Remembering how old cars REALLY were!
isellhondas
Member Posts: 20,342
I was talking to a long retired shop owner awhile back and he reminded me of some things from the "old days".
Back then, most shops had a valve grinding machine because most cars needed a valve job around the 40-50,000 mile range. Today, valve jobs are a thing of the past.
By around 70,000 miles the engines were getting tired and due for an overhaul. If they made it to 90,100,000 miles it was time for a rebore.
Brake jobs were about a 25,000 mile event and if your original tires lasted 20,000 miles, you were lucky. Automatic transmission overhauls at 50-70,000 were par for the course.
Every town had at least one muffler shop and a radiator shop. Mufflers usually lasted just a few years and radiator recore jobs were common. Today, mufflers and radiators can easily last the life of a car.
Oil changes were done around the 2000 mile mark and spark plugs were shot after 12,000 miles.
Yep, they sure don't make them like they used to!
Comments
And a generator shop, where they would actually rewind starters and the like.
Oh, yeah...the old independents would NEVER install a parts store generator or starter on a customers car. Back in those days, they REPAIRED things. They would never trust their reputation to an assembly line rebuilt item.
The gas stations (which all had shops and not mini markets) they were a different story. They generally lacked the equipment and/or skills to rebuild something.
Don't forget the chassis lube with that oil change,,,,,,hhmm maybe a new set of points every other spark plug change
Mufflers... I had an '82 Accord that I probably put 4 mufflers on in 12 years...
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I don't know if they were aluminum then like they are now. If you did a lot of short trips, the moisture wouldn't get burned out.
Midas shops used to only sell (and push) exhaust systems and shocks. Now they do a lot more repair work since mufflers (and shocks) last so much longer now. They would have gone broke otherwise!
Radiators are now aluminum with plastic tanks! No way to "rod and repair" one of those but they still last longer. We used to use plain water with maybe a rust preventive.
And the environmental laws have sure changed things. Radiator shops has some NASTY chemicals in those tanks!
Got yelled at for breaking a block on a Galaxie 500 due to an unexpected cold snap one Thanksgiving. No one told me that you had to change the radiator fluid for the winter. That's what I get for borrowing my Mom's car that week to get to school an hour away.
Growing up in So. California we didn't have that problem. I can't ever remember using my car's heaters.
I used to have to re-gap the points every 5-6 weeks on my '66 Triumph and replace them every 3000 miles or so . Plug gaps had to be checked every 3 mo IIRC. I replaced distributor caps or rotors at least two or three times. Electronic ignition is a wonderful thing.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
My son's '87 BMW (sold last year) required a valve adjustment every 15K miles (including a new valve cover gasket).. This doesn't seem all that old.
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Old Volkswagens called for valve adjustments every 3000 miles!!
I used to lay on my back under my VW and they rarely needed adjustments.
Model T Ford owners are probably sick of seeing this famous letter, but it's fun for us "moderns' to see what things cost in 1928.
Repair Estimate for a Model T Ford
So a new fender in '28 was $3.50.
That's equivalent to $47.70 in today's prices.
RockAuto will sell me a front fender for $43.79.
Labor would be lot more. And paint (although I do have a can of "Japan Black" in the basement. Likely all dried up.)
In 1928 Technology was expensive but labor was cheap. Now it's technology that's cheap but labor is expensive.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
Here in Vermont where they use tons of chloride on the roads in the winter.... the BODY of most cars would last about 4 winters before there were fist-sized holes in the sheet-metal. An engine would NEVER have time to actually wear out. Most pre 1980s vehicle would suffer this body-rot.
This is one reason I still prefer German-branded vehicles. They carry a 12-year / unlimited mileage corrosion warantee. My VW received new fenders from the factory on THEIR dime.
Even modern Chevy trucks ALWAYS rust over the rear wheels. It is kind of like a Chevy trademark.
Except that Rock Auto fender is probably a Chinese made knockoff that won't fit correctly.
20-25.00 to overhaul an engine! Wow! Labor must have been 1.00 per hour in those days.
$1.00 per hour? Heck, I was paid $1.00 per hour in '74.
Maybe $0.50 per hour?
@isellhondas, could be. If you want the CAPA certified one, the price jumps to $52.79.
Average income in 1928 was probably about $2,000 a year, (according to Hemmings Motor News at any rate) so yeah, a buck an hour might be close.
Another thing I though of was the fact that I remember having to change radiator and heater hoses pretty often back in the "old days" but I can't remember ever doing this in recent years nor did the Honda store where I worked ever (that I remember) recommend changing any of these on the used cars they would carefully inspect. Same thing with "fan" belts now called "drive belts".
I did replace s serpentine belt on a Buick I owned a few years ago but I did this as a preventive thing.
Really? 1.00/hr in 1974? That doesn't seem right.
In 1974 I was managing a large Auto Center for Sears and I started my entry level "tire busters" at the minimum wage at the time which was 2.55/hr.
Of course, this was in So, California but I can't imagine another state being less than half that amount.
Believe me, they earned their money! On Saturdays I would have at least ten of them with another three guys manning the Coates 30-30 tire machines. A Coates machine would last us
no more than a year or so. Those days are LONG gone for Sears....too bad.
If anyone wants to borrow my compression tester, just shout.
Yep, $1.00/hr. I was in high school and took the work at the garage even though is was under minimum wage. Somebody reported the boss, then we instantly got a raise to $1.70/hr, min wage in Ohio at the time. I guess it was '72, not '74...
"Average income in 1928 was probably about $2,000 a year"
That seems awfully high to me...
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That's what I thought, but it was about right, according to IRS info. About 1/3 of returns were for $1000-$2000, 1/3 for $2000-$3000, 1/3 for more than $3000.
I guess there might have been a lot of folks under $1000 (the minimum, it seems).
I remember my mother making about $4000-$5000 per year as a school teacher... in 1968. 40 years later..
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I made $1.50/hr in the summer of 1974, working for cash in my stepfather's retread shop. Later that fall, $1.75/hr as a busboy at Bob Evans. 1975: $2.10 at McDonalds. I think the restaurants were actually less than minimum wage, because they provided a meal..
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School teachers were SO underpaid back then it was sad and I really respect the ones like your mother who cared enough to take those jobs.
Working in a retread shop must have been smelly miserable work. Were it not for cheap retreads in the old days I would have been walking!
I had forgotten about the Niehoff brand! They made tune up parts!
What ever happened to Champion Spark Plugs? They were hot stuff back in those days
although most shops preferred to use AC or Autolites. I haven't seen a Champion plug in years!
The retread shop was where I learned to bust my a--. And, that being 16 yrs old didn't mean that I didn't have to pull my own weight. Very hard, hot work, and probably way too dangerous for a minor.. but, that lesson served me well. Being able to back up your promises with actual productive labor is a skill that kept me from starving in the recession of the early '80s..
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Oh yeah, even though the mfr. might not recommend changing things like belts and hoses, doing so is good preventive maintenance. I've even changed out radiators because the ones BMW gives you aren't good for more than 100K, ditto water pumps.
Woe betide the owner who fails to change the timing belt on an interference engine (although, to be fair the makers usually do specify the change intervals for those).
Remember bias-ply tires, they were cheap (as little as $15.00 IIRC) but they were only good for 10-15K miles.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
I don't remember new tires being that cheap but in the town where I grew up we had three places that recapped tires. I seem to remember depending on size that they were around 15.00 each. a buddy worked at one for awhile and I would drop in to see him. I remember the smells and the HEAT from those molds. Do they still make recaps?
Speaking about old stuff on cars.... I recall the original "Steel Belted Radials" had a tenancy to become wire-brushes on the outside edges. Apparently, the wires underneath the tread would squirm and move as you drove and stick out of the sidewall.
Back when engines were about as complicated as a wood stove, you could even "hand lap" new valves into the cylinder head if the old one burned out and you couldn't afford a machine shop. You sat there like a Native American starting a fire, with the head on your lap and the valve being churned by your two palms. This method would NEVER give you optimum compression (as machine shops did fancy angle cuts) but it gave you enough to run the car quite decently. And you could run those big old iron heads on a large belt sander to "mill" them flat, before putting on a new head gasket. Crude methods, but in the 50s and 60s, engines were pretty crude, too, compared to modern powerplants. On the assembly line, they used to knock new pistons and rings into blocks using wooden hammers!
G'day
Hand lapping valves. Unfortunately, I can recall doing it; never again!. However a mate reground a head, which had heat warped, using grinding paste and a thick sheet of glass as a true surface. It took him most of summer, off and on. However it meant that the two central cylinders ended up fractionally larger than the two outer ones and resulted in an odd engine character. I cannot reproduce the noise, except odd!
Cheers
Graham
RE: hand lapping valves: I even did it on an Austin Healey 3000---ran pretty good, too! But compression never went much over 95 psi.
It was hard to bend a cylinder head on an iron block--you had to pretty much reach volcano-like temperatures. Nowadays, an alloy cylinder head can warp if you look at it wrong.
When your DOHC aluminum motor shows "H" on the temp gauge, SHUT THE CAR DOWN!
Hey, Mr. S...
I was just browsing back in some of the topics I started and I had to laugh when I read the one where you and I managed to annoy the hell out of a guy who swore 1964 Rivieras came with 401 engines as standard equipment. Of course, they didn't and when we tried to explain that all of the publications backed us up, he really went off on both of us.
That was in 2000! 14 years ago!!
I knew a guy who had an old slant six Dodge Dart that blew a radiator hose on the freeway one night. Traffic was heavy and by the time he was able to get if off the road the engine SIEZED up!
He had it towed to his friends gas station for the night and planned to just junk it the next day since it had something like 150,000 miles and was old and beat up.
The next morning, his buddy arrived at work, saw the Dart, saw the blown hose and replaced it and started the car right up! The guy drove it another couple of years with no ill effects.
Yeah, try THAT with that modern DOHC car!
tune ups every 10K , oil changes every 2K ( I still do it every 3K, its a habit I cant' break), rust, mufflers, brakes, etc... but lets not forget safety. No crumple zones, metal dashboards and steering wheels that would not break away , forget about the shapes of them. I love the old cars, and will always have the memories but the new ones are much much better overall.
Manual valve lapping? Look familiar?
you know, I might still have one of those somewhere....
Sadly, mine was nowhere that fancy. I made do with a piece of wooden dowel with a rubber suction cup thing on it. Fingers were almost worn out by the experience. Never again!
Cheers
Graham
I had a coronet that had the old slant six, those engines took a beating. Couldn't kill the things.
BTW Isell great topic.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Thanks! This was an old moldy topic that I started years ago. Please jump in!
Many cars in the 1950s used oil bath air filters. These worked well but were a mess to clean. Mostly you saw them on old flathead engines and early V-8s. Not sure who was the last to use an oil bath filter, but the last flathead in a car was I think Plymouth in 1959....(edit: Nope I'm wrong--it was the Rambler up to 1965). The military used Dodge flatheads all the way up to 1968!
I dropped one of those oil bath air filters when I was working in a gas station, right in the
engine compartment of a car! It was a Y Block Ford and what a MESS it made!!
I think you are correct on that 1959 Plymouth although Rambler and Studebaker MIGHT have gone another year or two with a flathead.
Oh you're right about that! 1965 was the last year a domestic manufacturer used a flathead engine. Not sure when Studebaker quit the flathead...maybe 61 was the last year? It makes sense that the "little guys" would struggle on with flatheads, since they had to "make do with less"--and did a pretty good job of it, too. I know that 60s era Checkers had a Continental flathead that was converted to OHV--it very obviously looks like a flathead engine with a cylinder head bolted on top.