If you'd driven a large selection of vehicles, you'd know that some are much easier to judge the extremities on than others.
My old SD1 Rover - which I've owned for about 30 years - is particularly difficult to judge where the rear is when reversing. To the point where I've fitted reversing sensors. Haven't had that problem with other cars.
All early Minis did. Cheaper than a starter relay, I'd guess.
IIRC, my Mum's mini saloon had one like that, too. That must have been over
40 years ago.
And the tailgates are really hard to get hold of, when one reverses into a tree. And that was 30 years ago. And no, I'm not saying how I know.
Didn't those with long fingernails have to resort to carrying a clothes peg to be able to depress the button?
Chris
Things must have improved. Rimmer have brand new ones at about 160 quid - not a bad price for such a large lump of steel.
I remember an aside in a motor mag when the SD1 was new - about so many having dented rear bumpers. The early ones were polished stainless steel - mine is fibreglass, so easy to repair. Can't be because the brakes are so good they got rear ended...
FIAT 500/126 had the starter *lever* on the floor. Next to the choke. Breakdown toolkit carried a length of wood for broken starter cables.
Bowden cable operated starter switches were pretty common at one time. Often just a pull switch on the dash.
Is a contactor a relay that allows a small current from an ignition switch to control the heavy current to the starter motor?
I hadn't realised that the floor-mounted starter buttons switched the full current - presumably there were heavy-duty cables running under the floor to it. If I've understood correctly what a contactor is which the floor mounted switch avoided.
The Morris Minor (for those too young to remember it) had a similar arrangement of a starter switch which was separate from the ignition key switch. In this case, there was a pull knob which operated a Bowden cable from the dashboard to a switch somewhere under the bonnet which operated the starter - again I'm not sure whether switch controlled the starter motor current directly or switched a small current to operate a relay. IIRC the starter motor was not interlocked with the ignition switch so you could operate the starter motor even without the key in - it's just that the engine wouldn't fire until the key turned on the LT and thus HT feed to the coil and sparking plugs.
I was about to say....same on my S-Max.
Horn ring and column gear change (Humber Hawk).
Yes Generally mounted on the starter motor to keep wiring losses dwon
The original Mini had the battery in the boot anyway. The floor switch was 'on the way' to the starter motor.
Yup.
Mostly the point of using a cable and so on was to operate a much chunkier contactor or switch than could be done with a key.
There was a whole lot of 'user interface' stuff that came in immediately pre and post WWII like electrical starting, turn indicators, hydraulic brakes, automatic advance/retard, automatic mixture controls... Probably the late 70s was the peak of mechanical and electromechanical stuff before transistors and the digital age ushered in fuel injection, and electronic ignition.
In between we had relays...
IIRC the starter motor was not interlocked with the ignition
That is my recollection also.
I find I can learn the width of a strange vehicle fairly quickly when it comes to passing on a single track road and avoiding a) hitting the oncoming car and b) putting the nearside wheel in a ditch, providing the width available is quite a bit wider that the car.
But when it comes to driving through a narrower gap such as bollards of a 6' width restriction (usually at a crawl because there is only a few inches to spare) I have to do it by eye - by looking at the edges of the car against the edges of the obstruction as I approach. If the obstruction was only at ground level and not visible from the driving seat as I compare car with obstruction, I'd have no chance without mirrors or cameras etc because I'm hopeless at comparing two things unless I can see both at the same time rather than comparing with a *memory* of how big the aperture looked a few seconds earlier. My wife can look at an object (eg a potato) and then look at another which is almost identical and say instinctively which is the larger/heavier, whereas I have to place the two alongside (to judge size) or hold one in each hand (to judge weight). It's because (she says) she has a pictorial memory whereas I don't.
I've heard it said that that some drivers of double-decker buses know instinctively the height of their bus and can look at a low bridge as hey approach it and determine, without seeing the height restriction sign, whether their bus will fit under with an inch or so to spare or will clip it by a couple of inches. It's a mystery to me how they can do this without comparing the numerical height printed in the cab against the numerical height on the bridge sign, or else by using a camera at roof height on the bus as they approach gingerly, given that from the driver's cab there is no way of seeing anything remotely like the view from the roof to learn the comparative heights.
When I'm passing a row of cars parked at the side of the road, I still find it very difficult to get close to the cars on my left (I lose my bottle even when I'm a fair distance side-to-side from them) because as soon as I look across to the nearside windscreen washer nozzle on the bonnet and line that up with the car I'm overtaking, I can no longer see the road ahead and it takes me a couple of seconds to switch from looking at one and then the other.
Near me there are two stone archways (landscaping of a stately home) across the road. The narrower one is 8' 6" wide. To begin with I was like all the grockles who visit the mansion: I slowed down to a crawl to make sure I'd fit and had lined myself up evenly. But now I can go through at 50 (although I lose my nerve at 60!) - as long, obviously, as I can see that the oncoming traffic has obeyed their "give way to oncoming traffic" sign. Interestingly, when we got a new, wider car in addition to my own, I didn't have to go back to "learner mode" until I'd learned the width of this wider car.
The cable pulled a lever on the side of the starter motor which slid the gear forward, and made the battery connection through an 8mm stud connected directly to the battery +ve.
When the cable broke, it was possible to start the car with a length of wood strategically pressing on the lever from the engine bay (which was of course in the rear). In actual fact it was possible just by hand, if you were strong enough - and didn't mind getting dirty.
I had a push switch on the 1952 Series I LR.
Its interesting to note why all these things disappeared.
Essentially electric motors became cheaper than mechanical linkages. Then electronics became cheaper than bulky switches.
Column shifts disappeared when bench front seats vanished at the safety belt time, followed by rear bench seats facing sideways in vans and minibuses (and the Land Rover Defender). However paddle shifts on semi-auto boxes have reappeared.
Safety also lost us the horn push in the steering boss, as that now had to be padded.
I drove in a car where the (broken) throttle linkage was operated by a drunk irishman passenger and a bit of string. The joys of hitch hiking...
I inherited my Dad's Austin 1800. When I came to trade it in, the battery terminals were a bit dodgy, and it wouldn't turn over when I tried to start it for the salesman to value. I lifted the bonnet and pushed the solenoid, a handy facility in simpler times, and it burst into life. Salesman bemused - turned out he had only just taken the job, previously having been a golf pro.
Chris
Yes
My dad's Minor Traveller has it's starter on the ignition key - but the starter relay was mounted somewhere accessible under the bonnet and there was a rubber bulb on the bottom, which when depressed operated the relay contacts manually - very useful when trying to start it on a bad day when fiddling with leads and WD40.
An ancient car that I once drove (I forget what) it had a three-speed gearbox with odd layout
R 2
1 3so you had to go through a dog-leg to go from first to second and push the lever *away* from you to change up, rather than moving the lever towards you and in the same vertical plane on a car with 4, 5, 6, 7 gears.
IIRC there was no interlock such as a lifting ring or the need to lift/push down the knob when going between first and reverse, so I quickly learned to press the gear lever very hard to the right when going from first to second, to avoid hitting reverse by mistake.
That reminds me of another change that was introduced, probably in the late
70s - gear levers which were biassed by lateral springs into the 3/4 plane so you had to press against the spring to go from 3 to 2 whereas previously gear levers would stay in either 1/2 or 3/4 plane with equal ease so you have to be very careful to keep the gear lever in line when going between 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 to avoid hitting the corresponding gear in the adjacent plane by accident. It's odd that this trivial innovation of a couple of springs took so long to be introduced.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.