Check out the footage from 1979 at the toll booth on the Tobin Bridge
Next up... Cederq talks Phil into a new project.... ( Just kidding, check this rig out)
MORE HERE ON THE BUILDER <<<<<
Check out the footage from 1979 at the toll booth on the Tobin Bridge
Next up... Cederq talks Phil into a new project.... ( Just kidding, check this rig out)
MORE HERE ON THE BUILDER <<<<<
1979 - about 99% American cars in that video, maybe one Toyota Corolla. Huge bumpers and the styling was not the high point of design. Were those the good old days?
ReplyDeleteYep.I still mostly drive cars from that era.They last,and aren't loaded with fragile electronics that fail way too easily.Even old Chevy Monzas outlast modern vehicles.The old trucks,especially if they have manual transmissions,will outlast anything built now.
DeleteI saw a lot of Ford Pintos in that video. The company I worked for in 1981 at age 19 used them for company cars. We had 2 or 3 dead ones we used for parts cars, and we did all our own maintenance and repairs like regular oil changes. I replaced an alternator and a frozen brake caliper with parts from the spares. My Dad taught me how to turn a wrench.
ReplyDeleteThat and the station wagons at the beginning.
DeleteThe reason most GM cars were shit is because the dumbasses there made a bean counter (Roger Smith) CEO. All he knew how to do was cut cost, and the other two did the same until the Japanese started kicking their asses with the Honda Accord which for years was the number one selling car. Ford beat them out once or twice by fleet selling the Taurus in large volumes but would again loose out. I would be curious to know if the accord is the top all time seller.
How do I know this, I saluted the General for nearly 10 years early in my work life. Loved the people, hated the company as I drove a chevy truck and it was always and still is in the top 5 of stolen vehicles because those bastards would rather sell another truck than correct the cheap plastic on the steering column. That's why I switched to Toyota.
Great video Irish.
Bear Claw
I can’t imagine how much that toll collector job must have sucked.
ReplyDeleteI saw a few of those "Trans" out here in the West. Great idea! A pickup truck that needs the whole front end removed to replace the water pump or any of the other belt-driven stuff!!! ...No thanks...
ReplyDeleteWhy wouldn't someone want a "van" like that? That is what USED to be great about this country and its cars. People could purchase what they wanted, and if it wasn't available in mass production, there was always someone around who could change it to meet their needs. When I was a kid, my parents had their 71 VW bus "converted" to have a fold-out bed installed behind the back seat. It was supported at the head by straps that ran to the ceiling. I used to lay in the bed while they drove on camping trips. It was great fun. Nowadays, POLITICIANS are making decisions about what sort of crap has to be in a car, NOT the consumer. Automakers pad their bottom lines by lobbying for "safety" upgrades they can overcharge for, while preventing consumers from being able to purchase affordable, reliable transportation. Indeed, the good old days are long gone.
ReplyDeleteWhat I miss about the vans I've had is the luxury of one of us being able to nap in the back while traveling. The Expedition (an F150 with an SUV body) I had was the NBX, the heavy duty tow package. Everything oversize and beefed up, EXCEPT the damn transmission. Tore that sucker up towing a big trailer. Had to move up to an F250 for towing. That's a very interesting combo rig, but as I say, I have to question the tranny trying to pull that fifth wheel.
ReplyDeleteThey were built on 3/4 and one-ton chassis and drivetrains. ...They could pull a fifth wheel...
DeletePangra Wagon:
ReplyDeletehttps://64.media.tumblr.com/42b5d05079834e741c2e1b958ee0beb1/tumblr_mmsz0ci0ed1qer7q9o1_1280.jpg
A Vruck? A sibling got one of those fifth wheels and can't afford the gas to road trip.
ReplyDeleteAt least the tweets aren't mean.
Funny, we allways referred to them as a van-up. We'd see them with 5 passengers and a fifth-wheel, pulling a trailer.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was about 8 years old I overheard my Dad telling Mom about a couple of toll takers in New Jersey who were recently arrested for pocketing anywhere from a nickle to a quarter from every toll they were handed. Their MO was to be consistent about their penny ante thefts-so much so that it took years before the transit authority finally figured out what was happening. Or maybe it was more of a case where the toll takers failed to pay bribe money once or twice to someone higher up who knew what they were doing.
ReplyDeleteWe had a storekeeper on our ship who was shorting each crewmember's paycheck by a PENNY. As with the tolltakers, no one noticed for years. It was actually one of the crew's wives, who was a accountant, who discovered the "new math." She started talking to the rest of the crew's wives and the house of cards came down on the petty thief. He ended up going to Leavenworth for his crime. The total haul from his penny pinching was just over $3K... He sold his soul for a lousy $3K...
DeleteSacramento, California.
DeleteCal-Expo state fairgrounds.
Entry to the parking-lots is past uniformed toll-takers standing vaguely in the approximate area of the routes in.
Apparently, the take was purely on the 'honor-system'.
Apparently, some of the toll-takers owned multiple homes in resorts such as Hawaii and the Caribbean.
.
Apparently, the new electronic counters embedded in the pavement...
... are frequently off-line...
...or mistakenly shut-off by accident.
ah, memories. I recognized way too many of those vehicles, including (I think) a Family Truckster.
ReplyDeleteIn High School one of the part time jobs I had was driving prescription medicine deliveries for the local pharmacy. The delivery car was an AMC Gremlin with a straight 6 (might have been same engine in the Jeep CJ-7 around the same time). A couple of stories about that - - - - -
I would routinely get in the car with my box full of little white crinkly-noise envelopes with plastic vials of tablets or whatever in them, and off I would go. I would absolutely MASH the accelerator once I put it in drive, getting out of the parking lot. One day the pharmacist, a really nice guy, put new tires on the car and I had no idea. So when I mashed the accelerator that day - SKREETCH!!! I burned rubber, like really too long because at first I didn't realize that awful noise was from ME ! LOL I was mortified.
A similar story - once when several miles away from the store, I mashed the accelerator to get going as per normal (you know, because I was 17 and it wasn't my dads' car) and the pedal went to the floor and . . . . . nothing. Engine idle. WTF? So I popped the hood and found the cable from the pedal to the throttle was basically a bicycle brake cable (I recognized it from a previous part time job at a toy store, where one of my jobs was assembling bicycles for sale). Fortunately the pharmacist was smart enough to have a minimalist box of tools in the truck so I got a screwdriver, turned the idle adjustment up waaaay too high, drove it back to my house where I scavenged a brake cable from my bike (actually, most likely one of my brothers' bikes, because why screw up my own bike?) and got back to the pharmacy and acted of course, as if nothing had happened . . . . . ..
Good times, good times.
Steve the Engineer
Grew up in NJ off exit #114 on the Parkway; seeing those toll collectors reminded of a time headed to a Sprinsteen concert, drinking beer. Gave an open beer to a tolll taker, she really appreciated it.
ReplyDeleteCoign - America's First Conservative Credit Card - Video and information
ReplyDeletehttps://commoncts.blogspot.com/2023/01/coign-americas-first-conservative.html
Great video of the Mystic Tobin Bridge in Boston MA! Drove over that bridge many timed in my childhood to get in / out of Boston.
ReplyDeleteDetroit was building absolute shit from '76 to '86. Cordobas', Monarchs, Montegos, everything AMC, Pintos, Vega, Granada- top speed 86, Ford managed to ruin the Mustang. El Camino, Ranchero. Sloppy LTD steering. Trans Am hung in for a while. Today's cars are so much better- I absolutely laughed at some of these comments Irish.
ReplyDeleteThere was no fuel injection, electronic ignition had barely arrived, bench seats made of naugahyde. These clunkers would make 100k and everything started failing. I had a '77 T Bird, a butt ugly silver Nova with red interior, a '74 Galaxy (400, fast as hell) and two Challengers, both 71's. Clicker on the floor, no intermittent wipers, I even had one car, the Chevy Citation, huge POS. One car had auto seat belts which broke. Blew up a Grand Prix.
I bought a wonderful Nissan 300Z in 84, Laser in 85, Probe GT in 89, and a Buick Century. Nowdays my cars all go 250k + and I maintain the hell out of them. I got a Diesel F250 with 270k that will outlive me and pull a freight train.
No for my trip down memory lane all that