I’ve seen photos of some British cars from the 1950s and 60s with a holes in the grille for hand cranks, and Russian trucks from circa 1990 with them (although the Russian trucks were probably essentially 1950s designs). I had always assumed it was meant as an emergency backup means of starting the engine in case you had a dead battery or other problem preventing the starter from working.
The condenser was always in the wiring circuit with the points.
There certainly have been some distributor designs where points+condenser was a single physical subassembly replaced as a unit.
But there also were many distributors where points+condenser was not a combined subassembly. The points and condenser were sold separately, were installed a couple inches apart, and could be replaced independently too.
Just as in the later GM distributor designs, the coil(s) were integral to the distributor cap and the cap+coils were replaced as a single unit. But that was not true in earlier designs. In earlier times and even many then-contemporary non-GM designs the coil was a totally separate physical component mounted a few inches away from the distributor head.
Of the twenty cars I have owned, seventeen had carbs. Sometimes more than one. Although, here in Ohio, seventeen of the cars I have owned would qualify for historical vehicle plates. Have rebuilt many carbs (Holley, Rochester, SU, Carter) over the years. I don’t miss the learning curve of how much to pump the pedal when starting cold, warm, hot, etc. In really cold weather you would get only a couple of chances on a battery charge.
The only car I had with a hand crank was a Morris Minor (not the Mini, this one looked like a '48 Ford that shrunk) The hole for the crank was behind the front license plate, you flipped it out of the way. With a whole 1098cc, the effort involved was minimal. I used to crank start it just to get a reaction from people. It also had electric starter, from Lucas. Which may have been why the crank.
My math teacher took us (chess club) to face off against another school in his Hillman Husky (not terribly unlike squishing clowns into a Bug) which did have a slot in the bumper for a starter crank. I doubt he ever used it.
My first 2 cars had carburetors, a 1978 MGB and a 1974 Fiat 124. The MGB had the popular Weber carb upgrade, I remember messing with the screws on it not really knowing what I was doing. The car had a lot of problems, mostly electrical, but the carb did ok IIRC.
My 2006 Honda Shadow Aero motorcycle had a carb from the factory, it runs really well. I don’t think the Honda Shadow line had fuel injection until 2010, but they have always been regarded as very reliable.
[quote=“Jeff_Lichtman, post:100, topic:925911, full:true”]…Has anyone here ever driven a car with a manual spark advance/retard lever?
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Not on a regular basis, but a while ago my cool sister arranged for her and me to take a course in driving Model T Fords at a local museum:
I’ve driven a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500, with a 352 cubic inch V8 and a 4-barrel Holley carburetor. It was more of a weekend or hobby car at the point I drove it though.
Otherwise, everything else I’ve driven has been fuel-injected. I remember what a big deal it was when my dad got his 1990 Chevy Suburban, and it had a “fuel injection” badge on the back door, but I didn’t quite grasp at the time why people always commented on it.
My '32 Cadillac had a ignition advance lever that was calibrated in octane.
Reminds of a trip we took back to Ohio to visit my mom’s family. We were going on some side trip, and my dad was going to be driving an aunt’s car. This was maybe 1966 or 67? He nearly plowed into the curb … my aunt yelled “Herb! It has power steering!”
Yeah. The first time I drove a car with power steering was a Pontiac Safari Wagon. I kept making “C” turns at intersections due to oversteering. Almost smacked into cars in the next lane or into the curb, depending on which way I was turning. Was so used to making those turns with cars without power steering. It is quite different when city driving.
The biggest pain in the arsh was city driving a car without power steering that was also a stck. You only had one hand to steer with when turning from a stop.
I had to check - I have a 1994 Nissan truck with a carburetor. I was surprised that something so “new” has one. I thought that all cars were basically fuel injected by 1990, but I guess light trucks took some time to catch up. (I’m 34, by the way)
A lot of early power steering was pretty bad. There was so much power assist that it gave almost no tactile feedback.
Non-power steering (AKA Armstrong power steering) wasn’t too bad on smaller cars. Turning the wheel was hard only when the car was standing still. The hardest thing was parallel parking (or pulling out of a tight space), because you had to turn the wheel while the car wasn’t moving (or was hardly moving).
The cars they used for driver training at my high school had one-finger power steering and very sensitive power brakes. Driving these things was very different from driving my parents’ cars, which had no power anything. It felt like blowing on the brake pedal would cause the car to stand on its nose.
My parents had a 1968 VW squareback with mechanical fuel injection (i.e. it wasn’t electronically controlled). It worked pretty well until the day my mom filled the tank with what turned out to be water. This was during the first oil embargo, and the oil refineries were letting their supply tanks run low before they refilled them. These tanks often have water at the bottom, which usually doesn’t matter because they draw the gas from the top. But in this case, a tank got so low that they filled a tanker truck with water and sent it off to supply some gas stations.
Of course, the car wouldn’t run. When my mom tried to start it, the fuel pump filled the whole system with water, all the way up to the injectors. The oil company paid to have the whole fuel system replaced, but the car never really ran right again.
If l can include a motorcycle, my 1948 Harley has both a carb and manual timing retard.
To start, ignition off, fuel on, retard spark, set full choke. Kick the bike until the front piston was on the upstroke. Two hard kicks to get all the juices flowing.
Kick through till the front piston is on the upstroke, turn on the ignition and jump on the Kickstarter like your life depends on it.
Depending if the bike is stone cold, warm, or was just shut off (gas stop), you set choke to full, half, or open.
Biking sure changed when they put that magic starter button on them.
Yeah. My Dad had late 1960s BSA Victor. Single cylinder 441cc with finicky Lucas ignition and finicky-er Amal Concentric carb. It was a beast.
He was not a big guy and as a teen I was downright scrawny. For either of us to start the damn thing was always a chore. It had a compression release so it was practical to position the piston at the ideal spot for the real kick. But that eventual leap into the air and land on the kickstarter lever was always an adventure. If it kicked back you probably were going flying if it didn’t break your leg first.
We also had lesser machines that weren’t nearly so harrowing to kickstart. But still, between fiddling w positioning, amount of prime or choke, etc., and how long the bike had been sitting, it was always harder than you wished it was.
I don’t miss kickstarting motorcycles at all.
Yeah, the Victor had a long-stroke engine with a 9.4:1 compression ratio. They were notorious for kickback. At the opposite end of the spectrum were the two-stroke engines that became common starting in the late sixties. Those were a lot easier to start.
The Victor engine was slow-turning with lots of low-end torque. Someone once described it as “one revolution per telephone pole.”
The Victor was a stump puller for sure. A friend had a Kawasaki Mach III. 500cc in 3 cylinders and per wiki 6.8:1 compression. You could kickstart that with your arm.
I was riding 2-stroke 1-lung dirt bikes long before I was old enough to ride on the street. The last motorcycle I owned was bought new and was still carbureted although FI came in the next redesign of that series. I may never get another bike, but if I do it’ll be then-current state of the art. No fighting with nostalgia bikes for me.
I’ve been driving (legally) since 1968 and every car I had prior to a 1994 Buick Regal had a carburetor. In fact in my former life I worked in an automobile repair shop and used to rebuild carburetors. I still today own an old Camaro with a carburetor and it works very well. However, generally speaking carburetors are garbage technology compared to today’s fuel injection systems. With carburetors there’s problems with hesitations, stalling, running rough, poor fuel economy, chokes that stick on, chokes that won’t close, and on and on the list goes. Generally speaking fuel injection either works or it doesn’t.
The three best technological advancements on cars in my opinion are fuel injection, all wheel drive and anti lock brakes.
I would add electronic ignition to that.
That reminded me of how for many years “choke pull-off” was the Car Talk guys’ go to answer any time a caller’s car was running poorly, until fuel injection became common and they couldn’t use that answer anymore.