I got to thinkng about an '49 pickup that I bought off this widow lady one time. It had sat in front of her house with a load of coal in it since her husband had died and the acidity of the coal had eaten the bed off the truck. However, the cab corners were not the least bit rusty. That is rare here in East Tenn where the humidty is usually 85% +. Upon further inspection I found that there were 2x4 wooden blocks inside the cab corners. When I showed them to my dad he speculated that the wood would attract the moisture that accumulated in the cab corner therefore keeping the metal relatively dry. Essentially acting like a sponge. Have any of you guys ever discovered this in your truck and, if so, what condition were the corners? Just wondering, Bill
That's interesting . The Advance Design cab is designed to ' breathe ' and that's part of why there cab floor doesn't quite attach to the corners behind the seat , unforunately dirt and crud does build up there and hold moisture , this promotes rust ~ I can recall a very few (non - farm) AD trucks in the 60's that never got dirty cabs and so didn't rust out there , of course the toe boards and inner fender wells all perforated . I'd think the wood would hold moisture the same way a rubber fllor mat does ~ I hate rubber floor mats as they rust you cab out fast even though they lok so nice and are easy to clean up ....
I figured the wood acted kinda like the silica gel packets that you see anytime you receive something in the mail that is humidity sensitive. Don't know. Just a wonderin'. Bill
The wood makes sense to absorb all of the moisture. My corners were gone in my truck (All four corners that is). Not to hard to replace, actually pretty darn simple. Maybe this would be a trick for the mythbuster guys, what do you think .
I agree about the chicken launcher! A few years back, some friends of mine made a kick-ass potato gun out of PVC. It would shoot a potato at least 100 yards! Good times.
I had a friend with one of those. It's all fun and games until somebody or something gets hurt. That gun was short lived, the side of his dad's 80-s model suburban had a big dent in it from that gun. Next time I saw the gun it was in pieces in the garbage.
My 12 year old son built a potato gun. In fact, there is little that he hasn't launched from out in the back yard. His potato gun had a combustion chamber made of 3 inch pvc and a barrle of 2" pvc. He screwed two screws into the combustion chamber at an angle so that the tips were about an 8th inch apart and attached a gas stove lighter to the screw heads. Cram a tater in the barrel, unscrew the cap on the combustion chamber and spary a good dose of harispray. Aim it away from all breakables and push the button. BOOM! followed by a 12 year old boy giggling like a school girl. The bigger the boom the better. That tater goes out of sight too.
I like to hear stories like this, cause most kids, or atleast around here, don't have a creative mind or the know how to build anything. If it aint on the playstation or XBox then they don't know how to do it. Just make sure he doesn't point it at the cars, you should have seen the size of that dent. WOW
tail pipe That all sounds like fun but i've never tried it. Did stick a potato in a tail pipe once,,, shut er down fast. I thought as a kid it would blow out, guess that was before I knew how combustion engns worked. I did put a quart of transmission fluid (back when they were cardboard cans) on the top of a carb in place of the breather. Made it three times around the courthouse square before the fire dept. showed up, with the police and fire marshall. You couldn't see a building in the whole town, looked like it was all burning down from the smoke. Well the police didn't think it was a funny as I did, neither did my dad (btw he worked for the fire dept.) TB'sD
speaking of cardboard cans or oil, when i first acquired my 1950 6400 flatbed i happend to look under the seat and found about 3-5 unopend cans of oil. never seen one made out of cardboard before although i am only 18 going on 19 and there are many things i havn't seen yet. but I have seen, used, and owned a potato gun until i shot the neighbors chicken with it... lol man what a mess that made. LOL and now i feel bad! well anywho i got to work tomorrow so I better get off of here and go to bed.
Youse Guys Are TOO MUCH ! This is great Anyone here remember oil cans were _steel_ before they were waxed cardboard ? . When I were a pump jockey for Atlantic Richfield ("ARCO") we had the olde tymey oil can display on the pump island so I filled it with empty oil and ATF cans , looked pretty nice if I do say so . As far as hommeade guns , I'll have to say the ones I had all shot bullets..... ('ZIP' guns) Anyone here ever see a piano catapault ? I assume you guys know that PVC will shatter when it fails so I'd not be allowing my son to make any sort of gun out of it
Little scientist Nate, Believe it or not, my son Will thought of that and attempted to contain any possible schrapnel by wrapping it with duct tape. In fact, he uses dust tape on everything. He also wears hearing protection and safety glasses. I have pounded saftey into him since day one. I figure I would rather have him in the backyard where I can see him than for him to be slipping over to the neighbors house and doing stuff unsupervised. Of course he also begged fro and got a dremel tool and attachements for his 12th birthday. he uses it and regularly uses my band saw, drill press and grinder. I haven't let him use the table saw but I am sure, when he gets older, I will. The kid just has to be building something all the time. The last thing he built was a rig that allowed him to levitate a magnet. The thing worked and the magnet actually levitated. When he explains it to me I just kinda grin and nod my head. Heck if I know what he is taliking about. We will be safe. Thanks, Bill
Metal Oil cans Remember metal oil cans? for sure! sold a many can of oil that was metal and even have a few left. The Texaco station where I started working when I was 14 had them, the two sided rack sitting on the island between the pumps and even still used the old bubble tire balancer. BTW they also had a vending machine (manuel pull lever) where I bought my first pack of Marlboro for 50 cents. Yep, that's were life all started for me. Had a woman show me where my first oil dip stick was on my first day there, and it was all down hill from there. Man, those were the days. Tires changed by hand, balanced by bubble and installed by a lug wrench. We had an old wringer washer to wash our own rags and in those days full service was all that I ever heard of. The station better be clean enough you could almost eat off the floor. We checked oil, water, trans, tires and anything else they wanted for 19 cents a gallon.... what a life..... I miss those days. TB'sD
Service Station Fun Yep , those indeed were the days Schlepping out from under a car on the hoist every time a car drove in the pump island and rang the bell ~ DINGDING ~ DINGDING ! I have a million stories of those halycon days of my ' yoot ' . Every satruday after noon , I'd take a coffeecan of gasoline , a broom and a squeege and wash all the floors squeaky clean . @ the Richfield station the hoist seal leaked so it liked to jump the last 2' or so and would catapault a full sized car right off it if you weren't carefull It was also so old it didn't have a safety latch as we foud out one night after parking one car up in the air and two more underneath it...... next morning we opened the doors to find
Service with a Smile I just put a pencil to it and figured out that I used to fill up someone's car, change their oil with filter and grease the chassis for a total of around 10 bucks and they'd leave with a smile on their face looking out through a clean windshield.
BMW FILL UP = $40.00 BMW OIL SERVICE = $175.00 NOT HAVING TO GREASE THE FRONT CHASSIS = PRICELE$$ My how times have changed!!!
Our local gas station was where I would get off the bus in the evenings. I probably learned more about things there that I should have learned about somewhere else than anywhere else. Anyway there was a guy who worked there that wore jeans, penny loafers and kept his cigarettes rolled up in his white t-shirt sleeve. That was before the movie Grease came out so he wasn't trying to look like someone else. The owners son had a 57 Ford Fairlane that he stripped inside and lined with sheet metal, put an A-model axle under the front (that is what my Dad said it was anyway) stuck a huge engine in it and went drag racing every Sunday afternoon. There was a strip in every holler around here back then. Nothing was better than a big orange dope, a moon pie and the smell of burning rubber. Yeah, those were good days.
