Our little town boasts an original 1923 Ford Model T and a 1950 Chevy Panel Van that are both still running. The Chevy has it’s original paint. I grew up seeing both of these vehicles all over town. The Ford is driven by the grandson of the original owner. The Panel Van was bought by my father and it has passed through me, 1 sister and 2 brothers. I helped my dad put babbit bearings in it in 1969. I’m sure glad bearings come in a little box now. Never done that kind of maintenance before or since. We did the work in a cramped little garage in the middle of winter. No fun but it’s 2020 and the engine still runs.
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@missileman. While the 1923 Ford Model T and the 1950 Chevy panel van were much easier to work on, today’s vehicles do require less maintenance and repair. I owned a 1950 Chevrolet pickup some years back. It was easy to keep running, and the engine ran well.
As my career progressed, I found I had less time to do auto and home repairs as I had to spend time keeping up in my field. Even though I reminisce about how easy a Checker would be to repair, I wouldn’t have had the time to do the repairs anyway. I thought I would have more time in retirement, but I have become so involved in things that I may have to find a job so I can retire from retirement.
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I am not certain that the public wants things that are built to last. I think about the Chambers gas range. It was built to last a lifetime, but it wasn’t stylish. Not very many customers cared about how long a range would last–it had to look stylish in the kitchen. We built a new house in 1989. Once in a great while, I tune in to House Hunters on HGTV. Prospective buyers walk into a house about the age of our house and complain that the kitchen is so dated and all the appliances need to be replaced. All our old appliances, except for the dishwasher, which we replaced a year ago, are still functional.
Maybe it’s best that things aren’t built to last forever. My wife likes the new dishwasher because it is much quieter and cleans the dishes better than the old one. We had a well built Zenith console television set. We decided that we preferred a flat screen high definition set, so I donated the Zenith console to a church rummage sale.
Same with cars. I don’t want to go back to the past.
General Patton died after a low speed car accident in a Cadillac limousine about the same era as the 42 Packard. He was in the back seat when the car hit an Army 4x4 that turned left in front of it. Today, in any car sold in America, he would have walked away from that crash with little or no injury. Those cars were solid and strong and carefully built, but the level of engineering to protect the passengers was zero. They used a lot of gas, they needed frequent and very thorough maintenance and they really didn’t handle well or stop quickly, the lights were awful. We can all play with these old cars and recreate memories and have fun with them, but by today’s standards they were very dirty, dangerous and clumsy. No thanks.
@VDCdriver. The link you provided about the test drive of a 1982 Checker and how the test driver was not impressed with the way it drove and how he thought the driving position wasn’t comfortable confirms an account I read of an interview with a taxicab driver in “Working” by Studs Terkel. The taxicab driver that was interviewed did not think the Checker was comfortable. He also complained that the air intake for the cabin was behind the grill where it picked up.more fumes than if it was under the windshield.
If I had to drive a cab on an 8 hour shift, I think I would have preferred a Ford Crown Victoria. I know that the Checker was built for the short distance comfort of the passengers and the ease of maintenance to increase the cab company’s profits, but the comfort of the driver should also have been considered.
I hate to have to admit it as an old country boy, but I do like a few creature comforts in a car. I liked the 1957-58 Studebaker Scotsman, but the recirculating heater as opposed to a heater that brought in outside air was a bit much and behind the times even in the late 1950s.
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And yet, a recent forum member (the one who wants to install mechanical brakes in his old Oldsmobile) is convinced otherwise.
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I too thought that I would have a lot more time on my hands after retiring but that’s not the case. I now repair laptops, game systems and iPhones. I work freelance for some repair shops and a friend’s pawnshop. He gets a lot of electronics cheap but most have problems. I don’t enjoy working on vehicle’s of today but I try to keep current on the latest and greatest. My wife no longer likes to travel so it’s a good thing I stay busy.
| Triedaq
August 6 |
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@missileman. While the 1923 Ford Model T and the 1950 Chevy panel van were much easier to work on, today’s vehicles do require less maintenance and repair. I owned a 1950 Chevrolet pickup some years back. It was easy to keep running, and the engine ran well.
As my career progressed, I found I had less time to do auto and home repairs as I had to spend time keeping up in my field. Even though I reminisce about how easy a Checker would be to repair, I wouldn’t have had the time to do the repairs anyway. I thought I would have more time in retirement, but I have become so involved in things that I may have to find a job so I can retire from retirement.
@missileman. If you can keep up with today technology, you are doing great. I find it harder and harder to keep up. I think I still have all my marbles, but they roll slowly these days.
When we bought the first vehicle with Bluetooth, I found the owner’s manual difficult to read. My degrees are in mathematics and statistics. I was looking for the logic behind the steps. The whole process of pairing the smartphone with the audio system in the vehicle didn’t seem intuitive.
In the case of my Outback, the manual for the integrated audio/GPS/Bluetooth was clearly translated–badly–from a foreign language. It was so confusing and counter-intuitive that I just figured everything out on my own, by trial and error. It actually didn’t take that long.
@VDCdriver. When I was 9 years old, my dad traded his 1939 Chevrolet for a used 1947 Dodge. The Dodge had Fluid Drive, which was a fluid coupling between the engine and transmission. I asked my dad what Fluid Drive was all about. He showed me the pages to read in the owner’s manual. The manual gave the illustration of two identical electric fans facing each other. When one fan is turned on and the other fan left off, the blades of the second fan will turn at about the speed of the first fan. The manual then went on to explain that there were rotors and the power was transmitted by oil. Even as a 4th grade student, I could understand the explanation of how a fluid coupling worked. When I was in 9th grade, my dad bought a LawnBoy mower. It had a two stroke engine. The owner’s manual not only described how a two stroke engine functioned, but showed how to disassemble each component of the engine and rebuild it. I could fix anything on the mower and overhauled the engine a couple of times.
Things are different for young people today. I taught a computer science class where we used an assembly language. I went through several different algorithms for sorting numbers and told the students to choose one of the algorithms and write a program that would sort a set of numbers. One student came to me and said that the assignment was impossible as the assembly language didn’t have a “sort” command. I had to tell her that she was to write a sort procedure from the primitive commands in the language.
I do think, though, that we can awaken the curiosity of young people. I was assigned to teach a computer science class to elementary majors. The class was almost all female students. There was one unit on computer logic. I made arrangements with the industry and technology department to use its electronic lab. I had the students connect chips with the logic gates. These young women had so much fun connecting up the logic gates to do simple tasks that I had to schedule another lab session. I almost had to drag some of them out the lab.
I probably wouldn’t survive elementary school if I was a kid today. I would probably flunk the statewide multiple choice tests.
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You could just buy the parts and put one together.
I found that the main problem with that sort of stuff was in the translation from the Japanese or Chinese.
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For some reason that reminded me of the oil caps on the generator on my 59 Pontiac. Every few thousand miles you had to oil the bushings. I miss the Wonderbar radio though.
Around 1950 my grandparents shipped their 1947 Chevy over to Beirut Lebanon (Grandpa was a water resource engineer for the federal government) There was a little family trip from Beirut over to Baghdad that after an encounter with a large rock (driving mostly at night in the desert) a Bedouin tribe came along and took care of the family while grandpa got the suspension back in order. The car returned to the states a few years later.
Bluetooth has gotten easier in the past few years. Just turn on the Bluetooth device and turn on Bluetooth on your smart phone. The device will show up on the phone…click it and it will pair. I use Bluetooth headphones all the time. My hearing is going downhill so they help me concentrate on music or shows. BTW…I only keep up with some of the new technology. If I have a question I just use google. Not 100% accurate because of all the sleazeballs that post false info but it’s pretty good.
| Bing
August 7 |
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missileman:
today’s vehicles do require less maintenance and repair.
For some reason that reminded me of the oil caps on the generator on my 59 Pontiac. Every few thousand miles you had to oil the bushings. I miss the Wonderbar radio though.
@bing. I also miss the Wonderbar® radio. I had one in my 1954 Buick. Besides the bar just below the dial, there was a floor button between the brake and clutch pedals to advance the radio to the next station. Of course, the radio only had the AM band.
I remember the oil cups on the generator of my cars of the 1940s and 1950s. There were oil cups on the blower motor and pressure pump motors in the house where I grew up. I guess everything has gone to sealed bearings.
My hearing aids pair with my phone with Bluetooth, and with the TV through an adapter that uses a different channel of Bluetooth. I can answer a phone call by touching the volume button on the aid, and when I make a call it automatically is hooked to the hearing aids. It’s completely liberating. Without this setup I would avoid the phone completely.