Episode 28: Jury Rigged

There are a handful of right ways to fix a car, there are a lot of wrong ways to fix a car. But as technicians we know that there are things that happen and get done a certain way that only another technician could understand. Extra nuts and bolts, clips, and all sorts of other things get left off and the car is going to operate exactly as designed. This doesn’t necessarily make a job makeshift or jury rigged: but super glue, epoxy, wire ties, and duct tape usually do! We’ve all been in situations where the car had to go and the repair was not made up to spec.

However, if you truly jury rig it, a customer will eventually find out. When they do it will ruin your shops reputation, and yours by proxy. Brake lines being jury rigged with vacuum line, putting a .22 shell into the fuse box, and drywall screws are just a few of the more common examples. Using coat hangers to wire stuff up works great on the side of the road, but if you do it in a shop you should probably either get it repaired correctly or quit.

Also we talk the heat shrink tubing trick for all of you German car fixing folk, and the economics of spending money on your car versus spending it on beer.