Yeah like I said (and @VDCdriver) I vaguely remember a FoMoCo bag in one of the cars. I think it was the 61 Merc but can’t be sure. At any rate you would go to the Ford parts department and get a small bottle of concentrate. No gallon jugs around that I ever saw. Thing is every time you got gas, they would clean the windshield and check the oil so you didn’t use much of the juice.
… except for periods during and after heavy use of salt on the roads.
I recall going through a '66 Ford’s entire small bag of WW fluid in only a couple of hours. This was as a result of the small size of that bag and the fact that the WW nozzles in those days were not designed anywhere near as well as those on modern vehicles.
@MikeInNH. I really never think about whether it’s summer washer fluid or winter washer fluid. I just buy a gallon that is mark ed for -20 F and let it go at that. The reservoirs on our vehicles will each hold more than a gallon. I usually pick it up at Walmart.
The only fluids where I make a distinction is that I drink light beer in the summer and dark beer in the winter, just the opposite of when I used straight weight oil in my 1954 Buick where I used #10 in the winter and #30 in the summer.
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@VDCdriver. I remember returning to school in my 1965 Rambler when the roads were slushy and I was continually using the windshield washer. The Rambler used a small vinyl bag for washer fluid and I had emptied the bag. This was about 1971 and stations were full service. We had to stop.for gas and the attendant offered to fill the reservoir for a dollar. Now back in 1971 $1 was quite a bit of money for poor graduate students that had to.watch every penny. However, I gladly paid the dollar to.havr the washer reservoir filled.
-20F IS winter fluid.
@MikeInNH. I just pretend that -20 F washer fluid is the equivalent of 10W-30 motor oil and use it the whole year round. It was a real pain to have to use different viscisity oil depending on the season and I don’t want want to worry about different washer fluids for different seasons.
I go back to the days when we used antifreeze in the car radiator in the winter and just water in the summer. It was a real pain to drain and refill the cooling system every spring and fall. Permanent antifreeze was wonderful that we could use year round as opposed to the methanol based antifreeze like Zerone ® that we used in the winter and drained it out in the spring. We had thermostats in cars that opened at 160 F. With the recirculating heater that was a box under the dashboard, the cars were never very warm.
Now I’m really going way back in my memory bank but I don’t think in Minnesota anyway, there was much salt being used. Sand, yes. I really think they just plowed and spread sand and let the sun and grinding of the sand do the work. I’m talking late 50’s or early 60’s. I dunno, could be wrong. I was just a dumb kid.
The washer concentrate I remember was mixed with water for the summer and 50 per cent alcohol. When I drove truck to Waertown NY or through Watertown and Malone to Montreal we used pure isophroypol.
A high school buddy of mine bought a mostly finished kit car for cheap in 1969 It was a fiberglass rather cool looking roadster body on a Triumph TR-3 chassis. He went to DMV to transfer the title and registration. It was registered as a modified TR-3 so it required a ‘street legal’ inspection. It had headlights, tail lights, brake lights, parking brake and speedometer. It did not have a windshield which surprisingly was OK. It of course did not have windshield wipers which were required!!! He installed wiper posts and clipped small wipers on them. The requirement was for wiper and did not address them being functional. He got his registration. Bureaucratic Idiocracy at it’s finest!
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In 1971 $1 was 4 gallons of leaded regular gas. I was working at a full service Chevron station back then. Topping off fluids was a huge profit.
The 1960 Falcon had one as a factory option operated by the tunnel foot pedal - it also turned the wipers on low which was a nice touch. The bag had a hole in it by 1976 so we replaced it with a small plastic accessory bottle.
I attended a classic VW show a few years ago & saw one of those. Thinking it a good idea, I now have an old tire fully inflated, used with an air hose attachment, to supply occasional pressurized air blasts, for parts cleaning purposes for the most part.
While I was refueling, a middle-aged woman drove into the gastation with late model Honda Civic’s windshield covered in dirty road splash.
Assuming her windshield washer reservoir was empty, I offered to fill it for her.
She did not know that her nice car had windshield washers.
I sat in her car and figured out how to operate the windshield washes, then had her sit and use them herself.
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There are a lot of features people don’t understand. The symbol for “brights” and the switch to turn them off, their car’s bluetooth hands free feature for phones, and how the TPMS works… putting 100 psi in the tires try and turn the light off. Too more to list…
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I rented a new-ish Corolla for an entire week for a long trip just before Covid hit. I never was able to figure out how to turn the headlights on and force them to stay on. The was a big, thick owner’s manual in the glove compartment so I presumably could have eventually figured it out were I willing to study the manual; but on holiday, not in studying mood. My solution was to drive only during daylight hours.
Leave the headlight switch set to “Auto” or rotate the switch to “ON”, same as it has been for 30 years.
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I rented an impala in California and hit bad fog in the hills. I actually pulled the car over to check if the lights were on. Wasn’t real evident from th markings on the stalk. Like I said even if the switch is on auto, in fog or mist the lights don’t come on so you have to turn them on or I just cover the sensor so it thinks it is night time.
Now that we are on the subject. I have noticed quite a few cars that don’t have their driving lights on. These are not old cars but models that surely have Drl s. I didn’t think it was possible to turn them off. Maybe the off switch shuts them off too. Kinda dangerous with a string of cars with the driving lights on then a gray one dark. I’ve even seen patrol cars with their lights off which is illegal. I’m not stupid enough to make a citizens arrest though. I guess according to nevadas duagram, off means everything is off…
On my car (a Lexus), they can be turned off with a switch like the Type A one above. On my wife’s car (a BMW), it seems that they can be turned off only when stopped or at low speeds, but one of these days I should look more closely at that.
It isn’t illegal to disable DRLs. My truck has one fuse that will disable them. And I have, for 19 years and 150K miles.
I believe their existance is dangerous to motorcycles. Mcs no longer stand out as much as they should because of DRLs.
Further, taillights don’t get turned on because people see light and don’t realize the taillights are not on.
I was surprised to see that this was the case with my 2022 Lexus, because that was not the case with any of my previous cars.
But, I was gratified to see that the tail lights on that 2022 Lexus ARE illuminated when the DRLs are lit up. Clearly, there is no specific regulation regarding DRL function, hence the variation in function from one make/model to another.