Anybody Remember Back When?

[Ken]

No appliances that I know of. Depended on what was available. Wood, coal, diesel oil in a pan. Gasoline did not last long enough and was dangerous getting lit and normally not available easy. It all made a lot of soot. Another clean up job at day's end military protocol at work.

Ron

Dad had a '29 Oldsmobile that was cold natured. in the wintertime. My morning job as teenager would be to crawl under the motor area and place a 1 pound coffee can with cup of kerosene and old cloth soaked in the fluid under the pan area and light with a match then do same under each brake band. since they were outside of the axle. and if snow or rain froze so had to be warmed.
Reason for the coffee can the lid would seal the container when finished.
Pour hot water into the radiator until engine was warm ,shut off the drain valve and then Dad would crank the engine. let it run and it had a gas heater (Southwind)to heat inside the vehicle.

Around '59 working in Western Nebraska and at night the blowing snow had drifted over a small hill until about 6 feet deep on the road.
driving the road got on top of the drift and then sank up to the windows in a mid 50' Jeep . using a hub cap cleared the snow from around the wheels put on chains and put the Jeep in reverse and broke the clutch.

Well below freezing and nothing to do but wait until day light to start walking toward a ranch. Thought to pour some gas into a hubcap for heat. Just smoke no heart produced . got back into the Jeep rolled my winter coat around feet and a wrapped blanket over shoulder and sat it out until day light.
Walked to ranch and surprised a man feeding his cattle . He called a wrecker from Chadron Nebr. that cable pulled the Jeep out and towed to shop for repair.
ken

 

[stuckmotor]

How many of you know what the WPA was? Then there was the CCC.

I know because we had to learn several of those government agency abbreviations for a history test in the 60's. Were they part of the New Deal?

 

[stuckmotor]

No appliances that I know of. Depended on what was available. Wood, coal, diesel oil in a pan. Gasoline did not last long enough and was dangerous getting lit and normally not available easy. It all made a lot of soot. Another clean up job at day's end military protocol at work.

Ron

Thanks for that. I'd read about the fires before and pictured a wood fire.

 

[ultrarunner]

Ok you got me! What is a bunt plug?

Good thing when the crank handle was on the rim of the heavy flywheel. The ones with the crank like car took some real umph. That was probably what generated the pony engine idea.

Ron

It is the origin of Glow Plug... but way back when a match was used for to light the glow-plug... sometimes called a wick.

Here is a short video for one manufacturer many of the contemporaries also the same.

Steyr T8 Start (ankurbeln) - YouTube

Steyr 15 T8 starten - YouTube

This next video has lots of old timers... mostly Diesel from the very early days.

Historische Oldtimer Traktoren Compilation 218 - YouTube

 

[ultrarunner]

My last year of college - 1964/1965, Univ of WA - Seattle, WA - the wife & I were just married. We bought a Vespa motor scooter. Regular gas, in Seattle, was 19.9 cents per gallon. In the Seattle weather & traffic - a motor scooter was a PITA and downright dangerous. Somehow, we both survived - I graduated - my Dad bought us a brand new 1965 VW bug - day after my last class we loaded that poor little bug to the gills and drove all the way to Anchorage, Ak where I had my first job waiting.
Seattle was having some kind of gas war over the winter and that's why gas was 19.9. I think it was, normally, around 22 or 23 cents.

Hard to believe that a product now costing $3.29 pre gallon was ever that cheap.

This summer I'm going to give up my WA State pass card to the State Park System and get one of those credit card sized US/Canadian pass ports. I'm only around 115 miles south of the border and have always enjoyed the driving and scenery up in Canada. Some really fantastic, scenic drives just north of the border.

You guys have me beat... the cheapest I every bought was 24.9 cents in Oakland... other stations were more expensive but offered up to 10x trading stamps... plus... Mom still has a collection of Shell Steak Knives and a few Shell No Pest Strips somewhere.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I had a pony start CAT D-7 and a CAT diesel 40, both for a number of years, also a CAT generator with a pony. I also worked for a place that had a pony start 7 and I put more hours on that machine than I did my own.

I really didn't find them all that hard to start, even in cold weather, as the pony used the same water for cooling as the main, so in cold weather, it pre-heated the main and did a good job of it.

You de-compressed the main, put the pony in LO and turned the main over to "loosen it up", building oil pressure. Then you shifted the pony into HI and started spinning the main. Once the main was spinning at full speed, you moved the de-compression lever over and the main would crank up. Not too big of a deal, really...

If you wanted, in later years there were conversions built/sold to convert them to direct electric start, for those that wanted it. I liked the pony start better because of the pre-heating feature, but electric start ponys were pretty nice...

Quite a few wheel tractors were built with "ponys" too...

SR

 

[PILOON]

When I first started driving we were paying $0.459/Imperial gallon for high test gas. 'Regular' or the cheap stuff was $0.399/gallon. Remember the Imperial gallon is 160 fluid ounces, whereas the US gallon is only 128 ounces.
Americans would come up here and fill up their cars extolling the virtues of buying Canadian gas because they got better mileage out of it. They got the same mileage, just a bigger gallon, so they bought less gallons.

The middle of July, temps in the high 90s and the Americans would come up here with skis on their cars looking for snow.:laughing:
How far north do we gotta go to get decent snow? Keep going north, you might find it by the time you get to James Bay.

HaHa, I remember the annual ski migration as well in Montreal. (and that was not water skiing)
The Montreal Star would always make note of the first of the season.

To be polite you could blame it on the weather forecasters as the continuously referred to "Cold Canadian northern weather fronts"

 

[300UGUY]

I know because we had to learn several of those government agency abbreviations for a history test in the 60's. Were they part of the New Deal?

Yeah, the New Deal agency’s. A lot of the parks in Michigan were built with CCC labor. I think the wpa was for bigger projects. I think the Hoover dam was, and I know I saw a plaque in the Florida keys that the overseas highway was a Wpa project. My dad told me that he knew a lot of the local guys that were n the ccc. It was the only job available, until the ww2 war buildup started.

 

[Egon]

These seen quite a bit of use.
[video]https://goo.gl/images/1NFCCv[/video]
[video]https://goo.gl/images/1NFCCv[/video]
This one without the power cord & light bulb!!

Ash pans filled with coal ashes worked well.

For cars a team of horses in front worked well!

Then we’re these heaters that were used all over.
[video]https://goo.gl/images/qYgSdP[/video]

 

[turnkey4099]

Thanks. I knew there was at least one brand with that method.