Calin: Wow, this question takes me back to my junior year of high school. My friends, Brian, Scott,and I took off for a weekend of camping in Brian's '71 4x4 Blazer. This thing didn't have the best ride,but it was way high. It had super-stiff springs and 40-inch mudders-remember this was 1988 and lift suspension wasn't as refined as it is today. Anyway, we were driving down the road when a couple of dudes in a Camaro started pacing us, honking their horn, and pointing under the truck. Brian pulled over and we all hopped out to see what the deal was when we all saw it at once, the rear U-joints on fire. So,after calming Brian down and assessing the situation, I grabbed the only tool that was in the truck, a pair of pliers. I used these to remove the driveshaft so we could lock the front hubs and drive to the nearest gas station. We made that part of the trip just fine, and to our luck, the station had a set of joints. Since it was after hours, all of the mechanics had gone home and locked their tool boxes in the process. So, after digging around the place for a while, I ended up changing the U-joints with a big rock and a piece of pipe.It sucked, to say the least, but it worked, and we made it to the campground just in time to set up tents and sack out.
Galen: Over the last 16 years, I have had a lot of MacGyver moments, although I can't remember any of them now that I am put on the spot to come up with one. But, I would have to say the one that I distinctly remember-because of the pain involved-was when a buddy of mine snapped a throttle cable in his bug coming back from a river run. Fortunately, we were still in somewhat civilization and everywhere that would have a cable was closed. So, I walked into the grocery store that we were standing in front of making calls from the pay phone and got a couple strands of bailing wire. When we got back to his pile, we disconnected the broken cable and rigged the bailing wire for a hand throttle. After about 20 minutes of holding the cable, we figured out that we should have made some sort of cruise control device.Holding a spring-loaded cable for any length of time will cause cramping and a few days of pain.
Kevink: Well, most fabrication of custom trucks takes some Mickey-Mousing. It's a rare instance that you can literally bolt something up without having to make some sort of changes during an installation or jimmy something in place of a tool that you don't have. For instance, I just recently had my Bonspeed wheels re-hooped to my liking. To figure out my spacing, I laid the truck out over jackstands and crawled underneath to check it out. I happened to lose my tape measure but had to get some sort of measurement down. I simply reached in my pocket and pulled out my house keys to find the one that came an 1/8 inch away from the fender while pushed against the furthest point of my wheel. When I took the wheels in to be re-hooped, I gave the wheel pros my key and told them to subtract that much to the backspacing. It worked, and my wheels now have a perfect fit.
Andy: This one is tough...but let's see. Back in high school, I had some body damage on the front fender of my old Dodge pickup. After a buddy of mine did some so-called "bodywork" for me, I ended up having more dents and dings than originally were there. So, since I didn't have the money back then or the skills to fix the dents myself, I decided a better way to go was to camouflage the blemish. Since I was a big fan of the band Oingo Boingo, I made a stencil of their old smoking skull logo and spray painted my fender with about two dozen little skulls all over it. Sweet! The busy pattern over the primered dents obscured the damage until I got it fixed. I got a lot of thumbs-up from other Boingo fans, too. Anybody out there want to do a whole truck that way?