America is ( maybe not as much anymore) a nation of guys who tinker with stuff in their basements and (and yards) garages. That is one of the defining characteristics of Americanism.
There is nothing more American than teenagers using a tree to hoist an engine out of a car, kids with a collection of bicycle parts and three “Franken bikes,” or the guy working in his basement endlessly trying to re-invent the mousetrap.
That just does not happen in much other countries.
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On this day Dec. 9, 1884 some dude in Chicago, (Levant Richardson)
received a patent for using ball bearings to create low-friction roller skates.
As Grok describes it:
Switching from a plain axle to decent modern sealed ball bearings typically lets you coast 3–6 times farther.
In numbers people often quote:
– Plain axle→ coast ~3 meters from a moderate push
– Budget steel bearings → 9–18 meters
– Premium steel bearings → 30–50 meters
That simple idea, first conceived and drawn by Leonardo Davinci in the 1490s (for his helicopter) moving parts could move a lot more freely and wiht a lot less friction. This simple concept gave a 3x to 6x power boost to almost every related thing inventors were working on and was a vital step in developing the automobile.
That’s sad when you think about it. I rebuilt my first lawn mower before I was 12. My brother was laughing at me say you will never get it running. Well I did.
Then I built rabbit hutch shortly there after and started raising rabbits for meat…and for FAA.
Today young libs need to be told how to wipe there asses.
Unlike my neighbors, I never made the jump from
fixing bikes to fixing lawnmowers and cars
(I was a nerd and started doing things like reading Tolkien and Asimov instead)
But I, and every kid in my neigborhood had a collection of old bikes and
We routinely built Frankenbikes out of spare parts.
I’m not sure they do that in Norway and Liechtenstein.
I always (with pride) thought of it as an American thing,
associated with our big yards and suburbs etc.
Unfortunately it’s not nearly as prevalent nowadays because of planned obsolescence and how stuff is more disposable. That said, I do love my projects (flooring, plumbing, etc).
Least with old cars it wasn’t that big of a hassle to pull the engine. More modern cars are… Not fun most of the time. Some worse than others. My old Celica was pretty easy for the most part. Not as simple as that car in the picture but it was simple enough and being a manual car the wiring harness wasn’t that complicated since there wasn’t much going to the transmission side.
Never had to do it on my old f-body, but I have seen it done a few times and most of the time you pull engine from the bottom. Which is just weird but apparently it’s easier with those 93-02 Camaro/Firebirds.
It could almost be me, except we used a tripod of black locust saplings and a ratcheting come along. Three inch diameter locust posts are incredibly strong.
I’ve had half a dozen F-150 trucks down through the years and there was enough room under the hood with an eight cylinder motor in the truck, you could climb in there and have room to work.
Our Dad used to work on his cars, trucks and construction equipment all the time. I helped him haul out an engine in a ‘57 Plymouth Suburban Station Wagon, tear it down and rebuild it when I was about 10 or 11. I still work on my 2 stroke tools and minor stuff on the cars. Other regular maintenance goes to the dealer now, I’m getting too old and don’t have the means to get under vehicles anymore.
I just had to replace my water pump in the jeep, that and thermostat. Change them out and use the correct torque wrench to tighten the bolt taken about hour…getting to it was couple hours. Then I dropped shock pad that mounds on radiator between that and my transmission cooler. Get to that I had practically had to take entire front end off. My square body it would have taken about 45 minutes.
