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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2016 16:16:00 GMT
What ever happened to that dimmer switch? It was quite useful.
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Post by chexbres on May 30, 2016 20:08:43 GMT
I never would have remembered that dimmer switch if somebody hadn't mentioned it. Remember when the turn signals made that "clink-clunk" noise inside the car?
That radio is beautiful.
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2016 23:44:05 GMT
The dimmer is on the turn signal or on the steering column. Someone doesn't do a lot of wilderness night driving!
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2016 2:09:45 GMT
For one who rarely drives at night, because I can't see "Jack Sh*t , that "clicking sound" exists in my car, and is a great comfort in terms of more given confidence for the night blinded driver. I do recall having one vehicle where it went on the "fritz" and, I went into panic mode. Some sounds as such, can serve as a comfort.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2016 4:36:33 GMT
I think that turn signals still click on most cars. And there has always been a manual control for the bright lights, obviously. The foot switch was an extra.
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Post by onlyMark on May 31, 2016 6:32:38 GMT
The foot switch was an extra. Do you mean there was a hand operated manual switch and the foot switch? I had a 1960's split screen VW camper with the main beam/dip beam foot switch. On many vehicles that was the only switch. Most of my early cars only had that. The semaphore car indicators were common as well. If the car registration was NYW 653, that'd be my parent's old car.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2016 6:59:57 GMT
Yes, all of the beams could be controlled by hand. The foot button was just to give the left foot a role in driving, keeping in mind that American cars were (almost) all automatics.
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Post by mossie on May 31, 2016 7:17:05 GMT
My 50's cars had a foot dimmer and the good old semaphore turn signals. Who remembers being taught to give hand signals (no, not with one or two fingers), one could signal to policemen on point duty which way you wanted to go.
Thats a joke, our police are too busy writing reports or chatting each other up, to ever get outside.
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Post by mossie on May 31, 2016 7:22:10 GMT
My last post reminded me that the police always attempted to keep traffic moving. In the good old days, if I had a tricky job in town I called into the local copshop and they would come out to the job and advise and help with traffic control. To the extent that they would take traffic wardens away from their vital task of ticketing parked cars and get them to direct traffic for us instead.
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Post by onlyMark on May 31, 2016 9:47:29 GMT
Yes, all of the beams could be controlled by hand. The foot button was just to give the left foot a role in driving, ...... We may have to agree to disagree on this one. No car that I ever had or drove or knew in the UK had both means of switching between high and low beams. It had a hand switch or a foot switch. Not both. Merkins cars may well have been different.
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Post by Kimby on May 31, 2016 13:38:53 GMT
I'm not aware of any 'mercan cars that had both foot- and hand-controlled switches for dimming headlights. (K2 must have dreamed this.)
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2016 14:36:53 GMT
I am so young that I have little experience with cars of any kind.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 31, 2016 15:31:04 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2016 16:51:29 GMT
I miss the cute little triangular windows that worked independently from the front seat windows. I remember them from my childhood, and the first car I drove away to college in had them, an ancient Ford Cortina that was our previous family car.
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Post by fumobici on May 31, 2016 17:29:38 GMT
Those "wing windows" were wonderful, strong ventilation without wind. Also perfect for flicking ashes.
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Post by onlyMark on May 31, 2016 18:09:48 GMT
Called 'quarter lights'.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2016 21:01:17 GMT
They were called "breezies" in my family. Important when your parents smoked like chimneys in the car.
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Post by mich64 on May 31, 2016 21:29:53 GMT
I had forgotten about those triangle windows! I can clearly remember when my mother would light her cigarette, my dad saying, "Mary, open the window." and indeed, she would open that triangle window, and yes, that is the window he meant.
I also remember the dimmer button on the floor, our first car had one. I use the high beams a lot. As soon as I get on the highway towards home from the city, I am constantly turning them off for on-coming traffic but they are very helpful. When I get onto our road, there are no street lights so it is very dark out here and I worry about a deer or bear running out from the bush, the beam lights up the bush as well.
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Post by htmb on May 31, 2016 22:12:24 GMT
I drove an old jeep with rusted-out holes in the floor, a large Ford pickup truck used for farm work, a 1968 mustang hatchback and a Plymouth Roadrunner (the last two were owned by my high school boyfriend who worked at a gas station). They each had a standard transmission with clutch, and I'm almost positive they all had floor mounted dimmer switches. Well, maybe the jeep didn't. I don't think the jeep's lights even worked. I know the heater didn't, since I can remember driving it wearing lots of warm clothing while the cold air poured in from the floor.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 1, 2016 6:22:25 GMT
Vacuum operated windscreen wipers. The faster you went then faster the wipers swept. A variation was fitted to VW Beetles whereby the wipers worked by air pressure from a tube attached to the spare wheel. Leave it too long to check it and not only didn't you have wipers but the spare was flat as well. Not what you need when you have a puncture in a rain storm. Rotating tyres. Anyone still do that? In fact, anything on a car you could change/repair/maintain yourself instead of having to go to a garage to get it hooked up to a computer. Having stuff on a car you could actually dismantle to fix it rather than just replacing it and chucking the old one away.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2016 10:26:31 GMT
Now I'm trying to remember exactly how the choke worked.
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Post by bjd on Jun 1, 2016 10:43:28 GMT
Was it something to do with the amount of gasoline going to the engine? I didn't drive until I was 30 and still know (and care) nothing about cars.
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Post by htmb on Jun 1, 2016 11:06:02 GMT
Priming the engine like you to on a boat motor or a lawn mower?
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 1, 2016 11:42:03 GMT
Ok, I'll be a smartarse again. Engines need a mixture of fuel and air to run. When cold you need to restrict the air going in to increase the fuel mixture. A 'choke' is exactly that - a flap that turns to block off part of the air intake, thus restricting or choking it. In simple terms. I hope.
Priming is the old(er) way in that instead of restricting the air to make the mixture richer in fuel, you inject extra fuel at the beginning and leave the air side as it is.
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Post by mossie on Jun 1, 2016 13:44:03 GMT
Our Merlin engines had a Ki-gas pump to get them started, that is a priming pump.
As for old cars, I was taught to drive on an Austin A30 as you illustrated and actually bought a new A40. That really dates me.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 1, 2016 14:13:55 GMT
I remember someone in the 70's put a 27 litre(?) Merlin engine in a car and blasted it through France before anyone could catch him. One of the best, if not 'the' best engine ever built. It certainly was contributory to bettering our war effort. The dad of my mate bought a brand new A40 as well. I remember them well.
Something humorous maybe only Mossie will understand -
Ford are bringing out a new car. It's to be called the Ford Pubic. It'll be made out of old Corsairs.
I thought it funny forty years ago anyway.
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Post by fumobici on Jun 1, 2016 14:45:23 GMT
Vacuum operated windscreen wipers. The faster you went then faster the wipers swept. A variation was fitted to VW Beetles whereby the wipers worked by air pressure from a tube attached to the spare wheel. Leave it too long to check it and not only didn't you have wipers but the spare was flat as well. Not what you need when you have a puncture in a rain storm. Windshield wipers that operate on manifold vacuum (the pressure delta between manifold pressure and ambient) actually will generally work *slower* as speed increases, as higher load on the engine decreases manifold vacuum. I had the pleasure of driving an old Dodge pickup truck that would make one painfully aware of what was going on inside the intake manifold during a rainstorm. Also, I believe what you are perhaps thinking of re the VW is the rather odd way the windshield washers were powered from the pressure in the spare wheel. There was a hose that went from the Schrader valve on the spare to the washer fluid reservoir that pressurized the fluid inside to allow the washer fluid to squirt out the misters when the valve was opened. I've never seen a Beetle with vacuum operated wipers, although my experience with them only goes back to ones from the late fifties on. And just to pile on K2 a bit, I don't believe there were ever vehicles that had both steering wheel stalk and floor mounted high beam controls; it was always one or the other.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2016 15:39:53 GMT
I may have become confused by the fact that European cars had the control on a stem before American cars, and I moved to Europe at a time when the European cars were using a stem control while American cars still used a foot pedal (and continued to do so for about another 10 years).
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 1, 2016 18:26:59 GMT
fumobici is right. I will use K2's get-out of "I am so young that I have little experience with cars of any kind."
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Post by mossie on Jun 1, 2016 19:31:58 GMT
To do some boasting, our Mosquitos ran on two Merlins and also had had windows which could be opened almost on the quarter. See the attached picture, the window is open immediately above my head, it also slid in channels exactly the same as the door windows in the original Mini. Hope the picture is big enough.
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