m371961

Lets' see where this goes.

You may be an old car guy, if......

You ever set point gap with a matchbook.

You "repaired" a blown fuse with the foil from a cigarette pack.

You have broken down a tire with a bumper jack.

You have replaced a clutch along a roadside.

You have run your heater on a 90 + degree day to keep your engine cool.

You used a coathanger to operate your wipers when the motor quit.

cutlassjoe

Your old car is in much better shape then your daily driver....

RandyS

When you used a piece of wire hooked to the carb linkage (thru the firewall) to give the motor gas on your way to the Chevy dealer to get a new gas pedal linkage for your 57 Chevy Belaire......... (which you broke trying to get more travel to be sure the carb opened all the way at WOT )

joe_padavano

You had to reach under the car (with the motor running!) to shift your 68 442 into drive when the shift cable siezed up and you had to drive to the dealership to get a new one (yes, someone else was standing on the brake pedal at the time).

oldcutlass

Guilty, guilty, guilty! On roadside repairs besides the clutch, you can add water pump, radiator, transmission, driveshaft, ujoints, and rear ends!

lazy394

Or set the points with a hacksaw blade

MDchanic

Does doing the clutch in a diner parking lot in the middle of a city count?

How about running a string from the throttle linkage out the engine compartment, forward, to drive a VW bus with a broken throttle cable by holding a finger out the window and pulling the string (okay, that one was my father, not me)?

- Eric

tru-blue 442

You might be an old car guy if
you ever had to use the wife's
pantyhose for a fanbelt for
your 67 4-speed to get home.

Tony72Cutlass'S'

I'm not Old, but i changed my timing chain on the side of the road with a rachet set and a steering wheel puller!

Just so y'all know, I was quite proud.

mmurphy77

I, too, have replaced a timing chain set on the side of the road!
How about laying on the fender of a hoodless car with a timing light while my friend is accelerating down the road so I can see what the timing advances to under a load!

Tony72Cutlass'S'

Sounds like something hopalong cassidy would do

Honestly, biggest pain in the timing chain was getting the STUPID cover to meet up with the oil pan and get all the screws back on. Apart from that it actually went pretty well.

m371961

Tie a motorcycle gas tank to the wipers to gravity feed the carb.
"Borrow" a shaker full of pepper from a diner to stop a rad leak.
Use a hammer to close a blown brake line.

You don't have to be old to be an old car guy,but I am to old to go fender riding.

Funkwagon455

Your newest car is twenty-plus years old, and you are confident that it is really not that old at all.......

droldsmorland

Hows this. Riding around the wine country in upstate NY in a 71 Eldorado convertable when "bang" it stopped running with a single back fire? The upper bushing in the distributor froze up and the breaker plate spun with it briefly until it ripped the wires off. Pulled the distributor, disassembled it, emry clothed the bushing, stake-oned the wires, used ball-joint over flow grease for lube, wife turned the key until #1 spit my finger out, stabbed the errant distributor back in and off we went for more wine. The road box never fails me! The Amish people were looking at me like I was from Mars! Back got pretty sun burned too!

Aron Nance

You run Smithy steel-pak mufflers on all your Oldsmobiles............

redoldsman

There are a lot of great stories here and I have done several of them but I think Aron wins. Of course I am not the judge but he would get my vote.

rustyroger

You've ever packed a punctured tire with straw to get home.

You have made a 130 mile journey with a clutch that wouldnt disengage because the linkage had fallen off.

You have tied a door to a length of wood because the hinges broke off.

You have used the windshield washer pump as a substitute fuel pump (good for 40 miles on leaded gas before the diaphragm failed).

You have used a wooden beam for a leaf spring (plenty of old Land Rover drivers know this one).

You have used a wire coat hanger as a plug wire.

My late father did the tire stuffed with straw trick, I did all the others.

"Nececcity is the mother of invention".

Roger.

MDchanic

You might be an old car guy if

You've ever lay under your car, in a water and oil puddle, in a toll booth lane, with a sledgehammer, knocking the jammed gears of your Muncie M21 back into the right position so the car will move.

- Eric

oldcutlass

Oooooooh the memories!

I did the clutch thing on a VW beetle cause the cable broke, turned it off at stop lights, and then started it in gear when it turned green.

Drove a 65 Mustang 100 miles back in forth to work with only the emergancy brake.

Hot wire you car to drive home because you lost your keys at the beach.

Creativeindy

You may be an old car guy if..

You Used a screw driver under your car to jump the starter solonoid.
You Have 18436572 engrained in your head so much that you mistake it for your SSN
You Stole a stop sign to use to patch a floor board.
You got a chuckle reading all the previous comments knowing damn well you have done every single one of them yourself.

tru-blue 442

I keep coming back to this thread for the chuckles,
and to read someone's comment and remember, oh
yea, I did that too, lol.

And you are right...18436572, damn, need an eraser...

coppercutlass

you might be an old car guy when you are on the side of the road fixing your snapped throttle return spring.

You might also be an old car guy if you dont own any metric sockets or wrenches.

droldsmorland

What would we do without steel coat hangers!

Olds Dad

if you've ever driven to work in your '55 Olds and realized that you pulled your keys out of the ignition (while running) to run back into the house and forgot them realizing you can't shut your car off (and if you could, you'd have no keys to restart) -

Stupidity is ageless

1969w3155

Or hit the starter with a broom handle to make it work, used a half glass of water on top of the air cleaner to set the timing after installing a new set of points, when the ripples in the water smoothed out...the timing was good..or at least close enough to run well.

Olds Dad

My uncle tells a story of when he was in college in the late 40's he drove an old Packard and after sitting in the student lot for a few weeks in the bitter cold (RI) having to build a fire under the oil pan to thin the oil to get it started...Uncle Ron's a pretty straight shooter - think it's a true story

rcrac3r

I had an uncle just like that to. He had a big old pontiac that in the winter he grabbed the oil drain pan he made from a steel oil drum. He would start a fire in it & then push it under the engine to start it. Everything under the hood was as black as midnight.

starman63

When a kid at a car show says "I can't wait to see a slant 6", when u ran a wire from battery to coil and jumped out solinoid, when ur son wants u to show what dwell is and how to set timing, when someone asks if u set points before or after u install them

citcapp

when you carried a canvas bag of water on the front bumper going over the grapevine pass

citcapp

When you bought paraffin based oil by the gallon to help the oil burner you drove and kept it in the trunk

w-30dreamin

You might be an old car guy if you remember driving around with bias-ply tires because that's all we had then.

You might be an old car guy if your first aftermarket radio upgrade was a pioneer supertuner with an 8-track.

You might be an old car guy if you've owned a daily driver that came factory equiped with rear fender skirts.

Funkwagon455

Priceless Citcapp!!! Kudos to M371961 for a very fun thread...

Rickman48

Might be an old car guy if you:
Jacked your car up so high, the rockers hit you above the knee, and you could change a clutch without a jack in 45 minutes!
Changed a motor in the gravel driveway, in snow, at night, because it was your DD.
Changed valve springs and seals in the street, without air, just because the garage was full.
Got stopped for speeding, and accused of being a 'burgular' because your trunk was full of tools and spare parts!
Bumper Tag on the Kennedy Expressway with beaters!

Tedd Thompson

Ya, and drank from it when you got thirsty ( no bottled water then) ...Tedd

1969w3155

The one that went under the dash, with a round dial?!

Napoleon Solo

You might be an old car guy if

You stood on the bumper of your vapour locked suburban (towing a camper) shooting ether into the carb to limp and chug around a blind corner ' to safety' in Death Valley. " That wasn't so hard honey?"

You have a mint set of hubcaps for a car you don't own.

You timestamp events in your life by starting with "Hmm what was I driving then?"

Chuck_66

You might be an old car guy if you used a soup can to fix an exhaust leak.

ah64pilot

You may be an old car guy if -

Clothes soaked in gasoline you opted to finish putting the tank in rather than clean up and start over.

You know that an Allen wrench and an intake manifold don't like each other when setting points.

Your first experience with a horn relay was when your ratchet wrench introduced you to it while loosening a distributor bolt.

You cringe at the thought of having to buy a metric flare nut wrench set for your wife's Honda (today).

You drove to church with low boy lawn chairs and vise grips on the steering shaft during a complete interior makeover (Dad, I was a passenger).

Dressed to kill, your wife surprises you in the middle of the night while you're working on the car. She wants to "do it" on the fender, and you turn her down because you don't want to scratch the paint.

lazy394

Or you have 'tapped' the needles and seats with whatever was on hand ( in my case a fire extinguisher )
Or hotwired the car after your mates thought you looked like you could do with a swim only to splutter to the surface minus your keys and wallet!

bdub217

you've changed a tire with vise grips and a hammer and a jack from a honda civic (vise grips also served to raise and lower jack) =0.

This was on a 1300mile trip to New Mexico from Central Illinois. My g/f at the time had a civic sedan and I had a 94 lesabre. I guess I wasnt planning on jacking the car up during my trip or ever for that matter due to no jack in the trunk and the bar for her jack was nowhere to be found....Murphy always gotta show up when things go wrong.