Your top bodge

[Crackle]

For some reason I can't see anything other than a greyed out stop sign.

The curse of Google photos. You need to be logged into a google acct. it seems.

 

[Theseus]

The curse of Google photos. You need to be logged into a google acct. it seems.

??? strange, I am logged into me google mail account on another tab on the google chrome browser. Oh well, never mind

 

[Crackle]

??? strange, I am logged into me google mail account on another tab on the google chrome browser. Oh well, never mind

I added a thumbnail. I think i may give up on Google photos now, lots of people have problems with it.

 

[Mark Grant]

When I was in the Army in the '80s I was duty mechanic for a squadron summer camp in Bavaria. On the way down one of the Bedford trucks overheated, upon investigation I discovered that the top radiator hose had collapsed. I didn't have a spare so instead took it off, wrapped it in several layers of gaffa tape, refitted it and topped up the coolant.
That Bedford spent the next 2 weeks going back to camp in Northern Germany one day then to Bavaria the next. I did check the hose a few times during the fortnight whilst waiting for a new one which never arrived.
The gaffa taped hose held up perfectly and it was not changed until a week or so after we returned to camp.

 

[Mark Grant]

We also fitted a Ford 2 litre pinto engine into a Landrover to be used to tow out glider winch ropes.

 

[ColinJ]

I knew before opening the thread it would involve toilet cisterns. Modern flush mechanisms seem to be ill-thought-out, flimsy, pieces of parp that demand bodgery when they fail.

Our loo flushes only courtesy of two zip ties.

My cistern takes forever to refill after a big flush. Well, strictly, it takes about 10 minutes. That is normally tolerable for a singleton like me but it can become a pain when my family visit and they are queueing up in the morning ... And there is also a drip from the bottom of the cistern. I could probably bodge a fix with some sealant but as soon as my landlady can track down a plumber who will actually turn out, both problems will be fixed properly. I was all set to have a go myself but the damn cistern is resisting all attempts to remove its top and I don't want to risk breaking it! Meanwhile, I have a 500 mL container catching the drips - usually about 125 mL worth a day.

My most successful recent bodgery was this ...

The other bike was a DIY effort. I put a Stronglight triple on and got it to work with the groupset's original double derailleurs. The medium cage rear mech copes. The front mech is for a double, but I got it to work after filing a small amount of metal off a moving part which was catching on the seat tube when trying to shift down to the little ring. The only other thing I had to do was to make a thin shim from a strip of aluminium cut from a Coke can. I had to insert that between the frame and the bolt which pushes the rear mech away from the cassette. Without the shim, the chain was grinding when in the last 2 sprockets on the cassette.

I thus converted a bike with a Yorkshire climbs-unfriendly 53/39 chainset into one with a much nicer 48/36/28 chainset for less than £90.

 

[User6179]

No picture but years ago I had a Mig Welder ( Taskmaster) that kept on cutting out due to overheating so I went to the scrappies and got a fan out a car and welded onto the side of the welder over the vents and wired it up to a Hornby miniature railway transformer, never cut out again.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

Before I was married I lived in a bedsit. One night when the landlord was out we had pipe burst, I bodged it with a length of radiator hose and two jubilee clips then told the landlord the following day. Four years later I moved out and my bodge was still in place.

 

[Fnaar]

DIY touring map holder I bodged together few years back.


1) An old clip board, that has been hanging round my office for a decade.
2) Saw the end off, and patch up with gaffer tape
3) Attach to front of handlebar bag (the see-through 'map holder' top of which is not big enough for my mapular needs) using silicone strap bough off eBay 5 yrs ago and a spare allen key
4) Hold the bottom of it in place with my bar extender
5) Elastic doodaa from god knows where to provide 'keep map in place' extra security
6) Hey presto!

 

[Sharky]

Reversed into a steel gate in our local village hall and the wing mirror of my zafira caught it and snaped the hinge. But a couple of holes drilled and a couple of zip ties it is as good as new

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

No picture but years ago I had a Mig Welder ( Taskmaster) that kept on cutting out due to overheating so I went to the scrappies and got a fan out a car and welded onto the side of the welder over the vents and wired it up to a Hornby miniature railway transformer, never cut out again.

Yep, highly underrated things, model railways!!

 

[Salty seadog]

Can be anything but preferably with a description and picture: Here's one I'm particularly proud of.

View attachment 149613
The flush on the loo was getting a bit sticky so the toilet dribbled. Anyway in the course of examining it, the wotsit came off the doodah and I couldn't get it back on. I recall the bathroom bloke cursing a bit when he fitted it and he did tiles, fitted the shower, hung doors, plastered etc.... so I figured if he cursed a bit, I would curse a lot and still fail.

So with the aid of just what was lying about, I fitted some string to the doodah so you could just pull it. This was cool but it got stuck under the shelf which is when I hit on the toilet roll as a conduit. That worked for a few days before slowly collapsing and then I hit on the idea of using my old toothbrush to re-inforce the conduit. The final flourish was adding a loop to the string for one fingered pulling and hey presto, bodge done.

Proper fixing will have to wait until I need a plumber for something bigger, though I am coming under pressure for an impending MIL visit.

In a similar bodge the flush mech broke on my pan some moons ago, my bodge, drill a hole in the cistern lid poke a wire coathanger through and hook around the trigger, make a handle of it on the top....voila, several more years of successful flushing. Now if I wasn't single that would have been a few weeks at most.

 

[Supersuperleeds]

I lost the bottom bolt on my rear mudguard, has been held on with blue tac for a good two weeks up to now. When I get round to cleaning it next I might replace the bolt.

 

[400bhp]

Is she a plumber?

No, just an old boiler.

 

[MontyVeda]

The curtains in my bedroom are hung from an old broom handle and brass pipe fittings. I also have six drawer handles made from the rest of that broom handle.