Cars

I learned about cars by helping Dad work on the family beaters.
Before I left for college, the 2 family cars of interest (to me) were
a 55 Olds, because it had snort, and 49 Mercury, which I thought looked great, about this color:

Many 49 Merc coupes got chopped, which looked silly to me, but I preferred the 4 door anyway.

When we married, Amy had a 57 Chevy which had been pounded to crap.
We bought a 61 Merc, because cheap and a nice dark blue.
Our Merc had the 292 V8 originally introduced in the Thunderbird;  we called it ThunderMerc.

Leaking power steering was quickly replaced by manual.
With open exhaust, 2-speed automatic, and throttle floored,
ThunderMerc did not shift into high gear until nearly 80mph.
It was nearly as fast in reverse as first gear, but pathologically unstable.
When that transmission eventually blew, it was replaced by a 3 speed manual with floor shifter.
This massively confused the speedometer, which indicated 59 while being clocked at 85.
We drove it from Potsdam NY to Amy's folks near Batavia in well under 4 hours.
Gas mileage increased to over 20mpg on Interstates.

While at Clarkson, I ran a Texaco gas station as a foreign car garage.
We bought a 1962 MGA 1600 MkII, advertised in Competition Press & Autoweek, which had been flipped at Bryer.


I bought a 1964 Glas 1300GT cheap from a GI who had brought it back from Germany.
Running across a Maserati similarly styled by Frua prompted writing this story.

It was cheap because:

  • clutch would not disengage
  • engine would not shut off
Not stopping was because a stuck high beam flasher relay effectively bypassed the ignition switch.
Replacing that relay was easy, but I also rewired it to no longer bypass the ignition switch.
The clutch problem was caused by broken springs in the friction plate.
That was solved by welding the clutch solid at my weekly evening welding class.
More about Glas GT becoming BMW 1600GT.

Our Econoline van with surprisingly little rust came with a very tired 144cid engine;
we swapped in a healthy 200cid engine.  Main problems with this vehicle were in very cold weather;
Brasher Falls temperatures often dropped below zero, then the steering would get very stiff
and the transmission would be impossible to shift.  We learned to leave it in neutral when parked.
The engine would start (with clutch depressed, of course), then release the clutch
and let the engine stir transmission oil long enough to warm it, enabling shifting.

maintained by blekenbleu