Old wives tales for cars

[Buick35]

If anyone has some to share I think it would be interesting.I've heard about putting mothballs in the air cleaner does that do any good? I've also heard about the saw dust in the rear end but I think that was a dealer trick.Thanks,Greg.

[TheMoneyPit]

Sand in the tires is a true story, during the First World War there was also a rubber shortage just like the second war and loading tires was cheaper than a replacement 

[Buick35]

Interesting,I wonder how they put the sand in.Greg

[Mark Wetherbee]

Maybe the same way as tractor tires are loaded now? Or maybe just laying on the Side before putting the second side over the rim. 

[Paul Dobbin]

Lacquer thinner stops leaks in automatic transmissions.  1/2 cup usually does it.

Asprins in battery cells makes car batteries feel better and hold a charge.

[joe_padavano]

Your plastic-cased battery will discharge if set on a concrete floor...

 

But apparently it won't discharge on the conductive METAL battery tray that it sits on in the car. 🙄

[J.H.Boland]

Irish Spring soap in your car's interior is supposed to repel mice. My tough country mice ate the soap. I have visions of them hiccuping little green bubbles back in their nest.

 

Ground up horse pucks are apparently good at sealing up a leaky radiator. The pucks aren't as plentiful as they once were for some reason.

[Harold]

Oatmeal and pepper were two popular radiator sealers.  My father used oatmeal on his '38 Pontiac and it worked.

[72caddy]

14 minutes ago, joe_padavano said:

Your plastic-cased battery will discharge if set on a concrete floor...

 

But apparently it won't discharge on the conductive METAL battery tray that it sits on in the car. 🙄

 Haha, i still put my batteries on a wood on top of concrete! 

what is the opinion on covering tires on trailers with garbage bags or other covers to prolong the life

[Buick35]

7 minutes ago, J.H.Boland said:

Irish Spring soap in your car's interior is supposed to repel mice. My tough country mice ate the soap. I have visions of them hiccuping little green bubbles back in their nest.

 

Ground up horse pucks are apparently good at sealing up a leaky radiator. The pucks aren't as plentiful as they once were for some reason.

Get the puck outta here!

[Buick35]

20 minutes ago, joe_padavano said:

Your plastic-cased battery will discharge if set on a concrete floor...

 

But apparently it won't discharge on the conductive METAL battery tray that it sits on in the car. 🙄

Did you hear about the guy who was arrested on battery? They locked him away in a dry cell.

[PFitz]

4 minutes ago, Harold said:

Oatmeal and pepper were two popular radiator sealers.  My father used oatmeal on his '38 Pontiac and it worked.

The bugs in  the swampy drainage ditch water along side the NY State thruway did a permeant job of plugging up the radiator leak in my 62 Chevy.😉

 

Paul 

[padgett]

Heard about rice in a radiator but never saw any sealer that really worked. I put moth balls in the engine compartment of a car that must sit in the grotto for a while but have lots of quasi-feral cats around. Bananas to quiet a noisy rear end but 140 usually works better. I keep spare batteries in plastic marine boxes also use to keep the equipment closet alive.

[PFitz]

Transmission shop on Long Island that my brother worked in used chop meat to quiet trans and rear axles.  State finally closed them down for illegal State inspections. 

 

Paul

[Buick35]

Sounds like a real chop shop to me.I heard of an AAMCO by me that had a salt shaker filled with metal filings that they would sprinkle in the customers trans.pan to convince them that they needed a rebuild.My boss(owner) of a shop I worked for repainted torque converters and sold them as rebuilt.I'm glad I quit.

Edited June 27, 2020 by Buick35
Spelling (see edit history)

[JV Puleo]

3 hours ago, TheMoneyPit said:

Sand in the tires is a true story, during the First World War there was also a rubber shortage just like the second war and loading tires was cheaper than a replacement 

 

The biggest shortcoming of the RR Armored Cars used in the western Desert in WWI was the tires...not because they couldn't get them but they could be shot and go flat. Supposedly the fix was to cut a hole in the tire and fill it with wet concrete...made it bullet proof (literally). Of course they were never driven very fast and never on a paved road - usually sand or gravel. They also had a steel bullet-proof cover for the radiator that could be closed when going into action.

[Matt Harwood]

Synthetic oil eats seals.

 

High-octane gas is better for your engine than regular.

[joe_padavano]

2 hours ago, plymouthcranbrook said:

Except your metal car sits on nonconductive rubber tires

 

If there was a conductive path through the bottom of the battery, it would short itself out and discharge to the battery tray since the negative terminal is already connected to chassis ground, so again, tell me why a non-conductive plastic battery case will discharge on non-conductive concrete but not on the metal battery tray.

Edited June 27, 2020 by joe_padavano (see edit history)

[ia-k]

3 hours ago, Buick35 said:

Did you hear about the guy who was arrested on battery? They locked him away in a dry cell.

 

 

My son wanted to sell a dead car battery and asked me what he should price it at. 

 

I said "free of charge".

[CarlLaFong]

Rolls Royce hoods are factory sealed and, of course, Model Ts were originally designed to run on alcohol but JD Rockefeller and the oil barons forced the gubment to institute prohibition. foiling the evil plot of Henry Ford to control the nation's fuel supply

[Rusty_OToole]

Some years back I decided to test the claim that leaving a battery on a cement floor will discharge it. So I left a plastic case, 12V battery I knew to be good on the garage floor. Checked the voltage every day for almost a week. It did not discharge. Then forgot about it for 2 more weeks. When I tested it, it was dead as a door nail. Nothing at all. Tried charging it up but it would not take a charge. This is the only time I ever had this happen. I have other spare batteries I store on a wooden shelf and charge up every few months and they stay good for years.

 

All I can say is, try it for yourself. Buy a new battery leave it on a cement floor in the basement or garage for a month and see what happens. I know a guy who thinks I am a fool for believing this, he leaves his spare batteries on the garage floor all the time. He also buys new batteries 2 or 3 times a year.

[Buffalowed Bill]

Use of detergent oil in an old car, especially one that had lived on a diet of non-detergent oil, would break loose deposits of sludge, causing bearing failure. Engineering studies have proven that this old wives tail is simply untrue. 

Edited June 28, 2020 by Buffalowed Bill (see edit history)

[RansomEli]

Jay Leno wants to buy this car.

Edited June 27, 2020 by RansomEli (see edit history)

[Paul Dobbin]

"It's worth 10 times what I'm asking for it"

or

"It's worth 10 times what I paid for it"

Edited June 27, 2020 by Paul Dobbin (see edit history)

[trimacar]

How about the Stanley Brothers, if you were driving and you’d keep the throttle wide open on a Stanley for one minute, they’d give you a free car....

 

Or how about the all too common myth/belief that 6 volt car systems don’t work?  6 volts worked fine when the cars were new, if they don’t work now it’s corrosion or other issues with electrical path, small cables, bad starter...

[trimacar]

Or how about “it’s rare, so it’s very valuable”.... not always true....

[jeff_a]

 

• The value of a Mustang Boss 302 is so high that the fact one was driven over a fire plug does not lower its value. {actual ad to that effect}
• Same as the Corvette that had a connecting rod exit the hood for sale recently.
• Any of the luxury hybrid Fisker Karmas parked in Newark during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 would be a good buy. Only 4-8 feet of seawater washed over them. Just a case of a bad place to park 300 cars!

[Guest]

Straying just a bit here but, more than once I have had someone come up to me while refueling at a gas station or parked at a shopping mall and say something to the effect of "Hey, nice Corvette. My uncle (dad, neighbor, etc.) used to have one back in the 50's. Y'know, when they were still made out of steel."

I never correct them.

😄

 

[34LaSalleClubSedan]

You can lead a horse water, but a pencil must be lead. Stan and Ollie

[TerryB]

A fella in my home town, years ago when I was a teenager, claimed he bought a fairly new mustang for a couple of hundred dollars because the previous owner had committed suicide in it by running a hose from the tailpipe into the window.  No way of verifying his story but it was well circulated around town.

[zipdang]

Always rev the engine as you shut it off to aid in restarting later.

 

 

The guy with the battery was allowed in the bar only if he agreed to not start anything...

[joe_padavano]

2 hours ago, Rusty_OToole said:

Some years back I decided to test the claim that leaving a battery on a cement floor will discharge it. So I left a plastic case, 12V battery I knew to be good on the garage floor. Checked the voltage every day for almost a week. It did not discharge. Then forgot about it for 2 more weeks. When I tested it, it was dead as a door nail. Nothing at all. Tried charging it up but it would not take a charge. This is the only time I ever had this happen. I have other spare batteries I store on a wooden shelf and charge up every few months and they stay good for years.

 

All I can say is, try it for yourself. Buy a new battery leave it on a cement floor in the basement or garage for a month and see what happens. I know a guy who thinks I am a fool for believing this, he leaves his spare batteries on the garage floor all the time. He also buys new batteries 2 or 3 times a year.

 

I'm an engineer. Please explain the physics of how you think this happens.

[TerryB]

30 minutes ago, joe_padavano said:

 

I'm an engineer. Please explain the physics of how you think this happens.

Rapid and uncontrolled discharge of the flux capacitor.

[CarlLaFong]

43 minutes ago, joe_padavano said:

 

I'm an engineer. Please explain the physics of how you think this happens.

I HAVE HEARD VARIOUS Explanations over the years but they all are based on this mysterious phenomenon known as "grounding". The grounding effect circumvents the plastic case which is electrically inert at which the little "E"s find their way to their doom. Concrete plays a vital role in this battery suicide as setting the unit on the dirt  is a benign act since I have never been warned of any ill effects. The steel rack at my auto parts store, sitting directly on the concrete floor. Again, direct contact with the killer concrete is essential. I suspect a coat of paint on the slab could save the lives of many innocent piles. 

[trimacar]

15 minutes ago, CarlLaFong said:

I HAVE HEARD VARIOUS Explanations over the years but they all are based on this mysterious phenomenon known as "grounding". The grounding effect circumvents the plastic case which is electrically inert at which the little "E"s find their way to their doom. Concrete plays a vital role in this battery suicide as setting the unit on the dirt  is a benign act since I have never been warned of any ill effects. The steel rack at my auto parts store, sitting directly on the concrete floor. Again, direct contact with the killer concrete is essential. I suspect a coat of paint on the slab could save the lives of many innocent piles. 

I think it’s the same issue with computer information.  Computer code is all binary ,so it’s nothing but 1’s and 0’s....if a computer cable gets a kink in it, the 0’s can sorta slide on through, but the 1’s will get hung up due to their sharp edges...This has been a problem for years...

[Pfeil]

 I was working for a VW dealer as a unit repair tech back in 72. The chap next to me, a ex Hungarian fighter pilot who defected his Mig 15 into West Germany is installing a type 3 engine he just rebuilt, I'm on the bench rebuilding a transaxle when all of a sudden he starts shouting in Hungarian-more like cursing in Hungarian, but I'll never know, anyroad while installing this engine he slipped with his foot on the floor jack and the engine went up too far. Unfortunately his hand was guiding the engine up into the engine compartment and the engine tin pinched off the end of his index finger-left hand, and with every heartbeat a jet stream of blood spurting out he yells to me in broken English to get a battery quick! I find a battery in the shop and he opens one of the caps and sticks his finger right into the battery, this creates a fizzing effect bubbling all over, but it certainly stopped the bleeding. I grab the bandages out of the medicine cabinet on the wall and get a bandage and fix him up. He then says " all right then-lets get back to work" !

 

This was not a wives tale but a true tale none the less. 

  

[Guest]

Good grief!!!

😳

[misterc9]

I regularly store old battery cores on the concrete floor in my shop. They stay charged for months with no problem. I was told the storage myth comes from a hundred years ago when batteries had wooden cases. It was widely believed the concrete some how drained the battery through the wood.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, TerryB said:

A fella in my home town, years ago when I was a teenager, claimed he bought a fairly new mustang for a couple of hundred dollars because the previous owner had committed suicide in it by running a hose from the tailpipe into the window.  No way of verifying his story but it was well circulated around town.

 

Terry, 

I don't want to turn this thread ghoulish or anything but these things certainly do happen.

When I was in my teens, I found a guy who had done exactly that. The car was a nice 1968 Firebird. 

Unfortunately, I didn't follow up on the sale price of the car afterwards, but I'm sure it was very reasonable.

👻

[joe_padavano]

3 hours ago, TerryB said:

A fella in my home town, years ago when I was a teenager, claimed he bought a fairly new mustang for a couple of hundred dollars because the previous owner had committed suicide in it by running a hose from the tailpipe into the window.  No way of verifying his story but it was well circulated around town.

 

Everyone heard this story in our younger days. The version I heard was a Corvette, because for some reason the seller was unable to get the smell out of the fiberglass...