Hot Rods Automotive terms that don’t make sense....

It's not 'his' English, the poster was Australian.

 

The French.
It's always baffled me that people in the U.S. drop the 'h' in herb when talking about cooking ingredients. Not so when discussing Herb McCandless.
Same with dropping the 't ' in fillet.
Wannabe Frenchies!

 

How about HOT ROD?
I kinda get the "hot" part...fast, heat, wild, modified etc.
But "rod"? Connecting rod? What about the other 7...or is it a one cylinder engine?

Hot rod is a better description of what's in my pants...than my car

 

. The girls in your class must have been disappointed.

 

You wish. !

 

Change of direction;
What about burning your lights? I’ve seen signs after I crossed state lines stating, “ burn headlights during rain” . Is that to keep from burning your car up, burn your headlights instead?

I thought lights shined, or were on. Never burned any!

 

Yep.. “Movie House”

 

No that’s a Texas Tee Shirt!

 

Has anyone mentioned 'grease zerks'? I much prefer to call them 'grease nipples'.

 

How about "drag racing"? If you want to be pedantic that would only apply to tractor or truck pulling!

 

Not sure if it is the same in the US, but the main street of most Aussie towns is referred to as “the main drag”.

Yep, grease nipples Down Under. If I remember right, Zerk was a brand name like Welch. Haven’t heard the term zerk in Australia.

cheers,
Harv

 

After two jackholes nearly nailed me with their cars, while walking on the sidewalk, I'm feeling snarky.

Also...

Lots of terms/phrases are carried over/borrowed/stolen from other archaic or past terms.
I had an English teacher that was great at breaking down words for us, he would state 'if you know how to break down the most complex words, you can derive what the word means.' Or something to that affect, or is it effect

Dude, its Harmonic Dampeninininurrrrrer , always get a kick out of the HVAC tin knockers going wild with some of their terminology.

Cords probably were the first with flip up covers, I'm guessing when the simple bezels became more prominent they were just called 'doors'. Easier to say than escutcheon

Only ever heard Aussies say it, always throw it around when I'm around a humorless fellow.

Well, compared to the Pitman, it's just hanging around doing nothing, being lazy.

That's just a carryover from those days. Most Broughams I've seen tend to only have a partial vinyl top, implying similar. Driver uncovered, passengers covered, in Fine Corinthian Vinyl.

Doesn't have to do with shape, it's a term for spot or location.

Isn't this a carryover from marin usage. Running lights showed which direction/heading a vessel was facing. Same with on road vehicles and planes.

That goes back to language/origin. Roman libra is a pound, thus 'lb'.
Think of 'mile' which meant 1000(paces) which is why its 5280' and not 1000'.

Well, if you find your 'freeze plugs' on the ground, its a great identifier in that you aren't driving into work

That goes back to Latin, scutum IIRC. Which just means 'shield' which is what most escutcheons are, decoratively.

That's slimey sales BS.
Patina is a thing, the poor word has just been abused for money and internet points.

Very.

Probably just an easier sell. How many people understood all the technical specs back then? If you just listed cam specs, like today, would half those '3/4(race) Cams' have been sold? My'54's FSM uses very basic/plain English and has plenty of areas explaining how components work/function. A modern FSM, with some exceptions, tends to be a purely diagnostic/service book.
Disclaimer: Didn't read up on Jim's link.

Not sure if serious.
Pressure can be negative or positive.
Negative is Vacuum.
Positive is Boost.

That's another carryover from shipping. Driveshaft for propellers were, propeller shafts. Driveshaft may not have been common parlance compared to propeller shaft. Across the pond I used 'driveshaft' and got weird looks, CV axles were drive shafts, driveshafts were propeller shafts, and half shafts were two piece propeller(drive) shafts. IIRC with the lot I was dealing with

Has nothing to do with its sizing, it has to do with its functionality.
Kinda reminds me, if you say 'ball joint' most folks will know what you mean. Say spherical bearing, most will look at you funny or call it a 'pillow block'. Which 'pillow block' is the isolated center support bearing found on multi-piece drive shafts.

More salesmanship nonsense.

But 'Hedge-hogging the Moen' is funnier than 'Dropping kids off at the pool.'

Plural of head, where something begins. River head, head lights... it's the beginning of a thing.

20% is still 20%

I would argue it depending on what kind of nonsense.
'Cause some of the repeated nonsense that comes out of me face hole is pretty damn funny.

1HP= 550lbs lifted 1ft in 1second.
This is constant work, not peak, averaged out by good ole Mr Jimmy Watt.
Peak HP from a horse was considered to be about 5HP.

Now THAT is funny.

Isn't this just more carryover and colloquialism. Carriage lamps/headlamps burned. Before that electron became popular and stuff.

Zerk was the name of the inventor.

Drag has several meanings. Pulling something with force, main street, and of course to cross dressing
I'm sure there are a few more but the first two seem to indicate the kind of racing

 

Take a breath Mike!

 

But the guy who patented them in 1929 was named "O. U. Zerk", not "O. U. Nipples". By the way, his full name is Oskar Ulysses Zerkowitz. Imagine working in a gas station and trying to tell a customer that their Zerkowitz needed lubed.

 

Normans were originally Vikings (i.e. Scandinavian)

 

After reading all of these responses, especially @MAD MIKE 's long winded but well thought out discourse, the one thing I would like to do before I croak is to get together with the lot of you and have several beers. We could finally get resolution on the eternal, burning question of which is better, Ford or Chevrolet, as well as solve all the OT problems of the world. I know, we can set up a live stream broadcast of Lloydfest 2024 for all of you who can't be there in person .

 

I’ll save you the time and organizing of a get together.
Bow ties rule

 

You had me at BEER!
Oh yeh, Chevys are better!

 

Getting slightly OT here, they were also indigenous French and Romans.

 

Ahem, that has yet to be determined , but @Lloyd's paint & glass has a drag strip in his immediate vicinity, hint-hint! He also has cold beer .

 

3k miles to prove a point. Days of traveling. Week off work. Are you effing kidding me? You are delusional. Mercy.








Oh, wait. Did you mention beer?

Disregard the above

 

ROAD TRIP! It's only 4,830 miles round trip and yes, there will be beer, moonshine and Lloyd's personal favorite, Woodford Reserve as well as drag racing, bench racing, campfires, corn dogs, corn hole, camping and peeing in the bushes. Flush toilets available for those of a more delicate nature .

 

Any time my buds and me are sitting around discussing important stuff like this, with most of us in total agreement about many world topics, it occurs to me; If the people calling the shots in this world would just come consult us mechanics before they make a decision, the world would work a lot better.

 

Alan, you forgot beef jerky and s’mores!!

 

This one's for @VANDENPLAS
It's Dodge!

I actually like them all.

 

Calling a core plug by any other name, however popular and long-lived, that implies that they have another function other than cleaning out casting sand is a sure-fire recopied for disaster.

Working from 1986 to 1998 in New England. I made over $400K replacing engines (sometimes both), generators, out drives, manifolds, heads, blocks, etc. for people that firmly believe that these objects had a different function. Each was fully convinced that their errant notion was correct, until proven, very expensively, otherwise.

Have you ever seen a man so wealthy that he has everything he could ever need cry? Explain to him what happen to BOTH of his early 1940's V12's.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but something can be very popular, and still be completely wrong.

You can indeed be completely confident in your actions, too, and still be wrong. That's your choice. In the US, at least, you have the complete freedom and liberty to be as wrong as you want to be.

 

I'm with you on that.................but we can't blame it on the younger guys with their newer cars because they don't even use distributors..........Maybe it was the Aussies..........errrr, make that Australians. Blimey, I can't get the bonnet shut (Just kiddin mate)

 

Why do we call cams and lifters "flat tappet" if one has an angle on it and the other has a radius?

 

Car nicknames. I get the usual stuff up to puddle jumper.
But never fully understood:

'Short'. "That's a sharp short".

'Flivver'. Name for an early, hastily cobbled together car. I once read that flivver was a term projectionists used in early movie theaters when a film stated to "flivver" and would soon come apart.

'Kemp'. I read this materialized as the opposite of unkempt. Still, it sounds weird. The formation of KKOA no doubt brought the seldom heard word more mainstream.

 

I know you're trying to not confuse the Ozzies, but you know better than that, you're from San Diego. It's a "charp chort".