Your McGyver stories.

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RopeArmour

RopeArmour

TreeHouser
Joined
Dec 15, 2010
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1,119
Location
Cambridge, Ontario Canada
Any memorable McGyver moments? kinda carry over from tieing a string to a rock thread

Used to live and work on a camp Timber Lodge in Kettleby.
Property owner asked me to knock down big old Elm hangin over the barn.
At the time all I owned was 034.
He supplied a rope and so I launched it into the tree and took the working end and passed it around the base of another tree and then created an endless loop to the standing end.
Then I got a big stick and passed it thru the loop and twisted that loop up as tight as a guitar string and then flopped the sucka.:D
Childs play with a rubber band sure came in handy that day.;)
 
I've used water in a brakes master cylinder before, when we were stranded and didn't have any brake fluid. It worked perfectly!
 
Blew out a broken stud with a plasma torch once. Didn't damage the threads of the case. Never found the sucka.
 
Back in my college days in western NC, I drove a beat to hell rear wheel drive 1967 Opel Kadet, which I put on some of the nastiest backwoods goat tracks you ever saw.

In one memorable event, I was trying to negotiate around a pile of rubble that had slid off a cliff and was partially blocking the trail...misjudged the edge, which crumbled out from under the front end, dropping the right front wheel off into air, and lifting the opposite rear wheel a foot and a half off the ground.

I had in the amazingly cavernous trunk all manner of gear and junk, including a pair of spare wheels w/o tires and 100 feet of some kinda three strand rope, about 1/2 inch.

So I removed the airborn rear tire, put on the spare wheel, wrapped the rope around the empty rim 4 or 5 turns clockwise and tied off the other end snug to a tree back down the track behind the car, on the cut slope side.

Got in, fired it up, put it in reverse, and "winched" myself back on the road.

Jacked up the winch wheel, returned the one with a tire to it's proper place, and backed a 1/2 mile out of there.

Easy peasy. The young lady was impressed :D.
 
While visiting my son's family last year, he had a Big Leaf Maple split and one stem threatened his power line and the house. i had no gear and I never worked a BLM before - don't have 'em back East. But, that stem had to come down and no one was available. So …

He had a good 1/2" double-braid which I had sent him so he could work on his roof. BUT, he only had one biner, a BD rock harness … and a bicycle helmet.

We went to the home center -- bought a mason line & pruning saw. Used a padlock wrapped up in canvas as throw weight. Set the climb line up with the mason line.

Used a Blakes and body thrusted up the good stem and pieced out the split stem -- 3 hours. He thought it was cool … which was cool to hear.

But the coolest part was watching my 3yr-old grandson "McGyver" what I was doing:

5596879254_a1b2cfd765_m.jpg
 
Jack, your story reminds me...

About 2002, a coworker of mine (also named Nick) and I decide we need to climb Mt. Shasta. We train, and set 4 days for the mountain. It only took 3. We used our extra day to go climb a redwood. We went to a hardware store and bought 1/8" line for the throwline, a plumb bob as a weight, and used our mountaineering gear (thin stretchy rope and prusiks) to climb up.

We made it and measured our tree to be about 280' from the highest point we climbed. We were pretty stoked about it!
 
Lawdy,1965 ! My buddy,two young ladies,2 6 packs of beer and a muddy lane , midnight .My ignorant azzed buddy decides to drive down this muddy lane and buried his mothers Buick station wagon clear to the axle in good old late March Ohio mud .

I noticed a flag stone culvert about 500 feet from where we entered the lane .Stone by stone we carried enough to make kind of a "take off" ramp .With the help of a bumper jack was able to get the stones under the rear wheels and lay out about 25-30 feet so as to get enough runway to launch that thing .The freaking sun was rising when we finally made it out .Oh the chit we got our selves into in the days of my youth .
 
Driving my 1938 Nimbus motorcycle far from home, It threw a rod bearing.

I pulled that piston and rod completely out of the engine, adjusted the rocker arms on that cylinder so they didn't open the valves and limped home on 3 cylinders.

Did it all with a crescent wrench and a screwdriver, by the side of the road.
 
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Snapped a throttle cable in an old F450 and tied some throwline to the throttle arm and had buddy in the passenger side
give er to get it back to the shop. Mechanics thought well of me that day because it was broken down on 2 lane hwy with not much working room.
 
Friend's Grandfather died and the family members came from out of town to split up the furnishings/belongings.
One daughter had purchased three batteries driving down from Maine in a rental truck!
I went to the old man's bread box, took off the wire tie on a loaf of bread, stripped it and replaced the broken section of wire in the old mechanical voltage regulator and it was back to charging.
She gave me the two new 'dead' batteries.
 
just started plowing a big snow (for these parts) might have been 10-14".. neighbor came over and asked me to plow his drive.. I had plowed maybe 5-10 drives of my regular route, with another 50+ to go, so I wanted to keep moving, but couldn't resist making a quick $100... His drive was so steep I had to make pass after pass, getting up speed and with each pass getting another 20-30' up the hill, then dropping the blade, just barely able to stay on the drive as it snaked up tight through big shrubs ... Finally getting towards the top, lost the two drivers side wheels over the side.. homeowner later told me that there was a 6" curb there originally to keep people from going over the edge, but the daughter had destroyed it.. Trying to go up or down didn't matter, I just kept sliding further sideways over the edge, with every movement.. I was f'ed... no way was a wrecker getting up past me.. and no way would they be coming anytime soon... I was going to be hearing it from a lot of pissed off customers....

Last thing I did before I left was throw and old rope in the truck... 3/4" oil soaked POS that I had never used for treework... had a big metal hook on one end.. hooked it to a cross member on the frame dead center between the two axles.. went up the hill on a 45 degree angle and tied off to a big shrub... dropped her in low and drove down, as the rope got tight it pendulumed the truck right back up on the blacktop.. i was paid and gone in 15 minutes..
 
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That reminds me, I punched a valve through a piston once. It annihilated the piston. the valve ended up in the crankcase. I was dead in the water. Stuck on the side of the highway somewhere in Ohio. Finley I think. With what tools I had I pulled the head. Seen the problem. Walked into town and bought a new valve, and a head gasket. Got back to the car put the valve in, but pulled the push rods so the cylinder was dead. torqued it all down and went the rest of the way on 5 cylinders. It ran real crappy, but it got where I wanted to go.

What an ordeal that was.
 
Used some chain when I had to rack the roof of the house when we did the install. They wanted a lot of money for bolt on brackets. I was mashing my brain against it looking for parts to weld together when I stumbled on the logging chain..... LIGHT BULB!. So I went and got some small links of chain some lag bolts would bolt through and bolted them to the peak of the house. Attached threee come-a-longs and the house went straight over three - four days of pulling the roof even with each half.
Lowering truck and trailer down a steep hill on 5/8ths stable braid and a large perty comes to mind as well when we got stuck on a steep driveway with a trailer in tow one time :)
 
The Eisenman magneto went funky on one of my D4 Cats .I used two automobile coils ,the points out the magneto and dry cell battery to fire the pony motor .Fired both plugs at the same time .Used it like that for several years until I got the mag fixed .
 
The "aerobic " type septic tanks use a low pressure blower to inject air into the system .These damned things cost about 400 dollars to replace .Old Al the cheapskate came up with a better idea 30 plus year ago .400 bucks and Al Smith don't belong in the same sentence .

Use the air injecter /afterburner pump from an automobile and a 1/3--1/2 HP electric motor . These things BTW will also make nice small air compressers with about 100 PSI discharge .
 
The gas strut, in the skid steer, that held the rear cab window open/closed failed. I ginned up some scrap parts and made a linkage that did the job much better. So, it will stay as a permanent fix!

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