In this Sunday’s Automobiles section, I wrote about a cross-country trip I took with a friend in my 1958 Cadillac Eldorado, and of all of the joys and jolts that attend travel in a car from the days before cruise control, satellite radio, before even cup holders.
And before the experience of near-absolute automotive reliability that most drivers experience today. For among the many ways the trip reminded me of my teenage years (which were spent begging my father to please move beyond Oldsmobile station wagons), the trip also recalled what was once a fairly common experience for drivers back then: the car that wouldn’t start, or stalled, or lost pieces of metal along the way.
When I was in college, for example, I tended to favor parking spots on hills, and readers of my generation –- this was the late 1960s –- will know exactly where I’m going: hills were my answer to a gimpy starter because a rolling jump start was far more reassuring to girls than hammering on the starter in hopes of getting the brushes to set.
The Eldorado had a new motor and all the trimmings, so it never left us stranded. But as the story discloses, it still managed to remind us that we had stepped back in time: the driveshaft came loose, the motor stumbled, at one point in late-summer Nebraska it was so hot under the hood the gas in the glass sediment bowl boiled, and a nice half-hour vapor-lock ensued.
But let’s get back those starter brushes. Few drivers today have to know how a starter works, or what it is like to drive a car whose mechanics are open to fiddling, with set screws, adjustments and tinkering. Cars today are so reliable that Click and Clack, the hosts of “Car Talk” on NPR, spend most of their air time settling pointless arguments between wives and their silent husbands. Besides, many modern motors are all but sealed behind plastic shields.
The old Caddy may have been frail, like others cars of that generation, but it was at least open to adjustment. Open up the idle speed to overcome a tendency to stall, clip clothespins on vapor locked gas lines, cover the carburetor with your hand to choke it. Get out and get under, as the song goes, and, if you’re not parked on a hill, bang on the starter.
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