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1960 Chevrolet convertible 348 cu in. Was coming home from a date and like any kid of the day. Came to a stop sign and was sitting in a puddle of water. The gas went to the floor and the tires went to smoke. Then came this odd sound of knock, knock, knock. I pulled over, oil pressure still good, no rise in coolant temp. Finally traced it down to a knock in the passenger side valve cover. On the side of the road, pulled the valve cover and found one of the pushrods in an S figure. I took it out, beat it with a heavy adjustable wrench on the asphalt until it looked to be fairly straight. Reinstalled it, put the valve cover back on and drove it like that until I sold the car several years later. Those old 348s were pretty tough engines.
Not exactly a repair, but one time I had the stick shift come off in my hand. Somehow I was able to stick it back in, and by pressing down as i drove I was able to make the three hours back home.
In the Mohave desert with a bunch of Jeeps. One guy had the aluminum bracket that held his P/S pump in place break. Pump went sideways and kicked off the belt. One impatient jerk tried to force the pump straight and wound up breaking the plastic pulley. No belt meant no water pump or alternator, so I figured out how to reroute a belt on the remaining pulleys to spin the waterpump the correct way. I measured around the pulleys with a tape measure and one of the guys ran back to town (50 mile r/t) to get 3 different belts. I don't remember the sizes but for example 40, 41 and 42 inch. I figured one would work, and it did. The shortest one fit, tensioner kept the belt tight and the owner was able to finish the trail and drive back to Phoenix.
One day driving my first car far from home (used 1976 mgb) I suddenly had a really strong smell of gas. Pulled over and checked under the hood and could see a crack in the short piece of hose from the fuel filter to the carburetor. I ended up cutting out a short piece of hose from another part of the engine (vacuum maybe) and swapping that in to get home.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Mine goes back to 1970.a friend and I were on the last day of a 2-1/2 month cross country road trip of 18,000 miles in my 1964 Buick Skylark wagon. The 300 CI V8 has aluminum heads, and suddenly on a quiet county road in northern CA there was a loud bang and then “pop pop pop.....” so I shut it down. Looking for obvious problems I saw that one spark plug was missing, and after a few minutes we found it down the road a ways. I could see aluminum threads on it, so I knew it had blown out and the aluminum threads were shot. I found a pack of Doublemint gum in the car, wrapped the aluminum foil wrapper around the plug and got it installed well enough to make it the rest of the way home, about 400 miles.
Ended up pulling the heads and having a machine shop put helicoil inserts in all 8 plug holes, and put in new lifters while it was apart. On the test drive I took a girl from college on a first, but long date. We have now been married 43 years.
1960 Chevrolet convertible 348 cu in. Was coming home from a date and like any kid of the day. Came to a stop sign and was sitting in a puddle of water. The gas went to the floor and the tires went to smoke. Then came this odd sound of knock, knock, knock. I pulled over, oil pressure still good, no rise in coolant temp. Finally traced it down to a knock in the passenger side valve cover. On the side of the road, pulled the valve cover and found one of the pushrods in an S figure. I took it out, beat it with a heavy adjustable wrench on the asphalt until it looked to be fairly straight. Reinstalled it, put the valve cover back on and drove it like that until I sold the car several years later. Those old 348s were pretty tough engines.
If I remember correctly that was the 348"s nickname, I had a 57 Pontiac and bumped a curb on a round about which bent a tie rod. The left front tire sounded like I was going 100 mph squealing when I tried to proceed home. I then did what you did to the push rod and straightened it best I could, which got me home again.
Radiator neck cracked at the upper radiator hose. Shaved it flush with a nail file and stuck the hose back on with the clamp. Tightened the clamp with a dime. Had no tools in the car. Used bottled water to refill. This was my moms boyfriends car. He just sat there shaking his head I said let’s go home we can get a radiator on the way.
Back in the day I had a truck with a carb. A float had a hole in it and would fill with gas and basically flooded the engine. Pulled it apart and used a piece of cork to stuff in the little hole to seal it up.
But basically I had the "low oil pressure" indicator come on. So I took it to a local jiffy lube, turns out there was no oil and by the skin of my teeth I didn't mess up my car.
Needless to say, I'm on top of my scheduled oil changes now.
I always carried a roll of duct tape in my car. And lo and behold I needed it outside Vegas that day. Radiator sprung a leak, so at a rest stop I let the engine cool, then wrapped about six or seven turns of tape around the split. Topped up the antifreeze, (which I also carried) Said, "in Vegas I'll get it fixed correctly".
Yeah sure.
I sold the car a few years later with the duct tape still intact.
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Stone-Crusher
