While hurrying to pick-up his girlfriend from work in his '73 Beetle, my brother snapped the throttle cable. Rummaging around in the trunk, he found a bunch of fishing gear, including a spool of monofilament line. Tying the end of the line to the throttle arm, he carefully threaded the spool around the back seat and into the passenger compartment, finally attaching the other end to the driver's windshield visor. Gently tugging on the line, like a trucker on his air horn, he found he could control the throttle well enough to drive, even while shifting thru the gears. When his girlfriend complained that he was five minutes late, he simply muttered "Don't ask ..." and yanked on the string. Vroom, vroom! While bombing around in a lonely rural area with my buddy in his MG, the car's radiator sprang a leak. He quickly wheeled it into the parking lot of a tiny country grocery store and hurriedly purchased a pair of Morton salt-and-pepper shakers. He opened the radiator cap and poured about 1/4 of the ground black pepper into it, then capped it and started the engine again. As we watched, the tiny geyser of coolant squirting from the radiator slowed to a trickle and finally ceased entirely. We topped-up the coolant and drove away. As far as I know, he is still driving the MG with its black-pepper coolant clot, and I think the shaker of salt ended up in my Westy ... Jeffrey Earl 1983 diesel Westfalia "Vanasazi"
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