Posted on 06/14/2019 8:08:35 PM PDT by Army Air Corps
Much time has passed since I last called FReeper motorheads together for a good garage chinwag.
Tonight's discussion: Your first motor vehicle project. When was the fist time that you got your hands dirty working on a car, truck, motorcycle, etc.?
The manual we used has long since departed. I don’t remember who the author or publisher were. I don’t think it was VW.
The older VWs are a blast to work on because they are so simple. The simplicity is a great way to into a newbie to auto mechanics.
It is a very easy engine to work on. It had a rough idle and so I took it apart again. This is where I learned the rule — one piece at a time. I replaced the distributor, carb, and rebuilt the engine. Turns out I had a bad carb.
4th Grade. Blown head gasket and valve job (burned exhaust valves) in an AMC Matador with minimal automotive tools. Dad was a Woodworker so most tools were those type. Dad was concerned about not knowing much about Engines plus He was concerned about the Emissions JUNK on the car. I told Him that We should strip it All off and trash it. He didn’t want to. We had several of the Air Pump Injector Tubes that the nuts on the tubing had seized to the Exhaust Ports on the Heads. One H€££ of a battle with those...
We got it done in about 2 weeks including Machine Shop time.
And yes it did start and run.
A CORTINA !!! Way cool. I had a 68 2 door. I bought it for $100.00 running and driving condition. A buddy of mines brother had a bunch of them: MKI, MKII and even an Estate also 1 MKII that was a Right-hand Drive.
I wish I still had it.
Got a little messy with my 57 Chevy 270 close ratio trans with a 4:11 IN 1957.
Although I did eventually rebuild the motor on the van, my first big wrenching project was rebuilding engine & trans on my 1957 Chevy pickup (235 straight 6).
1st was a Triumph Spitfire...….but the 2nd was a complete restoration of a 1966 Shelby GT350! Wish I still had, sold for $12,500 in 1974 to get married. Every time one crosses the auction block my wife knows it’s going to be quite time...… I think about the $125,000 the car would be worth!
Along the way, I got a few of those 30,000 volt zaps. It sure does get your attention. I’m afraid these days it would stop my ticker on the spot.
I think the Camaro and others of the era may have hit peak price. Our generation is starting to pass away and today’s kids just don’t have the nostalgia for those cars we did (as evidenced on this post).
With electronic gadgets, the Internet, and federal regs that make it almost impossible to work on your own car as well as emission regs that make it almost impossible to modify your engine, the motorhead is passing into oblivion. The new generations are just not enamored with cars. Perhaps the Baby Boomers post WW II were the last generation to know the thrill and mystique of the open road.
Cheap air travel is another likely reason for the demise of the car enthusiast. You don’t have to drive across the country any more — you just buy a cheap ticket and get where you want to be in a few hours. Who needs a car?
I knew someone from the Catskills, had a 1957 Ford Prefect, bought new from King Ford in Brooklyn. A few Pontiac dealers sold some Vauxhall Victor’s GM was considering putting Chevy emblems on the ones imported to the US and Canada and calling them Corvairs.I remember near Yankee Stadium was a garage that sold Brit cars, Land Rovers, Jags, Bentleys. Where I grew up in Rockland there was Foreign Cars of Rockland that sold MGs and Triimphs, also Renaults and occasionally Peugeots. Ted Shultz Ford sold a few Anglias and Cortinas and Moorehead up in Kingston, still in business was one of the first Volvo dealers in NY. But yeah, other than VWs before the Japanese cars, not many imports around.
My uncle (who was a B-17 pilot in the war) raced motorcycles at tracks around Stamford, CT after the war. He ran a motorcycle dealership in Stamford and sold Harleys. Around 1960, he added this odd motorcycle brand called "Honda." Wiki...
In 1960, the first full year of operations, American Honda sold fewer than 2,000 motorcycles through three product lines: the Dream, Benly and Honda 50 (Super Cub). The following year, Honda established 500 motorcycle dealers and spent $150,000 on advertising in regions where it operated. Honda's expansion into new U.S. markets was undertaken one region at a time over a five-year period, starting on the West Coast and moving east, creating new demand for motorcycles.He was really prescient to buy that franchise so early and it became a huge money-maker for him.Sales in the U.S. did not increase notably until 1963, when the company launched its "You meet the nicest people on a Honda" advertising campaign, the first of its scale to position motorcycles to mainstream Americans. By the end of the year, Honda had sold more than 100,000 units in the U.S., more than all other motorcycle manufacturers combined.
Your uncle got involved with Honda at the right time! And G-D bless him for his service.
100%
What year Model A? Not sure, I think it was a ‘30, but it might have been a ‘29.
What body style? Sedan. Dad had a roadster when he got married, but they needed more passenger room when the family size increased.
It had no heater, but the 5 miles to town was doable. I do not remember any 20 below days, so we must have had a siege of global warming in the mid 50s. Didn’t do any engine work, but Dad had ridge reamed it and installed oversized pistons sometime before I drove it. The odometer quit somewhere a little over 98,000. Dad broke an axle about a half mile from home on the mud roads shortly after the war. The replacement came in the mail.
I did not do any engine work, but replaced the roof.
I was in about 7th grade and my grandpa had me cleaning up parts in his diesel repair shop. He paid me a little bit.
He gave me an old Chevy six to take apart and he helped me rebuild it.
We figured how to put it in an old Cleotrac crawler and I would pull things around the property with it.
I became a mechanic later on probably because I was breathing it all my life.
I still remember the solvent it was diesel kerosene with stove oil and turbine oil mixed.
We burned slash piles with it and added some gas make it start off. poof!
I would man the the fire with the crawler.
We mounted a cherry picker stick on the blade and and winched engines and the sort out with it too.
I learned how to communicate with a lot of yelling grunting and hand motion with my gramps.
I sure miss him.
A dream to drive and a symphony to the senses. The muffler sounds like a flute, the hiss of the carb, the complex sound as the gears mesh, the smell of gasoline and oil, and road ahead over the hood and nickel plated headlights.
My dad bought it before I was born and I inherited it in 2007. An engine rebuild might help the ethanol issue.
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