trail side repair stories, tips and tricks...anyone got any?

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Wow.. not to rain on anyone's parade but,.. why don't these repairs even hold a candle to stuff I see overseas?.. I mean,.. you have stuff tantamount to "I say,.. I had to wait on my latte while I found a shop to repair this and that"... and I see people in Africa, India, Nepal... rebuilding transmissions on the side of the road using rocks as hammers... or battery welding axles... using twine/rope to hold suspensions together.... I think I may have a few pics... I'll see if I can find them.

Carry: Lots of GOOD duct tape, SS Safety wire, stick Welding rods and those cables you can use to weld from multiple batteries (A Oxyacetylene torch can work here and is fairly small), about 15' each of different bulk hose, different size hose clamps (not just for hoses you know), paracord, 4-5 packs JB Weld, and if you are concerned about First aid,.. a GOOD large kit,.. I also include syringes, lidocaine and stuff to stitch myself and others up... Antibiotics and ant-bacterials, Pain-Killers... Water Filter AND iodine pills.. there's more I always have but I'll have to look in my truck to check... The normal stuff,.. water, coolant, oils, grease...
(I know people that carry spare suspension and axle parts and think I don't carry enough!)

Look long and hard at your vehicle,.. how old is it? What can you imagine letting go on it?... Prepare for the absolute worst thing you can imagine... on a true "expedition" it can save your life.
(Melodrama off!)

v/r,

Bill
 
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Sounds like that battery welding thing would wreck your batteries...?

Not all of us have that much space... I think the point here is tips and tricks for the average person who carries what normal people carry... not a military unit behind enemy lines :D

OK here's a cool one that is really kind of a desperate fix, but I HAVE seen it in use. And no I have not tested the possibility of performing this without preparation. If you happen to have the right size of hoses and hose clamps to fashion them, you can use your AC pump as an air compressor to reinflate tires.

I'm not sure if you can do this without a tire valve attachment? Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the tire valve will let pressure in without being opened? In that case the AC compressor should provide enough power to pump up a tire without a proper seal. The way I saw it done was with a proper air hose attached to the AC pump, and of course the proper way to do it is much more complex, but in THEORY you should be able to do it with just some hose and hose clamps if you remove your tire and hold it into the engine compartment above the compressor. You should DEFINITELY be able to do it if you're in the situation (that I've found myself in) that you have a compressor that has committed suicide which you can salvage the tire valve attachment off of.
 
joshoisasleep said:
Sounds like that battery welding thing would wreck your batteries...?

Not all of us have that much space... I think the point here is tips and tricks for the average person who carries what normal people carry... not a military unit behind enemy lines :D


1. Google battery welding.. been done for decades... all over the world... on a regular basis.
2. Military unit?... this IS what people carry on expeditions... Having been in the military for over 20 years... you'd be stupid to carry this 'behind enemy lines'.
3. Normal people?.. as there are perhaps .0001% of the world population involved in anything like this... where does the definition of "normal" come into play.

If we are discussing a few days off-road with friends,.. that doesn't really meet the definition of "expedition" now does it?.. then you would not need most of this... but then you'd be close
to gas,.. water,.. and what the heck, hotels.. and restaurants.

To me an "expedition" type trip is at a minimum a few weeks to several months in a self-sustaining mode with only occasional farays into whatever civilization you can find for things like fuel or food if you can't hunt it down.

I've been a few places in this world... as a partial list I've been to: Pakistan, India, Thailand, Laos, Burma, UAE, Egypt, Sudan, Sierra Leone, China, Guyana, Canada, All over Europe-Northern and Eastern... people there that do this either for a living or as a serious hobby would laugh at that attitude and then get irate that either they or emergency rescue services would have to rescue you/recover your body from wherever you broke down, unprepared.

v/r,

Bill
Click to expand...
 
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woah relax, no offense intended. I never really considered myself a normal person anyway. hehe I only said that because I actually carry a lot of what you mentioned above, but seriously even I don't have 15 lengths of each type of hose and try as I might my girlfriend will absolutely NOT let me purchase/carry an acetylene torch or even a small welder... :). Sometimes you have to make compromises between what you need, what you want, and what you might need...

That being said, I still have found myself in situations that I was unprepared for, as can happen to even the most prepared person...
 
On second thought I just googled battery welding. That's pretty sweet stuff. I saw a pair of small welding glasses down the street yesterday, I think I'll take a walk down and pick them up along with some welding rods...
 
joshoisasleep said:
On second thought I just googled battery welding. That's pretty sweet stuff. I saw a pair of small welding glasses down the street yesterday, I think I'll take a walk down and pick them up along with some welding rods...
Click to expand...


First time I saw battery welding was in Pakistan (Islamabad) where a guy was working on Pakistani truck's (Hino-which I think is actually japanese?) broken frame.

I've tried it at home and while a bit hard to control... as I was using modified battery cables... I can see it very easily saving the day in the bush.

v/r,

Bill
 
You would only damage the batteries if you tried to perform continuous welding,,. this would drain and damage the batteries... since you would weld in "stitches" of about 1/8-1/4"... wouldn't be an issue.

v/r,

Bill
 
cruiser_guy said:
https://forum.ih8mud.com/tlca-sanctioned-events/215660-new-mcgrew-year-6.html post #163 How about a busted motor mount? Fixed with a nylon cinch strap and duct tape. We were stuck behind until we got the mount fixed. He continued on till mid-day when he was able to head to the camping area. I'm not sure if the repair would have held for the afternoon on McGrew.
Click to expand...

Sweet.. this is the kind of stuff I was seeing in India, Africa and other places... you'd see the hood open on some vehicles and you know that the next possible repair would be with gum or something similar,.. straps and leather belts holding suspensions together... baling wire,.. plastic jugs in places they shouldn't be... Miss those places (tearing up) :)

v/r,

Bill
 
Having a bank of batteries for your secondary battery will make battery welding easier and less likely to strand you. That way you don't need to use your starting battery. 3 or 4 batteries in parallel could be switched over to in series for welding. Smaller capacity batteries can be used, but personally I'd stay with one of the common vehicle battery sizes.

A side note: AGM style batteries can kick out very high current. I have a few 60Ah batteries from SBS that have a short circuit current of over 1000 Amps. At that current it's terminals will self destruct in less than a minute. It only has 6mm screw posts, not the big lugs seen on auto batteries.
 
I used to recover broken down hire 4wds from Fraser Island. Had heaps of oddball recoveries over the years.

One time there was an old series III Land Rover that had blown a transfer case on a sand hill. It was a single lane track on the way to the barge and there was a heap of other backpackers trying to get to the barge lined up behind it. We tried towing it out of the way but the drivetrain was locked solid. I managed to get it back into two wheel drive but it was still locked up at the back. I had to remove the axles but I couldn't fit a spanner on the FF hub bolts. I grabbed a socket from my tool box but I couldn't find my rachet, must've left it on the bench back at the workshop. I couldn't find anything I could use to undo those bolts. The crowd watching me was growing angrier by the minute as they realised they might miss their barge. I was getting desperate. I then noticed a prybar I had in my box. I smashed the plastic handle off it and used the square shank into the socket (exact right size luckily) and used a shifter on the other end to turn it. It saved the day. Worked like a charm.

It's not just the parts that need to be thought of outside the box, sometimes the tools you use can be used in different ways to their normal usage.
 
Another trick I have heard of (never done it myself though) is how to make a emergency locker.

If you have an unlocked rig, break an axle or something, are travelling by yourself and are right in the back country and need all of the traction you can get to get out this method may work.

Remove diff oil filler bung, rotate diff till you can see the spider gears, poke a length of wire into the spider gears (alloy TIG wire is ideal, but whatever you have will do), rotate the axle to jam the wire in there till it all locks up, reinsert the bung. Presto instant locker to give drive back to the good axle.

ps. remember to remove all the broken bits of the old axle first.
 
My first time behind the wheel of a 60 was on Fraser Island! It was my dad's though, and I was only eight years old :).

Funny trail fix story on that same FJ60. At one point driving a long stretch of road through the desert the fuel pump went. Fortunately we'd recently stopped at KFC where my brother and I had convinced our parents to get us the toy they were giving away at the time - squirt guns with a hose and screw-on attachment to fit standard 2L pop bottles. My dad drove for like two days to the next town that had a fuel pump with a 2L bottle held out the window, gravity feeding the fuel using our squirt gun adapters. During this drive, we saw very few other vehicles, but one of them was another FJ60 going in the other direction, with a 2L bottle held out the drivers side window!! :clap:
 
Years ago I was working in a bus depot and the old mechanic used to carry a piece of pine hose stud and a knife, he told me that he once used it to repair a crack in the block of a bus, also he said he had trimmed it to size and hammered into a fuel tank to stop a leak.
I only have his say so but he seemed pretty credible
 
BOLANDMARC said:
Years ago I was working in a bus depot and the old mechanic used to carry a piece of pine hose stud and a knife, he told me that he once used it to repair a crack in the block of a bus, also he said he had trimmed it to size and hammered into a fuel tank to stop a leak.
Click to expand...

I had to pick out the wooden plug from the diff on the FJ45LV when I was working on it so that's not an uncommon practice.

I didn't know what it was at first as it was all covered in grease and dirt. I thought it was a boogered fill plug from someone using a cold chisel so I got out the drill so I could use an "Easyout" and the fill plug was extrodinarily soft!!
 
I once used vise grips to hold my snapped rear leaf spring together on my 81 short bed P/U. Not to spectacular, but handy out in the bush. I didn't want to loose the vise grips so I tied them to a crossmember under the box with mechanics wire. :hillbilly: Wheeled the rest of the weekend and then drove home like that. The vise grips never moved. Ended up putting in 4 new leaf springs after the other side snapped as well.
 
Never throw away your cordless battery drill if the battery dies, some times it is cheaper to buy a new drill. Then just throw the old battery away and solder 2 wires on to the + and - in the drill and have a clamp on the end of the wires so you can connect to your 4b's battery= 12 volt drill for your tool kit.
 
Thinking of gashes. I fashioned a plug out of a bit of tire rubber from the side of the road to fill a hole in the oil pan of my car. Held it in place with a ratchet strap around the engine. Used some wire where the strap went past the exhaust manifold.
 
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