the same mountainbike: I’m sure you have also heard “Kick the Tires and Light the Fires” although that would only be allowed in desperate combat situations. Fortunately I was able to avoid those.
I bought a used 1955 Pontiac back in 1962 that gave me all kinds of problems. Yet, I knew other people who had 1955 Pontiacs and thought that they were very trouble free cars. In fact, the 1955 Pontiac was on the Consumer Reports recommended list as a reliable used car. The engine had just been overhauled by the service department at the dealer where I purchased the car. The problem I had was that the oil passages in the studs that held the rocker arms would plug up and the rocker arms would chirp. I had the studs pulled and tbe oil passages flushed out, but I never completely cured the problem. In 1955, an oil filter was an option on the Pontiac and my Pontiac didn’t have that option. The former owner probably didn’t change the oil az often as necessary which may have explained why the dealer did an engine overhaul. My guess was that the overhaul was really a sloppy patch – just new rings and,a valve job. I also had to have new bearings in the manual transmission of the car. It could have been that the transmission oil level wasn’t checked often by the former owner. In addition, the transmission shift linkage did not make shifting gears very pleasant. There were two problems–first the car hasn’t been well maintained and secondly, it was the bottom of the line model–no oil filter (and no radio), manual transmission, etc. Had it been a more expensive model with the oil filter option and the Hydramatic and been reasonably well maintained, it might have been a good year for a Pontiac.