i remember a hilarious episode of andy griffith when barney bought a old car from a sweet old lady that said she only drove it to church on sundays.when he brought it to andys he was so proud and took andy,aunt bee,opie and goober for a ride.it purred along perfectly for a few miles then started to make wierd noises,and then the horn button slowly came at him cuz it was being pushed up by a shitload of axle grease.turns out the old lady and a couple other guys were crooks rippin people off by sellin crappy cars made to look and run good for a bit.My question is have any of you guys heard stories of cars made to run well just to sell em.ive heard of sawdust in trannies,heavy grease where there shouldnt be,bailing wire holdin stuff together etc..
In The Grapes of Wrath the Joads buy an old truck (i think) to get to California.. Anyway, times are bad and the dealer is packing the old cars with sawdust so they'll sell. I never did get what the sawdust did?
Well this is an off topic car, but I had a 69 AMX that I was selling and the blue paint had completely oxidized. I buffed the heck out of it with armor all and it looked pretty darn good. I hope the guy that bought it wasnt planning on painting it any time soon...Not really a drive train thing but still along the same line.
When I was a VW mechanic,guys would ask me to put axle grease in with the oil to quiet down the knocks
I've heard of sawdust and banana peels to quiet down a howling differential. One that you really have to watch for is buying a car with a load of 80-90W gear oil in the crankcase. A terrible thing to do.
Yup, I got some weird looks sniffing the motor oil and ATF on a couple of purchases but it's better safe than sorry.
My wife gets pissed when I start laughing before Barney does something stupid. I've seen those shows so many times that I know what he's going to do. He's the best!! How about when he bought the military motorcycle with the side car, had the goggles and helmet??
Hmmm, now that you mention it ... I like the band name Don Knotts Overdrive. Safety Dance. Barney Fife: Well, today's eight-year-olds are tomorrow's teenagers. I say this calls for action and now. Nip it in the bud. First sign of youngsters going wrong, you've got to nip it in the bud. Andy Taylor: I'm going to have a talk with them. What else do you want me to do? Barney Fife: Well, don't just mollycoddle them. Andy Taylor: I won't. Barney Fife: Nip it. You go read any book you ant on the subject of child discipline and you'll find every one of them is in favor of bud-nipping. Thanks, Kurt
My favorite Barney Fife moment came when he and Andy were at a party. Barney was complaining about how unattractive the girls were there and Andy says "what do you mean Barney, they arn't so bad", Barney replies "I bet if you ran a quail threw here half of um' would get up on point". And that made Barney my hero. Blake
Believe it or not I just watched this episode on dvd. I bought this one and several other old tv shows now on DVD to show my kids what REAL comedy is.
I know an old used car salesman's trick is to run about a half pint of brake fluid through an auto tranny that is acting up. The brake fluid reacts with the seals and other parts internally and will temporarily (on occasion) make a transmission behave long enough to find it a new home. I've been on the recieving end of this one before. I've also seen/had a little Mitsubichi Eclipse blow a head gasket 30 miles after we bought it. Seems they removed the belt and head bolts, lifted up the head, slid the old gasket out and then the new one in, tightened everything down, and sold it. My ex-father-in-law had an old Falcon (think it was a Falcon) he told me about putting brake fluid into the trans on it. Said when he bought the car for $50 it wouldn't do anything but ease forward slowly. Put a cup of brake fluid in it and then drove the wheels off of it for 6 months before it spun a rod bearing.
I bought a 74' cj5 almost 10 years ago.. Ran fine. Right after I changed the oil, I had almost 0 compression. block was shot. Oil was so thick you could have chewed and blew bubbles with it. Almost 9 grand and 10 years, I finally got her on the road a month ago. I could have almost built one with aftermarket parts for the change I dumped into it.
lol...speaking of barney fife.... here's a model that i built as a tribute to barney, and the whole mayberry clan. this was a pretty rare hubley promo model to begin with.
My dad would tell me stories of guys that would go to the trouble of dropping the pan and replacing noisy bearings with leather. I don't know how cheap you gotta be that you can't spring for actual bearings. He said they would run real quite after that. Heard of stuffing bananas in the trans or rear end (of the car).
The Jalopy Journal
