The tech finally found the rattle
Dec 18, 2021 14:33:54 #
Abo wrote:
Sounds like your dad knew how to pedal a car 
.
Unlike your father, mine had very average driving skills, despite that, he had a heavy right foot.
My mother however was an artist behind the steering wheel... smooth and profoundly
accurate... very fast too when she wanted (relative to other road users).
.Unlike your father, mine had very average driving skills, despite that, he had a heavy right foot.
My mother however was an artist behind the steering wheel... smooth and profoundly
accurate... very fast too when she wanted (relative to other road users).
For quite some time Dad was a long haul truck driver and always getting bonuses for making runs in less time than allocated.
My senior year in high school I inherited his 54 Buick with a 55 Roadmaster V8 (well Kentucky required you buy a car so they could charge a tax so he sold it to me for $1). My Mom and Step-father paid to have the car gone over and the engine rebuilt and my senior year in high school and 1 1/2 years of college that was my car - til the engine blew again so we scrapped it.
Now I was the cautious "wimp" among my friends when it came to driving but that 1 1/2 years I drove 26 miles from my Grandmother's farm to the college in the City of Paducah KY. 24 miles on winding two lane county roads with many turns and less than 1/2 mile for the longest straight section and the last 2 miles on US 60 to the college. I regularly made that run in about 24 minutes, sometimes I did better. After the Army on Los Angeles Freeways and cross county vacations on the interstate system my normal style was to pick out a truck, bus or other high visibility vehicle as far ahead of me in the fast lane as I could see and chase it. When I caught it I picked another one and repeated. I did the same thing when I was riding a motorcycle. You can cover a lot of distance fast doing that since you are almost always "racing" someone.
Then in the 80's I switched to a Chevrolet Astro Van with room for the kids etc. and slowed down. Later I switched to mid-size SUVs and now that I am retired I still drive nice comfortable mid-size SUVs. Currently a Kia Sorento and before that a Hyundai Santa Fe which I literally drove to the point of it starting to fall apart after 18 years. The first 7 of those years I was still teaching and averaged 800 miles a week commuting to and from work plus weekend activities.
Dec 19, 2021 11:57:11 #
robertjerl wrote:
For quite some time Dad was a long haul truck driv... (show quote)
Your Buick was a charismatic old ship... I wonder why It kept blowing engines... lack of oil changes?
My first car was a 64 BMC Mini. I got home from work and there it was in the
driveway. unbeknownst to me my mum bought the car on my behalf. It
cost me $10 out of my pay for the next 50 weeks. I thrashed the living
daylights out of that car every time I got in it... it proved impossible to kill... I wound up selling it to a friend
Not too long after I was working at a Shell service station as an apprentice mechanic (still with the Mini).
My boss and the mechanic (who was more an Automotive Engineer) decided
I needed something larger so they gifted me a very nice 63 Ford Galaxie.
Dec 19, 2021 14:39:24 #
Abo wrote:
Your Buick was a charismatic old ship... I wonder ... (show quote)
Before I scrapped it the local garage tore it down for an estimate, it seems the oil feed lines had some metal shavings jammed in them that restricted the flow, probably from the factory. Normal driving, no problem but late teenage driver always running late to class it equaled a burnt out and blown engine after a while.
Yes the Buick was big, comfortable and a rocket on the straight away. An Uncle called it my "Battleship". When the engine blew during finals week in December I paid $35 to a salvage yard (this was in Dec 1964) for an old 49 Studebaker that barely ran, the body was beat up from an accident, holes rusted in the floor board, one side window gone and only one head light worked all the time and it smoked like a steamboat but it got me to class the rest of the school year. Then it went back to the salvage yard and I moved to Southern California to live with my mother and step father and got a job in a super market to earn money for another car and applied for college in California, but before I got into any classes I got a draft notice (conscription). Said "hell no you aren't drafting me", enlisted in the regular army and off I went = over 2 years in Vietnam but when I came home in 1969 just a few days after I got back I got a phone call from a Los Angeles Chevrolet dealer that my shiny new 1969 Chevelle SS 4 door (I hate climbing into the back seat of 2 door cars) with a souped up factory V8 and the "Highway Patrol Cruiser" package (it was a model they sold to police departments for traffic control and for some reason it was available to soldiers from the PX in Vietnam) I had ordered from the Army Post Exchange in Vietnam had arrived from the factory and I got into school again while working almost full time at the supermarket.
Now that car could fly low on the interstates out in the flat deserts. Once I got a little carried away one Sunday night coming home from a fishing trip with an Uncle in Northern California and overtook another car in the fast lane while climbing the slope up the mountains from California's Central Valley and it pulled over to let me by. As I passed it I saw it was a Corvette with a driver who had a very shocked expression at being passed by a 4 door sedan while going uphill.
Dec 21, 2021 07:52:18 #
robertjerl wrote:
Before I scrapped it the local garage tore it down... (show quote)
Yep, boys will be boys.
I've just got too many stories like that I could regale you
with...
One dark and stormy night on the Hume Hwy (back then, a narrow and bumpy two lane road),
affectionately known as the "Doom Hwy" in a hurry to get to Saturday practice at an out of state race track towing an 8 x 12 checker plate trailer with the below plus fuel tyres parts tools... Let me know if you feel the need to know more... How I'm still alive is a mystery.
Ol' Superkart 79 lapped in the mid qualifying times of the F1 Cars of the era with yours truly
piloting it... when I could do 300 regulation old school push ups in less than ten minutes...
to drive those things at their limits you needed to be very hard indeed.
Dec 21, 2021 08:08:39 #
robertjerl wrote:
Before I scrapped it the local garage tore it down... (show quote)
By the way Robert, I'm glad at least the Chevy dealer looked after you when you got back.
Dec 21, 2021 11:41:31 #
Abo wrote:
By the way Robert, I'm glad at least the Chevy dealer looked after you when you got back.
Thanks, a problem was only one dealer in the Los Angeles area took delivery of Overseas Military Exchange orders and it was by the LA Airport. We lived in the far Eastern part of LA County (which is big so about 15 miles) and I had to wait about 3 days until my Mother had a day off to drive me there. And it was one of the heaviest rain storms LA had had in over 20 years. It was raining so hard the storm drains backed up and the flat streets near the airport had about 3 inches of running water in places. At least Mom's car and my new one had really clean undersides by the time we got home.
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