`red-lining

He went all the way to Europe just so he could destroy a Citroen? Sheesh.

--scott

No, he went there for other reasons and hasn't yet managed to destroy it,

Mine certainly had no power brakes. Drums all the way around. No power steering either. 8-cylinder engine which I once got up to 100 mph on the long easy downhill pointing at Huntington (I think) Beach. It felt squirrelly, as I recall, and I backed off immediately. (100 mph in a Corolla is perfectly fine.) The car ultimately developed a lot of problems which I had workarounds for, but I ultimately sold it to a "fine Cherman VW mechanic" who was sure he could fix it. A friend saw it at the local wrecking yard a few weeks later.

My grandma never learned to drive, but she scrubbed the whitewalls until they looked brand new. She also cleaned the chrome with steel wool. You guys remember chrome, right? Back when bumpers didn't need to have their broken plastic covers replaced at $hundreds/each.

I learned to drive stick on a friend's 1938 (maybe) Ford. Looked like a Brit taxicab. Later on I had my own 50 Chevy with an add-on floor stick shift, apparently installed and driven by a chimp. That's the one whose freeze plugs I replaced. Sold that one to a sailor on leave for the $50 I paid for it.

At the very least it's a warning in advance of need to the guy behind you.

There were no signs. We don't need no stinkin' signs, or maybe we do but we don't have them where I go.

So you didn't need to change down. The brakes would have been fine.

But no harm in changing down at the crest if you want to, particularly with a car you aren't familiar with and don't know how likely it is for the brakes to overheat.

I'm pretty sure I've told this before, but what the heck. I got mine up to 110 one time, and it was flat. No help from downhill. It was half-way across Michigan between Detroit and Gary Indiana.

It felt fine but I figure the speedometer went up to 110 so that's all I could do. When I got back to Chicago, my friend Rich Loft, who died of leukemia a few years later when he was in his 20's, said "Did you hide it?" I didn't know about that, but I guess I should have gone beyond the numbers and the needle might have gone behind the faceplate, or if it couldn't do that, I still could have gone higher than the higest number.

I had two r iders, it was just after dawn, no other traffic to hit, but I could have had a blowout and I had no business driving so fast with riders, esppecially when hey were sleeping and couldn't consent.

When I got back to Chicaog, the first thing I did was open my hood to admire the engine, and.... there were bubbles coming out from under one cylinder head. Darn, I thouught, and I quickly shut the hood and didn't open it again for a couple weeks. By then the bubbling had stopped.

Later I got a compression tester and like they say, two adjacent cylinders had low compression. But the car ran fine. And I think it leaked at cranking speed, but when running at 20 to 85 mph, it also leaked but not fast enough to make a difference in how it ran.

I remember now, that even after the bubbles, I drove from Chicago to Allentown Pa. and back at 85mph much of the way.

The car was like a tank, Undeneath the frame was a rectangle with an X inside of it.

One time at work at a construction site, when it was time for lunch, I thought I'd drive over a hill of loose dirt somone had made. I gave it a running start but I didn't get over the hill. The car stopped and when I got out, all 4 wheels were off the gound. so... it wouldn't move. I had to get the guy with the cherry picker to take the car off the hill and put it bak on the ground. But because of that great frame, there was no damage. 1

Mine still worked fine, but my brother had gone to Viet Nam and lent, then gave me his '65 Catalina convertiable. And as much as I like the Olds, I like the Pontiac better. So I gave or sold it for $50 to a guy I'd met because he had a car like mine. He had two, and after he had mine, he had 3. I hated to promote his nerdish hobby (details on request), but it needed a home.

**He bought a Ford LTD? convertibld when he got back from Nam (in one piece).

I wish I had a gramma like that. I remember chrome bumpers. You could sit on them.

I had read how to drive a stick and that was most of what I needed t o know. Then 4 of us were going on a trip and the owner of the 60n? Corvair wanted to leave earlier than 3 of us so he took two of u s out for an hour and taught us to drive a stick. From Chicago to Pittsburgh you only have to shift 4 or 5 cycles up and down, and I did the driving.

We went to Pittsburgh, NYC (where we watchd the '68 Deocratic Convention on TV, then Boston to see Doug's girlfriend, then some small city in NYS where my cousin was being married, the Rochestor and Niagara Falls, back to Pittsburgh and Chicago. There had been a bus and taxi strike in Chicago and I'd volunteered to use my car to drive delegates from the hotels to the Stockyardss and back, and I'm sorry I didn't get to do that, but the trip seemed more important. (The Republicans had the loan of new cars, but the dems were depending on volunteers like me, but more reliable than me.

True.

No, *we* are talking about using engine braking as opposed to using the service brakes. You shouldn't be using the engine to slow down on a hill, that's what the service brakes are for. What you can, and should, do is use engine braking to maintain a steady speed down a steep hill. That is the precise scenario where your service brakes can overheat and that is to be avoided at all costs if brake fade is to be avoided. If needed, should the vehicle still speed up, an occasional application of the service brakes is advised but no more than is required to maintain a steady speed. That way you neither damage your engine or needlessly overheat the service brakes.

Fraid so.

Wrong with a long steep descent.

Doesn't have to be a steady speed when the slope changes a lot.

What I said long ago.

Whether you get brake faded depends on how long the steep descent goes for.

No need for a steady speed. Fine if it varies for hairpin bends etc.

You don't need a steady speed to avoid damaging the engine, just don't exceed the redline.

What I said long ago.

The vehicles that I have with chrome bumpers have rust scattered on parts of the chrome. I'll have to see if steel wool cleans that up.

OK, I'm curious about the "nerdish hobby" now.

You slow down *before* you begin your descent. Once into the descent at an *appropriate speed*, you only use the service brakes to maintain the rate of descent, the engine braking taking care of the rest. It's obvious you have never driven trucks.

Again, that's when you *briefly* apply the service brakes.

Whether you get brake fade depends on your approach to the descent; how you manage your speed, both when entering and during the descent.

Again, you appear never to have driven trucks or, for that matter, any heavy vehicle.

What I said long ago.

You have that backwards.

There you go again, face down in the mud, as always.

And we aren't discussing trucks, we are discussing a medium sized SUV.

Or change down initially and don't need the brakes if it is a long steep descent.

But you don't get brake fade with a modern car like that unless it is a long steep descent.

Then you need new glasses bad and that is irrelevant to your silly line about a constant speed. Only a fool like you would maintain a constant speed in a truck or heavy vehicle, at the speed it has to do the worst hairpin bend at and there is no way to know what speed that will be in advance anyway.

You don't appear to have it at all.

Techniques are the same, just way more critical with a fully loaded truck.

You appear to be somewhat clueless.

Only one thing I can say in response to that - BULLSHIT!

You are just trying to confuse the situation.

You are pathetic.

Nope.

They aren't critical on a descent which isn't signed as a steep descent with a modern medium SUV.

You don't have a f****ng clue.

You are pathetic.

You have never had a f****ng clue.

For surface discoloration use a chrome polish. Steel wool will leave micro scratches and hence rust faster.

Where the chrome is broken or blistered, sand back to clean metal, acid wash, primer and chrome spray paint (I assume you don't want to have them stripped polished and re plated)

Nah, not re-plated on an old beater. Both are common 4 door sedans from the 60's/70's or beat up pick up trucks, original and worn, shot suspension, etc. Could be restored, but an unlikely candidate, and I don't have the money. It's just fun to drive around town. People always honk and wave now when you roll down the road in a 60's car.

Michael Trew snipped-for-privacy@att.net wrote

Doesn't happen here, but we aren't honkys.

You've got that right! and girls ♥ classic convertibles

Sorry t his took so long, expecially since I offered detail. P&M

It was just having a two '50 Olds. He was 35 or almost 40 iirc and he said he would drive around the U. of Chicago campus and impress the girls, or he hoped he did. Sure, some were interested in an old car but I don't think they were attracted to him because of his car.

I don't know where he actually lived but he owned a townhouse on the west side of Chicago which I visited once. The first floor had a big room, maybe living and dinning rooms with the wall removed, and it was full of boxes of electronics parts and probably other stuff that he bought at auctions, I think, There was little furniture, only these boxes of stuff and he was so happy to give me some of it, anything I could remotely use. He might have lived upstairs come to think of it but he implied he didnt'.

He kept his extra car there, in the back, and now he had 3 '50 or '51 Olds, one of them a fastback.