Inspired by the earliers posts on instant de-coke mixtures, I ventured to purchase a can of Bradex Easy-Start, which I remember from Ford 100E days. Having gone up a little in the affluence stakes, I don't need it for motors any more but normally the first start of the year for the lawn mower results in a dislocated shoulder and hours of frustration. With Easy-Start - first pull!
Does anyone else remember wonder products from yesteryear and are they still available?
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We used to spray ether from my model planes to get the mower to go.Also grind Jetex up and put it in a bit of parafin when it was really obstinate.Bradex easy start was ether based I think or maybe methanol the basis for all modern expensive wonder products that do not work.
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Smells like ether - and it does work as my shoulder will testify!
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Andy
Easy-start is ether based, I am fairly sure.
Also good for outboard motors when they have been standing over the winter.
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In Germany around '48 the MT wallahs used to get hold of the bootleg, high proof versions of schnaps (Steinhaeger?) and pour it down the downdraught carbs for winter starting. (They may have poured it down themselves too, against the cold!)
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Car accessories from olden times....
Leather gear knobs with picture of car on top
Big mirrors held over the normal one with elastic
Little stick on angle mirrors for the door mirror blind spots
Anti-static rubber things for back bumper
Windshield strips with names on them
Little plastics discs to stick on door which look like security locks
Stick on Garfields
Furry seat covers
Furry steering wheel covers
after-market center consoles
vinyl roof
stick on heated rear windscreens
clip on headrests
stick on ashtrays
little compasses on suckers
furry dice (people really used them)
yellow stick on reflectors
and so much more..........................
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Mark,
All on the one Capri?
David
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Don't forget the Texaco (I think) machine gun bullet holes that went in the rear window.
Ian
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Stick on mirrors
I still use a Paddy Hopkirk stick on blind spot mirror find it better than the current wide angle sections,with these you have to consciously look with the small stickon if anything is showing in it you have something coming up in your blind spot.
Norman
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'Nodding dog' on the rear parcel shelf !
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Go-faster stick on chequered stripes
Removing hub caps to demonstrate street muscle
Tyre pump that screwed in place of spark plug, to fill tyres, airbeds etc with petrol vapour
DIY white-wall tyre paint
Rechroming kit that allegedly worked simply by brushing a bit of wire over the rusty bumper
Yellow laquer for converting headlights to continental-friendly
'Krause' pour-in gearbox reconditioner (or if selling car, old nylons)
Sharon and Kev sticker in front windscreen
'Clean me' wittilly written on dirty lorry (an early forerunner of 'also available in white' and 'colour may vary from illustration')
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"Car accessories from olden times...."
*Olden* times? Half the cars in my neck of the woods still sport most, if not all, of the above!
DD
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Just remembered the Gator Grip socket from not too many years back. Socket with spring-loaded pins that shaped itself onto whatever you were trying to undo. Would have handled the recent rounded sump plug problem on this site no bother! Where are they now?
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Saw the Gator in Focus DIY yesterday. Does it really work?
David
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or the funny ring spanner. The end with the ring in it was hinged and it was supposed to grip anything.
Trouble was, rounded stuff is normally somewhere difficult to get to, and this thing wouldn't fit.
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Row of bullet holes across back window
Fingers trapped under boot lid
Plastic fins to make the windscreen wipers stay down
Sun visor fixed on top of windscreen (especially Ford Zephyrs)
Wind deflector shields shaped so that you could drive with the window down and your arm resting on the door top
Chain dangling from rear bumper to stop children being sick
Spoiler on the boot lid looking like a thing for roping a trunk to (whoops, I think they still make those)
etc etc
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Re the external sunvisor fitting to Zephyrs...they still sell them in Oz for fitting to Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores.
Very effective at trapping (live) birds after they have bounced off the windscreen, the air flow traps the initially stunned bird once it recovers, extracting the (by now) annoyed cockatoo can be an educational exercise!
Ian L.
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Cliff Pope wrote:
> Wind deflector shields shaped so that you could drive with
> the window down and your arm resting on the door top
Yes, I'd love a set of them!
My astra has the annoying feature of dripping water down the inside of the window, and all over the e/window controls and armrest, when it is raining. and I amn travleiing in slow traffic.
As a result, I have to stick a rag there.
Obvious answer - close the window... But then the car fills with cigarette smoke.
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Parking lights that you clamped in place by winding the window up (one bulb with a white front, rear red plastic cover and a lead to a specially fitted socket, saving your battery);
Separate-switched reversing light with a red plastic cover fitted on with an elastic band (early rear foglight);
Front foglight (with a four-position rheostat) - actually very efficient;
Extensions for light and wiper switches, so you could reach them if you happened to be wearing a seat-belt. The ones I bought had little tritium beads fitted in the end so you could see them in the dark (and they worked, too);
I confess to owning them all....
Richard
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Aftermarket centre consoles with cut-outs for enough instruments to make an airline pilot green with envy. Made to universally fit everything, so they actually fitted nothing and fell to bits anyway.
And internal radio ariels mounted in a tax disc holder, teriffic Radio 1 reception if you never went out of Shepherds Bush.
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Wooden bead seat covers...
Manual windscreen washer pumps...
Foot operated dip switches...
It just gets worse and worse!
CV
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RADIATOR MUFFS
We advise motorists to order their Muff before the frosty nights come. Makers are overwhelmed with orders directly a cold snap comes along.
The 'Midland' Muff protects your engine from frost and ensures easy starting.
Enables you to control the engine temperature to suit prevailing winter conditions by a pre-selection of three positions of the flap.
Austin Seven 12/-
Morris 10h.p. 12/-
Ford 8h.p. 14/-
Austin 10h.p. 13/-
Above taken verbatim from the 1937 Halford Catalogue for the Motorist & Motorcyclist.
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Fascinating thread this:
I don't think they've been mentioned but I wouldn't like to see them come back en masse (although I've seen one within the last week):
"kidney cutters" - chromed sheet covers which gave instant hooded headlights.
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'Dukes of hazard' horn.
scraping the barrel ....
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Holts' products would keep any old banger on the road: Gun Gum, for bunging up leaky exhausts, Damp Start for spraying on plug leads, Piston Seal for allegedly reducing oil consumption (on my Austin 10 the only way to get it to find enough compression to actually start!),
Esso tigers' tails for attaching to the filler cap (Tiger in The Tank late 50's),
V-shaped perspex bug deflectors that fitted where the bonnet emblem was (austins A30/40/50/70/90 etc , Standard Vanguards those types of cars. !00's of small triangular plastic stickers in differnt colors (Weymouth, Glasgow, Worthing, every town had them) that you stuck on the inside of the windows to say where you'd been, Bench seats (oh I remember those from early fumbling dates!), handles you bolted on the steering wheel to make it easier to turn (you can still buy these where I am), etc etc etc
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Eight track stereos. Never ever seen without an accompanying James Last tape in the glovebox.
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Terry
Try starting your lawn mower the way my father in law used to start his old (paraffin) tractor in winter. Light a bale of straw under it and leave it until the engine's nice and warm!
Ian
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Surely there MUST be somone as old as I am, who bought brake cable "Butterflies". These took up the slack in the nearly worn out brake cables on such cars as Ford E93A's (Prefects and Anglia's)
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Used one on the handbrake cable of a Marina. Worked a treat till the handbrake mounting bracket came away from the floor. Fifteen minutes with a drill and my mates pop rivet gun sorted that. BL's may have been crap, but they were easy to repair crap.
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Consul 375 lowline 2 butterflies on handbrake cable by the time I sold it. Why did the cables stretch so much?
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And about those whippy 8 foot fibreglass aerials
and Paddy Hopkirk stick on rear screen heaters
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And a full quarter wave flexible steel antenna for 11m mounted on the back bumper, with a hook up forrard to fasten it down to enter multi storey car parks.
(I have not entered this contest; with a comprehensive fifties motor factor's catalogue I'd have an unfair advantage on the one hand, while on the other with one finger typing I'd take for ever.)
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John, I got my Austin A40 "Farina" through an MOT with a streched handbrake cable by using a butterfly cable clamp in about 1972.
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All I can say is WOW !!!!
Any idea where I can get some of this stuff ?
Kevin... (wondering where that canvas water cooler went that I used to hang on the front).
BTW. Where's Ian (Cape Town) disappeared to ? I'm certain HE's seen some wonderful accessories in ZA.
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Kevin wrote:
> BTW. Where's Ian (Cape Town) disappeared to ?
Ian (cape town) has been away for a week or so, sampling the good life in plettenberg bay - a wonderful week of surf-riding, boozing, sunshine, a lot of very good food, and general relaxation. Back at work (saturday morning) just to catch up on the emails, and pop in to see 'you lot'
I'm certain
> HE's seen some wonderful accessories in ZA.
Indeed!
Take a look at www.autostyle.co.za
(Please note, I am in no way connected with this company. Thank God!)
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or,
I wish my girlfriend was this dirty!!
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'Tax in post' notices on the windscreen
'Running in, please pass' sign on the boot
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Or the Esso tiger tail to hang on the petrol filler cap.
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amstrad car stereos
back when alan sugar was in his prime and could sell anything
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Conversion kits to add flashing turn signals to cars equipped with semaphore indicators (my 14 year old Austin A30 van. Ah! those were the days).
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Sidewinder exhausts, usually allied to jacked up rear suspension, amazed everyone by achieving what had previously been thought impossible. It made a Mk 3 Cortina handle worse than when it left the factory.
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