Ill bet not too many corner repair shops do this stuff anymore. When I first got into the auto repair business (Many Years Ago) there were a number of skills that were required to be able to do the job that have gone the way of the dinosaur. Times changed and cars changed but I know you some of you old guys can add to the list of things that mechanics needed to do to keep those old cars running. When a car needed a brake job they had to remove the old shoes and rivet on one material and then couture grind them to fit the radius of the brake drum. If your starter of generator was not working they had to remove it and disassemble it and test each component to see what the problem was. The used a Growler to see if there was a short in the windings of the armature and replaced whatever only the failed parts. When a car came in for a Major Tune Up one of the things that had to be done was a valve adjustment. If it was a really good shop the used tools like the P&G valve gapper to make sure the valves clearance was exactly right. They removed the distributor and replaced the points and condenser and then tested the distributor in a Sun machine to make sure everything was working properly including the proper advance curve. When an engine was found to be in need of a valve job it was done in house which included cutting the valves and grinding the end of the stems, grinding the valve seats at the correct angle and even truing up their own stones to get those angles exactly right. When it came time to replace the spark plugs there was a tool that could be used to insure that the gap on the plugs was right in the manufactures specs.
Yeah, have all that stuff! I still re-line brake shoes for some applications and I do arc most shoes out of the box to fit the drum. I never got the whole P&G valve gapper tool but then again I know how to set lash.
Things like that are the reason I enjoy reading Gus model garage. It's cool to see the trouble shooting process and all the knowledge guys needed to have back then. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
i have the distributor machine and the brake shoe archer....the valves i get someone else to do yes...those were the days a mechanic actually fixed it , not just replaced parts
You know I ran a distributor machine at AMC when we developed distributor curves for our engine performance on dyno's back then. That was 1972, it brings back fond memories.
I have all those machines minus the distributor tester. I have a lead on one but have to wait for the owner to get older and decide to get rid of it. I still use all of them on customer cars. I just got the brake countersinking motor to work on my Breeze riveter. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
I still sandblast spark plugs with my $12 spot blaster. Very handy especially when you are trying to get an old engine running and the plugs get fouled from excess gas and oil. You can get it running, without ruining a new set of plugs. If you do this examine the plug very carefully and pick out all the pieces of grit that lodge between the shell and insulator, there are usually 1 or 2.
I got use most of those cool tools in my training as a mechanic and still have some but i didn't get to use much of them in the shop as that was the late 70s when things changed here.I find the distributor tester was the coolest and the Champion spark plug tester got used mostly to zap the apprentices....good days. JW
In 1972-75 when I worked in an old style parts store/machine shop we had all those tools minus the dist machine. We also had a king pin reamer. The big surfacer we had could handle Long Island Railroad locomotive heads and flywheels. It took a chain hoist to put them on the machine. I was a counterman but I liked to help out in the shop to learn how to use the machines. I did the heads on my '69 Camaro before the PO decided to sell it to me. It would be hard to find most of those tools in a shop today. Such is progress.
Some of those machines look familiar, mainly the plug blaster. There was a mom and pop Sunoco station outside the base my dad was stationed at. This was '66 - '74. I can remember my dad asking Gus for the full tune and my dad being really happy when he got the nova wagon back. I remember Gus's son had a '32 coupe right around the time AG hit the theaters. He was our version of Milner for a whole summer! Great times.
Progress is todays vehicles can run over 200,000 miles with nothing more than occasional oil changes and one spark plug replacement.
One of my grandfathers had a bunch of the old magazines with the Model Garage stories in them. I used to love reading them. I wish we still had them, but I think the magazines got "recycled" years ago.
KRB52, they are all posted online here: http://gus-stories.org/the_model_garage.htm Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
the learning curve is a bitch isn't it? the amount a service writer would have to charge in labor for a trained technician to use these machines would make a strong man sit down and examine his life if the cars of today still used the same technology. we got to the point where everything is pull-n-replace because the customers were too tight to pay labor for repairing failed parts. dealerships went away from it because it cost too much on the bottom line to rebuild parts instead of letting the factory do it. don't get me wrong; i'd love to have a couple of these standbys to reliably test parts i'm not entirely sure are bad.
Here's another good one. Anyone remember using one of these. Believe it or not I think they were first introduced in the 1950's
Used one at a gas station I worked at in the late 60's. Although the scope on it was a more modern unit.
I've still got the boring and honing equipment, my hot tank and the valve seat grinder and valve refacer from my performance engine shop that I ran in the 60's and 70's. I sold the brake shoe service machines (regretfully) when OSHA outlawed them and have just gotten a line on replacing them from an old closed machine shop so I can at least do my own on the hot rods I build for myself. Once you've done these operations yourself it pains you to let someone who basically hasn't a clue touch your parts. Frank
We just had new brake linings riveted on refurbished shoes for the Diamond T. We're fortunate to have a local garage that still offers that service. Back in the 40's and 50's General Tire advertised fleet service with trucks like mine specially equuippedwith compressor, air impact tire wrenches and tools, andcalibrating instruments. I wish I knew axactly what they carried aboard. I also wish I could find an advertisements like the one below one year newer. They had 4 IH trucks in 1946. My 1947 Diamond T was truck #6.
The Jalopy Journal
