Hey Beaner ever been 86ed from a drinking establishment? Where did that one come from? My guess maybe an old police code for intoxication.
Is there anyone here who never once greeted their buddy back in the good old days with a salutation like "Hey Kemosabe"?
Maybe a southern thing, but heard around my area "Hittin a lick" (engine running a radical cam) Haul Ass or Hauling Ass. Boy, that engine is so wore out the pistons are swapping holes.
The guy I apprenticed for used to say that - hit it a lick or hittin a lick for all sorts of stuff. Usually he was talking about having sex, sometimes when I needed to grab a BFH, or if he was planning on fucking off for a while. He used that saying for all sorts of stuff. From North Carolina and West Virginia Out and about riding around without destination or reason well we are out there keeping the roads hot or out there killing bugs and burning dinosaurs
How about the old term, when somebody wanted you to get on the throttle hard to get away from somebody and they said "grab a root and growl"... maybe it was a Texas thing
It was short lived around here but to accelerate you would say "give it some carburetor fluid" come to think of it,didn't here it much after cars became fuel injected. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
A "bootleg" or "bootlegger" turn was making a U-turn with the gas pedal with no brakes and just a small juke on the steering wheel. I skipped reading a few here and there so forgive me if I repeat anything.
I heard it was a military term, in the Navy right after the Big One, anything slated for disposal was AT-6
RE: bootlegger turn The true bootlegger turn uses the gas pedal to speed up the rear tire speed versus the pavement so friction exits the building and the vehicle does a 180 controlled by the gas pedal. Using the emergency brake handle to slow down the rear tires, thus lose traction to slide the vehicle around, is doable. I believe rally car divers have the hand brake trick in their toolbox, especially front wheel drive cars because they can only slow the rear axle. They can't speed it up with the gas pedal. It's all good. I'm just throwing out a term from the old days, however the deed is done.
Footfeed is one I haven't heard in a coon's age. Here is one we used to say a lot..."it runs like a stripe-ed ass ape".
Us real truckers still shift gears! No automatics for us! I learned to float shift without the clutch right after I started driving big trucks, seldom use the clutch except for starting or stopping. Lots of our Southern sayings are like that. A cammed up car is "Toting a lick" Gas pedal can be a foot feed, skinny pedal, load pedal or a few other things. Opening an engine up on the highway is "Blowing the soot out of it", usually because of the black smoke older cars would put out. A big carb was a "55 gallon drum with 4 holes in the bottom", meaning it used a lot of gas. Mags were any non stock wheel, no matter what they were made out of. Tennis shoes were tires. A steering box was called a steering sector, friend got a newer Chevy pickup and said it didn't have a steering sector on it, it had one of those wrecked peters on it, rack and pinion, lol. And some of the older guys still call a trunk lid a turtle deck.
And I bet if you had to get the truck into the shop after a clutch failure, you could still get it there without using the clutch at all (after dropping the trailer). Am I right?
When I was a diesel mechanic in the Navy in the mid -70s, that was the term we used for setting injector timing on the old two stroke Detroit Diesels. I learned on 12V-71TTAs, (much patience required). "You need to use a 1460 pick on a yellow tag S-90 to run the rack and it better bounce". The "1460 pick" was a timing tool used to adjust injector plunger height to 1.460 inches. Detroit guys know the rest. Haven't heard that term in awhile.
And when one runs away, its a "skid marks in the skivvies" moment. Been there twice. Was able to stop both engines from "puking rods" though, we literally twisted the fuel line off the 12v71 after the shutdown flaps didn't work, and the 318, (non turbocharged 8V-71 Detroit) was shut down by stuffing a service manual into the air intake on top of the truck. The second one was my fault...
In my younger years I did a fair amount of "souping up" of engines for people. Often times a guy with an automatic wanted to know why I recommended adding a "higher stall" torque converter when installing a "big" (higher lift, longer duration) cam. Showing them the the rpm range that the cam manufacturer called the "power band", I explained that they needed a converter to lock up after "the motor was on the cam" (inside the power band). A couple ignored my advice, only to come back later wanting to know why their engine stalled while at a stop light. Install the correct converter, problem solved.
The story I have heard for years: There was (and still is) a bar in New York City named Chumley's which was one of many speakeasies in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan. The address is 86 Bedford Street. Back in the old days when graft was more prevalent, the police would call Chumley's to advise of a raid in the very near future. The proprietor of the place would announce "86 everybody" and the patrons would run our the front door, 86 Chumley, while the police were coming in the courtyard door.
I often use the old term "tuning by the seat of the pants" to refer to carb and ignition tuning techniques. Of course, that was before electronics and computers and such. Surprisingly, I got pretty good at it! I think the term comes from the old barnstormer days where the pilots would fly "by the seat of their pants" without instruments.
I remember the old TV series, Get Smart, after the lead character Maxwell Smart. The female lead was Agent 86. I always wondered if it derived from that character somehow but I don't have a clue how. It's not a car term but it is a good trivia head scratcher. I remember it being used when instructing someone to toss something in the trash.