what's the opposite of "Obtainium"?

[Leon]

Ford liked to dress up other model cars and call them the Mustang. When they turned the Pinto into a Mustang it was a bad move.

[Leon]

Nothing but before the millenials many things were poorly designed.

Well at least they learned, out parents failed with many of us.

[krw]

"Nothing" is the point. ...and never will, as a group. Sure there are exceptions but living in mommy's basement doesn't make a serious person.

True that. And it's taken a nose dive in the last 20 years.

[DerbyDad03]

I had a 1966 Rambler Ambassador 990.

Weird thing to have break: The vacuum booster pump that was mounted to the top of the fuel pump, causing the windshield wipers to stop working. I solved the issue by pulling the hoses off both sides of the pump and connecting them to each other. It worked great as long as you didn't mind the wipers stopping mid-wipe when you accelerated, like you might do while getting on a highway. :-O

The same thing happened to my buddy's AMC Javelin while we were driving from Cleveland to NJ in a 40° rain storm. In that case the wipers failed in the up position, but would come back down if we turned them off via the slide control. Off brought them down, On sent them up - until the cable inside the dashboard broke. That's when we tied a wire to the wiper arm itself so the passenger could pull them down and then let them go back up. If you don't think that that is a thing, ask the Marines:

Then there was the time I had to replace the starter on the Rambler. I went to the parts store and found out that there was 3 different starters used on that car. The only way to determine which one I needed was to bring in my old one and match up the bolt pattern. AMC designed body styles but used parts from various manufacturers, so you never knew what you'd find while working on them.

Oh yeah, then there was the vertically mounted AM radio. I wanted to swap a AM/FM stereo into the Rambler so I started taking the OEM radio out. Turns out that they needed to make room for the AC ductwork, so they used a radio that was tall and shallow vs. the more normal short and deep.

I knew a guy that was an auto mechanic and also plowed snow as a side job. He built a plow truck by mounting a Pacer body on a 4x4 truck chassis. He said he wanted the extra visibility provided by the Pacer's expansive glass. Funny looking vehicle, but it got the job done.

[DerbyDad03]

25% of the engineers and scientists at NASA are millennials. Maybe they do live in their mommy's basements and play X-Box when they're not doing rocket-scientist type stuff, but I won't fault them for that.

[Scott Lurndal]

Something like 80% of SpaceX is millenials. The idea that the current generation is (insert phrase like lazier, less intelligent, less motivated, less patriotic) than a prior generation has been a meme amongst old people for centuries, and it has never been true.

[krw]

When was the last time that the US actually built a new rocket?

[DerbyDad03]

Define "US".

Besides, it takes more - a lot more - than "building rockets" for a space program to succeed.

Moving on...

[Scott Lurndal]

and a host of other, smaller launch operations here and worldwide all developing various space (or supersonic and hypersonic passenger planes) today.

Heck, SpaceX builds a new Starship almost each week.

[krw]

Oh, I'd forgotten that part. I remember the wipers slowing on acceleration and going a mile a minute when decelerating. I don't remember a booster but I did have to replace the vacuum wiper motor several times. Good thing it was easy and relatively cheap ("relatively" because I was a poor student).

No one would believe that vacuum wipers still existed.

My Gremlin had an Auburn clutch. The parts guy gave me a Borg clutch. While it didn't look at all like the one that came out of there, the hole pattern matched, including three extras. Thinking that it was a later upgrade we put the clutch in anyway. Nope. We took the new and old part back to the parts store and the guy couldn't believe anyone had used an Auburn clutch in 20 years (at that time). He felt bad for me so took the old one back (we'd damaged it) and ordered the right clutch (which wasn't in his book). Of course we had to do the job twice and were without a car for several days.

The reason we had to replace the clutch was that the starter took out the ring gear. I got pretty good at jump starting the car and could do it by myself (not all that safe but I was 19 or 20, invincible) but SWMBO wasn't pleased with the situation.

Uh, what model is it? Well, it's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56, '57, '58, '59 automobile It's a '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67 '68, '69, '70 automobile

[krw]

Since the comment was about NASA...

[krw]

I see you can't follow the thread either.

[pyotr filipivich]

The Japanese had just followed the smart ideas coming out of the US ... to bad American car companies hadn't adopted them.

Which was still a lot of money in the seventies.

Friends story was of buying a car for $235 "because of a vibration", which turned out to be the result of a bubble on the inside of one of the front tires. Drove it, sold to friend, engine seized, took it back. Had it parked at his dad's station where he work. Guy comes in the station, wonders if the car might be for sale. "Yeah, but the engine's shot". Guy just wants it for a restoration. "So what do you want to offer for it? $650 "That's fair."

Hey, it lasted more than a year, what's yer beef?

Had a friend with a Shelby Mustang. She called it "Mouse" because it squeaked. Even at a 105.

[pyotr filipivich]

DerbyDad03 [e-mail] on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 14:57:00 -0700 (PDT) typed in rec.woodworking the following:

Not so much "can't get rid of" as "I can't keep this, I "can't" really sell it, I'm sure someone would want it for their Project."

I knew there was a reason I hadn't put craigslist in the bookmarks ... "Oh, hey, neat ..."

Thanks

pyotr

[hubops]

Nope. Not for a fully certified car in Niagara Falls in 1975. It was as cheap-as-it-goes - legally. John T.

[DerbyDad03]

Bad quoting. I didn?t say that.

Now *that* was me.

[DerbyDad03]

But that?s not what you asked. Direct answer: The ?US? i.e. the country, never made a rocket but US based companies have and still do.

This better?

[Clare Snyder]

In '68 I bought a '61 Mini for $60. I likely spent $100 in repairs - frove it for a year and a bit and sold it for something like $250. Bought a '63 Valiant sedan for $300 with a fresh paint job. Drove it for about a year and a half anf bought a '69 Dart (in 1971) for $1800. I sold it in 1972 when I was leaving for Africa. Picked up a '65 Rambler Classic for $50 to tide me over 'till I left - Dad sold it for me for $75 after I was gone.

Cars from the sixties were better than from the '70s. When I came back I bought a '72 Colt (in '75) Ended up trading it to my younger brother for Dad's old '57 Fargo pickup truck - I think I came out ahead on that deal

The Vega was, like many of GM's small car attempts, a good idea very poorly executed - you'd swear they purposely sabotaged them to be able to sell their bigger junk.

[Clare Snyder]

From what I remember anything less than $750 was a "project" when I got home in '75.

[J. Clarke]

Well yeah, because those ideas never work in the US. I went through an example of that at a PPOE. The management jumped on the "Toyota Production System" and gave all kinds of trainings and started using words like "Kanban" and "Gemba". They even got an award for it (a US based award named after a Japanese who don't get no respect in Japan). I finally gave up on the company's training and started reading up on the Toyota Production System from the people who actually created and ran it. Well, what we were doing wasn't anything like the Toyota Production System. And after a few years in which their "improvements" didn't improve anything they jumped on the next flashy thing that some consultand dangled in front of them and then pretended to implement that.

And now we have the electric "crossover" that's called a Mustang. Ford never learns. I remember when the T-Bird was something special, then it went through a period in which it was "just a car" and now it's dead. On the other hand GM never lost focus on the Corvette and it's still going strong.