Bubblegum & Duct Tape: Hacks to Get You Home

Cars often break down at crucial moments, leaving you stranded in the middle of nowhere. Most times, you can call up roadside assistance to get you off the side of the road and into a shop for necessary repairs. But what if your cellphone isn’t working? Maybe the battery is dead, or maybe you don’t have a signal, or maybe you broke it in a fit of rage when car troubles popped up.

Forget the specifics. You’re stuck without a line for help. Since you can’t count on the kindness of strangers, you’ve got to get yourself out of that pickle. At least well enough to get the car somewhere you can actually work on it. Luckily, we’re no strangers to MacGyver’s road rules. We’ve been in that situation enough times to know what tricks just might save your skin when you’re out there on your own, and we’re more than happy to talk you through them.

NOTE: These are all to be treated as temporary fixes to get you by until you can address the issue with a proper repair.

It All Starts with The Tools You Keep

A well-put-together emergency tool kit is paramount to your success here. We are talking about quick hacks and tips that forego conventional means of getting a vehicle back up and running, but you still need some formal equipment to deal with most issues.

For starters, you want all of the basics. A flashlight, a set of screwdrivers, a small mechanic’s tool set, an adjustable wrench, road flares, a first aid kit, and an emergency blanket are all great things to have. On top of that, a portable jump starter, some Fix-a-Flat, an extra quart of oil, and spare coolant should all be on board. A tow rope and some jumper cables are worth lugging around should a stranger stop and help. Of course, this is all on top of the vehicle’s included jack and spare tire it came with.

Along with all of that, there are some key items you’ll want to keep inside just in case things go south. Cable ties and some pepper tablets are life savers. Weird, maybe. But you’ll understand why they’re there once we dive into the list below.

Tips and Hacks for Getting Up and Running

Cable Ties Are Universal Hardware

More often than not, the horrible grinding noise that made your heart drop to your stomach, inducing a panic stop, is on account of some kind of shield coming loose. Hardware can back off, clamps can fail, push-in fasteners fall out, and when they do, heat shields and shrouds fall into fans or drag along the ground, creating awful sounds that would scare the life out of anyone.

Cable ties are a quick fix to the issue. You can simply use them in place of the original hardware to hold up whatever it is that’s fallen out of place. It can be annoying to have to rig something up in the dark on the side of the freeway, but it sure beats taking a ride on a tow truck when your vehicle is otherwise perfectly fine.

You Can Bump Start a Manual

Dead batteries happen. And you’re pretty much out of luck if you’re stuck with one when you don’t have a portable jump starter or jumper cables with a secondary vehicle. That is unless you have a manual transmission.

As long as the battery is not totally dead, it should have enough life in it to throw a spark during the ignition cycle, which is almost always the case unless the vehicle has been sitting for some time.

Bump-starting a vehicle is the act of getting the vehicle moving and then throwing it into gear with the ignition on. This forces the engine to cycle, and as long as the ignition works, it will start the engine.

The catch is you need to get the vehicle moving about 5-10 miles per hour, which can be difficult without a hill and should really only be attempted if there are two people — one to push and one to work the controls. Still, it can be extremely helpful should your battery or starter fail unexpectedly.

Black Pepper is Actually the Coolant Cure

The OG of roadside repairs. You’ve all heard of it. And yes, it still works.

Everyone’s got a grandfather who threw something in the radiator to seal small leaks in a pinch. Though most of the time, it was some kind of wild concoction of eggs, milk, ashes, or all of the above, making it seem like something of a big fish story to make ol’ papaw sound like a legendary mechanic. Well, he is. And those little tricks really do work.

However, the easiest and least gross method is to use regular old black pepper.

You throw a few teaspoons into the radiator and the particles gravitate to the leak, creating a seal. You then replace the missing coolant with water or the coolant you’ve got in the trunk until you can replace the radiator.

It’s a great tip to keep in mind should you spring a leak near a diner, but there are actually special stop-leak tablets available at the parts store that work just the same, if not better. Keeping a few in your aforementioned tool bag is a far better option than hoping you can find pepper in a bind.

Stuck in the Mud/Snow? Use the Brush

There are a million and one reasons that you’d find yourself stuck in the mud or snow. There’s never one that’d make you feel good about the predicament on a normal commute. The good news is that you may not need anything special to get the job done. In fact, the brush or debris in the surrounding area may do the trick.

Off-roaders often use logs and sticks they scavenged from the forest in place of proper recovery gear when they get stuck. You can do the same. Simply jam them under the driving tires in the direction you need the car to move to get unstuck. Then, use the throttle and potentially a rocking motion to get yourself onto the debris. The tires can use it for traction, and the car can drive out of the sticky situation.

Word to the Wise

To be perfectly clear, we are not recommending you do anything that would put you or your passengers at risk. Anything listed above is a quick fix that you need to use with discretionary caution. For example, cable ties, while useful in many ways, should never be used to hold an upper control arm if the ball joint fails.

These tips and tricks will get you past relatively minor setbacks. They cannot and should not be used in place of necessary repairs to address catastrophic failure of major components.