On a lighter note!

[360gts]

Was having a beer today with a couple of motorheads....subject came up as how much we have changed in such a short time.
I remember as a lad...watching my Dad out in the street working on the old Mini...canvas over the front end...rain pouring down....lots of swear words
and all sorts of words I care not to remember.

Here we are now....heated shops...four point lifts....well lit pits....and all the tools we could ever imagine.....beautiful conditions.....and yet...we still find ways of complaining.
Sure, there are those on the Forum who have many stories they could talk about their evolution of change!

[kit of bits]

Funny you should say that.
I've just moved house last Friday and I now have a double garage and parking for at least 6 cars.
To work on a mini in a garage and be able to open the doors is a new thing for me.
I’m happy.
D

[Catmint]

Don'y worry, I am still keeping those swear words alive

[Rusty old S]

Yes , at 13 years old raiding my grandads shed and getting snail spanner’s , King Dick if you were lucky and a carpenters screw driver, wood chisel for scraper, proudly putting them into cantilever tool box that I had been given by next door as he head reversed over it. Watched as someone changed points on a Anglia and lost the little insulator, fitted without and proceeded to tow around most of Sunday morning with a lot of swearing. Good old days!

[steve1071]

Funny you should say that.
I've just moved house last Friday and I now have a double garage and parking for at least 6 cars.
To work on a mini in a garage and be able to open the doors is a new thing for me.
I’m happy.
D

Chuffed for you Dave after all your recent trials and tribulations

[mab01uk]

My late father volunteered to join the RAF during the war but as he was found to be colour blind became ground crew as an engineer/mechanic on Spitfires. After the war he saw a gap in the market for his new skills and started buying cheap pre-war cars that had been laid up off road throughout the war years and began repairing them to sell on at a profit. There was a big demand for old secondhand cars of any kind well into the 1950's, as even if you could afford a new car they were hard to come by as government policy restricted domestic purchases for several years after the war, with priority given for car exports to help restore the war-shattered economy.
My dad had many stories about how he got these old cars and repaired them with a lack of spare parts and very basic tools in the road outside his rented terrace house in Tooting, South London. Demand was high so he said he often had several potential buyers lined up, trying to outbid each other to secure what we would today consider to be old bangers!
One story I remember quite well was how he towed one of his bargain buys home and on closer investigation found it had a hole in the side of the cylinder block where a con rod had tried to exit...he stripped the engine down (out in the street in all weathers), drilled and tapped the block to bolt a plate over the hole plus some gasket sealant and fitted a good secondhand piston and con-rod from his expanding collection of pre-war car spares. A few years later when my dad had got his first proper garage premises and a car business going, he said that that car was still running ok and calling into his garage for service and repair work!

[Polarsilver]

Back in the day this apprentice with a 997 Cooper burning more Oil than Petrol was looking for a urgent solution or it would be back to a Push Bike.. so Saturday morning trip into the scrap yard looking for a get me to work engine ..found a 850 in a Van out it came on the subframe drop it down from that scrap van that was stacked on-top of another car .. back to girl friends home with this engine & box in the boot of her Dads Ford Consul..then self fit outside in the rain & my now Twin Carb 850 engine with pudding stir gears Mini Cooper was ready to take me to work for 7.30am on Monday.. if i was 3 mins late clocking in at Work you were docked 15 mins Pay & if three Late in a week = Foremans Office .. Today i will only remove a Wheel if the car is up on my 4 Post Lift & the girl has been "her indoors" for the past 52+ years

[AndyPen]

What great stories

I used to fix anything I could by the side of the road and when rallying, often in wet ditches too. Nowadays I have a nice rubber foam mat!

This is me in around 1983 wax oiling the new over sills that we all joke about now. The car was inspected last year using professional snake cameras and has stayed remarkably solid, so they are still on the car. I just realised that I still have those overalls in the garage, and since I slimmed down the past year can probably get into them again - let's find out!!

waxoiling Bette in early 80s_s.jpeg

['S'-type]

I remember the days if working on your car in the street, often in freezing weather. Basically you had to if you wanted to keep them running. It was character building. But as has been alluded too, the language
could be pretty colourful when it wasn't going right. (Usually!) Although not everyone had the same inclination, resilience or sufficient impoverishment to put themselves through it, you could say it was almost a rite of passage when you got your first car.
To do this these days, you are regarded either as a bit of a wierdo, hard up or just sad by generation x or is it y? The ones that don't like getting their hands dirty and call recovery just to change a wheel.
We used to dream of having a garage, if you tell the kids of today, they won't believe you. And I'm not even from Yorkshire.

[hanlminiman]

What great stories

I used to fix anything I could by the side of the road and when rallying, often in wet ditches too. Nowadays I have a nice rubber foam mat!

This is me in around 1983 wax oiling the new over sills that we all joke about now. The car was inspected last year using professional snake cameras and has stayed remarkably solid, so they are still on the car. I just realised that I still have those overalls in the garage, and since I slimmed down the past year can probably get into them again - let's find out!!



waxoiling Bette in early 80s_s.jpeg

Your image reminds me of the time I was changing an engine on a pig farm of a family friend who felt sorry for the son in law. Under the car on a slope. Felt wet - the swill had been released not realising I was there, Hey ho memories from our youth.

[cookie1071]

I’m still doing work on the car in the street - terraced house with no garage

[Catmint]

I’m still doing work on the car in the street - terraced house with no garage

still grim oop norf then

[cookie1071]

I’m still doing work on the car in the street - terraced house with no garage

still grim oop norf then

Public sector pay has its downsides

[Exminiman]

I’m still doing work on the car in the street - terraced house with no garage

still grim oop norf then

Four Yorkshiremen Sketch…..“We used to drink tea out of a rolled up newspaper” https://youtu.be/DT1mGoLDRbc

[Peter Laidler]

Or the other one '....... when we wuz goin' t' school, it were up 'ill BOTH ways.....'

[Spider]

When I was 21, I met the girl of my dreams, found a cheap, very cheap house and put down a deposit on it, we moved in together and to help ends meet, I would work out under the back verandah on Minis and Mokes. When it rained, it flooded under there, but hey-ho, still had to get the job done !

My late father volunteered to join the RAF during the war but as he was found to be colour blind became ground crew as an engineer/mechanic on Spitfires. After the war he saw a gap in the market for his new skills and started buying cheap pre-war cars that had been laid up off road throughout the war years and began repairing them to sell on at a profit. There was a big demand for old secondhand cars of any kind well into the 1950's, as even if you could afford a new car they were hard to come by as government policy restricted domestic purchases for several years after the war, with priority given for car exports to help restore the war-shattered economy.
My dad had many stories about how he got these old cars and repaired them with a lack of spare parts and very basic tools in the road outside his rented terrace house in Tooting, South London. Demand was high so he said he often had several potential buyers lined up, trying to outbid each other to secure what we would today consider to be old bangers!
One story I remember quite well was how he towed one of his bargain buys home and on closer investigation found it had a hole in the side of the cylinder block where a con rod had tried to exit...he stripped the engine down (out in the street in all weathers), drilled and tapped the block to bolt a plate over the hole plus some gasket sealant and fitted a good secondhand piston and con-rod from his expanding collection of pre-war car spares. A few years later when my dad had got his first proper garage premises and a car business going, he said that that car was still running ok and calling into his garage for service and repair work!

What a fantastic story Martin, many thanks for sharing it.

[minibitz]

I have memories of swapping my first mini steering rack on the concrete outside my flat on a frosty winter day. 15 minutes spannering then a quick trip upstairs to run hands under a warm tap, get the ole fingers moving, then back to it on and off until the job was done.

[mk1]

Couldn't agree with the OP more. When I started, I had bugger all tools, no money & no real idea. I loved every minute of my Mini-ing. Nowadays, I have a massive workshop, all the tools I could ever need, and more & for most of the time I am just going through the motions, sometimes I think I only still have Minis because I don't know any better.

Oh, to be young again

M

[Exminiman]

Looking back it is amazing how few tools I got by with, seemed to manage everything with a Halfords Socket set (from my Grandparents) which I still have....mainly three spanners,7/16", 1/2" and of course a 9/16"....various hammers, a number of chisels (all blunt), a Gunson Eeziebleed.....but not even a trolley jack!

Engines were hoisted out using a beam in the garage and a rope, light was a single bulb "lead light" which flickered on and off.

All work under the car was carried out with my nose almost touching the underside of the car, normally in a T shirt, normally took a few days to shower off the oil afterwards...

12G940 heads were made to fit onto small bore engines by grinding out pockets with an angle grinder while engine in situ`

Much to my parents alarm, used to swap subframes, (Wet to Dry) on a piece of grass next to the house, usually took a couple of days, just because we would go out clubbing or to the pub in between......

On a first date with a particularly attractive girl, she had to join me in pushing my Mini 1000 around Heston services to get it going again, surprisingly we are still together 40 years later.....can you imagine that today

They were good times though and I miss them.....

[Peter Laidler]

Most of us were taught - or learned - the basics from our dads. My dad used to get me to help him doing all the dirty jobs on his Vauxhall Victors. All his tools, as I recall, were King Dick or old wartime snap-on and most of them had a big broad arrow and WD stamped on them.

We used to drive to Spain every summer and one year I helped him do a decoke and oil change, caused by the 1 star local petrol, on the beach near our camp site. My dad was super fastidious about environmental and green issues and just let the old oil run into the sea. He told me that oily fish were good for you. I have taken all he said on board!