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MG MG Y Type - Bodge...Really

Interesting honest post on Facebook today.

New promotion supporting "Bodge, Bodge Bodge...works fine"

Interesting view... I definitely value my Y's too much that I'll destroy any previous owners Bodges I find.

Richard

R E Knight

Hey. Dumb Georgia wonders what a bodge is? Thanks Larry
Larry Brown

This was my post....a "bodge" is a repair using something other than the correct parts to achieve the fix.
In this case, i had bought two flashing amber LED 'festoon' bulbs for the semaphore trafficators, but the bulbs were too small to fit. I sacrificed a fuse and soldered the end cap onto the bulb to make it long enough.
Sometimes "bodging " requires creative cunning. In the wrong hands it can be brutal and ineffective.
Using beer cans and wire for a temporary blowing exhaust fix is a good example of a bodge....no, my Ys exhaust is fine.
The art of make and make do.
Alan Chick

Not on my MG but on a Mk1 Cortina that I had back in 1968. It was a Sunday night, at the end of a public holiday, everywhere was closed and I had some sort of brake problem. I found a garage that was open, but it was only for fuel, and the young lad on the till wasn't that helpful. Not really knowing what I was doing I somehow instinctively knew to check the brake fluid reservoir, to my alarm the fluid was low. With just a scissor jack to lift the car and a blanket to lay on, I managed to make enough space to see underneath.

Brake fluid was dripping of the pipe that came from the reservoir and led onto the rear brakes. A closer look showed a small rupture in the pipe just where it bent from the downward point to the horizontal. I had no tools and no spare fluid, but the garage had brake fluid. Whilst I was buying that, I had an idea. I also bought a small hacksaw and a small pair of mole grips.

Getting back under the car, I sawed the pipe in two, right across the rupture, using my wife's nail file, I smoothed both ends of the pipe, then using a screwdriver I opened the horizontal end just slightly. Then, using the mole grips, I squeezed the downward end into a taper. Then I jammed the tapered end into the open end, pushing it as hard as I could. I then locked the mole grips over the temporary fix.

I knew that the brakes now had to be bled, but didn't know how. Luckily it was all in the Ford manual, and my luck held when I found the right size spanners on the shelf in the garage. After I topped up the fluid, and with my wife pumping the brake pedal, I was able to open the bleed nipple until all the air was out, then I tightened up the nipple, and hoped that the mole grips held. They did and we got home. I'm not too sure if the garage was that impressed when I took the car in the next day.
R Taylor

First bodge that I did was at age 18 on a BSA 3-wheeler back in the days when you could drive a 3 wheeler on a motorbike license [of course you blocked the reverse did't you?!]
Clutch had disappeared so I bought a bag of corks from Boots and relined the plates, put oil in and drove it! It was a bit jumpy until all corks wore down to same length but it was a good, working, Bodge , not too many other options at the time!!
M.I. Stephenson

Interesting use of the word “bodge “. The description using the noun form is different in my part of the world, unless I grew up on the wrong side of town. Perhaps I need to hear the oral form and then perhaps I may be enlightened. If the phonetic form of bodge is actually to sound like “bodgee” or “bodgie I would be happy and would let it lie . My understanding of the word is as the verb form “ that was a bodgie/ee job “ said the master to his errant apprentice. So when the word was used in my past it was to actually to describe some occurrence that was done poorly . or botched, or is it just Aussie slang .

So , I am trying not do a bodgie job on the Ys.

Cheers Clive Y 1932, Y 0670, Y 6103, Y 1190, Y6761



CR Dickinson

This thread was discussed between 15/02/2018 and 22/02/2018

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