My favorite is the one with a classic car/ hot rod for sale for $500 dollars.. the guy goes to look at it and the car is in perfect shape. It runs perfect, perfect paint and upholstery. He's really curious and asked the lady selling it how come she was selling it so cheap. Her answer was her husband ran off with his secretary and phoned her and told her to sell his car and send him the money!
Bones Can’t say, Old Wolf, I went to Kingsford Charcoal history site, they are the same company that Henry started back in the teens but was sold to the Clorox company years later. Don’t know anything about the plant in Arkansas, but makes sense they could have moved. Bones
My girlfriends father collects Lincolns, He also sold them for many years. About 5 years ago he got a call from another Lincoln Dealership asking if he was interested in a mid 70' Continental with 2500 miles on it. The story was the customer who owned it dropped it off for the first oil change, never came back. Eventually the dealership filed for storage charges enough to take ownership. Her Dad passed, felt they wanted too much for it, not a special model worth collecting to his eye.
some (not all) of the posts clearly illustrate that even a thread about the questionable origins and truth of 'urban legends' serves to perpetuate even more urban legends.......seems they will be with us until the last person leaves the planet......
A fellow at work showed me a newspaper clipping about a early vette walled up in the basement of a grocery store in Maine. Article only mentioned the finding of it by construction workers..
Got this from an older neighbor lady, she was on old man #2 or so. Seems that her first husband had been a Snap On tool salesman. They split up & headed different ways with him leaving instructions that he would come back & pick up all of the old tools & boxes he had in the garage. And he had a garage full of classic stuff. Some years later he got around to picking up his old tools. Called his ex & she tells him that "shit was in her way for too long & she had to pay some one to come haul it away" . Good story, but why do I hear about it after it is gone?
This one I read about goes like this: A train carrying new cadillacs (mid-50's) across the U.S., gets side-lined from the main line (because of track-work or something), and is delayed. There were "caves" which were used for cold-storage of train wagons dug into this mountain "somewhere", that had not been used since WW2. The wagons carrying the cars were shunted into there for storage from the elements, and somehow forgotten about, and then discovered 20 years later, all with 2 miles on the clock. Sounds like an episode od "We challenge you to... Bullshit,or not?"
Interesting thread. Also interesting that there are so many cynics. I am aware of true variations on three of the stories in this thread, but have no intention of being ridiculed, so they will remain unprinted. One that has not been mentioned, is that farmers in central Missouri (at least) disconnected the accelerator pumps on their single barrel carbs during WWII because of gas rationing. And just to tease you, a variation of the "experimental carburetor being removed at the first dealer service is absolutely true". But it wasn't just one, there were a thousand of them! If you want to research it, Google Bracke. Not sure you will find it, but you might. Jon.
I find it interesting that modern technology with computers and EFI are making 40-50 mpg cars, but some guy back in the '50's built a carburetor that would deliver 100 mpg.
Didn't say it was gas mileage, and it was a lot earlier than the 1950's. They also were not placed on the cars in error; it was a test. One other thing to consider: some are saying if there are no pictures, then it isn't true. Cellphones didn't grown on trees. In the 1940's and 1950's lots of folks didn't own cameras! When a kid, my folks had a cheap Brownie, and Dad developed his own film. Couldn't afford to send it off. Basically, we took pictures of birthdays and Christmas. The first decent camera we owned was bought when I got to attend Philmont Scout Ranch in 1960. If you don't own a camera, you can't take pictures. Jon.
I read a article about a engine Smokey Unick built that used a lot of cermacis. And it ran at very high temp and got unbelievable fuel economy. Then I never heard anything about it again.https://www.bing.com/search?q=smokey+unick+cremic+engine&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IESR4A&pc=EUPP_
I found it on the internet, just quire “ Bracke carburetor” came right up. It has his description of it in his patent. Quite lengthy, didn’t read it all, but really couldn’t picture what he was talking about and there was no diagram to view the numbers he was referring to. Kinda lost my support when he kept referring to suction. Carburetors, his or any, function from pressure, atmosphere pressure, not suction. There is no such thing as suction! That is an “ urban ledgend “ Bones
On some diesels something happens and they will somehow activate the starter & start themselves up. At the scrap yard lots of mornings the 3-71 Detroit on the 22B crane would be running when they showed up in the morning. so they installed a battery disconnect. I know of a semi truck that had been setting for a month and cranked up in the middle of the night. It was in 1st gear and drove off a mountain at saddle Ark. Tore it all to pieces.
This used to happen a lot when I was a kid. But when my buddy, Gary, and I got caught that was pretty much the end of it. My butt hurt for a solid week. Oddly, the engines no longer started by themselves.
That did happen on a ‘55 Ford that I had put a 430 MEL in back in the sixties. I was a kid and I wired it half 6 volt and half 12 volts, don’t know if that had any thing to do with it. I had taken my dad’s car to town that night and about 10 PM, my dad heard my old Ford cranking in the garage. He got up came out thinking I was coming back to get it for a drag race. There was my car cranking away, but wouldn’t start, as I had a separate ignition switch. I guess it was wanting to come to town with me! Lol
Really! http://www.thecarburetorshop.com/Bracke_1.jpg http://www.thecarburetorshop.com/Bracke_3.jpg Jon
Then there's the Pogue carburetor that got 125 mpg on a early V-8 Ford. That will stir the pot on this forum! https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/the-elusive-pogue-carburetor.1006781/
When I was a kid I hopped up on a scraper that had a Jimmy 6-71 in it. I pushed the starter button and it started right up. I had no idea of how to shut it down so just hopped off and went home. Hope it didn't run out of fuel.
I heard about the guy with the mixer truck dumping a load of concrete in the convertible about 50 years ago. Apparently it was common practice and may still be.
That's what happens when you don't go back and check to see what spell check did to your post before you print..... Premature organ donor...now that's a completely different story.........and it goes like this ...........damn...it already happened...... Sent from my QTASUN1 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
The old Terex S18 scrapers had the 6 -71 Detroit. I ran them back in the day. there was a cable pull that kille the engine. there also was a cable you pulled that closed a flap shutting off the air intake. That was for when they ran away . When that happened they started burning the crankcase oil and turning horrendous RPM and smoking clouds of dense smoke.
I read the same article in a magazine years ago. I think it was "Special Interest Autos". '53 or '54 Corvette purchased new, driven home and walled in. This one is true.
My grandfather had a Indian motorcycle. this was in the late thirtys or early 1940,s He lived in northern Indiana and brought it inside the house to work on it to get out of the cold. And Him and Grandmother got into a big fight about it. and He got mad and buried it out in the back yard. It was sand so the hole was easy to dig. So there is a vintage indian motor cycle buried at Spencer place in Lake Station Ind. Behind a two story house with the old asbestos siding.
Carburetors function by a differential in air pressure. Simply stated , lower pressure is created by airflow passing though the venturi. Atmospheric pressure (higher), acting on the fuel in the bowl, pushes fuel through the metering system, atomizing/mixing it into the airflow and on to the cylinder(s). Ray
This one is true I have the magazine that has the story in it somewhere....guy buys the car he had it walled in at a grocery store that he owned he died I believe the store changed owner anyways a daughter ended up with the car then I saw a follow up story that show that she parked the car in here living room of her house and was saving it so she could give it to her daughter when she was old enough to drive but I think I saw yet another story telling that she ended up having to sell the car...... I will see if I can find the magazine..... Sent from my QTASUN1 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
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