@Rod_Knox. Now your talking about my kind of truck. I had a 1950 Chevrolet one ton pickup. I well remember the floor pedal that operated the starter. The battery was under the floor on the passenger side. There was a plate one lifted to service the battery. There was a hand choke to start the engine when it was cold–no automatic choke to stick. My truck had “intermittent” wipers" . The wipers were vacuum operated and only wiped the windshield during the interval the accelerator was released. My truck even had those wonderful split rim wheels. I think there was a.provision to hand crank the engine if the battery was down, but by the time I bought the truck the hand crank had long since been lost.
These old Chevrolets were real work trucks–you had to work to drive them.
Depreciation was pretty high on the truck. I bought it for $115 in 1972 and sold it three years later for $110. It wasn’t a total loss. I think I was able to write the $5 depreciation off my income taxes.
Technically, the old Chevrolet pickup truck starters did not have a Bendix® starter drive. On a Bendix® starter drive, the pinion was engaged by the inertia of the pinion gear as the starter motor accelerated and the pinion gear was forced into the ring gear by a spiral groove on the starter shaft. If the engine fired, the sudden speeding up of the pinion gear caused the spiral shaft to disengage, which was quite maddening if one cylinder fired but the engine did not start. A Bendix® starter did not use a starter solenoid to engage the starter pinion.
Only garden tractors and outboard motors still use the Bendix system today.
This is a Bendix starter drive.
Bendix also made a bicycle coaster brake that used that spiral threaded shaft. Pedal forward and the gear would bottom out on the hub and drive the hub, pedal back and the spiral shaft would force the gear against a set of friction disks to brake the bike.
In 1954! That’s high pay.
I always heard creeper.
I thought opioids treated hunger too. Remember paregoric? My prescription would be another dose of vicodin.
FWD or transverse mounting?
@RandomTroll. Yes, $3.75 for 2 hours work was high pay. What turned out to be worth even more was hanging around the shop and watching this mechanic repair motors.
The knowledge I gained was invaluable when I was starting out and money was tight.
No they don’t. They treat pain and excessive diarrhea (particularly paregoric also worked as an expectorant and cough suppressant). Honestly, an opioid medication is more likely to make you nauseous than kick up the appetite.
Common misconception. It’s not the FWD that causes these problems. It’s a combination of transverse engines and trying to make the car smaller, lighter and be assembled quicker. Never had any problem working on our 1970 Olds Toronado with the 455 cu. in. engine. FWD but longitudinally mounted engine and large engine bay.
I use these “Power Grips” pedals with regular shoes:
What I meant by ‘treat hunger’. I just looked up vicodin on drugs.com. It lists ‘loss of appetite’ as an unproven side-effect, so maybe I’m wrong.
Given the nausea that often comes with Vicodin (especially for people who are naive to opioids), most people loose their appetite while they take it. Systemic Anorexia by itself, though, is not a side effect. Frankly take sites like drugs.com with a grain of salt. I checked for side effects on Lexicomp, which is a pharmacist-centric site and has far more accurate information. (thankfully, too, I don’t pay for it, it’s provided by my place of employment)
One disadvantage to FWD (and especially true if the tires are aged or worn) is that torque steer can cause some tense moments when it hits a puddle of water or ice at 70 MPH since the leading tires are doing the pulling.
I have read–but not experienced–that FWD vehicles might be safer in a snow skid, as you can put a very small bit of power into the steering/front wheels to help you get out of the skid. Only two skids I have been in, I had only time to review all the church prayers I learned by heart as a kid. No time for analyzing the situation and applying appropriate remedies, or anything!
I had a VW Rabbit in the late 1970s and used to go out driving in the snow because it was so much fun. Ice was problematic, but snow handling was very good.
Which manufacturers haven’t solved the torque steer problem by making the CV axles of equal length?
thank you for the info. Ted
This discussion is still going on? Not reading everything but I’ll weigh in anyway.
I’ve had about six FWD cars, not trucks so have no idea of trucks, but have had no adverse affect with FWD. Great in snow and ice. I’ve pulled a camper through hill and dale and mountains and through snow and ice and never had a problem with traction or handling.
My first job at the greenhouse in 1964 paid 50 cents an hour and a free bottle of pop at break time. I graduated to the restaurant for 80 cents an hour and worked my way up to $1.25. My first summer man job at the factory paid $1.65 plus overtime but at another plant in 1968 I got a whopping $2.40 plus a piece rate bonus. I paid myself $5 a week for records, dating, and entertainment, and saved the rest for school. Yeah cry me a river.
I don’t know much about opiate addition but from what I have read, treatment needs to not quit cold turkey as some programs require, like AA. The reason is if you fall off the wagon again which many do, a similar dose from before will now kill them. Yeah while demand is an issue, supply is an equal issue.
Partial solution. It helps but so does moving the center of the outer CV joint outboard to the steering axis pivot line, reducing the scrub radius and adding gear-type or viscous limited slip differentials. Electronic nannies help, too, like the type that make one brake grab a little bit when the tire slips.
All my cars have had FWD, and no problem at all with their performance. FWD is all good, no bad in terms of sedan performance imo. Some service procedures (for example timing belt/water pump replacements) can be more or even much more difficult w/fwd, due to how the engine and transmission and axle shafts has to be packed into the allotted space. Pickup trucks usually use rear wheel drive I think b/c the fully loaded weights can be more evenly distributed. But other than that, to me fwd is the way to go. I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase even a pickup truck in fwd, b/c for the most part the stuff I haul doesn’t weight that much. And if I wanted to haul a lot of weight, like for a load of fire wood, I’d just make extra trips if I had a fwd pickup…
My first sedan was a budget RWD, my second one was a FWD.
I lived in the area where roads are covered with snow and ice for 3-4 months in a year.
The transition was very apparent in winter performance: RWD was way more predictable at the point of loosing the traction: it was enough to simply release the gas pedal and vehicle would stabilize itself, where my first FWD snow day I made a couple of rotations and ended up in the curb, fortunately not in another car: immediately after releasing gas it would simply spin.
Later, I’ve learned the tricks of using gas to stabilize FWD, and modern electronic nannies help a lot too, but the difference in how car reacts to the instinctive reaction of releasing the gas pedal will always plague FWD
Well kinda maybe. True it pulls you along so not as likely for the rear end to slip but in heavy snow, if your wheels begin to spin, it has a tendency to pull you to the side of the road, not straight. In my personal opinion with traction control, you are constantly trying to find that sweet spot where you are still making progress but your wheels aren’t spinning. Doesn’t happen very often but next Friday the 13th I’m staying home. It was a long 9 miles. Still I’m all for FWD. Even with AWD, the rears don’t kick in until they start to slip which is not exactly what you want on ice. It’s not like all four wheels (or at least one on each axle) are grabbing at the same time
I guess that you aren’t familiar with Subaru’s AWD system.
