i don't know what the the last thing i've done as far as car repairs go is is change oil and filter an and that kind of stuff i haven't gotten really involved in anything
uh extensive in car repairs in oh oh probably a year or so i think the last thing i did of any significance was change the water pump on an Oldsmobile
yeah i had a similar thing that i've worked on cars ever since i was uh a kid and that was some time ago but i've gotten to the point where uh the newer cars are getting so complicated to work on that uh
oh most of the cars i buy i try to buy as simple a car as possible so you know changing the oil changing the spark plugs and most of them now you know you don't go through the ignition stuff anymore because that's all solid state or
yeah i know what you mean
yeah
they're fuel injected and so there's
or fuel injected so there goes the carburetor and if the fuel injection system breaks down there's no way in the world you're going to work on that
yeah
no there's no way somebody once said uh i had a car that said fuel injection on the side of it and a woman asked me what that meant and i said that means that i can't work on it you know they've gotten so complicated or so high tech that uh
oh yeah yeah basically that's it
the guys average guys can't really go out in the in the garage and do a whole lot of repairs uh
yeah i've got uh an eighty four Chevy van that's uh a one ton van with a camper conversion on it
yeah
it's got the the the good old three fifty standard engine in it regular gas engine and that engine i understand i can i can actually work on that engine
absolutely
yeah i used to have uh
Chevy van it was a short van that had the the three fifty in it
yeah
uh-hum
and basically it it was a motor and you didn't have all the other junk around it and you could get to it to work on it
right
yeah
i had to change the water pump in that here about a year ago and it was really fairly easy take the grill out and the radiator out and you can just stand there and work on it
yeah the hardest part about uh water pump changes is getting all the junk off before you can get too it
well that's true you're right you know by the time you've finally got down to it i was hoping i could remember where all those other things went
well that's kind of the way i was i tried to remember as i took stuff off where it went and i don't think i had too many nuts and bolts left over when i got it all put back together
a few years ago i had an Oldsmobile diesel and uh the uh it after about a hundred thousand miles the injector pump went out on it and uh i bought it when we were living in Lubbock when i came back here i brought the car back here and uh
i don't know diesels got pretty unpopular and you couldn't sell the thing i mean though for what you could get for one you might as well drive it over a cliff and uh the injector pump went bad so i
oh yeah
found an outfit down here to rebuild it and uh i reinstalled that and that was probably one of the most miserable things i had gotten into in a long time
yeah
i don't think i'd know where to start with a diesel
uh well if you know diesels don't require mechanics they require plumbers
well that's true
and uh
i think the only closest thing i've come to to a diesel is i've worked for a tractor repair shop uh when i was in high school and uh we used to overhaul farm tractors basically
yeah
and they were nearly all all diesel but as far as cars i've never never been involved with them
well the injector nozzle and stuff in you know the big diesel farm tractors you know what are about the size of your
thumb and the yeah you can get to them and the ones in in the diesel cars were little tiny things and just almost impossible to do anything with
well yeah yeah and you can you can get to them
well i
i've had a lot of good service out of that car but uh uh i finally gave it to my son and he drove it literally into the ground you know he was out at Tech and he he finished it off
yeah
i'm
i guess you're right the the diesel has almost fallen into unpopular status i don't know exactly why One of the reasons is i i'm beginning to wonder is where do you get gas at i sure i don't know if it's still
uh limited like it was i don't notice it probably because i don't huh
what the availability
you mean the diesel availability
yeah i don't i don't notice but maybe because i'm not looking for it yeah
yeah well i'd bought uh a GMC diesel pickup
and uh loved that thing you know i really liked it but it turns out a pickup wasn't what i really
yeah
needed and it was the van that i needed then to buying the you know traded it in on the Chevy van but uh sure enjoyed it
but you you got the the three fifty in the van
yeah yeah the three fifty regular gas engine
yeah that's what i like because they've got plenty of power and uh
uh-huh
if you treat them right they're not the gas guzzlers i think that they've got the reputation to be i'm convinced that uh Detroit or whoever it is made a major mistake years ago when they stopped putting the small V eights in and went to the fours and some of the sixes
yeah well
uh-huh
i'm convinced that the small V eight like the the Mustang's original two eighty nine or some of the Chevy two eighty threes
were good little V eight engines that were not gas guzzlers but they had enough power to pull all this weight And the four cylinders just don't have it
yeah
i think that little the little Chevy V eight when it started out in sixty in fifty five i think was two sixty five something like that little
yeah
you know not a hold lot more than the than the six cylinder that i think was like about for about two thirty five or something but uh
they kept boring that block out to where you could a get a four hundred small block four hundred that was uh the same block you know just just kept boring it out and boring it out and stroking it a little bit more yeah
i think those guys those little V eights could have been made to be pretty powerful little engines if they would have gone with it but
yeah
well that was uh that was a short stroke engine it could really wind up
oh yeah
the two little cars i've got now
bought a Mitsubishi Mirage here a couple years ago and and it was normally carbureted and it's fairly easy to work with because there's not just a whole lot in it to go wrong and you know changing the plugs and stuff
yeah
yeah that's kind of like
the the first well my first car was a fifty six Mustang and uh over the years uh all i had a uh Dodge pickup several years ago and uh i can't remember the size of the engine it was a three O seven or something like that
yeah
but uh i remember working on those cars you'd open the hood and there was basically nothing in there but an engine and a few things Now you open the hood and it's scary like you say it takes a plumber to figure out where all this stuff goes yeah
uh-huh uh-huh
yeah
the friend of ours over here he's got uh sixty five or sixty six Mustang with the six cylinder
and uh i was look under the hood of that the other day and like you say you can see the road it's amazing
yeah
well if you had to you could climb up in there and do what you needed to
you could yeah you could stand in there if you really wanted to i guess
my dad's got a new um i guess it's an eighty nine or ninety uh Chrysler something or other it's one those transverse mounted V sixes front wheel drive
oh yeah
and uh he was showing it to me and we're looking under the hood and everything's nice and clean and you know you can see the three spark plugs there in the front And i said well where are the other three
and he had never really thou ght about it And he says well hopefully i won't have to change them before i trade it off Yeah it's going to be a problem getting back there because it was shoved right up against the fire wall
yeah
yeah
so they just about complicated the things so much that shade tree mechanics can't do much with them uh-huh
yeah well when they went to the started with the newer engines you know when they started putting all that pollution control stuff on the older engines is where they started getting into so much you know trouble because the three fifty with all the
you know like well actually i guess here within a couple of years ago anyway was the last i've paid any attention to it the three O five was that that V eight that they put in the the three quarter and and half ton van and it had all the air pump and uh
right
uh i don't know all that all that stuff and all the antismog stuff and uh boy that was uh really a mess back under there under the in that van
yeah the antismog pumps
and all that stuff loads the motor down
uh-huh uh-huh
so it's trying to push the weight plus
have all this drain on it from all sorts of
belts and things
but that's one good thing i've got a uh eight ninety uh
Chevy Blazer now and it's got one uh belt on it a serpentine belt
oh it's that one that's about uh what an inch and a half wide got a bunch of groves in it
yeah
i haven't had to replace the thing yet it looks like it would be uh better than having i've got an an Olds Tornado that i think's got six belts on the sucker And i had to get all those off you know when i was replace that uh water pump and uh
yeah
yeah
i had to struggle with that for a while to figure which belt goes where
yeah it's kind of like the inside dual on a truck you know when one of them breaks it's not the outside one it's it's the it's usually that power steering belt or something that's way back in there everything's got to come off
oh man
you bet everything else's got to come off first well it's a pleasure meeting you
yeah and we'll uh how many times have you done this now is this
uh i've got uh five stickers here from TI so i guess i've done probably uh i'd say seven or eight of them
yeah i hadn't uh hadn't not gotten any calls here in the last uh this is the first one in a week or so and
yeah i haven't gotten any calls in two weeks so i don't know if if it's tapering off or what i had a difficult time the past couple of times of getting uh answers so it sounds it's taken them ten fifteen minutes at a time so
if it's
winding down or what
finding a taker
people or either not or maybe they're burned out or they're through with it anyway let you go thanks for talking
yeah well
okay all righty bye-bye
