My son and I were looking at what at first glance appeared to be a nice 318ti. Opening the driver's door I saw the interior door panel had been secured with a line of sheet metal screws. The salesman was actually surprised that I simply closed the door and walked.
Unnecessary Bodges
- Thread starter brages
- Start date
That’s funny…two sheet metal screws currently hold the window switches in place on my daughters Beetle….maybe I’ll paint the heads black to make them blend in
I’m typically the kind of person to fix them to perfect, but sometimes it just costs too much. My wife grazed a deer in our 16 Rouge which put a slight crack in the bumper cover and broke the housing of the passenger headlight.
We really weren’t interested in parting with the deductible for such minor damage, so I glued, epoxied, and zip tied my way to a final repair. You wouldn’t have noticed unless you were right in front of the bumper.
There’s cheap, and then there’s cheap with style.
There was a guy I worked with from ManPower that had a family and a retarded child. His philosophy about cars was to find one from and old person that can't drive anymore and get it cheap(remember those days?) and drive it till it quits and leave it beside the road and get his family home by hitchen a ride. He never came back for it and just bought another one. He was not mechanically inclined. Last car I remember he had was a Rambler wagon that was in very good condition that finally had the water pump let go. It was the 6 cylinder with an easy to replace pump. Somebody at the state auction of tow ins got a good car. He was good to his family.
One of my neighbors has had a missing rear window "replaced" with black plastic bags and duct tape for a couple of years now. Not too long ago the car had its compact spare on for about four months. The thing must have been bald by the time he finally replaced thee tire.
Sometimes they get fancy and go buy clear plastic sheeting instead of using a trash bag.
I should have been more specific. It's a rear door window, not the back glass. The plastic has been changed several times; sometimes it's black, sometimes clear, sometimes both.
The thing is, the correct fix for a 3 Series door panel is to reattach the posts that hold the panel clips with the proper adhesive(nothing exotic, E6000 or Gorilla Glue works fine). The perpetrator of the sheet metal screw “fix” was just lazy.
My dad had his 95 grand am window duct taped up for the longest time before someone stole it one day, If I recall right he bought the part but it was a major pain to try to get it out in the very small cutout they give you in the door. I seen plenty of those era of grand ams with the window taped up
I’m not sure if it counts but I once did a bit of a convoluted fix on the door for my cabin air filter which had a broken clip. It involving a hex bolt and nut that had barely any space and made changing the filter a humongous pain in the ass albeit once installed it worked as the factory intended. Finally realized I could just pop a cheap-o pop clip in the same area and it would work just as well but took about 1 second to remove and re-install when I wanted to change the filter. I think the actual part I’d need to replace is like $10 but it’s so prone to failure that the SOP is duct tape.
This reminded me that my blend doors in our Beetle are now covered on duct tape. The foam the are constructed of crumbles and blows out the vents. Duct tape fixes that!!!
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