Purt near ain't nowhere to hook one up anymore. LOLI am working at a GM dealership, out of 15 techs , no one uses a vacuum gauge to tune and diagnose anymore. I've only seen its use mentioned here a few times
Purt near ain't nowhere to hook one up anymore. LOLI am working at a GM dealership, out of 15 techs , no one uses a vacuum gauge to tune and diagnose anymore. I've only seen its use mentioned here a few times
Overly nostalgic for sure but that was then and this is now.Full disclosure. I grew up in a family shop that had been building race cars and hot rods since the model A up hrough racing on the beach at daytona and drag cars in the 70's and hot tords in the 80's. It was old school (outdated) by the time I came along I was exposed to a lot of things people thought was nuts even in the lat 80's early 90's so my perspective is probably skewed.
But I was thinking about how a lot of the things that my grandad and great grandad did are lost due to a bunch of reasons.
I mean who re-arches leaf springs with an anvil and a hammer? Who builds slant sixes for a dirt track car? Who has factory crank counterweights machined down and knife edged anymore? Who modifies a chassis to use two different length torsion bars on a dirt car? Who the hell hotrods old Plymouth flatheads?
A lot of these practices are lost dues to better options now days and many due to it being more cost effective to just buy a crank or a cylinder head than spend the man hours or machine shop bill necessary.
But as I look around the world is changing. Things that were cheap and readily available a couple years ago are hard to come by and suspect quality now. I'm finding myself out of necessity dipping back into some of the things I learned as a kid. Hell Im planning to weld a carb flange into a jeep efi Intake. Something I never would have considered had I not seen it as kid.
Are any of you experiencing this? Or I am I just maybe overly nostalgic?
Are these kind of things being lost to time?
You should do videos on it if you haven't. Would be a great way to pass on the knowledge.I totally agree with th OP. It is leaving fast. I am trying to find a younger guy to learn how to rebuild distributors, have one guy supposed to come by on Sundays to learn them, Not yet! I guess he is plugged into a OBD II port somwhere.
You nailed it. This is why when I see these 318 builds requiring a boatload of machine work I think to myself " but that negates the point of running a 318..if I wanted to dump a boatload of cash id buy a 5.9 magnum and build that up...""And to answer the original question, yes. Only the people with money can afford this now. I guess I'm not getting no titanium rods for Christmas this year. lol
Oh boy did I ever make a nice amount of money fixing people stuff. I loved coming home to a line of cars needing help.You have folks who just don't care buying up old cars and sending them overseas. Make money now the hell with later. There was a time when knowing how to get a flooded car started in January was a part of life, now you just call off work and have it towed to a "technician" people don't care and everything is high drama, the flooded car, its the end of the world if it were to happen to someone today, and they'd pay you an arm and a leg to fix it fast LOL!
First real cold snap every winter always translated into a fleet of tow trucks dragging in the "no starts". Easy money, push them inside, change the plugs and oil, let them warm up a little and boom, fired right up 99.9% of the time.Oh boy did I ever make a nice amount of money fixing people stuff. I loved coming home to a line of cars needing help.
You have folks who just don't care buying up old cars and sending them overseas.
^^^^^Hey, don't tell me about what I do or don't like and what I should do ok...? Did someone wake up on the grumpy side of the bed this morning...?
i made a post on the internet and again you are telling me about what I'm doing ...how pretentious of you...you are complaining that people are selling cars overseas. i just stated why they are doing it and how not to have it happen. take it how you will. makes no difference to me.
You say I'm complaining, I say I made a post. Find someone else to pick on .
I agree with you 100%.To me there's hotroding and then there's restoring and all the stuff in between.
Hotroding is getting an old car running/driving safe and then making it better running.... and the fluff may or may not come later/ not so much $$ in the old days.
Then there's the resto where you take everythng apart and make it all perfect. $$$$$$$$$$$$$