My 49 Buick with a Dynaflow vaporlocked, so I got out the tow strap and the wife started to tow me home. After a few blocks we came to a stoplight and I realized the car was now running so it must have "bump started".
I had a '78 Ford 302 with a C4 auto. If I was cruising at 30 mph I could shut it down, turn the key on and it would restart. I had an out of work Ford guy rebuild it for me so he might have done some trick to it. No one would believe me so I had to do it often to show that I could.
I convinced an ex-girlfriend that she needed to switch to summer air in her tires, and with a little help from her cousin, she totally bought it. Good times. On her friend's car I did have to drain the blinker fluid. Water had collected in the lens and shorted it out. Catholic school girl skirts, mmmm.....
If you had it in gear then I can believe it - once the front pump is running and providing pressure to engage the clutches you can apply power through the clutches either direction - that means when coasting the clutches would still be engaged (see engine braking) and thus driving the front pump - and pumping more fluid to KEEP the clutches engaged - now if you stopped at a dead stop, then tried - I doubt it would restart... As for old wives tales... I've heard the premium is better thing from a LOT of people. heard this one too - a .030 overbored 350 chevy is automatically a 383 stroker... (yes heard that from a couple guys with their stock rebuilt 350's...) All used cars on the lot are "one owner" cars... no matter how many years old... and it's a bonus if they throw in old lady owned...
I was reminded of this one tonight!!! Green on a race car is BAD LUCK!!!!! The same thing was told to my old man back in the sixties when he wanted to paint his engine green!!!!! So he did!!!! Then with the green engine in his little Henry J he set the 1/8 th mile world record in his class over eight times inn the next few years!!!!! If every one did somthing that was bad luck, how many other things could have been done that was against BAD luck!! And as my wife pointed out GREEN MEANS GOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
They won't discharge, but if there's enough residual acid on the case and enough time for it to creep down (or condensate to help the process) they'll etch the F-k out of the concrete underneath. Board is still a great idea, just for different reasons.
i still like the one that goes like this : "that car had so much power.....i used to tape $100.00 bills to the dash, and take people for rides. if they could grab the $100.00, they could keep it." this one might be more urban legend than a wives tale, but i've heard it about every make and model of car and engine. it always seems that the person who owned the car was either a friend or a relative of the guy telling the story. here's another one.... "that car had so much power, that i could punch it at 70 mph, and smoke the tires" . the car in question is usually a bone stock camaro that the guy used to own.
The new one seems to be that is you download some counter culture plans off the internet, then get $50 worth of house-ware parts at the local store and spend a couple of hours one weekend, you can make any gas engine run endlessly on some tap water and produce no pollution to boot. The only problem is it seems that if you can accomplish this, some secret group will hunt you down and take you out under mysterious circumstances thus erasing any benefit of gas savings you might have enjoyed during your spectacular, but brief final days.
I just recently heard the same thing! except it was 60 miles an hour. And the vehicle in question? stock 350 96 silverado 4X4. The guys quote after that was "Its just like a corvette!"
" You can NEVER have to much carburetor. My (insert small cube V8 here) had TWIN 900 holleys on a tunnel ram and it went better than a big block! "
it also seems that every chevelle is a real S.S., and that every muscle car has a 4:11 12 bolt posi in it. one time, a guy told me that he had a 350, with big block heads on it. by the way, does sawdust in an automatic transmission really keep it from slipping ? i assume that the trans would be short lived after dumping sawdust in it.
how true...i've heard and seen this before too. a friend of mine bought a 67 camaro with a stock 327 / powerglide. the thing would barely idle, and it would bog really bad and he couldn't figure out why. well, it had a 750 holley double pumper on it, and a single plane intake. we stuck a 600 vac. secondary on it, and the thing ran good. even with the single plane intake, it ran decent.
Beetlejuice55, I don't know about the sawdust trick, but a pint of brake fluid is supposed to get you home on a trans that you have otherwise fried the clutch packs in (once it cools down again, it's done, or so I'm told). A bananna peel in the diff is supposed to make a howling diff quiet, just long enough to sell it.
59 and 60 Chevys go airborne because of the fins. "I had one! It does!" Amazing how many "seasoned" car guys tell this one. Or the ad for the chevy for $500 that was really a vette.
The opening line of Bruce Springsteen's "Racing in the Street" : "I got a 69 Chevy with a 396, Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor" Um, weren't the Fuelie heads the Fuel Injection heads from the 327 Corvettes? How did he get them on a big block?
With a VERY accurate scale, you could prove a wheel/tire with higher pressure does weigh more. So no doubt it helped with traction by the same .000001%
FWIW we had a new mechanic that wouldn't believe us that an inflated tire weighs more (slightly) than a deflated one. Just so happens we had to do a tire change on one of the DC-6's that night, so we rolled it into the warehouse onto a scale and weighed it fully inflated and then after we let the air (Nitrogen in this case) out. It was 2 1/2 pounds lighter deflated (the Main Landing Gear tires on a 6 are 15.50 20's @ 100 Psi).
First there is a big difference between flat out lies and the often repeated wives tales that people believe in. Like... All flatheads over heat. generators are not as reliable as alternators that properly maintained and adjusted mechanical brakes are death traps when compared to the same size hydraulics of the same era. running an engine with no exhaust pipe will damage the engine or it will run poorly. All an engine needs is a vent to relieve the crankcase pressure. every time an old car quits running when it's warm...it vapor locked. amp meters are dangerous and the meters themselves cause fires. All of these are widely repeated and sworn to by honest people that honestly believe them to be gospel. We hear them so many times for so many years that they have to be true right? Not really. Now the guy that tries to tell me that he can get the front wheels of his 40 panel truck off the ground 2" powered by a 307 Chevy....he's just a fuckin' liar.
Heard that ground beef in the diff. will quiet it. Wouldn't want to be the one that removed that cover/ pumpkin.
Mercedes up to at least 1985 have a rear pump and can be push started. I've done it and the procedure is spelled out in the owner's manual. Had a running flathead that would run hot after a while (sooo what, you say...). After I pulled it for a SBC, I found one of the thermostats installed backwards. Onlyest thing I could think of was that some dork thought that it would slow down the flow and help it cool. After more thought, I realised that the Ford flathead is set up to cool like two separate four cylinders, and that there is no connecting passage between the two halves of the engine. Had a long argument with a Harley rider. Seems he had a trailer hitch that he built for his bike. A swingarm mounted hitch. Besides the very obvious wrongness of the whole concept, his main contention as to strength was that if you drilled a hole, tapped it and put a bolt in it, the part regained it's original strength. Needless to say, I was concerned everytime I saw him with a tool in his hand. Then there is the idea that the front brake on a motorcycle will kill you if you even look at the lever. Must be a strong one, as I've bought many a bike with worn out rear shoes and brand-y new pads in the front. Cosmo
And least we forget the clothes pins on the fuel line to prevent vapor lock and also moth balls in the gas tank for more pep.
Not quite a wives tale but a pretty funny story. My boss bought a brand new Ford F-250 Diesel back in 2000, His first diesel. After about six months of driving it he came to the conclusion that all handles on all the diesel gas pumps were green. So hes about 30 miles out of town when he pulls into a Mobil station, pulls up to the green handle, swipes his card and proceeds to fill his tank. Hops back in the truck, gets about 2 miles down the road when the truck starts running a really rough. He looks in the rear view to see if it was smoking and said there were fire balls shooting out of the exhaust, one after another until the thing just died. So he walks back to the filling station to talk to the mechanic, and as he passes the pump he just filled up at he notices the 92 octane sticker. Thats when he finds out not all green handles are diesel.
my daily driver is constantly refused for service anytime i try to take it to a dealership because its lowered. they are constantly trying to blame any problem on pinion angle (which was not changed) and RPMs (because i have a 22" wheel on the back). i call bullshit on both.
In a classified ad the abbreviation "body perf." means "body perfect". It actually means "body perforated by bullets".
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