History Things that worked, until someone in modern times decided they don't. Photo tread

I consider myself a student of oval track., drag race, and hot rod history and I am always amazed at how things that worked and worked will for years in hot rodding and racing suddenly get deemed unsafe, or that they won't or don't work.

Spilt rear wishbones come to mind, they have been used on hundreds maybe thousands of cars over the years everything from street driven hot rods, drag cars, road course specials and oval track cars.

I have been interested and studying period correct hot rods since jr high school in the mid 1990s, going to events and making friends with old time hot rodders and racers, and never once seen a car, or heard a old time hot rodder or racer speak of issues.

My father has been a going to the races since 1962, and involved on the pit side since the late 1960, in that time he has never heard of old time racers talk about issues with them breaking.

I am not saying that people haven't had them break, but I always wondered what is the number that have broken to the number of times they have been used, and how were they mounted?

This car has been running with the vintage stock car club I race with for 5 plus year and has been raced for 20 years or more.
It has about a 400 H.P. Small Block Chevy, runs super soft super sticky 12"-13" wide tires.


Vintage hot rod chassis

 

The first thing that came to mind was ammeters. They were used for ages on cars and now aren't. Was helping a friend with an electrical issue. He wired in an old ammeter like a voltmeter. That makes for a dead short.

 

Carburetors and points ignition. Both have worked over 100 years, now nobody wants to use them.

 

I built a "T" bucket in the mid '60's. Because of spaces issues (and influenced by Hugh Tucker's NHRA championship A/SR), I installed quarter-elliptic rear springs. They worked well, probably too well, as one of the rear suspension members (analagous to "split rear wishbones") broke within one month of getting the car on the road. These were constructed of 1" 1/8" wall square tubing and were quite short, which may have contributed to the problem.

To solve the problem, I angled the suspension members in and terminated them in one 1" chrome-moly Heim Joint, right below the front U-Joint. That worked perfectly and lasted indefinitely.

 

Bench seats. We used to travel with 3 adults across the front, because that's where the dinky little 12volt oscillating fan was mounted on a 110 degree day.

 

-Hydraulic Power Steering, or at least Hydraulic PS powered by a belt-driven pump
-Autronic Eye (how well it worked then is debatable)
-Crank windows
-Drum brakes

 

What I've noticed lately with YouTubers and Instagram folks is that they talk about how great aftermarket EFI and their modern GM engine is, but several of them spend countless hours trying to get something running because of a bad wire or bad sensor, or some give up and go back to a carburetor. Many also carry spare injectors and fuel injection computers. Not the picture of easy tuning and reliability everyone spews. Carburetors aren't the best at everything, but they're easy to troubleshoot on the side of the road, and if you have spark, fuel, and compression the car will run. Nothing but carburetors for me on my vintage stuff.

I keep putting bench seats in my vehicles and am not seeing the allure of buckets.

 

Crank windows is my pet peeve. I can't stand electric windows and when I bought my OT truck, I had to search high and low to find one with roll up windows. I had to buy one intended for a government purchase because they are really stipped down.

 

There are all kinds of philosophical layers to this.

G. K. Chesterton somewhere says something to the effect that it always was that doing a thing proves that it can be done; only the ideologues of his day would have it that doing a thing proves that it could never be done again. If anything, it's only got worse over the century since then. I keep encountering people who come very close actually to believing that the laws of nature change over time, causing things which were impossible in 1850 to be easy now, and — significantly — vice versa.

There is a political angle to this, because the obvious question which arises from the misapprehension is cui bono? But be that as it may.

On the other hand, getting past a linear conception of technological history is central to the spirit of the HAMB, even if we don't dwell on why promising technological trajectories are suddenly abandoned and others wilfully adopted. If "because the new one was obviously better" is in all kinds of ways unsatisfactory, "because it was Friday" is just stupid. Suffice it to say that there were good reasons and real reasons.

But context plays a role. If a solution seems to stop working for no reason, the first question to ask is whether the problem has changed. In the case of split bones in racing I suspect that it had something to do with a shift to a soft-rate, long-travel suspension mindset. A negligible lack of warp articulation became a significant lack of warp articulation.

 

Bumper jacks, from back in the days when cars really had bumpers!

 

I think the rear split wishbones get a bad rap these days because guys try using them with a torque tube, which causes binding because the front pivot points aren't in line with one another. In an open drive configuration that isn't an issue.

 

Some of it is government rules in emissions and newer stuff that is more efficient Like L head engines even lawn mower are stopping them

 

I don't believe that they suddenly become unsafe or won't work. It's gradual, as the parameters change, the older stuff gets phased out as the newer technology that meets the new demands takes over. The old stuff still works fine within its design parameters but can't compete under the new operating requirements.
Safe (unsafe) is a comparative. Generally speaking the more modern the car (race or street) the better the chances are of surviving a wreck. Is the new car safer or is the older car unsafe?

 

Flat tappet lifters

 

I love a bench seat. My '55 F100 had a bench seat 'til lately, wife Joey sat right next to me, (old style?)
One day a young cop stops us, wants to know about seat belts...We displayed the 3" wide aircraft types.
He was surprised, "Wasn't aware older trucks had seat belts, especially in the center..."
Yeah. Like it was 'factory'. Lucky he didn't ask for a smog cert!

 

Interesting story about the Autronic eye. Its main problem was it couldn't differentiate between car headlights and other lighting sources like street lights. Bill Lear (inventor of the 8 track cassette and eponymous Lear Jet among other things) solved the problem by coming up with a circuit that could tell if the light source was powered by DC (car lights) or AC (everything else) and got a patent. He then approached GM about licensing it, but they refused to pay his license fee. He then shopped it around but got no takers, as Detroit was loath to pay license fees to outside vendors (that went all the way back to the Selden patent). Closed cooling systems was invented in the '50s, they waited until the patent expired before using that technology. The guy that invented delay wipers tried interesting Detroit in those, again no takers. They then tried to sneak them into production a few years later with minor circuit changes without paying a license fee. He sued, but it took years before he got vindication and a settlement. There's a movie about this, 'Flash of Genius'.

 

I had no idea, and that's a really interesting tidbit of information. Thanks for that!

 

Ever drive 4 wheel drum brakes in heavy rain ?

 

Many times. What's your point?

 

Seems like an obvious point to me.

 

I have never had a problem with 4 wheel drum brakes driving in a heavy rain. This may be explained by the fact that I was never stupid enough to try to drive through a 2 foot deep pool of water.

 

Bad engineering works just fine...


...until it dosen't.

 

I've had issues with drum brakes in very heavy rain a few times, and I didn't drive through standing water. Scary when pressing the brake pedal has no effect at all...
But discs will do the same thing under those conditions, but will 'clear' faster than drums will.

 

Doesn't take 2 feet just enough to get the drums soaked .
Its OK , I'll ignore your ignorance

 

As long as you keep going in a straight line on a flat road.

If the wishbones' front pivots and the ball of the torque tube are in line there should be no bind either — again, as long as you keep going in a straight line on a flat road. As soon as you hit a single-wheel bump or a curve you'll find yourself with no rear roll articulation. Then, something will bend, wear rapidly, or break. That's true whether you've got a torque tube or an open driveshaft.

 

I've had four-wheel drums fade to absolutely nothing down a long hill in perfectly dry weather.

 

The horse and buggy.

 

• vent windows
• drip rails (did a better job of stopping the waterfall when you entered/exited the vehicle)
• ashtrays and lighter
• passenger side door and trunk key cylinders
• audible turn signals
• full size spare tires!!!
• Internal combustion engines-2035-California if they have their way

Re autronic eye, my Wife's 2020 daily has auto dimming headlights.

 

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