History Safety or Didn,t know any better.

Drive shafts were chrome molly. Worked well.

 

I think that there are some things that are safer and something that are just ignorance gone to seed. The Jews used to have what they called "fence laws" (please excuse the religious reference and bear with me just a bit). They were laws that they followed that we over and above religious law so that there was absolutely no way to even approach breaking "The Law". A lot of what we call safety rules are just that, an extra tube in the roll bar incase one isn't good enough, a neutral safety switch incase we don't make sure the car is in neutral before we start it. A starter lockout on the driver seatbelt incase we don't buckle up, passive restraint incase the switch don't work, an airbag incase all of the above gets bypassed.

OK so I ranted, I earned it, end of the day, we didn't used to be molly coddled. People died, but a lot more lived than died and end of the day we all lived and lived like life was worth living.

 

Back then we used a lot of junk yard parts.

 

All this talk about how unsafe things were back when. It's what we knew and did. The technology in car safety has vastly improved and that is from experiences of the past. But IMHO in some ways we've become overly concerned about safety. Back when kids also rode bikes without helmets and padding, drank from a hose, swam in a creek, boys in grade school carried a jackknive, kids could be gone from sunup to sundown without mom and dad worrying. It was a much different and simpler world

 

Hard to believe but some of my class mates would bring a .22 rifle to school so they could hunt squirlls on the way home. (country school) How times have changed.

 

I don't know if they changed that much. I graduated high school in 2002 and the first week of firearm season half the kids would show up to class in their finest cammo, and you'd see some of the kids in the parking lot looking at their shotguns in the toolbox of their trucks.

 

We brought ours to school for rifle club. The high school had a shooting range in the basement.

 

It was not uncommon for kids to bring shotguns to our high school as many of us hunted after school. How times have changed.

 

I laugh when some argue about being period "perfect" After reading this...No your not!!! Some styles of cars today are alot more safe then the stuff back then

 

EPA or someone would shut that down for sure today because of one word, LEAD. Several National Guard Armories had shooting ranges with adequate ventilation systems, proper bullet traps, Etc. and they have all been closed due to the LEAD.

 

How many stick welded water pipe roll bars have been made ? How many gas welded tube chassised cars were built? Nobody wants to admit they are brave enough or stupid enough to have driven a car that was made that way. A lot of them were.
My dad showed me how to pack a length of water pipe full of sand and cap it off and heat it with a rosebud and bend it between 2 pine trees without it collapsing to make a roll bar for an open wheel modified.

 

Another thing that was common in our area was mounting the sterring box on the scatter shield in a center steer car.We must of had an ass full of brains. Thats the way it was in 1958.

 

How about Ford tractor gas tank in the pass front seat area and a hand pump to prime the injector pump mounted beside the shifter. Common modified practice back in the day.

 

Thats the way it was

 

I occasionally give my daughters a ride in the pickup bed. They sit at the front with a ratchet strap across their waist, and we cruise the neighborhood. Not much more than an idle.

 

I would love to get in my water pipe roll bar, exuast tube, gas and arc welded (1963) dragster and take a ride, nuts resting on whinning quick change and a blower screaming in my face. Thats a ride but thats the way it was.