Alaskans believe that duct tape fixes everything. Some people call it “hundred-mile-an-hour tape” because pilots have had to repair their wings with that sturdy gray* stuff. But apparently duct tape works on cars, too.
Off and on over my years in Alaska I have seen vehicles repaired with duct tape. On those occasions I didn’t have a camera with me. Having joined the 21st century and bought a smartphone, I now have a camera with me pretty much 24/7.
Yes, I have become one of those people who takes pictures whenever something strikes her as beautiful or funny, or both. For example, here’s a picture of my niece’s pup showing off her winsome doggy smile:
I don’t keep all my pictures, but I confess to having a heck of a lot of pictures of our yard and greenhouse. At some point I will turn them into this year’s version of “Looking back at the garden.”
But that’s not what I came here to talk about. The subject today is fixing cars.
A while back I saw a vehicle whose panel had been taped back on after some dreadful mishap. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen a duct-tape vehicle fix, but it was the first time I had a phone with a camera in it.
Over the next couple of months I saw three other examples of, uh, creative auto body work. Luckily I had my phone with me on all three occasions.
Duct tape car #2
This is not a great picture, sadly. The dark spot in the lower left corner is a tire, and as you can see, the tape is slowly giving way. Maybe the owner of the car was driving faster than a hundred miles an hour?
Once I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Duct tape is like The Force: It has a dark side and a light side and it binds the universe together.” Sounds about right. I have also been advised that if it moves and you don’t want it to, use duct tape; but if it doesn’t move and you wish it would, use WD-40.
The Frankencar
This wire-and-zip-tie fix makes the car look as though it’s had stitches. All I could think of was Frankenstein’s monster.
But it seems like a good tight job, one that’s holding up just fine. Long may it grip!
The screwed-up car
If the owner had taken this vehicle to the shop, the auto body expert would have put that loose panel back seamlessly, and maybe pounded out the dent and touched up the paint.
But what fun would that have been, when clearly the car owner had some Phillips-head screws handy? As for the dent: Who cares?
And the discolored paint? See “Who cares?,” above.
Here’s a second, closer view of those Phillips-head screws and the paint scuff:
Making do, with cars and more
The Last Frontier is known for outside-the-box thinkers. These are the kind of people who’d frame a split-level house, finish the lower level, and then live in the basement for months while they earn enough to buy materials to finish the upstairs.
The kind of hardy folks who, after an aeronautical disaster miles from nowhere, find a way to fix the plane with what they have, and maybe spend a few days cutting down trees and stomping the snow smooth to form a runway.
The kind of savant who, when he can’t afford a replacement part for his exterior car mirror, makes a replacement part of his own – by carving it from walrus ivory. (Yep, this happened. A friend of DF’s couldn’t see spending so much money on the gizmo that makes the mirror move. Not when he’s a master carver.)
So I guess it’s not surprising that some Alaskans want to avoid the auto body shop. Why bother, when you’ve got a perfectly good junk drawer full of inspiration?
Readers: Have you ever jury-rigged a car repair, or some other kind of repair?
*Duct tape now comes in all sorts of colors, and even patterns. Legions of sourdoughs are probably rolling over in their graves.
Related reading:
- Vinegar is magic. Also: A frugal Swiffer hack
- Need something? Buy Nothing
- 8 pointed questions to ask before you buy
This is too funny for words! I am, at this moment laughing my fanny off. Go get em Alaskins.
I can think of two times in my life where jury rigging a vehicle bought some time. When I was 19, I had an old rusty but trusty VW beetle. The fenders were coming off, but with some wire coat hangers and imagination I was able to keep those fenders for another year. That’s about how long the rest of the car survived too, so I suppose you could say it worked out. The other vehicle is a 2009 Dodge van, which had a front quarter panel meet up with a doe. The van survived but it now has a salvage title. The repairs included a new radiator and straightening out the frame. The outer plastic and headlight unit were pieced together and tied up with zip ties. It’s been over a year and everything is still all together. There’s even a tuft of fur, now worn down, hanging on in one of the cracks. My husband considers it a badge of honor and refuses to remove it. He also wants to see how long it stays there…
I don’t blame him.
Duct tape car repairs are not unique to Alaska. Very common in Michigan too
Doesn’t surprise me.
My Dad duck tapped a hole the size of a basketball on the quarter panel of my sons car. Spray painted it white to match. Hit up the rust spots too. Seriously ran great but was 20 years old. No emissions testing etc required in Michigan for renewal.
I’m glad you got a smart phone. I know you are a wordsmith, but still, a picture is worth a thousand words (or so the expression goes.)
It’s helped use a lot more illustrations, that’s for sure. And sometimes it’s worth a million words, as in this example:
https://donnafreedman.com/like-the-worlds-on-fire/
My husband was famous for his creative jury-riggings. Once his car was set fire to and he and his father completely repaired the upholstery and dashboard themselves. It was not pretty, but it worked! A lot of his repairs, of course, utilized duct tape. Many years ago, I was driving quite a distance in a snowstorm. I was pretty nervous until I saw a fellow in the next lane. Apparently his driver side windshield wiper was not working, but he had managed to solve the problem; he had tied a rope or cord to the wiper, and through a crack in his window was manually operating the wiper, moving it up and down and successfully clearing his windshield! The fact that he was managing to drive through a bad storm with a handicapped car gave me the courage to keep on keeping on!
That’s some top-shelf creative thinking, right there.
I’m calling BS on this one! Its pretty obvious you snuck down to Arkansas and took those pictures at our Wal-Mart parking lot. You had to sneak because we don’t let Northerners in much and you are from waaaaay up north. I guess its possible you got some of them in West Virginia or Mississippi but most of them definitely look Arkansan to me.
That doesn’t surprise me, either.
A mechanic repaired my car and zip tied parts of it together after an accident; the insurance company totaled it. It worked for almost 3 years, while driving it 500 miles per week back and forth to work.
One of my make do moments: using a large coffee filter to replace the filter (accidentally thrown away) in my dust buster. Last two years.
Will let DF know about that second one, since we have a dust buster and a million coffee filters. Incidentally, he reuses the coffee filters; current record is six pots with the same filter (which gets rinsed off and set out to dry).
I had set the original filter for the dust buster on the edge of the kitchen trash can to dry after rinsing it. My DH thought I missed the toss, so threw it in and threw it away. I usually throw out the coffee filter for it after the second or third use.
We had a 20 plus years old 3/4 ton brown pickup truck nicknamed the Clampett Mobile (remember the Beverly Hillbilly TV Show) since it was pretty worn down, but it was still running. Truck is long one. Hubby did several jury rigged fixes so it would pass inspection. One was filling a very large rusted out spot with spray foam and sanded over so it looked somewhat presentable. It also had other issues. But the most spectacular feature was the way the exhaust fumes would somehow build up when going up and hill and loudly backfire and scare the crap out of anyone passing us. They must have thought it was a drive by happening. You never knew when it would happen and you couldn’t help but laugh like crazy…..the kids loved it. The kids are grown now and we mention it once in awhile and get some more laughs out of it. Live in Northeast PA and yep, we got crazy fixes on vehicles too.
I repaired a cracked bumper on my husband’s Toyota Corolla with superglue and Magic Marker. It lasted the life of the car and only needed occasional refreshening coats of Magic Marker.
The vinyl gearshift sleeve on my old VW Rabbit split. I fixed it by stapling double fold bias tape on the sides of the split and neatly sewing it shut with embroidery thread, both in blue to match the sleeve. That’s the same car that I stapled the headliner up and reattached the grill emblem on the inside with tiny eyelet screws from a picture framing kit after a bump in a parking lot popped out the original plastic fasteners.
I am loving these stories, folks. Keep ’em coming!
I remember our early, more penniless years when we lived in the country and had a used club cab pickup. My husband did some rust proofing on certain areas of the truck and then I hand painted the whole truck. If you got close you could tell, but we didn’t care and we got years of hauling firewood for our wood stove and other bulky supplies.
I’ve never done any of these tricks to keep my car together but I definitely have driven around for years with rust, dings and dents. But that dog’s smile…
She’s a rescue dog and deeply loved, so she has lots of reasons to smile.
We zip-tied a bumper back onto our car after we were rear-ended and the car was declared beyond economical repair by the insurance company. It only took a couple of zip-ties and the car lasted for quite a few years after that.
Ha! I know a guy who drove a “totaled” car for years afterward.
My elderly uncle had a “trailer” that was really the salvaged rear end of a vintage (1930s, 40s or 50s, I think) pickup truck. Instead of the truck’s cab, there was some kind of metal piece on the bottom, sticking out, that attached to the trailer hitch on his car. Never saw it in use, but it was parked on the side street (he lived on the corner) near his back fence for many, many years.