Folks,

I put myself through college in Buffalo, NY working at an autoparts store and fixing minor stuff on friends cars. The parts store gave me great prices (below what they charged most commercial customers). Each week I would leave with over $100 in parts (at 1973 prices) from my $1.85 / hour job for working on other folks cars.

One friend had a 63 falcon, "cupcake" I believe was her name. I did all the brakes, tune-up and many other things over the course of a year or so. The starter died and the friend's brother had another Falcon with a bad motor, but good starter. The 170 ci 6's were so easy to work on I swapped good for bad in 45 minutes ( 2 removals - 2 installs). Just lean over the fender and 2 bolts + 1 wire.

Another friend of mine also worked at the parts store and did mostly car painting to pay for college- in lovely Buffalo. He had the ultimate luxury of a large heated garage. We jointly were going to do a brake job on a beautiful '76 boat-tail Buick Riviera. We each did a side in about 30 minutes. Hustling to get it out of the garage for the next job I fired up the 455 and got ready to backup as the garage door was going up. Lucky the door was far enough up cause I hit reverse and had not pumped up the calipers yet. The car is rolling back toward MY CAR. Pump, no brake pedal. Pump Pump, no brake pedal. Pump Pump Pump PUMP! It finally stopped just short. Whew.

Chuck