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Ford Repair with a Coat Hanger

Here’s a neat mechanics’ trick using a wire coat hanger rather than an expensive specialty tool to get this common maintenance and repair job done yourself.
No Need for a Specialty Tool with This Trick

Baling Wire and Spit Repairs

Living on a farm as a kid back in the ‘60s you learned to make do with what many of the locals referred to as “baling wire and spit repairs.” In other words. jerry-rigging your repairs with whatever you had the most of.

I can remember my dad using an old Lincoln welder on a daily basis during the haying season always having to weld back together nearly every moving piece of metal that went into creating this hay-baling monstrosity that at the time was already over 25 years old and held together the most part with rust, prayer, and cursing.

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However, there were many times when welding was an option that time would not allow. So, he would settle on using baling wire to help hold it together long enough to last the day until we could haul the mechanical carcass back to the workshop for a better repair.

Installing a Stretch Belt on a Ford

What motivated this reverie and topic is a recent Rainman Ray’s YouTube channel episode where the host demonstrates a useful mechanics’ trick for getting a reluctant new pulley belt to slide onto a pulley. In this case it is a stretch-style power steering belt on a 2008 Ford Edge.

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Much of the time a belt has a tensioner of sorts that you can loosen, adjust, and then easily remove an old belt and just as easily replace with a new belt followed by readjusting the tensioning system. With this Ford model, however, there is no tensioner for the power steering unit and so a stretch belt is used. The problem in the video is that Ray did not have the specialty tool needed to get the new stretch belt “stretched” onto the pulley. Getting one meant lost time and having to pay for a relatively expensive specialty tool.

Ray’s solution: tying the belt partially onto the pulley with a piece of clothes hanger wire to hold it in place while turning the pulley so that the stretch belt would roll into the groove rather than off the outer edge of the pulley.

That explained, here’s a demonstration of how Ray did it that is a good hack that might come in handy someday when faced with a similar problem.

Please Note: Timeframe points 12:10 to 19:30 are the actual demo.

And finally…

For additional articles related to repairs, here are three selected ones for your consideration:

Timothy Boyer is Torque News automotive reporter based in Cincinnati. Experienced with early car restorations, he regularly restores older vehicles with engine modifications for improved performance. Follow Tim on Twitter at @TimBoyerWrites for new and used vehicle news.

COMING UP NEXT: Never Buy a Used Chevy Silverado As-Is

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