Repair/mechanic tricks and or tips?

[tommu56]

I scrounge HD frig magnets out of the PM dc motor that are trash at work.

I take them apart till you have shell with magnets.
I cut them in half between poles (stand on end on band saw)
then I put them in the arbor press n press on top of n.
press down on shell glue will break off magnet as shell flattens.
if the magnets hit plate shim shell up for some more clearance.

tom

 

[patrick_g]

I scrounge HD frig magnets out of the PM dc motor that are trash at work.

I take them apart till you have shell with magnets.
I cut them in half between poles (stand on end on band saw)
then I put them in the arbor press n press on top of n.
press down on shell glue will break off magnet as shell flattens.
if the magnets hit plate shim shell up for some more clearance.

tom

Don't forget old microwaves as sources for a good magnet. The magnet used for the magnetron is pretty potent.

Pat

 

[cityfarma]

And don't forget about the door seal magnets on fridges. Just remove the plastic and you have great magnets for holding drawings posters etc onto your shed wall.

Cityfarma

 

[oliver28472]

Someone mentioned the plastic coffee cans a while back. I use the one pound Folger can as a cup holder. Have a computer hard drive magnet in the bottom to hold it on my Satoh and Mits.

 

[Rara Avis]

Roller Magnet...when you make the proverbial repair in the hayfield...YOU WILL DROP SOMETHING in the grass...

Amazon.com: AMK Manufacturing Rolling Magnetic Sweeper - 18in. Magnet Length: Home Improvement

 

[BTDT]

Roller Magnet...when you make the proverbial repair in the hayfield...YOU WILL DROP SOMETHING in the grass...

Amazon.com: AMK Manufacturing Rolling Magnetic Sweeper - 18in. Magnet Length: Home Improvement

At that point and with my luck, whatever I dropped would be made out of plastic or aluminum. Thanks for the link

 

[Soundguy]

Orings... that's what i usually drop out in the field..

Speaking of orings.. keep an oring and a self tapping sheet metal screw in your tool box.. can't tll yuo how many dinged fuel tanks and oil pns that got a chip from a rock inthe road knock a pinhole in them.. a self tapper ( and driver ) and that oring will get you home or to a service station.. I've seen it done with a piece of innertube rubber and a plain screw as well.. etc..

Soundguy

 

[patrick_g]

Orings... that's what i usually drop out in the field..

Speaking of orings.. keep an oring and a self tapping sheet metal screw in your tool box.. can't tll yuo how many dinged fuel tanks and oil pns that got a chip from a rock inthe road knock a pinhole in them.. a self tapper ( and driver ) and that oring will get you home or to a service station.. I've seen it done with a piece of innertube rubber and a plain screw as well.. etc..

Soundguy

Great idea. A buddy and I had to drop the pan and put a bolt through a hole with improvised (carved on the spot from found materials) wooden washers. I would have given a case of beer for an O-ring and a sheet metal screw.

Pat

 

[patrick_g]

Once down in Baja California when a radiator hose blew out we had the spare hose but the clamps were shot and we didn't have spares. I didn't want to ruin a strand of barbed wire fence so I was going to borrow a little of one of the twisted wires and leave the other to support the relatively slack fence.

I didn't want to be too obvious so as there was another truck approaching I was going to wait till it passed before borrowing the wire to fabricate a temporary clamp. The truck did not pass, it stopped and the driver asked about our problem (hood was up.) I told him and he says, "upper or lower hose?" I said upper and he got out, opened his spares container and hands me the right sized clamp, refusing payment. He was driving the same model International Harvester 3/4 ton as me.

The fixit suggestion in all this? If you can't be good or smart, BE LUCKY!

You can improvise radiator stop leak with a number of substances. Another Baja adventure we ran a mesquite branch into our radiator. We had no stop leak with us. We tried our black pepper which is known to stop a leak if it is just a micro sized hole. This hole was to big so we escalated to heavier duty improvisation and ended up getting a ffair seal with some Malt O Meal breakfast cereal but it took oatmeal to finally stop the leak completely. If you can get to the part of the tube that is leaking and pinch the hole at least partly closed it helps the cereal plug the hole. The cereal does not hurt anything and can be cleaned out by normal rinsing and flushing methods when you get to a repair facility. I have heard that egg white works too but didn't have fresh eggs left at the time.

The main leaf of leaf springs on 4x4 vehicle are mandatory if you have to use 4x4. I broke one and in 4x4 the axle tries to go off without the truck. 4x4 was mandatory since we had already blown the rear differential. We splinted the spring with branches and rope and clamped a Vise Grip to hold the spring in place. We made it a couple hundred miles to return to San Diego and had new springs built at National Spring and Brake a GOOD facility.

After having to spend much more time than expected in gas gulping low range 4x4 traversing quite a distance in the desert we made it to the highway but ran out of gas just a few miles from a gas station. We were able to empty our Coleman lantern and cookstove (white gas) into the tank, reserving just a little to pour in carb to get the engine firing without running the batt down cranking a V-8 to operate the fuel pump. We just made the station.

Pat

 

[Bird]

You can improvise radiator stop leak with a number of substances.

Only one time I had a reason to do that. I have a cousin who, many years ago, was proud of his 1956 Chevrolet sedan and decided to show me how fast it would go. He was doing just about all the 110 mph speedometer would register when there was a lot of banging noise up front and a small inverted dimple appeared in the hood. He very promptly kicked it in neutral and we coasted to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. We thought we'd surely blown an engine.

This was a state highway and we had seen nothing in the road that we could have hit, but in examining things under the hood, it was obvious that something had hit the cooling fins on the generator, bending one of them out quite a ways, we could see where it hit a fan blade, and it had hit under the hood hard enough to actually crack the metal. It had also knocked 3 or 4 little holes in the radiator. Since we had seen nothing we could have picked up from the road, my first assumption was that a nut or bolt had come loose and meandered around under the hook. However, we never found a single missing nut or bolt.

So, after the engine had cooled down, my cousin started it up (ran just fine), put it gear, accelerated briskly to about 60 mph, kicked it in neutral, shut off the engine, and coasted until we nearly stopped, at which time he restarted it, and did the same thing again. About 3 cycles of start, accelerate, kill engine, and coast got us to a convenience store. But it was still 30 miles to my home and car. So he went into the store and came out with a big handful of bubble gum. He was chewing vigorously with a big mouthful of bubble gum. I was laughing so hard I couldn't hardly help him, and between chomps on the bubble gum, he was saying, "Shut up, **** **, and chew."

But we plugged all the holes in the radiator with bubble gum, got to my house, removed the radiator, and took it in my car to a radiator shop. The guy there wanted to know what we used to plug the holes, and looked like he was going to cry when we told him. He said, "Do you have any idea how hard it's going to be for me to get that cleaned off so I can fix those holes?" But he got it done.