Ingenuity......

Mike

I've heard of a bloke using a length of kangaroo tail skin as a radiator hose.
Of course a Cobb & Co hitch and a length of fencing wire will jury rig all sorts of broken bits.

Cheers

When I was in my teens, a few decades ago, I was a keen abseiler. A group of mates and mayself went bush for an abseiling weekend, and broke tailshaft uni on way home. We didn't use made up harnesses in those days for abseiling, just a length of seatbelt webbing, a tape not, and presto, we had our own harness.

We used one of the lengths of seatbelt webbing to tie up the uni and got home albeit, very slowly.

Back in the early 70's was out northwest of Katherine. One of the vehicles put a stick through the sump of his FJ45 (Station Wagon version). We dropped the sump, hammered the hole back flush, really cleaned up around the damaged area and applied Araldite (the good full strengh stuff which is all there was in those days), let it set overnight. Re assembled it the next morning and it worked a treat and never failed.

Very long time ago, when I was a kid, an older uncle pulled in to the farm with an early model Ford 4 cylinder. Was making loud bumping noise from the bottom of the motor.

Next day, stripped the bottom end and found a big end bearing knakkered.

So, discarding the bits of no use, he proceded to make bearing cap and matching bearing to get it going to get home (about 45ks). Saw him some months later and father asked him if he had put new bearings in it yet. no was the reply, why should I.

Materials used? Red gum timber

Mike

G'day.
Back in the early 60's on my way to an old goldmine that a mate and I worked on weekends.
I drove a 1946 Chev Ute - great set of wheels :-)

Applied the brake to stop at a steel gate, nothing happened and I went straight through...........
The brake cylinder on the offside rear wheel had gone and of course most of the brake fluid with it.
It was a pretty rough and hilly track so didn't dare going on without brakes.

Sat down and boiled the billy while pondering the problem.........
That's what I did:
Heat a copper penny and then beat it between 2 hammers until it was thin and flat.
Used a chisel and then a file to manufacture a small disk that just fitted into the pipe connection on the brake cylinder.
Annealed that and then used it to block off the cylinder.
Filled the brake system with water, bleed it a bit and I was on my way.
I had deathly brakes for the 120 miles to the mine and back home ( Peterborough, SA ). G'day Willem .......

Another time, going to the same place in a Morris Commercial ( remember them? ).
Did a big end bearing.
Repaired it by making bearing shell from a leather belt. It got me home.

Take care out there,
Mike

Between the Wars , a radial engined bi-plane split an oil pipe over the GAFFA .They landed in the desert OK , had tools but no pipe section . A curious Emu strolled up to have a look and was shot with the pilot's pistol . The Emu's trachea was a tight sliding fit over the split pipe and got them home . The pilot reckoned it was good for another 50 hours flighing but got over-ruled by the engineers on that one .

i never saw the bush mechanics but a mate said some guy carved a break pad out of a bit of timber, unbelieveable.

So I guess the question begs to be asked.. who would bother buying bearings for a "big end" these days.. judging by the number of home made jobies.. sounds like it's a breeze.. but I bet my 05 GU wouldnt like it much.. I guess thats the sad thing about all the new 'fangled ' 4WDs these days...

bleep tered a steering box on a forty series out near Woods Point.

Lashed a jack handle to the front tie rod and out the front of the car through the a hole in the old bull bar. Used some 8 guage wire to bind it on.
Then we strapped a sapling to the handle extending about 5 metres in front of the car and two bloke had to jog in front of the car steering as they went.
It was a slow ride out but did the trick.

Not cars but boats.

A commercial fisherman on a largish boat off the south coast WA experienced flat batteries after a few days drift fishing.

Result - Cummins diesel wouldn't start. Some grunt but not enought to turn it over through compression. On some marine motors you have a manual decompress for such eventualities but not on an engine of this size.

Solution was the guy removed the rocker cover, maually opened all the valves and used knives etc from the cutlery draw to slip under the valve stems to keep them open, then turned it over with no compression and kicked a few knives out.

The start up was pretty spectacular apparently with cutlery flying in all directions - but he got it going and of course there were no bloody engine management systems, copmuters what have you to stuff up the works.

KISS works every tme.

John G

Heard of one guy who totally stuffed rear axle assy(totally meaning more than just bent) on Gibb R R.
His Solution:--
Unload stuff in off road trailer into back of vehicle, shove trailer under back of vehicle, wire twitch it into place and drive out using front wheels only.
It works with P/Time 4wd (centre diff type vehicles may not be able to handle the loads)

The first time I went to Cape York (1990) we had a trailer with us. The trailer got bounced around a bit and just out from Twin Falls the wheel bearing seized and broke off. The wheel was found in the bush with what was left of the stub axle and bearing.

After a short while a small tree was cut, stripped of all the branches and tied to the draw bar with fencing wire. The tree was wired to the axle where the wheel should have been. This acted as a skid. With this set up we were able to drag the trailer to Twin Falls where we camped until the axle was replaced.

Wayne

Was flying at 20000 feet over France in my Sopwith Camel in 1917 when a blasted Hun put a stream of tracer through my left-hand lower wing and faithfull rotary engine. As he over-shot, I dropped my lunch-box on him (stale bread, corned meat, no pickles) - which put him out of action.

Now to get home with broken wing and no engine...!

I tied up the joy-stick with my belt to keep her in a shallow dive and climbed out onto wing. Promptly lost trousers in wind.

Retrieved piece of English willow from smashed wing-strut, fashioned new big-end bearing with sharpened spoon and fitted to motor. Used silk boxers to repair wing fabric. (Rather chilly after that!)

Restarted motor using clothesline from survival pack and limped home, shooting down three more Huns on the way.

Biggles