Just remembered a thing of the past.
Notice in rear widow of car--
"Running in -- Please Pass"
Memories, memories
Has anybody got any more?
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Not having to keep a "FSH" and stamps in books etc and doing the routine stuff yourself - even on brand new cars
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Locking my Capri with the keys still in the ignition, then going indoors and getting a nail file which opened the door straight away.
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taking the engine out, then fixing it on the kitchen table. (1956 morris minor)
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Chris
I remember rebuilding a Cortina engine in the spare bedroom. Not long married, so we were a bit short in the furniture inventory. Now, taking the engine components up there one piece at a time is OK, but the trouble came when I tried to get this fully rebuilt, all-iron, engine complete with head back downstairs and into the garage.......
Cheers
John
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remember the stick on rear window heater/de-icer? and having a portable radio on the passenger seat for company? and numerous puncture repairs on the cross ply tyres? and the thick mayonaise in the rocker box caused by condensation mixing with the oil? and the regular de-coke?
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remember those little parking lights which used to clip on the top of the drivers window?
Furry steering wheel covers?
AA badges with your membership number stamped on?
When you wanted to tune your car having to bugg*r around with main, idle, correction jets, emulsion tubes, choke sizes, accelerator pump settings etc etc rather than just plugging some data into the engine management look up table.
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Optional extra wing mirrors on my first company car, mk1 escort and buying a radio for it.
3 seater bench seat in the front and column change vauxhall
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The "tiger in your tank" Esso petrol ad campaign and the furry tiger's tail you could tie round the fuel filler.
John Slaughter's story about rebiulding an engine in the house struck a chord. Here's my version;
In the early '80s I had bought a Singer Chamois (Hillman Imp clone) for my wife. It went very well until the oil pressure light came on as she was coming home from Leeds Maternity Hospital, 15 miles away.
She was tired, hungry and in no mood to stop and find out what the big red light on the dash was. By the time she got home, the car was sounding very rough. I found myself having to rebuild the engine in the kitchen, because the garage was completely full of er ..... an ex-display fitted kitchen which we had bought in a sale a fortnight earlier.
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Black vinyl rear seats which burned your legs (wearing shorts) after a day out in Blackpool. :-(
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Valve radio's with humming vibrators.
Switching from positive to negative earth.
8 track players.
Blaupunkt "Blue Spot" radios.
Badges in real chrome.
Suspension jack up kits.
Redex.
Balancing pistons on the kitchen scales.
"Scrappies" that paid for cars and batteries.
Oh, I could go on but beginning to sound like my own dad!
C
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my friend had a mk1 cortina with light blue vinyl seats covered with clear vinyl covers to protect them.
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My brother replaced the rear axle of his 2.8i Capri at the roadside outside the London scrapyard he bought it from, then drove 300 miles home again. A few years before that he replaced the clutch of his Triumph Herald in a layby, working from inside the car, in 45 minutes. But he was best at replacing Mini clutches. These took 25 minutes.
HJ
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Doing the motorbike test when the examiner is on foot!
For the emergency stop he just jumps out of the bushes and goes "wahey!" I can't believe it was like that for so long.......
I'm pleased to tell you you have passed Mr.Fecker......
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cycling on my grandmother's pushbike 20 miles to a scrap yard and returning with a half shaft and disk assembly tied to my back with string.
All because I thought a GS Club was cool - it wasn't.
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The days before the MOT test.Then it was known as the 10 year test.
I remember my BSA 500 motorbike having a bald rear tyre for months. In fact the best tyre was one where the baldness had progressed to a uniform layer of canvas in contact with the road. Much better in the wet! The trick was in replacing it before it burst.
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The sound of churning starter motors on damp winter mornings, then the "character building" push-start in exchange for a lift to school from one or other of the lucky neighbours who owned a British car.
Chris
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Taking a girl out in my old sit-up-and-beg Ford Popular that had a plywood floor:
- Go though deep puddle, fast (I'm young, remember)
- Scream from girl
- Dirty black water up the back of her new nylons
- Evening cut short!
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Jumping in my Fiat 128 Rallye eager to take my new girl out for second date, turning the key to be greeted with a cloud of electrical smoke from under the dash and dead silence from the engine. The battery to ignition wire had been resting on the brake pedal and had chosen that moment to wear away the insulation and short out.
Bussed it across Leeds, bribed a mate from work to lend me his Morris Minor van, ran it out of petrol, eventually got to take future wife out 3 hours late.
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Ian - surely you could have used that as an excuse to "get you out of these wet things" ooh missus.
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Outting a blanket over the engine on a cold winters night...................and forgetting to take it off in the morning before starting up and driving off.
Parking lights that clipped to the window and connected to the battery with crocodile clips.
My 1600E Cortina.
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Another used to be an oval sticker you could buy "Warning-Disc Brakes"
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Holts Piston Seal - can of gunk you poured down the plug holes to reduce smoke and oil burning (it didn't)
The arrival of Holts fiberglass repair kits - they must have kept bangers on the road a lot longer - my '51 Chevy was almost all 'glass from the doors down.
Asking the girlfriend to give her her nylons when my Ford Pop fanbelt broke on Porlock Hill.
NOn-syncromesh first gear (crunch....)
Doing a complete respray in the driveway and trying to get the bloom out of the cellulose paint afterwards
Part numbers: HS1A 694 Mk I was the Payken number for a MInor 1000 head gasket set, and a Herald needed a PH8 FRam oil filter.
THe (then) weird Herald rear suspension when it came out in 1959, with the rear wheels angling outward at the top.
Hepolite piston ring kits for worn bores (they worked well)
Slippery vinyl bench seats in the front, great when the current "squeeze" was riding on board and one took a left-hander deliberately fast......
THe Austin Allegro (best in either purple or BL "turd" brown). Had to be careful jacking up the rear or else the rear window glass popped out. NOt to mention the famous square steering wheel, nicknamed the Quartic by some bright spark in Longbridge's marketing dept.
Or what about the wonderful Skoda Octavia. They were all sold in an off-pink colour by Pride & Clarke of London for I think 399 pounds. Allegedly assembled by Czech convicts, they fell ap[art rather quickly.
Very well remember the same Pride and Clarke offering something called a Toyota on the mid-60's. All the old soldiers were vocal about this -- built on a bowl of rice aday, unfair to British industry, it'll never catch on etc etc.
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Growler,
You haven't got one of those Hepolite piston ring sets in +30 for a Land Rover 2.25 Diesel??
David
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Wish I did -- they were great weren't they? chuck a set of them in plus some big-end shells and a decoke over a weekend and the old car was good for another 20k!
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Motorcycle examiner jumping out into the road in front of candidate.
Whoops: he's not too hot on vehicle recognition: wrong bike!
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Jumpers for goal posts....
Long hot summers....
Mother's cakes....
Nothing motoring related I'm afraid. 2 young!
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Beginning to think the motor byke test was a bit excessive before realising I'd taken a wrong turn. Never saw him again, but collected a 'pass' the following day from local office after being told he'd had to go home with a 'stomach upset' - possibly diarrhoea.
Heater and wing mirrors optional extras. How hardy we were - even turned down the heater on a Herald.
Starting handles - now they should be reintroduced. Batteries seemed to last for ever as the kids got bigger and stronger and three at a time could hang onto the handle.
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What about the draught that used to come from the large holes where the pedals fitted through the bulkhead and rubber grommits had gone or perished. Hand-operated windscreen wipers.
Oh and not forgetting the Esso Tiger and quadruple green shield stamps with petrol
Petrol when I had my first car in 1965 (Austin A40 Farina) at I think was 4/11d a gallon about 25p in silly money today.
Free shots of upper cylinder lubricant at petrol stations some later charged 1d a shot.
Three people sitting on the open down bootlid held up by massive leather straps of an Austin 16 (or was it a Morris something or other) having a picnic.
The rear screen sunblind that was operated by the driver by a long piece cord on pullies
Temperature gauges on the top of radiatior caps on the front of the bonnet.
Sorry about this but I could go on and on and on and on .....................lovely memories of the past when roads were a pleasure to drive on.
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Don't think anyone's mentioned the starting handle yet.
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the use of the sign "tax in post" being used on cars.
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That 60s slab sided, high waisted styling, the chrome, impressive grille, wood and leather interior.
The new Rover 75 is really growing on me.
David
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i also used to have a citroen 2cv which had the windscreen wipers being connected to the speedo so the wipers went at different speeds.
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I remember a mate and I having abuse screamed at us by the owner of a small petrol station in Rural Kent, who went on to order us off his forecourt without serving us because I was riding a Japanese bike. We laughed about it at the time, but a few years later I worked with someone who had been a Jap PoW and his stories of what they went through made me understand the old boy's attitude.
A garage I worked at for a while refused to service foriegn cars because they were "Too bloody complicated". They'd do well today.
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Eight track players giving instant access to any of Acker Bilk's greatest hits.
David
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David Woollard wrote:
>
> Eight track players giving instant access to any of Acker
> Bilk's greatest hits.
>
> David
Oh David, that brings back memories - in my Grandfather's Triumph 2500 pi, which was probably one of the originals and had about 2 quadrillion miles on it by the time he had it, listening to 8 track - he only had three elvis presley, Mantovani & Acker Bilk. travelling to Devon at 30mph ALL the way, trying to shrink into my seat at the reaction of the drivers behind.
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Mark,
Yes why was it folks with the eight track players only had four tapes. Acker bilk one, Elvis another plus two random....from a choice of about 100 produced I guess.
On another thread you might have seen we had a new 2.5PI in 1972. Super car for the time.
David
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Rubberduck
look what you have done;
quiet an impressive thread length here but its begining to sound like the burst of vocal lucidity one often finds in a nursing home shortly before the tablets are given out.
as ever
Mark
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Mark
I don't care - just give me the tablets, and bring my slippers!
What about Ford vacuum operated wipers - the faster you went, the slower they wiped.
What about the cable driven wipers on a Vauxhall Wyvern (driven from the camshaft). This 1500cc car had only a three speed gearbox and about 40 bhp, consequently you were constantly flogging it second to get it up hills. Crikey, the wipers nearly rocked the car from side to side!
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Oh, and I forgot about being temporarily blinded. This happened in my aforementioned Ford Pop when the fabric headlining detatched itself from the roof and sagged down over me like a collapsed umbrella.
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Well isn't it better than speed traps and motorway madness???? Glad to read all the replies though, it did bring back many memories but I hope I am quite a few years away from the nursing home, but sometimes I wonder.
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Nurse,
Can you bring all these contributors a nice cup of milky tea and put a blanket over their knees whilst they have their afternoon naps.
Sorry nurse nearly forgot, can you check to see if any of them require a fresh pair of trousers.
as ever
Mark
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Just remembered another from way back. Sitting in the back of my Dads Ford (I think it was a Pop) and being asked to thump the post behind the drivers door to get the indicator arm to pop out. And then having to reach out and push it back in after the turn.
Ooh! that flannels a bit cold nurse.
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The heady days when someone who asked for a quids worth of petrol was thought a bit flash.
Oh dear, nurse, I think I have had a little accident........... oh its all right the heated seat was switched on...phew!
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i remember me and my father completely stripping an old ford down to a bare shell and trim and valves and pistons etc spread out everywhere...
and rebuilding it, painting and rustproofing it as we went...
it was better than anything that came out of the factory when we'd finished
those were the days when i had more time than money, which may come around pretty soon again if the economy doesnt start picking up!
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