Best boaty DIY bodge

On the first day of the Torbay regatta a few years ago the gooseneck on DesignSource exploded. (DesignSource is a 12ft skiff owned by fellow forumite BobC which I was borrowing for the event) That was the end of that day for us, and as we phoned round trying to locate something that would fit a 60mm round section carbon mast (or stump in our case) it started to look like it was the end of our regatta. As DS was a one off, built in NZ, parts are not easy to come by!

So I came up with this...it's a 13mm deep section socket out of my socket set, clamped against the stump and original carbon mounting spigot of the old gooseneck, and held in place by two big jubilee clips. To reduce the point loadings on the stump, I taped over the whole thing and poured in a fairly runny mix of expoxy and colloidal silica, and gave the clips a final tighten when the epoxy was nearly dry. Over the top of the socket dropped a towing eye from a jetski and powerboat chandlery, with the threaded part stuffed up inside the boom with some more epoxy (on DS the gooseneck is hinged at the bottom, not the top of the boom).

That eye had required some pretty serious smacking with a hammer to get it to bend to the right shape in relation to the threaded part, yet after two days sailing in conditions that ended up pretty close to the top end of the No1 rig, although the gooseneck was still fine, part of the flange on that towing eye (that served no useful purpose as a gooseneck) was seriously bent, so it had obviously taken some big loads. The socket has gone a bit rusty now with the wear and the salt water, but that's a small price to pay for being able to sail the last two days...and yes, several months afterwards before I did a "proper" fix!

The bodge...

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The boat...

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(the super eagle eyed amongst you might notice that the barefooted helm in this shot isn't me...it's GBR 470 silver medallist Luke Patience...)
 
Not a boat-specific one, but if you don't have an allen key...

...but do have an AJ, and can find a nut&bolt *somewhere* of the correct size, then....
 
Drive 'damper plate' failure. (Engine running, but no drive transmitted from flywheel to gearbox.)

I removed the gearbox and carefully drilled half a dozen holes round the edge of the damper plate and drive plate. I then bolted the whole lot together without too much pressure on the nuts and bolts and then put locking nuts on each of the bolts. It all worked a treat and got us back to our mooring where my eyes and wallet watered when I ordered a new drive plate from Volvo. I have kept the old bodged one on board as a spare in case of emergency. (At least I know it works.)

Loads of bodges at sea on long passages. (Including stripping the 'smart' charger down and washing the printed circuit board in fresh water and drying in the tropical sun to get it going again so we could charge off the generator and not the main engine. It worked for a while and then died totally as the one chip CPU controller failed.)

I'll try and think of a few of the tastier bodges that have kept me going when well offshore.
 
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Sorry. That is far too good to be on a bodger's thread.


I don't particularly like bodging, but when younger and driving around in a mate's Morris 1000, the SU fuel pump packed up. Opening the bonnet a sharp knock started it going again.
So we got a bit of electrical cable, tied it around the pump and put it through a hole in the bulkhead and through the glove box. Every time the car started to splutter a tug on the wire started the pump again. Worked like that for a week or so.

He also had a company Ford Escort with a dicky starter motor. As he always had golf clubs in the car he kept one by the driver's seat and would jump out, open the bonnet and "tap" the the starter motor with it.
 
Ru88ell said:
My original post in this topic contains a link to my blogpost about a prototype 'galley' for my little boat.

Well, I'm pleased to say that it's now finished, and the results can be seen here:-

http://yachtzephyr.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/pre-easter-modifications-stove-unit-completed/

I'm really chuffed with it. It's keeping me fed with some stunning meals as I'm holed up in Puffwelly Marina.
Click to expand...
What a fab job! Would you mind saying what sort of price the joinery charged? Ball park is fine.:rolleyes:
 
Half way through a day skipper course we found out that the oven flame went out everytime the knob (held in to light it) was released - our instructor tied a piece of rope around the oven to hold the knob in...it seemed to work and we saw the same boat up for sale three months later....not sure if this 'optional extra' was still in situ!!!
 
Take a flare gun and break it. Find a gear stick from a 1960's Morris Minor and drop it through the flare-gun barrel. Hey presto, you now have a 12-bore shotgun! :cool:

Damn handy for sailing in the Indian Ocean and presents no problems with Port State Security Control Officers when split.
 
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Back in the day I once fixed a record player with a liquorice allsort and a piece of string. The piece of cloth around the exhaust pipe of my minivan was not such a good idea and I am a dab hand at pruning roses with a spade!
 
This goes back to the 90s when I was cruising . Lots of people had the first generation 'smart' regulators external regulators for their alternators. People were stuck in places like the Torks and Caicos waiting for replacements when thay failed.

I devised a diy bodge involving a light switch and a stop tail bulb from a scrap car, to manually control the field current to the alternator and hence the output.
 
I just remembered a very old attempted bodge - if it had worked it would have been a classic! My Dad's first boat was a converted life-boat, with a Thornycroft Handy Billy engine. One day, soon after leaving South Ferriby (on the Humber), the engine died. After anchoring, investigation showed that the water-pump had failed; The screw on top had come loose and a ball-bearing that it relied on as a valve had disappeared.

At the time, I had a toy Dalek that had a ball-bearing in it so it would scoot around in Dalek fashion! I remember my Dad solemnly trying to get the ball-bearing out of it to replace the one in the pump. Sadly, the ball-bearing was too small, and I THINK the original one must have been recovered from the bilge, but my memory of an event that happened when I was 9 or 10 is not too clear, once the bit that was interesting to a child had ended!
 
Ru88ell said:
Whats your best boaty DIY bodge? I've recently make a prototype cooker housing, of which I'm very proud. :D

http://yachtzephyr.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/stove-project/
Click to expand...

people do get some funny ideas . From the blog " The stove shouldn’t be gas as that is dangerous on a boat." Loads of people dying every year from gas on boats? No - its perfectly safe if sensibly used just as meths is safe if not spilled, and petrol for the o/b.

If only the boat could talk and tell you. Wait a minute! It cant talk but it can write - its done so in the blog. I will have to send it an email - we could be good friends, me and Zephyr.:D Nice boat

Anyway - not terribly boaty this but I was coming back from the sailing club where I had been foraging on the foreshore for wood for the wood burner. Looked in the rear view mirror of the car and saw a wheel shooting off sideways and across the central reservation . A few seconds later, a loud scraping noise as the trailor axle hit the tarmac. Got the trailer to the side of the road and emptied the logs onto the grass verge ( memo to sell - must go and pick them up). Quick dash and recovered the wheel to find that both bearings were totally trashed. All the balls gone just the outer races and inner races left. Quick trip home for the bits and pieces box and back at the car I managed to get the wheel back on its little stub axle held in place with some copper plumbing fittings from the old CH boiler, load of copper grease and the whole lot held on by a large penny washer and a nut threaded onto the end. Quick check round to see if plod were anywhere about and at a steady 30 mph got the trailer back home - much to my surprise to be honest.
 
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Last year, trying to leave Den Helder, my engine made a horrible noise and died. I managed to sail back to the marina and called in a mechanic. Diagnosis was broken exhaust valve of which the pieces had fallen into the cylinder. Due to the cost of repair, I agreed to have a replacement engine fitted but the boat would have to be moved to a boatyard in order to have the work done.

The only quote I could get was for about 700 euros for a tow ( for 1.5 miles and maybe 2 hours work).

Having another look at the engine ( Volvo Md11c 2 cylinder ) I saw that each cylinder had its own cylinder head, so I removed the head from the faulty one and took out the bits of the broken valve. I also removed the rocker to stop the inlet valve working and blocked up the exhaust valve guide with a nut, bolt and washer to stop the crankcase pressurising.

I put it all together and started it. It ran very well but smoked a bit from unburnt diesel. It helped that this engine has a massive flywheel which kept everything going in between bangs. I only ran it up to 1500 rpm but it gave me about 4 knots.

I only needed it to go a short distance, but if I had been miles from mechanical assistance, I am sure that it would have kept going. In fact, I was so pleased that I have replaced it with a reconditioned engine of the same type because, barring catastrophic failure, I now have a possible additional option which would not be possible on modern engines with a one piece head ( since I would have to have a new head gasket as well )
 
Wow. 700 euros. What a set of knob heads.
Surely an evening in a pub and a £50 sweetener would have got the tow you needed.

Wasn't sailing on the agenda?
 
No, I couldn't sail because I had to go through two opening bridges and a lock to get into the canal system where the boatyard was. Also, Den Helder is a main naval base and main terminal for oilfield support vessels and they don't take kindly to leisure sailors trying to be clever in the harbour!
 
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