Speaking of instrumentation, it would be nice to get back a full set of gauges, at least render the gauges in a LCD screen that I can cycle through.
I once had a bad harmonic balancer. The shop said the balancer also damaged the alternator. When I got the car back, everything was fine until I started smelling sewers everywhere I went. A hundred miles from home, I pop the hood and saw the battery spewing acid. The new alternator was sending 16V.
The shop gave me another alternator, a battery, and did a thorough wash under the hood. But had there been a voltmeter like the old times, I wouldnât have left the shop in the first place.
@chunkyazian I am with you 100% on the gauges. I saved the engine on my parentsâ car when I was in 6th grade. My Dad explained to me what the gauges meant. We were on a family trip.in our 1949 Dodge. I was sitting in the back seat and noticed that the oil pressure gauge was fluctuating wildly. I pointed this out to my dad. He pulled the car off the road and checked the oil. None showed on the dipstick. He and I walked about a mile to s station and came back with two quarts of oil. The dipstick still showed one quart low, but we drove to the station and added the third quart.
Dad had checked the oil before we left home
We hadnât made a gas stop where he always checked the oil. However, in the old days of carburetor fed engines, the oil would become diluted from town driving and then oil would be burned off when the car hit the highway. That Dodge did have an oil consumption problem.
At any rate, I noticed the fluctuating oil gauge. I normally got 50¢ a week allowance for doing my chores around the house. For saving the engine and our family vacation, my allowance for that week was 75¢âa bonus of a quarter for being observant.
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Back in the '70s, when there was a movement for the US to convert to the Metric system of measurements, there was a letter to the editor in the local newspaper, and I think it would be fair to say that the woman who wrote the letter was panicked, as well as misinformed/ignorant.
Her letter said something along these lines:
When they start selling liters of gasoline, what am I going to do with my old car?
It takes gallons of gasoline, so I canât use liters.
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Many moons before that unpowered landing in the Hudson, Air Canada ground crew fueled one of its planes, a brand new Boeing 767 at that, in pound instead of kg. It ran out of fuel half way while flying across Canada
Edit: it was one of the first to have computers taking the place of a flight engineer, who would ensure the plane had enough fuel for the trip. With the flight engineer gone, it wasnât clear who was responsible for fueling the plane. It was one of the contributing factor to the incident
@chunyazian Yes, the âGimli Gliderâ was a Boeing 767 that made an emergency landing at an small WW II military era airport after running out of fuel. . The nosewheel collapsed but their were no injuries.
Canadaâs switch to the metric system was not always painless. Gimli is now known for a large distillery that makes various brands of Canadian whiskey
I read the book about the Air Canada incident a few years ago.
To keep it car related, the van, in which the air Canada maintenance drove to Gimli to assess the damage, also ran out of fuel
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I miss the more or less standard location of the controls. On many of my previous cars, the headlight switch was a pull switch on the left of the dashboard. The wiper control.was a knob on top.the dashboard.
I also liked the speedometer on my 1948 Dodge. At night, it had a green glow up to 30 mph, an amber glow from 31 to 50 mph and a red glow above 50 mph.
The biggest thing I miss is the legroom in the back seat of todayâs cars as compared to most sedans of the 1940s and 1950s.
The location of the controls is even more standardized today.
The lights are always controlled by the stalk on the left side of the steering column, and the wipers/washers are always controlled by the stalk on the right side of the column.
I wonder where the windshield wiper switch is is located on the Indianapolis 500 race cars. They are probably going to need to use their windshield wipers tomorrow.
I live in East Central Indiana and it still hasnât been dry enough to put my garden in. I cleaned up my garden patch and was rolling out my tiller when another storm hit (the manufacturer hid the windshield wiper switch on my rototiller).
Back to cars. The 1949 Nash Airflytes had the controlsâheadlights, wipers, ignition switch on the steering column. Apparently, Nash was more than 50 years ahead of its time. I guess the idea wasnât well received. The 1950 Nash moved the ignition switch, headlight switch and wiper switch back to the dashboard.
On my wifeâs car 92 buick lightâs wiper & washer dimmer switch & cruise control are all on the left.
I worked a lot of years for a Canadian trucking company that also operated in 27 states with many US employees and terminals. We not only had a lot of vans and flatbeds but a lot of reefers, some of which could also be set for frozen food.
The difference between using Celsius on the Canadian Side and Fahrenheit in the US caused us to ruin many loads.
We used to haul liquid latex which has to be kept at 45F or above and a US driver would pick up the load in Montreal and
see the 10C on the bill of lading and set the reefer to 10F. The C and F were not always shown on the bill because people on both sides of the border thought 10 degrees was obvious to everyone.
Not on my Focus (09). Lights are actually on the left hand control panel next to the steering column, wipers are on the left stalk with the turn signal.