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VK6BE > CARS 18.06.08 03:05l 101 Lines 5933 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : D62307VK6BE
Read: GUEST
Subj: re: Were we talking about cars?
Path: DB0FHN<DB0FOR<DB0MRW<DK0WUE<ON0BEL<ON4HU<VE3UIL<VK2DOT<VK2TV
Sent: 080618/0045Z @:VK2TV.#MNC.NSW.AUS.OC #:39635 [Kempsey, QF68JX] $:D62307VK
From: VK6BE@VK2TV.#MNC.NSW.AUS.OC
To : CARS@WW
That's right, Andy. My first car was my Dad's A model Ford, which I bought
from him when I was discharged from the forces. It was extremely reliable,
and at about 20 m.p.g. economical to run by the standards of those days
with petrol at 1/6 a gallon. However with the petrol and oils we used in
those days it needed a decoke and valve grind about every 6000 or 7000
miles, and I did that work myself since I could not afford to pay a garage
to do the work. Then there were the points! A special litle flat file was
poked between the points and run back and forth a few times which would
probably do the job. One tip if you did not have a file was to take out
the points and buff them on the side of a match box. That worked well
unless the points were badly pitted.
I can't remember much about the maintenance of the old T model, as I was
very young at that time, but I remember my father filing the points on the
buzzer that chopped up the 6 volts DC from the battery so that the
sparking coil could transform it to about 22000 V to start the engine. I
also remember my father checking whether there was life in the battery by
putting a spanner across the terminals!!! Mechanical work was pretty
crude!
He was more likely to flatten the battery than test it!
Another strange feature of the T model was that it had splash feed for the
lubricating system. The big end bearings had little scoops on them and
they scooped up oil as they revolved and threw it round the cylinder
walls. This gave sufficient lubrication until the car was climbing a steep
grade, Then the oil in the sump ran down one end and the front big ends
lacked oil and began to knock. You could get over this by reversing up the
hill which kept the oil in the sump down the other end and all the ig ends
happily spashing in the oil.
I also remember one owner having a big end bearing fail and so he wrapped
the journal with bacon rasher and clamped the bearing round the journal
again and got home that way. Why he had bacon rashers in the car we were
not told!. The engines were very slow revving of course.
Post WW2 I bought a heap of parts from a farmer, the remains of an Austin
Six, which had been a nice car in its time (1940 model I think). I rewired
this and had the engine rebored and assembled and away it went. It was a
very nice car with wood grained dash and semaphore direction indicators
which meant I no longer had to stick my arm out the window to indicate a
stop or a right turn. A Vanguard followed with a wet sleeve motor, four
huge cylinders and the necessity to decoke and rotate the sleeves every
few thousand miles.
Nowadays it is a Ford Falcon (4 litres), which has done 160 000 km with no
attention to the engine at all, no decoking and about 30 mp.g. Heater for
the cold weather and AC for the hot, a service every 10 000 km and a life
expectancy of the motor of at least 200 000 km. My son got 300 000 out of
his before the engine died on the Freeway near Perth.Embarrassing!
TVs! My first was home brew.1958, B and W, or, to be correct, green. The
picture tube was a 5BP1 from a wartime radar set, the IF strip used 6AC7s,
also disposal. The oscillators were built from part from the local radio
shop and I got a turret from somewhere - can't remember where. EHT was
supplied by disposals transformer. This worked quite well - we only had
one station at the time but I remember seeing endless episodes of Sherlock
Holmes. It was at the time of the record conditions on VHF due to the high
sunspot peak, and I remember strange pictures appearing which we later
found came from Russia, 5000 miles to the north of us. This TV came to a
sudden end when the filament transformer blew through and EHT of 2000 VDC
appeared on the metal parts. My son happened to touch the chassis and got
a bite. There was no danger as the EHT was only at a couple of milliamps,
but I decided to dismantle the thing rather than take risks..Nowadays we
can buy a small colour TV for about $150.
Your last remark is right on the ball, Andy. A couple of years ago I
bought an Epson colour printer for my photography (nearly $500). I went to
the agents a couple of weeks ago to buy replacement ink cartridges only to
be told they don't make them any more and none were available. "Buy a new
printer - Made in China - $99".I looked around some shops and found one
which still sold the cartridges for this machine. Just about everything we
buy here in the line of consumer goods is labelled "Made in China". The
result is that Australian made consumer goods have just about disappeared,
clothing elecrical, shoes, and now the Australian car industry is under
considerable pressure from overseas manufacturers in Japan, Indonesia,
Malaysia and now China.
Cheers,
Bob VK6BE.
> nd I'd only do that because the damn thing wouldn't start!
>
> Now you get in and turn the key and they start 1st time every time. And they
> do that whether you've maintained them or not, and whether it's hot or cold.
>
> Then there's tellys. We had a colour TV in 1969 for the start of regular colur
> broadcasting in the UK. It lasted a year. Upto the early 80s tellys laster a
> few years at best. Then all of a sudden they started lasting 10+ years. Part
> of that was me no longer buying UK tellys but stuff from Sony and Panasonic.
> But in general goods starting lasting a long time.
>
> Then we started outsourcing production to China and in many cases we're back
> to stuff lasting 10 minutes. My DTV set-top box lasted 13 months before a
> chip in the SMPS blew up leaving 8 pins in the PCB and no chip. An identical
> set-top box for the TV in the bedroom lasted 16 months before it did the
> same last night at 3am! When they worked they were excellent. But what's the
> point complaining they only last just past the warranty period when they
> only cost 16ukp each. A pound a month isnt worth my time moaning!
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