What ever you do do not touch these levers

My highschool daily driver was a '30 deluxe sedan, in the early '80's. Two weeks after graduating I was in Basic Training @ Ft. Dix NJ. Eventually, I was in the drivers seat of a Deuce an a half (2 1/2 ton army trk), and while being trained, the sergent in the pass. seat, exclaimed, "your dad MUST be a trk driver! You drive this thing too easy & are double-clutching". Nope, my dad wasn't a trk driver. I explained to him that I was driving this trk the same way I drove my Model A. Learning to drive that car at such a young age, really helped me out w/ many other things in my life.
 
[85930tudor;377893]The youngsters need to drive a B Model Mack with a Triplex trans, 3 shifters very confusing.

Is the transmission that you had to put your left arm through the steering wheel opening and grab the shift sticks with both hands while still trying to drive ? I thought driving a Pete 379 long hood with a 18 speed was bad enough.
 
HW, Basic Training @ FT. Dix June-Aug. '86. AIT @ Ft. Eustice VA Aug-Jan '86-'87 (67R-Apache Crewchief). Ft. Hood TX Jan '87-May '89. LOVED Basic, I was young & gung-ho! I was 1 of the 1st 100 Crewchiefs on this 'bird.....now it's considered old!
 
3 on the tree.....

one of my favorite cars from back in the day was my early'70 Maverick.
wish I still had that one! but the column shift linkage got so gimpy when it was only 3 years old it would lock up in 2nd gear. had to replace all the bushings to fix.......
 
When I was in high school, I worked weekends at a huge three story garage in San Francisco.(no doors--I was a night watchman) I always enjoyed driving the new cars from floor to floor or around the block. The local beat cop always brought pastries left for us from the bakery in the next block.After we had our coffee break( at about 3AM) he would say "hey Bruce what are you goin' to drive tonight?" One night I decided to drive the Levi Strauss BIG and LONG low boy around the block. I think it must of had 60 or 70 speeds forward!! I found "Very Low" and used that gear to drive around the block... the cop was still laughing when I finally made it back with out hitting anything!! The true test to me was backing it back into it's space without damaging any of the cars on either side!! The parking exercise only took an hour and a half
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Bruce Davis a400usa@nccn.net
 
Richard Wilson said:
I remember the first national meet I went to. I was amazed when I saw several of the Model A's had homemade instruction cards taped to the dash/windshield area listing step by step on how to start their Model A. That was about 20 years ago. I have seen this over and over ever since. Not sure what it means.......but was interesting to me.
Click to expand...

When I bought my Town Sedan, here's what I found taped to the dash - I decided to keep it for posterity:
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Back in the 1950's my Dad was training a guy in driving a 15 ton Euclid. He told him that when he shifted it was really important that he double clutch. The guy looked at him and said "you can't BS me John. I know that other one is the brake." About a week later he backed a truck over the reject rock dump with my dad in it. Both survived but my Dad always said the two of them were running inside that truck cab scared as heck. And then he'd laugh. The Old Man was tough and loved to laugh. He made sure all his kids learned to drive the same way; in a 1945 Ford truck in the hay field and a 1947 chevy coupe on the road, once we'd mastered the truck. I can still hear him yelling "give it some gas, let the clutch out slow." And for the first week we'd kill the engine every time we tried to take off, or the truck would start bucking and jumping and he'd yell at us "push in the clutch." The truck also had a worn pilot bushing in the flywheel and the clutch would chatter so bad our teeth would rattle. What a great experience. I still own the '47 Chevy coupe.
 
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