Hot Rods Went to the auto supply store today OH MY!

Yeh, I hear and agree with many of the comments, been there, done that......got the T- shirt.
Must admit, we are living in an entirely different world, and here's a newsflash...it didn't happen overnight but as we've been hearing a lot lately, it's the "new normal".
Pick a day or two out of your week and think about your various activities, I'll bet most of us will say we got less than the expected outcome.
I guess we will ultimately accept certain things and/or make the required adjustments.
I had a shop foreman that had a very short response when people came complaining that they didn't like certain changes that were being made in the company, he would just say "you aren't required to like it" as part of your employment agreement.
Maybe we had it too good!

 

A little comedy, helps out now and then !
With apologies to @anthony myrick .

 

Okay, one more comment and then, I promise, I will leave this alone. There is a very large industrial supply in Chattanooga that I found when I first moved to this area. This is the place that I went to when I wanted that one thing that I knew I could make work on anything I was building or modifying, automotive or otherwise. It's a very old place with wooden bins that went to the ceiling and stretched way back into the darkness lit by the occasional single light bulb. They have a hose shop that can make any type of hose for any application. The guys who work behind the counter know exactly what they have and if you weren't sure of exactly what you wanted, they could come up with something that worked. It was one of those places where you knew you were in hardware heaven, and I loved going there.

The original owner died a couple of years ago and his daughter took over the business. The first thing she did was go through all the inventory and anything that they hadn't sold a sizeable quantity of got hauled off for scrap, air and hydraulic fittings, tools, wire wheels, hill side washers or anything that wasn't currently bringing in a profit. I know this because I bought half a 25 gallon cardboard barrel of new 6" stringer bead wheels, about 90 of them dusty from sitting on the shelf, for $35.00. I had gone to the counter and asked about buying just one and the price for one in a plastic package was $26. The counter man knew me and took me in the back, showed me the barrel and said, "$35 and it's yours with a receipt".

The daughter had taken the company in another direction. She didn't want walk-in customers. Instead, she was installing parts vending machines in local manufacturing plants with pre-packaged parts for specific applications. The worker in the plant goes to the machine, swipes his ID card, goes back to his work station and installs the parts. Inventory control and it eliminates the people in the parts crib.

I don't like it, there's nothing I can do about it, but I'll remember how it was fondly. Same way I feel about automotive parts houses. I won't say another word about this, I promise.

 

I take pleasure in getting the opportunity to whip this one out, I'll ask why (fill in the blank) things that you could depend on being stocked aren't being stocked anymore.
"They don't sell" my usual response is "well, they definitely aren't going to sell if they aren't on the shelf"!
Yes, we didn't know how good we had it!

 

Taxifornia started an inventory tax even with companies that stocked old obsolete parts that fit their machines years ago… we hid shit all over the place. Threw out a lot.

 

It's amazing that people still don't grasp the concept that inventory that doesn't turn COSTS a company money every single day it sits there. It costs them to insure it, it costs them to count and inventory it every year, it costs them space where they could stock something that does sell. The retail industry estimation is dead inventory cost companies on average 20-30%. Just because it's paid for doesn't mean it's just sitting there for free waiting for you to come buy it once every 10 years.

 

I think lots of people understand that slow moving inventory costs a company money, they just lament the fact that these old companies which hold on to it, are disappearing.

Too bad it couldn't just be put into big bins on pallets and auctioned off to amateur resellers instead of scrapped or dumped.

 

Our local hardware store basement was chocked full of everything needed to keep a 1913 mining operation running. It was like heaven down there, with everything in wooden crates, stacked to the ceiling.

Until it wasn’t. Went down there a couple of years later and all the old treasures were gon. Modern shelving and lighting displaced it and the only stock was the typical fresh off the boat import junk we all love to hate.

Nostalgia is nice, but if it doesn’t sell……

 

I was working on my truck the other day and was using a 9/16ths wrench and a guy wanting to speak to me noticed the wrench and said 'oh, your truck was before being 'upgraded' to metric?' That motherfuker got an assreaming he'll never forget! 'upgraded' I went ballistic.

 

"Too bad it couldn't just be put into big bins on pallets and auctioned off to amateur resellers instead of scrapped or dumped."

Sometimes it is but the scrappers outbid the resellers because they are too cheap because they know they might be sitting on it for a while themselves and now we are back to holding cost.

cannot blame the scrapper when they are paying more than resllers want to pay for the item.

 

I prefer metric
Had to “re-learn” the fractional system when I started working at the hot rod shop. Had almost zero fractional tools in my work tools
Boss didn’t like me measuring things in millimeters.

I’m might get spoiled having students at the parts store. Needed a couple merc parts today, looked up the members, he forwards that to the store.
Done
With my commercial account, I had the parts people’s personal number. I would look up the part on their system, forward the links and done.

 

Metric?
On the HAMB?
What's the world coming to?

 

Might chop my merc something like 76.2mm in front and around 100mm in the back.

 

The ancient, most dreaded word "WHITWORTH"

 

“They ain't metric, they ain't inches, you never can find a wrench to work on them” - Mater, Cars 2.

Whitworth is easy. Try finding a die to fix British Standard Brass thread on the back of an old Jones tachometer.

Cheers,
Harv

 

Any real reason why you still live here?

You seem to complain about it a whole lot.

 

That guy need not fret over it, most repro stuff I have used lately has been made from metric stock. A fuel sending unit for a '65 C10 had a brass female fitting that took an 18mm wrench, and my personal new favorite thing to hate, 5/16-18 bolts with 12mm heads. Worm gear hose clamps also are appearing in this danged ol' aggravating metric mess, so I now pack up just about every tool in the garage when I go to work on other folks' stuff. Helps keep my rants to a minimum and my blood pressure within spec.

 

Brake caliper and wheel cylinder bleed screws have been metric on the last few I replaced, too.

 

Other way 'round.

Metric is where the world is.

Metric is the world that the HAMB is coming to.

Neither a 25/32", nor 27/64" combination wrench is not a reasonable tool to have in one's toolbox.

 

Yup, knew there was something else I had forgotten about, makes you also have to get in and out from under the car an additional time.

 

[QUOTE="gimpyshotrods, post:

Neither a 25/32", nor 27/64" combination wrench is not a reasonable tool to have in one's toolbox.[/QUOTE]

Now there are some wrenches designed before my time
but
I grew up with them in the old tool boxes my dad had around,
still I have some

As for metric stuff, just another tool in my box

 

A 25/32" wrench is a great tool to have if you have a 25/32" nut or bolt.

These n/32" sizes were standards in the early days, pretty much disappeared by the '50s, but every now and again a guy comes across one. Last time for me was in a welding gas regulator, it was either 23 or 25/32", and I had to go out and dig up a socket in the pails at the used tool store, no metric socket was close enough.

 

You are so right!! I can’t even find a good auto parts store that stocks or can even order Lucas wiring harness smoke. Of course I need positive earth smoke and negative earth smoke. I have all the Lucas special tools for installing the new smoke, but I am having extreme difficulty in locating new smoke. Aftermarket smoke doesn’t last as long as OE Lucas smoke either.

 

Hey @Truckdoctor Andy
My favorite LUCAS advertisement, truth in advertising!

 

Are you doing that after you move the steering wheel to the right side of the car?

 

Nope. Maybe if I worked for the postal service.
That’d be a cool delivery vehicle

 

It wouldn’t. I needed 1/4” NPT x 18. Checked with my thread gauge. Ordered 1/4” NPT x 18. Package says 1/4” NPT x 18. Actual part in package is 1/4” NPT x 20.

 

Back in my NAPA auto parts days, everything in the store had a classification indicating the anticipated sales. D class were the fastest sellers, going down to A and then W for warehouse stock and O for obsolete. Small stores might only keep D and C class items while larger stores like ours might stock all the way down to A. We even kept some W class stuff because we had more call for them than normal. But every year, we went through reclassification, as sales for some items slowed while others climbed. Some items were sent back to the warehouse while new items were added.

I can remember in the early 80s we stocked dozens of sets of GM V8 points. By the time I left in the mid 90s, sales had dropped to the point that a couple of sets would be plenty.

Times change. The vehicle population changes. People change. We have to deal with it even if we don't like it.

 

No such a thing, by definition National Pipe Taper (and Straight) in 1/4" nominal size is 18 threads per inch (TPI).
Was this actually a taper thread? If straight, it would most likely actually be 1/2-20, which is a regular fine thread (UNF).
If tapered, could it have been actually 19 TPI, in which case it could be BSPT (British Standard Pipe Taper)?