I've got a pretty good one that involves my 1992 190E. I had just purchased the car while in Northern Michigan for a wedding, I bought the car knowing it had "a slow coolant leak". Well when it came time to head back home to South Carolina that small leak turned into a big one about an hour into my trip. I had to pull off the road every 30 miles and refill the coolant resevoir. Its a good thing I bought four 2 gallon refills before I left. I made it to a local auto parts store and after close inspection I found the problem to be a cracked thermostat housing. (These parts used to be metal, why did Mercedes switched to plastic!?)

No place within 150 miles had the part and I had to be in SC in 24hrs. I topped off the coolant and drove down to the nearest gas station and walked in and bought a fistfull of the 35 cent packs of Wrigleys Double Mint bubble gum. After about 15 mins of chewing I had enough gum to fill the cracks on the housing. Well I made it about another 50 miles, thats when the 180 degree coolant turned the gum into mush. At another gas station now I walked in and bought a roll of duct tape, cleaned the housing off and wrapped it in half a roll of tape.

I was able to make it another 100 miles to my dads house on that fix.There I took the housing off, cleaned it up nice and good on the dinner table and mixed me up a batter of JB WELD(the guy at the parts store told me this would never work becuase of the high temp of the coolant) I filled the cracks in very carefully and made the part look brand new...put it back on and guess what no leak! In fact I drove the car that day to a guy who parts out Mercedes and was able to get the replacement part...this time a metal housing off an 80's 190E. But out of pure laziness or just to see if my Macgyver fix would hold I kept my JB Weld fix on the car and drove all the way to SC with out a problem. In fact later that Winter I drove the car to Key West,FL and back, (2000 miles roundtrip) on the very same temp fix. Soon after the housing blew and I replaced it with the metal one I had waiting in the trunk.

196,000 miles and running strong! The things a Tank!