Automobiles I have owned

I already told you about my first car a 1939 Chevrolet. It cost $59.00. I kept it for 3 years, give or take, and I sold it for $30.00 and a Willis car. I sold the Willis car for $20.00, which means that the car cost me $9 dollars plus upkeep. That is not bad for three years of driving and dating and wooing the girls.

I bought a Studebaker car from one of my professors in college. It was a much more modern car and looked much better but it was not as easy for me to fix when it developed transmission problems. It had an automatic transmission with way too many parts, not simple like a standard transmission. It cost me a lot more to buy and I did not keep it as long.   

During my 8 years of working my way through college I had a series of different cars. I don’t remember the sequence of them. One was a 1948 straight eight Buick. A strait eight is a car that has the eight cylinders in a straight row and not four cylinders side by side; that is called a V8. Ford motor company was the first company to build the V8. The straight eight was a heavy car so it was a good ride and served me well. There was one problem. It was hitting on only 7 cylinders. It still ran good so Barbara and I went on vacation one summer to El Paso TX in my car of 7 cylinders. My brother was living in El Paso at this time so he and I took the tappet pan off to discover that one of the push rods had the piece right at the top broken off. The push rods control the valves. There are two valves for each cylinder, one to let the gas fumes into the cylinder and one to let the burned fumes escape as exhaust. First the valve opens and the gas fumes go in and then the cylinder closes and the piston comes up and compresses the gas then the spark plug fires the gas fumes and the explosion slams the piston back down and the exhaust valve opens to let the fumes escape. If ether one of the push rods is broken that cylinder does not function. One was broken so I needed another to replace it. We started with Auto Part stores with no luck. Next we tried the Buick dealership. They told us the part was no longer manufactured. Then we tried every Junk Yard place we could find in the phone book. No luck.

I was ready to put my tappet pan cover back on and continue with my 7 cylinder Buick, but then I looked at the socket that I had in my hand and inspiration hit me. The end that the socket wrench fit into was about the size of the push rod and only the end was broken off so I got my trusted hammer and forced the socket over the end of the push rod. I dropped the rod back into its slot and adjusted the tappet bracket and I drove my 49 strait 8 Buick back to California. I don’t how long I kept that car but it was still an 8 cylinder car for as long as I had it.

TO BE CONTINUED