Bodge JobsIf you can't fix it with a hammer and a roll of duck tape, it's not worth fixing at all, my old mate said minutes before that nasty business with the hammer and a roll of duck tape. Tell us of McGyver-like repairs and whether they were a brilliant success or a health and safety nightmare.
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Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 11:58)
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My ex-wife's fatherHis name was Erle. I'm not sure if it was the bodged spelling of his name that made him that way or just that he was a cheap bastard, but he insisted on repairing everything with whatever happened to be at hand rather than driving out to buy the proper parts. He really had no mechanical aptitude, so the results were often pretty bizarre. I used to refer to them as Erle-isms.
Among my favorites:
-he was mowing the lawn and broke the glass globe on the coach light by the driveway. His answer? Coat the inside of a gallon pickle jar with white house paint and put that up there.
-his station wagon was a late 70s beast with the little doors over the headlights that would flip up when the lights were turned on. One of these stopped working, so he broke off a chunk of tree branch and jammed it, bark and all, in place to hold the door open. It looked like the torture scene from A Clockwork Orange.
-he couldn't be bothered to remember the combination of the lock on the barn, so he wrote it on the barn door in pencil. Then one day he repainted the door, and proudly took me out to show off his work. "Did you write down the combination somewhere else?" I asked. He looked at me for a second before muttering "Well..." and wandering off.
-a blown fuse in a car? Forget about trying to track down the cause when you can simply wrap the fuse in aluminum foil and be on your way. I saw at least one burned out hulk that was the result of this. There was a second one, but he denied having anything to do with that one.
After he died I spent many a weekend tracking down and fixing Erle-isms. I don't think I got them all.
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The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 10 Mar 2011, 13:30,
2 replies)
i like thisi can relate to the fuse/car combo, i'm guilty of that
(, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 15:23, closed)
Rasies handI did it to my mates computer.
His power supply kept blowing fuses, so I thought it'd be a good idea to beef up the fuse a bit.
Ever seen 6" flames jetting out the back of an IBM PS/2?
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Not Pineapple anymore, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 15:55,
closed)
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