Back in my day•••••

Yes - MGAs may well have been the last car to have wooden floorboards. Much easier to replace than rotted steel ones, though and they were further protected by the typical British oiling system that not only marked your parking spot like a male dog, with drips and splotches, but also rust proffed the entire underside of the car while driving.

BTW, one of the funniest or saddest things I have heard in the car game was a guy that pulled the carpets on his Ferrari 365 to replace them and found fiberglass. He figured the car was a rust bucket and sold it.  Hope he never lerned that all of that model had steel bodies and fibreglass floors...

In reply to wspohn :

Were you the “sucker” that he dumped it in?  

I remember when an Impala was a good tow vehicle.  Snow chains and a bag of rock salt in the trunk made any car good in the winter.  And if you needed to haul stuff, you bought a van.  Ahh, the days before the SUV. 

(replace the Roadmaster with a 77 Impala and the Glastron with an aluminum Starcraft and you'll have my childhood) 

In reply to pinchvalve :

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this picture ........ 

In reply to 759NRNG : race prep back in the day was remove the top,  remove the side curtains, unbolt the windshield and put the numbers on.  

When I took driver's ed in High School, it included learning how to change a tire.  Odds were, you were going to have to do it at some point.  My daughter has an AAA card and will probably never use it for a flat tire.  

In reply to pinchvalve :

I wouldn't be so sure.  With all these low profile tires out there and the crumbling state of American highways, I see at least one car per day on the shoulder squatting over one corner.  In the old days, it was because bias plies only lasted 15,000 miles.  

Remember driving your parents hot new car on a new stretch of unopened, flat and straight highway at 100+ mph after dark and seeing with your sealed beams what looks like a solid line of orange barrels across that new highway?

And wondering if there was a 10 foot drop just on the other side?

And learning about the effectiveness of drum brakes and 7.25x14 bias plies in trying to rapidly reduce that velocity?

And maybe there were 3 of your best buds in the car?

And maybe you were 16.

In reply to wspohn :

Were you the “sucker” that he dumped it in?  

 

Sadly, no. 

In reply to TasdevEngineer2of3 : 

Mom had a very early Mustang  convertible with the 271 horsepower 4speed. I was just 16 that summer. 

Luckily we got it from a dealer who had used it to be a pace car for the local circle track.  That explained why the tires needed to be replaced with only 3500 miles on them rather than my use drag racing on Lake street.  

Keith Tanner said:

And you had to replace the points regularly? And how everything smelled from the unburnt fuel, and if you got in a crash you were impaled by the steering wheel? And how a car with 100,000 miles was considered high mileage?

Ah, the good old days.

Haha, rose tinted glasses...

TasdevEngineer2of3 said:

Remember driving your parents hot new car on a new stretch of unopened, flat and straight highway at 100+ mph after dark and seeing with your sealed beams what looks like a solid line of orange barrels across that new highway?

And wondering if there was a 10 foot drop just on the other side?

And learning about the effectiveness of drum brakes and 7.25x14 bias plies in trying to rapidly reduce that velocity?

And maybe there were 3 of your best buds in the car?

And maybe you were 16.

I never had any encounters with orange barrels, but I did wonder if my dad ever knew just how fast his '61 Catalina would go...when I was 16 I found out it could run the speedometer needle past 120 (although I don't know how accurate that was.)

...I remember watching my grandpa double-clutch his old Ford pickup with the three speed on the column, in no seemingly organized pattern, and just thought everyone did that.

In reply to frenchyd :

Sprites, Midgets, & Spits had 13" wheels, MGBs had 14" & Minis had 10" BMW 2002s had 13" as did my Fiat 850. Camaros, Mustangs, & Barracudas had 14"

In reply to purplepeopleeater :

And mini’s had 8 or the optional 10 inch wheels

Old British car owners especially. Remember kingpins?  Every few months your steering would get heavy and you had to grease them, then every two to three years you needed to press them out and press in new ones.   Or what about starters with remote solenoids?  The good thing about those was when the system was weak you could get out your large screwdriver (conveniently kept in the drivers door pocket) and lay it across the terminals so the engine would turn over while you opened the carb butterfly with your other hand. I was convinced the girls were impressed by this but I fear that was not the case. 

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

I wonder what I did wrong? I bought my MGTD ( (with king pins) in 1969  in the many decades since I’ve never replaced mine. Since they were thoughly  checked for every vintage race I’ve entered( I suspect well over 50)  I’m reasonably sure they are still OK

same with the starter and fuel pump and carburetors and wiring,  

In fact all the areas that so many had problems with never once gave me trouble.  

I accept that I’m a failure when it comes to problem areas 

BIMD...you could by a twin turbo Supra and RX-7 brand new. 

King pins were never issues - proper maintenance was. Anything will degrade if you have grease boots cracking and never service the suspension, but other than that original kingpins should go 80.000-100,000 miles.  Steering would occasionally get tight because the idiot owner didn't know you weren't supposed to grease them you were supposed to oil them. Ditto anything that used Herald uprights - grease would harden and not allow anything further to go in and the shafts ran dry and wore out.  But owner ignorance isn't the same as design defects.

Having remote solenoids was great - you used them to bump the engine over with the plugs out when checking valve clearances. The later pre-engaged starters were easier on the ring gear teeth though.

In reply to wspohn :

Best of all were hand cranks, used in a lot of British Sportscars up through about 1960 

purplepeopleeater said:

In reply to frenchyd :

Sprites, Midgets, & Spits had 13" wheels, MGBs had 14" & Minis had 10" BMW 2002s had 13" as did my Fiat 850. Camaros, Mustangs, & Barracudas had 14"

 

 

A lot of early Barracudas had 13" wheels.  I think the disk brake cars came with 14's.  

Don't forget the left-hand threads on the left-side lugs.  

I miss the gas stations that offered full service for 18 hours a day. My father called them filling stations. I thought calling them filling stations was wierd when I was a kid, but think it's appropriate back then. You know, back in the 20's, 30's, and 40's, the owners of the "filling stations" lived on-premises, so they were there if you needed a fan belt at 3:00 in the morning. So I've been told anyway. But that was a bit before my time).

I was thinking this morning, non car related, but back in _my_ day (whatever day that was...but that's another topic) computers made mechanical noises to let you know they were working.  And it was satisfying.  The "crunch crunch crunch" of the floppy disc drive let you know stuff was about to happen.  Even the old hard drives made twittering sounds as the pickup head flitted across the spinning platter.  A nice, noisy fan let you know everything was cool.  

Now my computer just sits there, in silence.  

volvoclearinghouse said:

I was thinking this morning, non car related, but back in _my_ day (whatever day that was...but that's another topic) computers made mechanical noises to let you know they were working.  And it was satisfying.  The "crunch crunch crunch" of the floppy disc drive let you know stuff was about to happen.  Even the old hard drives made twittering sounds as the pickup head flitted across the spinning platter.  A nice, noisy fan let you know everything was cool.  

Now my computer just sits there, in silence.  

Remember real high quality keyboards with a positive action and a nice solid clunk as you typed?  I hate these modern keyboards.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :Typewriters!!!