Early brakes were mechanical and were operated by a metal rod. Hydraulic brakes were a big advance in technology.

I remember looking at a big Lincoln in a museum that boasted being the first car that could maintain 70 mph. Roads were dirt back then and the damn thing had rear brakes only. Can you imagine riding a dirt road with those thin little tires at 70 mph? The back end would lock in a heart beat, if it had the braking power to lock the wheels.

According to my late father there was something worse than steel rod brakes, cable brakes. IIRC the '37 Ford had steel cables instead of rods. He said that the cables stretched constantly, thus keeping them adjusted was hopeless. Ford went back to rods in '38 and then hydraulic in '40.

After WWII, when hot rodding came along, it was a straight forward modification to upgrade late thirties Ford mechanical brakes to hydraulic using 1940 components.

I'm enjoying the early Gus Stories. The earilest ones seemed to be written more as instructional than the later stories.

The terminology is quite fun; mudguards are fenders I think, sizzle patches were the hot patches, clutch out means clutch pedal to the floor.......

Fun reading.

A bus is a car, a storage battery is a battery (right?)...

Then there's just the old technology such as generators and unsynchronized gearboxes.

Unsynchronized transmissions are still used in big trucks. You can shift a synchronized transmission without the clutch too but you can also kill it that way.

I wonder if the sizzle patches were the ones where you lit the glue on fire before you slapped the patch on.

Oh yes, but no way are they common in passenger cars (except for reverse).

Yes a sizzle patch is a hot patch that you pressed in place and lit with a match. An Army buddy of mine told me the other day, that when cleaning out his late Fathers garage he found one of the presses that was used for this. He asked if you could still get the patches.

I did some googling and learned that they are no longer sold in the US. Thanks EPA, OSHA, or whoever the hell outlawed them.

My first car was a sliding gear transmission, a '48 Chevy. I drove several different sliding gear transmissioned vehicles back in the old days.

Generators have not been gone all that long. Mopar went from them to alternators in 1960 or 1961, GM in 1963 and Ford in 1965.

Yes a storage battery is simply a battery. I haven't noticed the bus term, but I've heard people refer to their car as a bus. Probably a term more common in the twenties.

Thanks for the site larry,

Its a real gem. Those little stories really work in your head for logical thinking towards repairing a car.

Having a good time.

You can still find sizzle patches and the glue and the big ol' matches! on Ebay!

Thanks Strelnik. I'll check it out. If I remember correctly I looked on ebay, but didn't find the old ones that were in the little tin. I'll check it out. I think a few of them would be a great gift for my Army buddy. His wife is going down with Lou Gherigs disease, so I try to give him a bit of diversion from time to time.

Interesting the sizzle patches totally left the market. They worked far better than what replaced them. Of course tube patching today has been almost gone for quite some years.

First ford with hydraulic brakes was the 1939 I owned. Very low milage two door example for 125.00. Car had no issues other than those almost useless reflector headlights. They were not tarnished just very weak.

How weak? One very dark night I came up to a corner at speed. Unable to determine if it veered left or right. Rather than chance rolling the car went straight ahead. There was no ditch and no damage.

Yes, I guess 39 may very well have been the first year for juice brakes. I never had a '39. I had two forties though and was mistakenly under the impression that they were the first year.

I do believe that forty was the first year for sealed beams. I had a '37 that I had the reflectors re-silvered. It was hard to find someone to do it, but I suppose in the thirties and forties there were more people that provided this service.