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The Wild Bunch
Blowing Up Charlie
Turnpike Ticket Massacre
One of the keepers
The Myth of Gamey Vennison
Service Auto Glass
Throwing Down On The Bigshots
Knock City
Elanore
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JLF
One of my college cars was a 57 Chevy two-door sedan, black with a white top.
It had a 283, and a slush-o-glide tranny. It developed a healthy rod knock soon
after the bacon loaded into the bearing caps by the tote-the-note lot fell out.
It knocked for all the time I owned it, but ran fine, and never let go, so I
didn't worry about it. It was embarrasing to cruise in, however, so I figured
the best defense was a good offense, so I lettered "Knock City" on the lower
panel of each front fender. Naming cars was cool back then, and I was an arteest,
and did a good job. It earned more than a few chuckles parked in the local
burger-burp cruise joints, and chuckles were cool.
The only bad habit the Chevy had was the resident fluid gremlin in the tranny
with an insatiable thirst. The thing used ATF like a bear, and I never could
find a leak, or a puddle under it, so I just chalked it up to a gremlin. I made
a habit of keeping a few quarts in the back seat, and when it started being slow
to go into gear, I would feed the gremlin, and all would be fine.
One fine morning the fates conspired against me. I had used up my back seat
stash of ATF, and kept forgetting to restock, and it had been a few days. I
bounced out to make a morning class, fired the Chevy, and dropped it into gear,
and it did nothing. I revved the engine...nothing. I tried reverse...nothing. I
*really* revved the engine...nothing. No matter what I tried, the Chev wouldn't
budge.
I shut it off, and went back into the apartment, hoping to find a can of ATF
that had made it into the house for some reason. No luck, and time was growing
short to make the class, so I went into improvise mode, and started another
search. On the kitchen counter was a can of Crisco shortening, and inspiration
took hold. I grabbed an old sauce pan, dumped a big glob of Crisco into it, and
fired the burner. In no time, I had "oil". I sprinted out to the Chevy, popped
the hood, got my funnel, and emptied the sauce pan into the tranny. I fired the
engine, dropped into drive, and was rewarded with a familiar, and re-assuring
clunk. Slammed the hood, threw the sauce pan in the back seat, secured the
house, and roared off to class in the nick of time.
After class, I re-stocked my ATF stash, and topped off the tranny. The Chevy
never gave any hint of trouble, nor did it ever smell like fresh-cooked
biscuits.:) I drove it without incident for quite some time, feeding the tranny
gremlin at regular intervals. Finally some feller came along that wanted a
"classic" worse than I wanted transportation, and made me an offer I couldn't
refuse. I told him that a rod knocked, and the tranny gulped ATF, but didn't
bother mentioning the deep-fried additive.:)
I imagined at some later time, some mechanic somewhere pulling the pan on the
tranny, and wondering "what in the world is all this?"
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