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

Correct...

 

A spat is an ankle covering used in the 19th century by soldiers to keep mug, rocks and such out of their boots. I have a pair that I wear when I play golf on a wet course to protect my pant legs and socks from mud and debris.
It is obvious why fender skirts were called Spats since they provided the exact same function for the body of the car. Source-WikiBanditpedia

 

Yep.

Cheers,
Harv

 

Love it ,four on the tree, never saw one , cool, but doesn’t sound as good as three on the tree had several three on trees err three speed column shifts. Should’ve kept them all. Neat subject just a little while back my brothers and I were talking about three on trees (common term for three speed column shift in the upper Midwest) and many of my nieces , nephews and all but one of my sister in laws didn’t have any idea what the hell we were talking about my kids and wife did know however must’ve raised em right. Now I have to have a four on the tree

 

My brothers mid 60's Fiat 1500 wagon was 4 on the tree.

 

The "rat" term came first, because in the valley, the pushrod arrangement was said to look like a porcupine. Somehow that morphed into "rat". Thereafter, since the SBC was its little brother, it became the "mouse".

 

er,,flopper stopper ? must be German

 

Bruce agreed..... and who would argue with Bruce. He knew it all....

 

I've always thought it odd that the 'mystery engine' and then the MarkIV were deemed new and odd since Mopar essentially went there in the mid 50s with the Poly engines.


Bruce Lancaster said: ↑
I see an odder line...my reading of car magazines goes back to before the big block and its immediate acestor, and this is how I saw it.
Remember this goes back to '62-3 as well as to the Mark IV in '65, as the basic head geometry came out via the "mystery engine" that briefly shook up NASCAR.
These engines were sometimes referred to as "porcupine motors" because of the look of all the rocker studs sticking up at multiple odd angles...this went to "Rodent" and then to "Rat" in my reading history. The SBC as "mouse" came along as a contrast to "Rat", AFTER the Rat designation became popular.
These isn't a definitive lexical study...just the datum points I bumped into as I read my way through the newsstands.

 

Renault 16TX, 5-on-the-tree.

 

And only three wheel nuts.

Cheers,
Harv

 

Mercedes had it also

 

Truth

 

Just saw this. Artificial intelligence will NEVER be able to come up with anything like it. Thanks for this, I'm still laughing.

 

Bet you look really "spiffy" in them..........................

 

Touché

 

Golf spats aren't quite that fancy but identical to what @X38 posted. Just made from Nylon and Velcro. Which makes me wonder if car spats or skirts can be made sporty (like for golf) or dressy (as the well heeled gent above).

 

BBL origin - the popular opinion is that it is from oil field origins, blue barrel. However, teacher and history nerd Nate Maas found a use of it in the 1700s, predating any oil field use. So, rabbit hole is now open.

---

A few days ago, I wrote a post about why the word barrel is abbreviated bbl. I thought I had done my homework. I had checked my sources and it seemed like my post was reliably sourced (going back as early as 1904) when I had attributed the abbreviation bbl to the use of blue colored barrels in the Pennsylvania oil industry in the 1860s.


Thankfully, an anonymous reader wrote in with a tip saying that bbl was in use long before the Pennsylvania oil industry. Sure enough, I did a little poking around on the internet and found some old cargo manifests from the early days of sail. I found one as early as 1764 that use the bbl abbreviation and it was certainly in use even before this.

(Manifest of the brig Sally, dated September 11, 1764 - note the bbl abbreviation)

So where did bbl come from? I contacted three reference librarians across the country, and after doing their research, all three came back with the "blue barrel" answer. When I explained my earlier cargo manifest finds, one librarian from New York still put up a defense saying that "blue barrel" was well researched and had a long history of documented evidence.

 

It's mostly the financial terms that I sometimes have a problem with.

 

This is GREAT !!

 

She.a librarian , how could she be wrong , after all , she's a product of an institute of higher learning , those folks are never wrong , just ask them !

 

All the different ways you see the word HI-BOY spelled!

 

I like it when the uninitiated call every body style hot rod a roadster. "Man I wanna build roadster just like Milner in American Graffiti."

 

....A swing and a miss.....

bl : already in use as abbreviation for "bale".
bbl : adopted as abbreviation for "barrel".

.... all way before any oil industry in the U.S.

This seems to be the most logical explanation. (Occam's razor and all that...)

 

I think that you are mistaken - that is an Aussie term, - just like servo……..definitely not Kiwi !

 

A long time ago we agreed to redraw the international borders, as long as we got to keep Pharlap, pavlova and Russell Crowe.
]
"Arvo" and "servo" are only used on West Island. Never on North Island or South Island



Cheers,
Harv

 

dizzy is actually a Brit term.

Bump stick. Its a cam shaft man.
Bonnet, what?? its a hood man.

Deck lid. Well OK, my car does not have a deck.

One that gets used in some circles is crank case. if it is not separate from the cylinders is is the block, a crank case is actually separate from the cylinders.

Pots, for carburetors. "its got twin pots man!!"

Front windshield. I guess the back glass works as a windshield when you are backing up but windshield is kind of self explanatory.

Front grill, really? How many cars do you know of that have a rear grill.

Here is one that always got me when I was little, "straight pipes" they are not straight.

Here is one that is kind of odd. Jockey Box, you don't hear it much. Its the glove compartment.

there are several terms that I use that most don't understand unless they know me. I cannot think of them right now, ya'll have been listening to me for over 20 years now. Feel free to throw them out there.

 

All of my Corvairs had a rear grille.

 

I hate to break it to some of you, but grills are for cooking on. ;-)