[AT] : Re: Good tractor day

Wed Mar 4 13:53:22 PST 2009

Farmer,  I bought a good car that way once too.
About 1981 or so I bought a 73 or 74 (can't remember) Chevy Nova.  It was a 
plain Jane with a 6 cyl but it had AC.  It ran and drove great.  I bought it 
off a Buick, Olds, Cadillac dealers lot and the price was cheap.  The car 
was clean as could be.  We drove it a while and it drove great.  It had good 
power and was economical.
Well, it came time to change the oil and the guy who changed it for me had a 
long look on his face when I went to pick up the car.  He proceeded to tell 
me that he thought the engine had 90 wt gear oil in it.  Sure enough it 
started loosing 30wt at a rate of about 1 qt every 500 miles.  Sometimes 
less.  Still it had good power and ran well.  It did not smoke or drip.  The 
inside of the exhaust pipe was a dry, pale gray.  It didn't get hot and not 
want to start after a trip or do any of the things that would make you think 
the engine was bad.  We kept driving it and I kept thinking about it but 
couldn't find any source for the problem.  It didn't get any worse.

Well a few months later a friend noticed that it had an exhaust rattle and 
decided to help me look for it.  I was in the car racing the engine a bit to 
make it rattle.  One guy was looking under the rear  of the car and another 
was looking under the hood.  All of a sudden the guy under the hood said 
"WAIT, do that again"  So I raced the motor.  He said "NO a little faster". 
I turned it up to probably 3500 rpms or so.  He said well I found your oil 
problem.

At 3500 or so it would start squirting oil right out of the end of the oil 
pressure sending unit.  Now I had seen oil pressure sending units do that 
before but usually there you can see where they have been dripping or 
actually see them leak.  This particular one wouldn't leak until it got to 
high rpm and apparently when that happened the car was generally going fast 
enough that the oil stream was getting sucked down under the car and onto 
the road.  We couldn't even find any sign of oil on the bottom side of the 
cab.  A few bucks fixed it.

I'm pretty sure that is why it got traded in and I suspect the dealer looked 
for the cause of the oil loss, couldn't find it, put some heavy oil in it 
and sold it to some idiot like me.  Well the joke was on them.  It was a 
fine car until it unfortunately got wrecked.

Charlie
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Indiana Robinson" <robinson46176 at gmail.com>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 8:56 AM
Subject: Re: [AT] : Re: Good tractor day

>
> When an emergency comes up, regardless of it being your car breaking down 
> or
> a country having to go to war, if there wasn't a budget already 
> established
> for the funding it has to come out of emergency funds by definition. It's
> only when you decide that it's going to be a continuing operation that you
> put in as a regular budget item.

======================================

I owned that car back in the 1960's...
:-)
A 1961 Ford Falcon I bought in 1963 that showed about 30,000 miles but
must have had about 230,000 miles on it. The high miles didn't show
until you tore something down and looked at wear. The dealer didn't
need any trees for the place to be "shady".
I sort of got my money back in a way when some years later he had a
nice looking full sized 1966 Ford station wagon sitting on the back of
his lot. When I inquired about it he said that they were going to dump
it cheap because his mechanic said that its rough running problem was
just going to be too costly for them to fix. I bought it for a song
and I can't sing. I guess nobody ever told his so-called-mechanic to
"begin at the beginning". It cost me the price of a distributor cap...
Probably under $3 back then. It was great wagon and trouble free while
I owned it. If you listened carefully you could hear the arcing snap
in the old cap as it idled and if you turned on the radio you could
really hear it there.
-
I lucked into another deal like that years later when I bought a not
so old 1972 Olds 98 at a yard sale for $200. The owner said that the
whole front end had to be rebuilt and the quote scared him off. He
said that you couldn't hold it on the road over 30 MPH. Then he said
the magic words "it started doing that kind of suddenly"... I bought
it and drove it home and he was right, it jumped all over the place
above 30. The complete cure for that one was to replace the left front
tire that had a broken belt... We drove it for years and then our
oldest daughter drove it a year or so. We changed a few tires but
never did have to put any parts in the front end. Nice car, very
comfortable. Barely fit the garage though.   :-)
-
The weather is finally breaking here and I'm kind of chomping at the
bit to get some things done. For all of the global warming it seems to
these old bones that this winter has been really bitter. Lots and lots
of wind. I was moving the last of the round bales last week to sell
them to a regular hay customer and a couple for our horses and I got a
few moved and the cold wind just got to be too much. I stopped and
waited a day for less wind. It "might" hit 50 today and possibly mid
60's in a few days. That sure beats that 10 with high winds a few
nights ago.

-- 
"farmer"

"Good clean muck never hurt nobody!!!"
Morris Moulterd

Hay and Straw Exchange (Buy it, sell it and trade it.)
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/HayandStrawExchange

Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com

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