Best / Worse Bodge..

[guest18]

Time for a new topic methinks 

What is the best, or the most horrifying, bodge you've ever seen/done/found? We've all heard of sawdust in the gearbox, heavy oil in the engine etc before selling, but what really stopped you in your tracks?

I'll kick off with a worst:

Inspecting a sports 125 just arrived one of the bolts holding the front brake disc on appeared to have been chewed, so I decided to pop them out and replace them... only to find that a previous owner had managed to shear half of them and instead of sorting the problem had fitted the disc with half the normal complement of bolts and then glued bolt heads over the holes on the remainder... it looked ok... but for some reason I felt the need to fix it properly! 

[andy230]

Only 2 spring to mind just now (tho there must be few good 'uns from John G's race history!)

1.  Throttle cable on my Suzi TS50 snapped.  Playing on the beach at Loch Lomond (oooh! please forgive my decidedly un-environmentally friendly adolscance    )  And spelling!

Anyway, moleys on the end of the cable got me home.  Bit woobly, but I was 16.  Not the most impressive bodge I know, but the feeling of being a genius, at that age, lasted for days!!   

2.  Barrel nuts holding down the barrel came loose on a rebuilt norton twin.  I was 19 or 20 by this point.  The same moleys allowed me to tie it down again, to get home oily, but with a top end to do.  (I was actually quite pleased!!)

And another just came to me

3.  The same norton was plagued by electrical problems in Northern italy.  I spend a couple of days rewiring it, with the aid of my friend's Mama's old washing machine.  There's a lot of approximately Norton-sized lengths of wire in there.  Ok, so the battery fried by Northern france, but I figered "just put the lights on!" and got home.  In fact it went like a train after the wiring was done (and before the battery died!)


a

[guest27]

Ummmm

Footrest started coming off the RD500 on the IoM and could not find a thin wall socket to tighten it with, carved a bit of firewood to shape and hammered it into the space and presto - foot rest now OK - only took it our some years later when I moved the foot rests.

My first bike - was all one bodge, made froom Yamaha, Suzuki and Honda parts.

My KH250 - was a real bodge and a half, eventually abandoned in Cornwall.

Guy at the first or second Barrel Bikers Firkin O' Bitter rally broke his clutch lever - super glued it together - seemed to work.

Mild steel stud and Devcon - trying to get the Triton Barrel to hold together till we got home.

Same Triton quickly hammered together when I bent the RD500 before the IoM - was held together with a couple of rolls of gaffa tape - the guy at the MoT station nearly peed himself laughing at it - and then passed it as there was actually nothing wrong with it - well nothing from the outside, ate a cam and a barrel on the Mountain.

Haveing had GC explaing the ins and outs - the worst must be those JC sidecar mounts...

I am sure there are more to come.

R

[guest24]

My Honda CB400T Dream decided to break a conrod at the little end and thrust itself through the back of the crankcases. Got the bike home, stripped the engine and bought some new bits (piston, con rod) but not crankcases. I had a spare CB250N superdream engine to hand and decided to graft the two together.

Firstly I filled the top crankcase half's hole with araldite epoxy resin plumped out with finely ground chalk powder; sets very hard.

The bottom half was borrowed from the 250 engine.

At this point I decided to switch gearboxes as well. So out came the 5 speed box with kickstart gear and in went the 6 speed box and no kickstart option.

Put it all back together and away we went. Worked fine for ages and then I flogged it when I bought a new CB350S-G .

Is that a best or a worst bodge??

[pigafetta]

Everything I do is a bloody bodge job. The one I'm most proud of is the seat pan on my CD175. Mine had rusted through and you can't get them anymore so I made one out of the door from one of my kitchen units and an old wooden box that I got some salmon in. It was great, looked better than the original. Bit hard on the bum though.  

I once hammered a GP100 wheel bearing into the end of my silencer when I lost my baffle. Worked a treat and passed the MOT. A friend of mine rode around with a moley gear lever for weeks.

Theres something really satisfying about a good bodge that works well. I tend to bodge things around the house a lot because I'm skint and mean.

Dave B



As for bad bodges, them jubilee clip sidecar mounts spring to mind

[Steve Lake]

now... this is going to sound so bluddy improbable......

in 1961 i bought an austin 7, on the face of it not a bad little car, it was a runner, and the lights worked, upholstery was serviceable, and bodywork reasonable.....but.....engine was a bit rough....

you need to understand that i was in the RAF at the time, had just finished my training, impoverished, and in need of wheels (the local women wern't too impressed with my beezer bantam). and motors changed hands, usually for about 50 quid as guys got posted overseas. (thats what i paid for the car, and a couple of years later for a 500cc goldie!)

So, having handed over the 50 quid, i was the proud owner of an austin 7 about 25 years old.

Great stuff! down the local with a car full of lads, 2nd day out the engine got really rough, I thought it was having 4 pi55 'eds on board and hauling up wiltshire hills.....but it expired half a mile from camp, so the blockheads had to get out and push.

following weekend, about 20 blokes all with theories as to what was wrong, the general opinion was no compression on at least one cylinder........like.....take the plugs out.....stick a finger in the hole, turn the engine over......(crank handle at the front!) if your finger squeaked, then there was compression.....

having established a lack of compression.......opinions were divided between a broken/burnt valve and broken rings/piston

being a side valve engine...taking the head off was a ten minute job..................

Oh my gawd...........

number 3 piston had a hole in the middle......the hole was actually in the middle of an alloy plate riveted and araldited onto the piston crown.... used to seal up a hole caused by a dropped valve at some stage in its life.

If you're out there Greg Thompson......you ba5turd......I'll get you!

[guest18]

 
I had a feeling this might be a good topic in this company   

So to keep things rolling along, and following on from Steve L describing buying cars before I was born(!) (cheers Steve, you just made me feel much younger  ) here's one my Grampa told me and swore was the truth (not a man given to fibbing either, so I believe it...)

He was racing bikes in the thirties, and using his as everyday transport and naturally many colleagues and friends had bikes, well one day a lot of them were meeting up for a run and one of them turned up with a shiny sidevalve single that he'd just bought secondhand. Everyone admired it and then they went bopping on their way.
Well they hadn't got that far before friend on the single suffers lack of power then a non running engine. They decide to pull the head off and have a look and while they're doing this someone says "can you smell wood burning? I don't see any houses.." once the head is off they find that there is a hole burnt in the top of the piston. On closer inspection they find that the hole is there because the carpenter who had sold him the bike had knocked up a replacement piston out of a handy bit of hardwood and punted the bike fast after destroying the proper piston!

Like I say, the only first hand witness I know of has passed away, but having heard some equally I believe him strange tales of that crew which were later verified, I believe him 

[Steve Lake]

I'm sure it's true Smudge.....I have heard of several instances of part or whole wooden pistons.....nice bit of well turned ebony would probably last ages on a sidevalve low compression engine...

lets face it...it's a very 'green' alternative....as long as the wood comes from a sustainable source :-)

[bullet350]

 one of my mates has been riding featherbed nortons since the early sixties, and still rides one daily.

of all the bodges he's told me about, including a lump of wood wedged between the top frame rails and the head to keep the engine together, he best one is this:

during a period in the early 70's working at a chemicals plant near Enfield (who disposed of controlled chemicals on windy nights so the thick and brightly coloured smoke wasn't spotted) they started to mix their own fuel.
anything that was inflammable or slightly explosive was 'liberated' and mixed to try and obtain some kind of racing fuel for a few moer bhp.
after several melted pistons, exploded engines, and chemical burns they decided that this was a job best left to BP and Shell.
he also admitted that this 'fuel' was often mixed in cooking pots, and stirred with something metallic.
duck and cover....

the same man also told me of a friend who was cleaning a partially stripped J.A.P single engine in his bath that he had filled with some kind of degreaser. all was well until the crank moved round, which inturn rotated the magneto.....
' i'm just popping down to B&Q dear, i think the bathroom needs some work '

bulet350

[guest40]

A friend asked me to help him buy a bike a few years back as he had located a late model trailie for a song. Soon as we got there, there was a great looking red Honda 250 dirt bike ,the seller said not to take it too hard when test riding it, as there was no oil in it. HMMMM
so I declined saying I would like to look at the bike first so he had time to put some oil in (which didnt seem to be available) . HMMMM  I noticed a mounting bolt on the head was missing so I had a closer look and yep the mounting was cracked, so were a couple of others and other "crunch damage became apparent under the camoflage of new paint. HMMM  I bid my pal to go hunting for a different type of song and the seller was really upset that we didnt want his bargain, cos we hadn't even ridden it, even at a better reduced rate.... HMMMM I wonder who he suckered in on that.   

[guest295]

On my long-ago ride to Mexico from Central California on the Lambretta 150D, the thing started to develop faults then, in Culiacan, the throttle cable broke. I went to the tip there and found some wire and wood. The wire replaced the cable and came straight up from the carb to lumps of wood wired together to supply friction. Despite the idle circuit's being blocked by something, it was usable and I got home. Much later I had a 250cc Simson which ended up with a Honda 50 charging system [alternator & regulator], Hino bearings and a BSA piston. The alternator rotor was made to fit by starting the motor and filing the correct taper on the shaft while my partner worked the throttle.

[Andy M]

I came back from the North Cape with the F650's fan worked via the horn button after the temp switch went.

Andy