No, they don't make them that way anymore.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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In a recent thread, I lamented that most people are awful at identifying things by their sound. I think I’m qualified to say this because I used to know a man who decidedly wasn’t awful at it. He was my wife’s grandfather, who died recently. He had quite an interesting life, and I could wax inadequately about wide parts of it. Rather than do that, I will describe this narrow aspect of him that I will remember to the end of my days. I hope it’s an adequate eulogy.

He and my father-in-law both eventually worked for Holley carburetor. But at this time, the son was working at a local gas station, and had bought a used Falcon convertible. Being proud of his new purchase, my father-in-law drove it to his dad’s house to show him what he’d bought. He had shut off the car as he pulled up, but as his father walked out, he told him his (iirc) #7 exhaust valve was probably burnt, and he needed to replace it and grind the seat. An inspection proved him correct.

My father-in-law later bought a '66 Comet Caliente. The gas station he worked at had a then-current Sun test setup. He’d use the Sun tester to tune the car, and then compare his 1/4 mile times against those the car turned with his father’s tune, which was done by ear. The car turned consistently faster times when tuned by his father.

The feat of ear tuning that amazes me the most was when Dodge was engineering the 440 Six Pack package. The Dodge engineers called Holley complaining that they could not get the setup to run right. Holley sent my wife’s grandfather down to tune it for them. He tuned it on a running engine. The engineers were told to take it off and put it on the flow bench to measure it, that would be the factory tune.

Each of these stories were told to me by other family members, and verified when I asked the man himself. Somewhat due to the evolving design of engines, and somewhat due the evolving needs of people; this type skill is vanishing, and it was never common to be so good at it. Even if the time for men who could do this work has passed, I will miss them.

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That is a very nice eulogy highlighting an amazing part of that man’s life. Thanks for sharing.

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Very cool. The man had a gift. Thank you for telling us about it.

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Very nice eulogy. A rare gift, and a helpful one at that.

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I used to know an old guy who balanced VW dual carb setups by smell.

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I find myself wondering if the man had perfect pitch, but in the absence of an interest in music, he applied it to cars.

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Thanks to everyone who read the OP, and thank you for the kind replies.

74westy, where was he smelling? I used to tune an old holley by the exhaust smell when I was too lazy to get the vacuum gauge out. The gauge was always better than I was if I bothered to check.

I think that you’re at least partially right. But that wouldn’t explain what sound he was listening for while tuning. I don’t think it was the exhaust note, at least not the way that the rest of us think of an exhaust note, because that pitch changes with almost any change to the pipe (length, diameter). If he was listening to the exhaust note while tuning (which is almost the only thing that it would make sense to listen to), he was listening to some other quality than just the pitch.

It also wouldn’t explain his ability to specify where the failure was. There are some things I can diagnose from hearing a car pull up. For instance, an exhaust manifold leak is easy to diagnose by sound once you’ve heard it. However, I couldn’t tell you which side it was on without opening the hood, much less tell you which cylinder was leaking.

I dunno, it’s a mystery to me. Indistinguishable from magic.