C,  I'm sure Volvo would have already invented it. unless of course Ford have patented the heated windscreen and keeping all to themselves.

 

So I continue to scrape and add -35C fluid to my washer bottle.

 

However. the 1.3mpi is one of the fastest to get-up-to-temperature I have known. 3 mins on my drive, heater on . no probs.

 

On one of my old Austins I took a length of copper brake pipe and coiled it around a copper coolant pipe that ran behind the manifold and soldered it in place then cut the washer hose and connected it to either end and hey presto - preheated screen wash.

It had a manual screen washer rather than electric so the speed of flow was slower, I don't think it would work with the quick and sustained delivery of an electric pump.

 

I had something similar on my Renault 9, but on a separate loop to and from the washer bottle. You actually heated the contents of the bottle, not the output. I had the pump on a hazard-light relay and a switch, so when on it would pulse the water round and not burn out the pump. Stopped the water from getting too hot too

I saw this last night and thought it belonged here.

Someone mentioned tips and Austins. Metros had ( like a lot of other cars ,then and now ) tapered wheel bearings ,which made getting the rear drum off to get at the rear brakes a bit of a pain . Slacken the drum ut. fix a spaner ( open ended was my choice) and fix to the wheel studs. Rotate the drum using the nut to apply tension, and tap drum gently . Similarly ,and I got this tip from an old Vauxhall foreman -- older styles of handbrakes had a fixed lever which fitted into the brake shoes . Problem was that with a servo and harder shoes, the starting point for the lever needed to be at 90degrees to the backplate. Bodge - either replace the levers ,or as I did mith my Maxi - repair the levers with a bit of welding. I've never seen so surprised an MOT man as the one that tested mine. It almost shot off the rollers. Passed with colours the next year. Suggestion for Curior - my old Cavalier had an electric  fuel pump.  But it had circuitry that gave one burst of five seconds at switch on and the pump only run on demand when the engine was runing.