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JV Puleo

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JV Puleo last won the day on December 18 2023

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About JV Puleo

  • Birthday 11/01/1951

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    Smithfield, Rhode Island

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  1. I have a pile of grinding wheels...came with one of the two grinders I have...the one I've never assembled. I'll send you some. I'll never use then all.
  2. Very good! They are one of those tools you rarely need but when you do there is nothing that will do the job anywhere near as well. Just being able to get a ground surface on tricky parts will be a revelation.
  3. My mother told me that when I was very little I recognized cars by who I knew that owned one. I must have been 5 or 6 at the time (this would have been in the 50s) but I'd blurt out "there goes Uncle Bob's car" or "Uncle George's car". My parents, who probably couldn't do the same since they hardly ever noticed cars, were surprised by that but probably goes to an interest that developed entirely on it's own. The little great-nephew I gave some books to has, several times, said he likes my "old" truck (a 1989 Blazer) which is what spurred me to do what I can to encourage his interest. He certainly didn't get it from his parents, neither of whom are the slightest bit interested.
  4. I think the most interesting part of this thread is that it appears that the majority of the participants had fathers that regarded their cars as appliances. What does this say about the endless din of "getting younger people interested"? Practically no one here comes from an old car collecting background. My own feeling is that, like everything else, collecting interests change with time and that we have absolutely no way of predicting exactly what they will be down the road. I just gave my great-nephew (he's about 10 now) four books I found I had duplicates of. All are on pre-war, mostly brass era cars. I've no idea if they will strike a cord with him now or in the future but I would not be surprised if it did.
  5. No influence at all. My father had absolutely no interest in cars beyond getting to work and back. He tended to buy big, used luxury cars because, as he reasoned, you got a lot more for your money and, since he didn't drive any more than he had to, the cost of gas was irrelevant. His parents never had a car so he did not grow up around them. He did have some memories though and, since he was born in 1916 these often were of late 20s cars. I'd never seen the "headlight in the fender" but he knew it was Pierce Arrow... I have to give him credit though. He never made any effort to stop me in my pursuit of old cars, old books and old guns & swords even though he thought it was a stupid waste of time and money.
  6. I have no problem with adding directional lights even where they are not required. The day is long passed when anyone recognized hand signals. Do they still teach hand signals in Driver's ed? I doubt it. As it is, there is always a danger in driving with lots of idiots trying to talk or text. I've had far more close calls from drivers who were fixated on their phone than with drunks...who I hardly ever see on the road in the daytime.
  7. Presuming that most PA's were sold here, the states that had a HP tax usually did it in increments like "less than 20", "20 to 30", "30 to 50" and "more than 50". This is why so many American cars were described as "30 HP". My 1910 REO was a 30 HP...but at the same time the Packard 4-cylinder was also described as a "30" when it clearly developed far more HP than the REO did.
  8. I think that is probably correct. The calculation would have been based on how much work could be done at a sustained rate. The idea was to not tire the horses out since they were probably walking in a circle 12 hours a day...if not longer. The steam engine would have been in the same situation...how much could it pump day in and day out.
  9. The term dates from the end of the 18th century and relateds to James Watt's steam engines. Originally, steam engines were pumping engines used to clear mines and occasionally to lift water for canal locks. The pumps were usually powered by horses walking in a circle so the reference is actually to how many horses the new steam engine could replace. When applied to the ICE there was no agreement as to how it should be calculated and, early on, was poorly understood. Britain (and many US States) had a "Horse Power Tax" so that you paid more to register a car of large HP than you did a small one. In the British case, ICE HP was so poorly understood by the Members of Parliament that the formula was based on the bore of an engine and ignored the stroke. This was about 1904 and despite the advances in calculating HP the law remained on the books as passed. Hence British cars developed long stroke engines because these gave a better HP rating for tax purposes. A good example is the famous 30/98 Vauxhall...which developed 98 HP in an engine that, for tax purposes by the old formula was only rated at 30. It is also the reason why the Model T, though sold in Britain, never attained the popularity it did here, because it's fairly large bore and short stroke made it susceptible to a higher HP tax.
  10. Though I'm sure it wasn't intended, RN did me and my friends a big favor. After the Corvair was no longer being built, and with all the bad publicity, they were extremely cheap. I think I paid $300 for '68 convertible around 1972. Prior to that I had an early one that was free...which was important because I had to get to work and I'd just spent every dime I had on a 1910 REO. My friend Paul still has his 64 that is an ongoing project with him. He also has a 32 Chrysler roadster but his wife prefers the Corvair.
  11. Steel chassis were pretty much the rule after about 1905. Franklin was one of the only exceptions and they continued to use them because they were both lighter and stronger (given the extreme care they put into making them) than the available steel frames. They stopped because the buying public expected steel and because they were having an increasingly difficult problem getting the wood they needed...as well as the workmen skilled in handling it. There were many so called "advances" in design that were driven by buyer's conceptions, almost invariably formed without any knowledge of the engineering involved. As far as all metal bodies are concerned...those go back much further than their adoption by Ford. Well before WWI there was the Springfield Metal Body Company...Pierce Arrow used cast aluminum body panels for a time. These changes were often driven far more by cost. It was the 1920s before metal working machines were up to producing an all metal body and the 1930s before a sheet of steel could be rolled large enough to make the top of a car.
  12. The SAE standard fine thread for all diameters over 1" was 16TPI so virtually all hubcaps with have that thread. The actual diameter of the hub is the critical element. In order to measure a hub puller you need the double depth of thread for 16TPI...that should be the inside diameter of the puller. The number for 16TPI is .0625 (1 divided by 16)...so diameter of the hub less .0625 should get you very close. This isn't foolproof because there were different threading tolerances and wear to contend with and it's impossible (for me at least) to know what each car manufacturer used. If, for instance, the hub is 1.75" in diameter you want 1.75 - .0625 = 1.6875. This should be very close...but you'll need a vernier caliper ... a ruler is nowhere near accurate enough.
  13. Like all these terms it's just a convenient dividing line. All of these terms are arbitrary and should not be taken as definitive regarding any specific car. I fall into the "pre-war" category although, for my purposes, I'm not much interested in anything after the mid to late 20s. I can admire the later 30s cars but have no desire to own one. As an example of how arbitrary these terms can be, when I had my first old car, a 1927 Cadillac, it was an official CCA "Classic". The CCA defined "classics" as beginning in 1925 so my friend, who owned a fantastic 1922 Silver Ghost RR Permanent Salamanca wasn't eligible. This was idiotic beyond words but clubs are private organizations and can set their own rules, even silly ones. Even now that 1903 Mercedes 60HP discussed on this site isn't a "classic" by their definition even though it is one of the most significant cars ever built.
  14. I'd speculate that the very best of the very early cars never see an auction and change hands quietly, behind the scene. This is probably true for most of the best cars which makes citing auction figures specious even if they can be trusted (which I doubt is always the case). Many years ago I had a tour of the famous Waterman collection of early race cars. That was a treat because most (or all) of them are now in museums, mostly in Europe.
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