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In the mid 70's someone came out with a BB machine gun, and I had to just have me one of those.
It looked like a UZI, and held (2) 1/2 pint boxes of BB's apx 3000 of the little buggers. It ran off R -12 , but back then no one knew R -12 was that bad a thing unless it was burning.. never do that...
The problem was on a long pull the gun froze solid and you had to wait and let it thaw out befire it could work again.
I rigged this thing up to the shop air compressor one day and found it wouldn't freeze up at all any more, but now my movent was limited.
After work some days it was common for the crew to hang around and we would down a few 'pops' and waste the bottles inside the box carrier of the time and inside the paper bag. It was interesting to see the bag settle as everything inside was trashed to bits.
About 90 psi worked pretty well too.
and then ONE DAY I got a brain storm, and mounted a BBQ gas can in the back of the car/truck, rigged air lines from the AC compressir to it with a gage on the dash, I mounted a push button switch on the dash ti cut the compressor since the 122 Amazin never had AC to begin with but the B-20 AC brakets all fit anyway, and a used but good hood pull, which was later altered to a solenoid to fire the gun mounted behind the grill.
A Plymouth hood orament was mounted on the hood to act like a front sight.
I think about now is the time to end this tale... other wise I might have to take the 5th...
Every time I heard stories like that I'm glad I'm not married. Damn.
No one but no one is more happy than me SHE IS GONE! She married some other sucker, and I bet his life is miserable.
I did much better the 2nd time around.. This one can ride 14 hour days on the back of my bike and not speak once. i dunno what she does back there for that long, but what ever it is I don't have to listen to a bit of it.
A neighborhood buddy I grew up with had a 66 Mustang that he wanted to raise in the rear (because that's what everyone was doing) but being 16 and broke, air shocks were out of the question. One day we jacked up the rear and took both tires off and were just looking at it trying to figure out how to raise it when it hit me. I said wait a minute I'll be right back. I ran to my house and gathered up my bright idea.
My dad would do woodwork in his spare time so I went into his shop and grabbed a handsaw, a 6' ruler and a 2x4 and went back to my buddies house. With the Mustang jacked up and the rearend hanging by the shocks, I measured the distance between the top of the leaf spring and the frame rail straight above it and cut two 2x4's that length. Put the blocks in place, put the wheels back on and let it down. Presto, instant Hi-Jackers.
Had to be the roughest ride on earth but WTH, we were 16 and thought we looked cool and that's all that mattered. We learned pretty quick to keep a few spare 2x4 blocks in the trunk and also learned the difference between pine and oak too.
I wouldn't consider myself an auto mechanic, maybe an amateur mechanic, I used to do simple stuff like oil and filter changes, battery replacement. I do remember one time when I was 18 in 1975, I wanted to replace the air filter on the 1967 Chrysler I had back then. I took the metal cover off and I placed it on top of the battery... yeah.. the cover touched both the positive and the negative terminals on the battery, and kaboom! Both caps on the battery came flying off and battery acid went flying everywhere. Thankfully, the air filter cover took most of the acid. If I remember correctly, I had some acid on my arms, and the t-shirt I was wearing that day, but I guess it could have been worse.
Reminds me of another "endearing" habit of the 70's UK Ford Capri, and Cortina.
The shifter was held into the gearbox by locktabs, which folded over, holding it in place.
Except they didn't.
Through time, things would wear, and gear changing would often leave you with the gearstick in your hand, while you had a whole box of neutral !
Sitting in heavy traffic, in the middle of an intersection, trying to find the right hole for it was not fun !!
Yeah, that happend to me with a Capri I had on loan from a professor, I was working on it getting it ready for paint - anyway the clips backed out and left me with no shifter.
I don't recall the details but I managed to wrap/tie a rubber band around the shift rods, was able to drive the car back to his place like that.
He was duly impressed with my McGuyver abilities (years before McGuyver was on the tube...)
It failed it's inspection for excessive exhaust emissions.
Probably just valve stem oil seals, but they don't have a lot of cash, and couldn't have afforded to book it in.
Since I was a mechanic, i offered to do it for them, however, at the time, we were 2 men short in the workshop, and were working 14 hour, 7 day weeks, so, doing a head rebuild on a car wasn't something I had much time, or inclination for.
I put it off for 2 weeks, then, at the auctions, a car exactly the same drove through. It was rough, It had more hits than the Beatles, and looked like it would never see the road again.
i thought if it went cheap enough, I'd be just as well to swap engines, rather than rebuild his cylinder head.
So, I picked it up for £15. ($25) and drove it home. It was a cracking little engine.
Next weekend, we got the Sunday off, so I thought I'd get the job done, the boss let me do it in the shop, so, I had the replacement engine bolted in to my dad's car within 4 hours or so. I was pretty chuffed.
The new engine was a carb, but my dad's was injection, so, I set about changing the ancillaries, no problem, an hour did it.
Then,as I took off the dizzy cap to replace it with the other one, stupid me went to answer the ringing phone, forgetting to mark the leads.
It was my dad, he was getting the bus up to pick the car up.
Back to the car, realised my mistake.
"Bugger".
Into the office, got the autodata book, checked the lead positions, and firing order, and stuck the cap on.
Filled the water, topped up the oil, turned the key.
Brr-rrr-rrr-rrr BANG.
Aw, dammit, I must have misread the book, or mixed up a couple of leads.
Sure enough, checked the diagram, and, sure enough, I'd read it wrong, and mixed up #2 and 3.
Whoops. never mind.
Lets try again.
Brrr-rrr-rrrr-rrrr-rrrr Bang !
Aw sh*t !
So, checking the book again, everything seemed right, so I began checking everything else. Good spark, good fuel, checked the static timing, in case I'd managed to disturb it.
Perfect.
So, kept trying for a bit, with the same results.
baffled, I wandered around muttering, and scratching my head. checking, and re-checking.
At this point, one of my colleagues wandered in to pick up some tools for a homer.
He asked what was up, so I told him, and showed him.
He listened, looked at the car, and the autodata book, then pointed out to me that the picture of the dizzy was, in fact, illustrated from the timing belt end, and I in fact, had assumed the direction of rotation wrong.
Changed them, rather sheepishly, and the car fired up first turn of the key.
A neighborhood buddy I grew up with had a 66 Mustang that he wanted to raise in the rear (because that's what everyone was doing) but being 16 and broke, air shocks were out of the question. One day we jacked up the rear and took both tires off and were just looking at it trying to figure out how to raise it when it hit me. I said wait a minute I'll be right back. I ran to my house and gathered up my bright idea.
My dad would do woodwork in his spare time so I went into his shop and grabbed a handsaw, a 6' ruler and a 2x4 and went back to my buddies house. With the Mustang jacked up and the rearend hanging by the shocks, I measured the distance between the top of the leaf spring and the frame rail straight above it and cut two 2x4's that length. Put the blocks in place, put the wheels back on and let it down. Presto, instant Hi-Jackers.
Had to be the roughest ride on earth but WTH, we were 16 and thought we looked cool and that's all that mattered. We learned pretty quick to keep a few spare 2x4 blocks in the trunk and also learned the difference between pine and oak too.
Now there's a way to make toothpicks I would never have thought of. At first i thought you were going to make rear spring shackels in wood
I wouldn't consider myself an auto mechanic, maybe an amateur mechanic, I used to do simple stuff like oil and filter changes, battery replacement. I do remember one time when I was 18 in 1975, I wanted to replace the air filter on the 1967 Chrysler I had back then. I took the metal cover off and I placed it on top of the battery... yeah.. the cover touched both the positive and the negative terminals on the battery, and kaboom! Both caps on the battery came flying off and battery acid went flying everywhere. Thankfully, the air filter cover took most of the acid. If I remember correctly, I had some acid on my arms, and the t-shirt I was wearing that day, but I guess it could have been worse.
LOL exciting huh? I never did pull that stunt. How did the clothing handle the wash
bobman, last Fall I went to drive my car, which hadn't happend since the early Spring before, because i ride a bike all summer.
Cranked the engine, and it went er er ah weeeeeee. Uh oh, pulled the cap of the old 85 volvo and had my wife flip the key. The dist rotor didn't move a fraction of an inch...
I sent her for a timing belt and tear down the front engine cover to find a big mouse nest, that went thru the belt complete with dead mice.
I had done this job before, and so didn't look at the book. I popped the oil filler and set the cam to rabbit ears with a small dental mirror.
Set the crank with a wrench and by then she was back and I set the cog for the distributor to the new mark on the belt. Left it that way, open for a test. Started real hard and lumpy??? hmmmm
Took the belt off and did it all over again and it started hard and lumpy again.??? WTF?
Took the belt off and lined it all up again, this time putting my varriable timing light on it and it read out 70 degrees BTC! Huh??
The bloomin belt was painted wrong!
Took the belt off one last time and set the dist to the Bosch mark like I friggin should have the first time... all's well
I made a 3 hour ordeal out of a 45 minute problem.. most of the time cleaning out the mouse stink and fuzz. Them little buggers are up the defroster in my plow truck right now. I gotta get a hungery cat.
In 1977, I had a 1966 Chevrolet Caprice, with a 327 C.I. engine, and a Rochester 4-barrel carburator. I had to take it to a shop to have an electrical component checked or replaced on the carburator. I was in the customer waiting area, which had glass panels on one side and you could see mechanics working on your vehicle. I was watching the guy that was working on mine, and he was under the hood revving up the engine then all of the sudden I started seeing blue smoke come out of the exhaust pipe. He had the air filter completely off, and his hand over the carburator, and somehow he dropped a cotter pin through the carburator, and of course engine vacuum sucked it in and it ended up damaging one of the cylinders and possibly the intake valve and the cylinder head. I was upset, but they told me that they'll fix the engine. The cylinder damage was extensive it wasn't repairable, so they supposedly got me a rebuilt 327 engine. Well, as it turned out, the engine wasn't really rebuilt, they got it from a salvage yard, and they cleaned it up and repainted it to make it look like it was rebuilt. The engine started leaking oil out of the rear main bearing seal about 3 months after they put it in. I took the car back and they started finding excuses to not do any work on it, without me paying for it!
I sold the car around the middle of 1978 and I bought a 1972 Chevrolet Impala, and I never went back to that shop again for any automotive work. I believe they also went out of business sometime around 1983.
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, but back then no one knew R -12 was that bad a thing unless it was burning.. never do that...
other wise I might have to take the 5th...
