OT: 1965 Halfords catalogue

[Tim Watts]

My dad used to have one. My new car has one built in (not GPS - an actual magnetic compass with an indicator in the rear view mirror)

[Tim Watts]

Leopard print seat covers :->>>

[Dave Plowman (News)]

How things have progressed. You can buy a wideband O2 sensor kit for about £100 these days which will give you an accurate measure of the air/fuel ratio while driving around. ColourTune was always flawed in that it only really showed it at idle.

[Dan S. MacAbre]

That's interesting - it might show me why my old Fiesta sometimes seems to pink. Mind you, I'm not even sure the car itself is worth £100 :-) But it keeps going.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Quite. I remember my father treating himself to a radio for his company car. A Smiths RadioMobile - the first all in one valve unit. Cost over £20

- more than double the average weekly wage. Aerial extra = and maybe also the fitting kit. Mid '50s.

Other one I remember from those days - a 17" TV. 59 gns. So over 6 times the weekly average.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Remember trying to fit one. Wouldn't work due to the sunroof motor. ;-)

[newshound]

17 inch? A monster, very posh.

[Terry Casey]

PUCK, Bill!

It also says Puck quite clearly in the printed description and, anyway, what do you expect for 4s 3d, even at 1965 prices?

[Graham.]

On Thu, 7 Dec 2017 20:53:08 +0000, Andy Burns coalesced the vapors of human experience into a viable and meaningful comprehension...

No, but I had a TELU LOG (page 2)

[Vir Campestris]

That's £2/10/- you heathen!

It's the tools. I still have a couple of them, and they work fine... and a radio for the price of a bike.

Andy

[Richard Jones]

What about the Spark Plug Air pumps on page 42?! 'Absolutely clean air' it says? Well I suppose the air has been through the engine air filter but what about the mist of petroleum vapour included as well? Not only for tyres but other inflatables too it says. Could be interesting if an air bed is pumped up with this and a stray ciggie match is dropped when lighting up!!

[Mike Clarke]

I doubt if it pumped the cylinder contents directly to the tyre. More likely the pulsating cylinder pressure acted on a diaphragm working as a pump. Could still be dodgy if it developed a leak between the cylinder side and air side.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'm not sure they did have a diaphram. If I remember those devices they looked suspiciously like a plain tube with the appropriate fittings either end.

[damduck-egg]

There was a rubber diaphram and a non return valve,

we had one for a blowing up the tyres on a tractor an old TVO fueled one so it had spark plugs. A simple device easily kept in the tractors small toolbox and the sparkplugs on the tractor were easy to access.

They relied on the air being drawn into the side slots of the screw in connector having an easier path and breaking the vacuum created by the down stroke so the air was sucked in there instead of the fuel/air mixture being drawn through the more restricted route via the air filter and carburetor. Hardly any fuel injected engines around when they were common.

A more detailed description here

Versions are still available from various places on the web.

I wonder if any owners of a single cylinder motorbike were ever given one for Christmas by a well meaning Mum or Wife.

G.Harman

[Mike]

My Father had one that we used to take caravanning. It was really noisy and lots of people would gather round to see what it was; Most amuzing.

- Mike

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Ah - right. Does make sense.

I never even thought of buying one when current, as the idea of removing a plug for this purpose struck me as just asking for problems. Given how many manage to cross thread them. But then my first car had a tyre pump in the toolkit. As, oddly, does my current one. But very few in between. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The standard size thread from those days was a fine thread and all too easy to get cross threaded. Especially into ally. Not so sure about the earlier larger size.

[Rob Morley]

That would just have made it a sort of foot pump.