OT: Fender Skirts and Supper Time

[Guest guest]

my uncle had a tractor you had to crank. My father-in-law has a couple of old

tractors like that too - and they still run !

Paula .......... in Michigan

I used to have super powers but my therapist took them away

 

I'm 63 and I remember a buncha cars around home that had to be cranked

to start .. and the terms " crank'er up " is still used quite a bit in the

USA.

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Hey Paula, Liz, other good folks ..

 

>>I turned 50 last Dec and I remember cars with starter buttons

>>Paula .......... in Michigan

 

I'm 63 and I remember a buncha cars around home that had to be cranked

to start .. and the terms " crank'er up " is still used quite a bit in the

USA.

 

> my first car had a manual choke! All my friends asked what it was for!!

> ))

> Michelle

 

Same here .. and they were good.

 

> Hey! Whats wrong with a manual choke??? My car still has one - handy for

> hanging your handbag on ;-) (OK so maybe its a bit old, well, a lot old

> - well, very very old actually. But I still get 50+ to the gallon from it

> and - apart from the cost of spares (!!) I love it to bits. Long live the

> Renault 5.....best little car ever built!

> LLx

 

Manual chokes were good .. automatic chokes are still a potential

problem in that they sometimes stick, freeze up, get outta tune with the

carburetor and allow flooding and such .. but convenience is the name

of the game .. efficiency is good when things work but we're modernizing

ourselves into a corner on a lotta mechanical things. Read not long ago

that the occupation of automobile engine mechanics will be history 25

years from now .. then there will be computer experts dealing with the

engines.

 

In my yonker days I owned a 49 Studebaker Commander, 49, 51, 53 and 55

Fords, a 52 DeSoto Convertible (with fluid drive and a Continental Kit)

and a 55 Buick with a Hemi-2 Engine. Except for the Buick, getting 30

miles to a gallon was around average but gas was never more than 25

cents a gallon and from time to time there would be gas wars and

stations were lowering prices below 20 cents.

 

I could fix most of the minor problems on those old cars .. changing

brake shoes was a routine requirement .. and when something real bad

happened there was always a " gud ole boy " around who could fix it in his

back yard. Back then if a problem was bad enough to cost $100 to fix ..

you just put the danged car on blocks and bought another used one. ;-)

 

With most of those old cars speeding was not a big issue .. had to be

going downhill to get better than 60 miles an hour. ;-)

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch http://www.AV-AT.com