Posted on 12/15/2013 2:58:23 PM PST by Olog-hai
It smears flies across your view and freezes up in winter, but now the humble windscreen wiper is destined for history.
Supercar designers McLaren are working on secret plans to replace the rubber wiper with a hi-tech ultrasound device that stops anything sticking to the windscreen. It would mean wiper arms heading down the same road as wind-up windows and ashtrays as they vanish from cars.
Adapted from a similar system used on fighter jets, the proposed design is understood to center on high-frequency sound waves that effectively create a force field across the windscreen preventing water, insects and mud from resting on the glass. …
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Yea now you have to buy a cup shaped ashtray and put it in the cup holder and still have to put your beer can between your legs.
Having to put your between your legs is the part I hate, you have to drink it faster so it doesn’t get too warm, really screws up my miles to beers ratio.
I had ratchet winders once.
The cranks were stripped so I mixed up some JB Weld and hammered a socket on each one and kept a ratchet driver in the console.
Here’s an article.
Mostly for cost reasons. Automakers figured that we didn’t want them. Ashtrays are handy for other things too like spare change and the occasional piece of paper.
http://www.thehogring.com/2012/04/28/whatever-happened-to-car-ashtrays/
I can remember being able to ride my bicycle to the drug store with a rifle on the handlebars, buy a pack of cigarettes, a Dr. Pepper or two, a Snickers bar or two and a box of .22 LR ammunition and then head off to a nearby playa lake to shoot at everything that moved and some things that didn't.
That would elicit a SWAT response these days.
Ford, GM, Ram and Nissan all have stripped work truck half-ton PUs with crank windows. So does the stripped Toyota Tacoma.
Some of the new low-end cars come with manual crank windows and I believe a few more models can be ordered that way.
Ya. They are called cupholders and the cig lighter, a power outlet now.
Oh shoot!
Now I’ll have to buy a new car.......
Back when I was in college in the early 1970's, road trips were measured in beers one-way.
A 2-beer trip was about 20 miles. A 10-beer trip was about 200 miles, etc.
Those were the days.
“I’m sure it’s not a problem, but a man needs a little bit of solitude and mobility.”
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I get that from my bicycle, which I ride to the market every day. If I need to go out of town, or to the big city, I take an air conditioned bus that I can catch anywhere on the highway, rarely waiting more then 5 to 10 min.
They are quite deluxe with on-board movies, wi-fi, and airliner type seats.
I know very few natives or ex-pats that have a car or motorbike. Those that do have isolated homes or retreats up in the mountains, and most of those have only a motorbike.
Ya.
It adds cost, drains the battery, and breaks down.
Plus, you got exercise cranking the window up and down.
Don’t come back, we have too many green jerks here now!
Ban bicycles, walking and public welfare transpirtation!!!
I’m with you. They could really get some air into the car.
Its that glass thingy right behind the bonnet.
Ya. But you had to make sure that you closed the side door if you drove through a river.
My 65 VW bug had a hand crank sun roof.
CC
Whatever floats your boat.
The day I can't get in my big, unstickable overpowered pickup is the day before I die.
“Now days they would send in a SWAT team for such an act. Those born after 1980 don’t realize just how many freedoms we have lost.”
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You are exactly right, and it will only get worse.
Before I left (2005), I noticed that that the “good old boys on the beat”, had morphed into jack-booted thugs, even in small bedroom communities.
I actually did that to a '62 Corvair once.
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