Car Thread

[webenda]

You can buy a 5 quart jug for less then $20.00.

You can buy a 5-quart jug with 5 quarts of motor oil in it for less than $12.50.


Proof: https://www.walmart.com/ip/9-Pack-Super ... 535uX1w1g0

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Hey America: Pennsylvania (eastern) and middle Pennsylvania, around Scranton, esp. and southern and middle New York, and northwest New Jersey:

The deer are really out there on the highways, this being a height in their mating season. I counted a dozen of their carcasses gruesomely arrayed along Rts. 11; 81; 380; 80, and stopped the count to give better attention to the rainstorm I was battling, today, as well as the reckless mentalcases who were on the roadways jockeying with me for space in the lanes.

I can't speak for the other states but feel sufficiently alarmed to want to warn anybody here who might be traveling the Northeast USA roads. Many fresh deer bodies hurled onto shoulders and center-strips seemingly having dragged themselves there with their last gasps, heads turned chin-up and neck curved into backward facing arcs. None were in the lanes, though inches close.

[webenda]

How did this Westcott tool get bent so badly?

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Somebody placed it on a train track?

[robert.]

It was made that way.

[sleepmac]

I agree with Robert. The Westcott tool was made that way.

Dan Weinhold

[rogruth]

I also agree.
But not with Murph this time.

[chuck]

From:

http://www.papawswrench.com/vboard/index.php?topic=10525.0

The idea behind the "S" or offset handle was to gain clearance for your knuckles.

I'm guessing this didn't work out so well as they aren't around much anymore. My dad had a singer spanner (aka not adjustable) with an S curve handle in his toolbox. It was more of an oddity than anything else. The curve may have protected the knuckles but the offset made using the wrench problematic. I think I tried it once on a bicycle repair and immediately switched to a traditional combo (open end/box end) with the standard head angle. It just felt "right".

[webenda]

Here is another old tool. I don't have to ask what happened to it, it says right on it, "DROPPED."

Video of steel part being drop-forged: https://youtu.be/Wf4NDkiZw6E

[chuck]

As in "dropped forged". I am assuming the lettering was expensive so they "dropped" the second word.

BTW, other than the "Dropped" part that looks exactly like the wrench my dad had in his toolbox.

[webenda]

Curved handle for esthetics, anti-knucle-busting, or snaking into tight places?

[chuck]

Probably a bit of each of those. I suspect that it could be summed up as "It seemed like a good idea at the time" as you only see these as collectors items and other designs have eclipsed them.

There is a lot of weird stuff floating around that has fallen by the wayside as other products replaced them of the actual needs changed. One thing I can get easily side tracked on is looking up original records on Ancestry.com. Some of the data is surrounded by old newspaper ads for stuff I had never heard of. A lot was patent medicine but there were a lot of "gadgets" to allegedly help make your life easier. The print version of todays infomercials. These ads can be so interesting that I actually forget what I was looking for and start researching the "thing".

[webenda]

Hand-forged adjustable wrench.

Looks like this one has performed as a hammer.

[rogruth]

Wayne,
My grandfather had one of those and it was used as a hammer if the hammer was not close by when needed.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Speaking of tools and of cars....
A couple days ago, I noticed something on my dashboard instrumentation of which I had been completely unaware. The speedometer had markings right up to 160mph.!! When did that happen in cars?! I can recall, back when I had a '72 Gran Prix, back in 1972, that its limit was marked at 120mph. But to see, now, that my vehicle could, ostensibly, at least, go that fast, I wondered where anybody would need or be able to push their car to that extreme. Why would anybody want to? Why have it there, available?

Of course, trying to be "objective," I am rational enough to remember that I did accelerate my Gran Prix to its limit, a couple times, only, just for the thrill of it and the adventure of it, out on Rt80 somewhere, but that was for a few seconds. And I was a much younger mentalcase of 40+ years younger.

160mph available? Why?