[yumpy]

Got a phone call at work today from the G.F. She told me her lovely daughter got her 68 Camaro out of our barn,and it kept stalling.Told me there was a red and black cable sticking out from under the hood. "would that be causing the stalling?) I told her to unplug the battery tender from the wall, disconnect the two cables and let the car fully warm up. What cable? The cable that plugs into the wall next to the horse stall. What cable are you talking about. THE ONE THAT IS PLUGGED INTO THE WALL THAT SUPPLIES ELECTRICITY TO THE BATTERY.She took it for a drive and found these two cables under the hood and it keeps stalling. UH-OH
Guess i'm out a battery tender. Hope the base is still plug into the wall and not laying somewhere on RT 26.Her daughter is a great girl.Small Business owner and Champion barrel racer.I guess she just isn't use to unplugging her daily driver or her horse when she wants to go for a ride!

[njsteve]

DOH!

[Blowd]

Back in the day I met a wonderful girl who unfortunately owned a "classic" 1970 Cutlass. The car was past it (towels above the visors for the leaky roof, rust to the tops of the wheel wells, etc) To soften the blow that her beloved Olds was not worth repairing, I put her into a nice little Buick Skylark driver. Not great, but head and shoulders above the Olds until we could find another.
One day the phone rings, and she informs me that the oil light is blinking on, but only when she goes around a corner. Hmmm, electrical or just low oil level? I ask her to stop at the parts store and buy 2qts of oil. I tell her to put one in and if that doesn't fill it put in the second.
20min later she calls back to tell me she put both in and it's still not full. So I'm thinking major leak or ran the pan over the railroad tracks. So I ask if it's even on the stick yet? She replies that she doesn't know what "stick" to look for but she can't see any oil down the hole yet..... I'm sooo glad she didn't try to "fill" it.

[ladytata]

You think you have it bad, since I'm a girl, I get all my girlfriends and girls at the gym asking me about their car. The one told me the sub murine lite was on. Lol, it was the check engine lite that looked like a motor w/fan. Another ond freaked out cause the steering wheel locked up, I could go on & on.

[boltbuster]

My wife grew up around tools. Her dad was a tool-and-die setup man, and wired a good deal of their new house in the Fifties. She helped him pull wire and handed him tools. A year after we were married, we bought a new'70 Galaxie 500 with an H-code (two-barrel) 351, just like the car in the attached picture. Anyway, I really liked the car, except for one thing... It didn't like damp weather. For some reason, it would flood out when first being started. Not all the time, but often enough to be aggravating. I had to remove the air-cleaner and stick a screw driver under the butterfly to keep it open. Once I did that, it started right up.

We taught in schools just a block from one another. During wrestling season, she kept the car and picked me up after practice. Knowing that the Ford would inevitably give her a problem, I showed her what to do to fix it. Sure enough, it happened a couple of times, and she just handled it. The best part of the story came when one of the other teachers couldn't get her new Cougar started on a damp Spring afternoon. Pat knew that a Mercury was dressed-up Ford, and she could smell the gas. She opened the hood, took off the air-cleaner, got the emergency screw driver, propped open the butterfly and had her turn it over without touching the gas pedal. It took a couple of tries, but the Cougar finally roared to life. To hear this woman tell the story around the school, you'd have thought that Pat had parted the Red Sea. She just smiled.

We put 93,000 miles on the Galaxie before it died, and we traded it in on a new '76 Cutlass, 350 with a Quadrajet. It always started...

[77 TRASHCAN]

Originally Posted by ladytata

You think you have it bad, since I'm a girl, I get all my girlfriends and girls at the gym asking me about their car. The one told me the sub murine lite was on. Lol, it was the check engine lite that looked like a motor w/fan. Another ond freaked out cause the steering wheel locked up, I could go on & on.

LOL submarine light, that's better than the old "710" cap...

I grew up in Eastern Iowa, lived in one town from birth till 6th grade. Went back to one of their class reunions because of family and friend ties.
Kinda like Mayberry...
A girl in my class lived in the country, hated it, no neighbors, couple miles from town, didn't like the isolation.
She decides to have nothing to do with any guy that is agricultural oriented for a potential spouse.
She brings Mr Geek accountant major home from college for the folks to meet. She has him check the oil in her "college clunker" car. He proceeds w/ requested task, it's a quart low...so he pours a quart of oil in the washer fluid bottle.
No bigger...he does it again after they are married...he was not allowed to open car hood after that...

[Firedup6975]

That's hysterical "what cable" LMAO!!!

[Firedup6975]

Originally Posted by ladytata

You think you have it bad, since I'm a girl, I get all my girlfriends and girls at the gym asking me about their car. The one told me the sub murine lite was on. Lol, it was the check engine lite that looked like a motor w/fan. Another ond freaked out cause the steering wheel locked up, I could go on & on.

I hear ya on this. I too get my friends asking me stuff, like how much air goes in the tires. And how to open the hood. OMG!!!

[Greg Reid]

Originally Posted by Firedup6975

how much air goes in the tires.

2-1/2 cups domestic, 750 millilitres import.

[Super Duty D]

Originally Posted by Greg Reid

2-1/2 cups domestic, 750 millilitres import.

Don't forget to run this in the blender on Medium-high, for no more than 7 seconds.

Cheers!

[mviker]

Originally Posted by Greg Reid

2-1/2 cups domestic, 750 millilitres import.

Be sure it's season appropriate also. You have your winter air and your summer air. Two entirely different beasts! :P

[The Champ]

My wife may be a blonde, but she's not that kind of blonde...

She's no expert mechanic, but when she got her first car ('71 Camaro), the first weekend I had her underneath the car changing the oil and filter. Made her get the jack out of the trunk and jack the car up and take a tire off and put it back on.

She's helped us out at the race track - changing wheels, scraping mud, putting on/taking off body panels.

Did the same thing with our daughter when she got her license.

[Craig Hendrickson]

Part 1: Back in 1968, I had a short dating relationship with a smart good looking professional young lady. On our first date going out to dinner, I was driving my 1965 GTO 4-speed and accelerated up on the freeway onramp at a brisk pace. One of the GOAT's mufflers had a small hole in it and under WOT, it made a pretty loud noise. When this happened, she let out a yell and said something like: "What's wrong with your car?" Needless to say, that was pretty much the end of that dating relationship.

Part 2: This girl owned a pretty cool car: a 1965 Mustang 289 AT convertible. After her & I quit dating, the AT in the 'Stang "went out". Her then-current boyfriend told her to get rid of it and buy a Chevy, so she bought a new 1968 Nova 6 (blech). Some many later, I had occasion to talk to her by phone and I asked her whatever happened to the 'Stang. She related the trade-in story, but said now that she understands what they are worth restored, she's kicking herself. We agreed that if her and I had still been dating, I would have just swapped the AT out for an equivalent used (junk yard) one and she would probably still have it.

[Blowd]

My flip side story is about my mother. When I was in high school auto shop class she became interested in what makes a car tick, probably due to being a single parent, and the long line of clunkers in our family history. I showed her the basics of checking fluids and mechanicals and even taught her how to change the oil properly. She took great satisfaction in this particular task and continued to change her own oil until she got to be in her late 60's. By then we lived in different parts of the country, but she had picked out a good floor jack she could handle and had her proper jack stands. I always imagined the look on the passerby's faces seeing this little old lady out servicing her car on Saturday morning. You go Mom.

[Chris65LeMans]

Originally Posted by Blowd

My flip side story is about my mother. When I was in high school auto shop class she became interested in what makes a car tick, probably due to being a single parent, and the long line of clunkers in our family history. I showed her the basics of checking fluids and mechanicals and even taught her how to change the oil properly. She took great satisfaction in this particular task and continued to change her own oil until she got to be in her late 60's. By then we lived in different parts of the country, but she had picked out a good floor jack she could handle and had her proper jack stands. I always imagined the look on the passerby's faces seeing this little old lady out servicing her car on Saturday morning. You go Mom.

That's a great story! I, too, bet it was a sight to passerby.

[GT182]

A woman came in to the parts store I hang out at last summer. She wanted 4 quarts of oil. She got em and went out to her car. Put them in and came back asking for 4 more quarts. She added them too. Then she came back and asked how much more oil would it take to fill her engine. It wasn't coming up to show in the engine oil fill hole. Everyone in the store stood there bug-eyed.... and truing not to laugh their butts off.

Needless to say the guys drained about 14 quarts of oil out of her engine and then "trained" her on finding and reading the dip stick. She's never been back. LOL

[The Boss]

My GF stays out of the garage & I try not to mess her up in the kitchen. It's been working for 11 years now.

[Formulabruce]

I met a super Hot blonde chick at a car show ( in the string bikini top, etc, yes just too good to be true circa 1983) , after a couple months , she swiped my one owner extremely rare '68 Z-28. Put her in jail after a 'woman hunt" involving many military bases ( which I have passes for thankfully) . She used her phone calls from jail to try to call me collect LOL .. was a couple weeks of hell ..

[GT182]

Originally Posted by mviker

Be sure it's season appropriate also. You have your winter air and your summer air. Two entirely different beasts! :P

Don't laugh on winter and summer air. Back in the 70s when I was working at a gas station up North, we had tons of people come in and ask that the air in the tires be changed to winter or summer. To them it wasn't a joke but we sure laughed like hell... and did as they asked. But the owner did charge to have it done. A buck a tire was the going rate. Truck tires were 1.50 per tire, but we didn't get many of them to do. I guess anyone owning a truck back then was a bit smarter.

[FunctionalShaker]

Yeah, that winter air is a little denser, so it costs extra.