"Mechanical Genius" comments you've heard?

took the lark in for a front end alignment yesterday, guy comes over leans on the lift and say what year is this? 52 or 53?

Its a 63.

I had a 53 studebaker with flathead 6 and 3 speed no overdrive, had a 160 mph speedometer. not sure why though it would only run 130.

Dude, that car wouldnt run 130 if you pushed it out of a plane with a rocket on its ass.

 

Post above reminds me last week I saw a CL ad the other day for a "1940s Ford Tombstone Grille" .... the pic opens to a '30 Model A grille shell. Overpriced, at that. I was afraid to try to correct him.

 

Advice is what you pay for it . Brian Brennen is not the sharpest pencil in the box. But he can type. By way Street Rodder mag. is getting better article wise.

 

They don't spin but they do float around. It doesn't matter where the end gaps are. When you build an engine and pull it apart after it's run even a short time they wont be where you put them. Same goes for an engine from the factory that's never been apart. I've never seen rings oriented in any particular manner and believe me I've torn down my share of engines. You're right about the cross hatch though. It's just there to retain some oil.

By the way, the best I've heard in awhile.....a guy I know was having some trouble with the rear brakes on his truck, a co-worker told him if he clamped the hose off he the fluid would be diverted to the front brakes and he would have twice as much stopping power in the front so it would balance out.

 

State vehicle inspector - "you can't use bailing wire to hold up your exhaust"

Me - "Your right, its coat hanger wire"

 

I've made a reamer for it!!

 

I worked for a chain selling parts about twenty years ago. They sent out Sunday flyers with all kinds of "woofie wowser" specials...we were offering freon @ 99 cents a can and recharge kits for $1.99. A woman came in and asked where the freon was, and " How much will I need ?" I told her she shouldn't need any more than three cans, and could return whatever she didn't use. She bought three cans and a recharge kit and went on her way.

About an hour later I pick up the phone, and it's the same woman...
" I want to know if I can return my air conditioning recharge kit ?"
Says I "Not if you used it" to which she replies "I did, and it didn't work !"

I tell her to return to the store, and I'll check to make sure that she knows what she's doing.

Fifteen minutes later she shows up, we go out to her car, and it isn't equipped with air conditioning...I ask her where she "installed" the freon....

she sat in the car, rolled up the windows, and let three cans of freon loose in the interior !!

....made me wonder what she'd done to cause the evident brain damage.

 

When I worked at a tire store in Waco, Tx in about 1972 a guy comes in with his kid and the 383 Roadrunner that he had just bought the kid and has a set of 45,000 mile radials put on the car to get good mileage when the kid wanted wide ovals. about a month later they are back and the dad is raising hell because the right rear tire is bald and we had to have sold them bad tires. The fronts didn't show any wear and the left rear only showed marginal wear. We went a few rounds especially when the guy says that he rode with the kid all the time and the kid never hot rodded the car.

I couldn't count the number of times that I redid brake jobs on Monday that the owner of the car had done him self on Saturday and got all the parts mixed up or lost.

I replaced three rally wheels, a lower A frame and a rear axle shaft on a early 70 something Grand Prix because one of it's owners employees had jumped a curb with it making a U turn. The next week I had to replace two more wheels and do another alignment on the same car because the same female employee had jumped another curb with it.

Had one guy come in and complain about a noise in the "front end" of the car. I test drove it and put a wrench on every nut and bolt in the suspension and what ever else might be loose. He picks it up and comes right back and then takes me around the block and points to the dash and says "see the noise is still there". The noise was a pencil in the defroster duct that rattled on rough streets.

The classic was the guy who came in and says his car has something loose and banging in the rear end. Service writer tells me to go for a ride with him and every time we take a corner "Bang" but when we turn the next corner in the opposite direction the "BANG" is on the opposite side. I say his wife must have left her bowling ball in the trunk. He says no way. Back at the shop we open the trunk in front of half the crew and sure enough, there is her bowling ball.

 

A guy I know told me that the radio in his 55 Chev. never worked after he changed the rear springs. He was a licenced aircraft mechanic and worked for a major carrier,now out of business!

 

One of my friends was telling me a story about a guy at the drag strip with him. He had just got done running his OT car down the track and one of he guys in the pits asked him if he had an air tank to fill his tires up a little bit, and he said yes I do, but it won't do you any good, it only has about 10 pounds of air in it, the other guy said, that's fine, I only need like 5 pounds.

He tried to explain it to him that it will just equal the pressure out between the tire and the air tank, but he didn't believe him and still wanted to use it, since he only needed 5 pounds of air.

 

Twenty something guy hanging around the shop telling me all about this 64 Chevelle he is going to get and put a 454 in it. Actually did get the Chevelle, probably from his Grandma. Nice car with a 283. Shows it to me on Friday and Monday says he put the 454 in over the weekend. "Went right in". 454 stickers and a scoop under the hood on the small block. Shrugged my shoulders and said " nice job"

 

Yes.
.

 

had a 210 '57 chev 2dr wagon years ago, people used to argue with ME and say that it was indeed a nomad.

 

30+ years ago while in college had a dumb room mate with a beautiful girlfirend and another friend with a wicked sense of humor. One night we're all sitting around our apartment and it comes time for the girl (poster child for "dumb blond") to head for her apartment across town. She leaves and pretty soon is back, her car won't start. Boyfriend goes out to be the hero and it is dead, won't click or anything. I get in to look things over and it's not in park, it's in reverse (Merc Bobcat with auto on floor). I slip it into park, hit the key and it starts. I shut it off and get out, putting it back in reverse. She gets in and nothing. Smartass friend saw what I did and he tries it. Wala! it starts for him, too. Gets out, slipping it back into reverse and she tries again. Nothing. Smartass tells her he will start it for her again and when she wants to go to class in the morning let him know and he'll make sure to start her car for her (they live at the same apartment complex). Boyfriend thinks he has a real friend. For the next month or so, smartass trades starting her car for breakfast, house cleaning and eventually sex. Boyfriend is blind to all this. We were actually at smartass's apartment one night and boyfriend notices some of blondie's panties lying under the edge of smartass,s couch. Smartass tells him she is doing his laundry for him for starting her car every morning and they got mixed up with his things. Went on for months.

SPark

 

A friend stops by my apt to show off his 51 ford shoebox There is about 4 of us looking it over and the hood is open. Parked just off of a busy street a older fellow pulls into the parking lot offering us assistance to fix what ever was wrong with he car.We explain to him that we were just looking it over and there was nothing wrong with it. He said that none of us probably know what this engine was (flathead) and how he use to work on these all the time in his dads shop. He changed water pumps all the time. We all just agree with him being nice but then the tells us that these engines don't have valves in them and that they run on vacuum. He use to build race engines with his dad and they had to boost the vacum to them to get them to run hard. We just all look at each other and see how much more we can "learn" from this guy. I ask if they run a reed valve like in a 2 cycle boat engine. Oh yah that is exactly what they run. Haha I thanked him and told him to keep an eye out for vacum pumps off a diesel for me. He agreed and drove off. He was alot of help and we learned allot that day Haha.

 

Great to know, just bought a 53 Ford Flathead V8 Haven`t touched it yet Still trying to get to know it

 

I had a student who " built alot of engines professionally before he came to school" said that the cam bearings on the old small blocks had different journal dimensions. Correct I said the rear one is smaller. No No it's the front one thats small he retorted. I said if that's the case I guess you probably had to get that cam moving pretty good to get it into the block. After some thought he recanted and said he now remembered it was the rear one. Good kid turned out to be a great student.

 

Had a hell of an argument with two coworkers that swore up and down 327s were stock in '57 Chevys.

 

Probrobly 3 or 4 times this has happened. Somebody comes up to us at a car show in our 58 impala and says " What year is it? I had one just like it"
If you had one just like it you should know what freakin year it is. Old people..

 

i had a guy tell me he had 396 heads on his 350....

 

I had a fella bring his Jeep CJ into the shop complaining of a vibration. I rode around the block and said "that's enough". I looked under the Jeep and saw the pinion angle was WAY off. He said he had a local repair shop/alignment place put the axles under it. He went back to the alignment shop and confronted them about the problem, the owner told him set the angles himself. Well sure the angles where just right when the Jeep was on the lift at full droop, but with the weight of the Jeep on the springs the angle was severely out.

 

Hmmm....must of used alot of JB Weld on that one

 

I had a coworker bragging up an engine he had built up one time. Said the cam was so radical they had to run two vacuum lines to the tranny modulator to get enough vacuum so it would shift right.

 

-As already mentioned (I skipped the last few pages of posts) there is, in fact, such a thing as drilling a square hole with a triangular drill bit.

And it's nothing new; A fellow by name of Harry Watts patented a drill and holder in 1914, based on a geometric concept discovered thirty or forty years earlier.

Getting back to the topic, though, I'll note that it's scary how easy it is to convince people my lifted 4X4 Corvair is mostly stock except for the "extremely rare off-road option package, you know, like an early Eddie Bauer".

That can possibly be at least partially explained by the fact that nobody under 30 even knows what a Corvair is, other than the fact some old guy named Ralph Nader that nobody knows doesn't like them for some reason... but still.

I used to work for a guy that fancied himself something of a car guy. Being the boss, he ordered a new shop truck, but the truck got misordered and arrived with a small block instead of a big block. (It was meant for a tow rig.)

He had to ask me if I was "sure" it was a small-block, and then had me describe in detail the difference, "just to be sure".

Once, in a parking lot, talking to a guy who liked my '66 Toronado, just after I told him it was front-wheel drive: "So the engine's in the back?"

Doc.

 

-Not only the drums, but years ago you also wanted to have your new shoes "arced" to match. Meaning that you measured the finished ID of the drums, and ground the shoes to match that radius in what was essentially a specialized bench sander.

The machines are antiques now, like brake shoe riveters, but they do still have some value if you run drum-brake cars.

Doc.

 

Some of these stories are gold & they remind me of a classic a friend told me years ago. He's like 10 or 15 years older than me so it was before my time, but it goes like this.

He had an Austin A30 or something that he was rodding. Anyway, his dad got sick of this car being around the house so he said "I'll give you a part of my work yard to work on your car". So that agreed they decided to tow the car to the dad's yard. Anyway, they got to a main intersection and the lights went red. When the light went green the dad took off (fast) and pulled the front bumper off the Austin - and kept on driving. So friend sitting at the lights, not going anywhere, when a roadside assistance guy lobbs up, jumps out, and says "I've worked on heaps of these. I bet I know what's wrong with it". He lifts the bonnet to find no engine or gearbox. He turns to the friend and says "Where did you come from"?.

Good thing he knew how to fix it!

 

"It's a 289 bored out to a 351."

-KK

 

I hear this stuff all day at work from the local know it all, like all the custom metalwork he has done with bondo or the fact that his old 67 chevelle that he had in the seventies was the fastest thing out there and it had over 500hp but then he goes on to tell you how he used to have trouble beating those little 340 dusters.

 

As I remember the Square drill bit had three flutes and was on a universal joint that allowed it to flop around. never saw one drill a hole.

 

Could it be that these "REALLY DUMB PEOPLE" get their information from people just like you? Their only really dumb mistake is actually trusting you and your answers..... And did you say the misinformation is their fault not yours??
Give people a break. They trust you for an honest answer, instead you play them for a fool.