Every time one of us buys a used car we’re rolling the dice to one extent or another. No matter how much research you do or how well a vehicle has been maintained, sometimes things just break unexpectedly. Other times, a pre-purchase inspection would’ve picked up on giant issues like a nail driven into the fuse box of a MINI Cooper that one of my pals recently experienced.
With that ‘fix’ in mind, we’re wondering what the wildest mod, hack, fix, or bodge that you’ve found on a newly acquired used vehicle is.
After spending years of my life working at an auto shop I can confirm that lots of folks try to fix automotive problems with non-automotive products. All of those viral photos you’ve seen of exhausts tied up with chicken wire, duct tape, and other means are totally normal to find in a shop over the course of a year. I’ve even seen people try to hold tires together with tape.
Other bodges aren’t likely to end up with parts laying on the ground though. My very own Subaru WRX was fitted with a Nalgene water bottle as the overflow tank when I bought it. Rigging up door pulls or seat-back recliners could be another example. But fixes like that aren’t necessarily safety concerns. We get the feeling that many of you have found much worse stuff.
Related: What’s This Nail Doing In A MINI Cooper Fusebox?
If you look around the web you’ll find lots of people who have made modifications that are horrible but also obvious. We’re thinking of window air conditioning units in the car window itself or cardboard body kits. Those are indeed terrible mods but they’re not secret. We’re looking for the mods that made you wonder what the person who completed it was thinking.
Let’s be clear too that we’re not excluding cool fixes that actually work well. Maybe you know of a vehicle that could only be saved if it was modified in a somewhat unconventional manner. That kinda stuff absolutely qualifies and could even be the best example. So you tell us in the comments below.
What’s the wildest fix, hack, or similar DIY repair that you’ve found on a newly acquired used car? Did it make you want to return it immediately? How did you handle it?