Man I hate modern spark plug setups. On my old Aveo they were buried under the ignition coil, the coil connected directly to the plugs instead of using wires. Then don't even get me started on how much I hate Subarus and their boxer engines....
Well, it's also that a DC powered tire inflator is like $15 and doesn't require a spark plug wrench and getting your hands greased up from the engine bay to use it. If the battery is dead A) you're not going anywhere anyway B) the engine couldn't be running to use it. Cool for its time before in-car DC power was common/standardized, but there's just no reason to go that way anymore.
@@nunyabusiness896 i dont get why so many people dont get this. Its just a old solution that has been since replaced by a better, faster and more convenient solution. Its a relic of the past like many things that were great then but have improved replacement todays
Well quite a few 4 banger engines from various makes are actually very accessible. But everything is so reliant on electronics now.... I'd hate to see it throw codes and go into limp mode until it can be reset (which not alot of people keep OBD2 scan tools or laptops in their vehicle lol). I don't think I could use this on my truck....I dread the day I have to replace my 16 spark plugs on my F250 6.2....nothing like pulling wheels and plastic flares *ugh*
@@DeadBaron That's coil on plug, probably the best type of ignition system and pulling a coil off takes a minute. Much easier pulling them off than remembering the plug wire orientation
The tire groover is still in use today. We use them all the time on our Midget and Sprint Car dirt tires. It is also common practice to sipe the tires and even take a grinder to them to take the outer layer of rubber off so that you have some fresh rubber before hitting the track. With that said, I would never groove a street tire. That is nuts,
Regrooving is common practice in semi trailer tires (clearly marked on sidewall "regroovable") due to the high cost of new tires when there is still 1/2" or more tread rubber even after they get to the wear bars
Used to be super common, but these days about the only things on the road that run regroovable tires are big industrial/commercial vehicles, semi trailers, and RVs.
Worth noting that when the tire re-treader was a thing, everyone had Bias Ply tires which had very thick solid rubber treads, unlike modern radials, so retreading them was entirely safe and viable.
Yes, and similar tools are still used today, just not for regular passenger vehicle tires. These kinds of tools are still common for reconditioning airless tires used on a lot of equipment.
Yeah haha, I was thinking the same. They were just much thicker back in the day. Probably why you will hear old guys complaining about how often they need to replace their tires now and how much longer they used to last.
Even modern passenger car tires can be retreaded. Obviously not with a simple tool like the one in the video. It's just an entirely different process & not something you can do at home. They basically sand off most of the tread, lay on new rubber, & cure it again in an oven/mold.
When I was a teenager, I must have re-grooved hundreds of bus tires. Many truck tires are (or at least 40 years ago were) marked as regrooveable. My brother-in-law had a business where he and his father bought old school buses, cleaned them up, and re-sold them. It actually worked well on most tires. Some tires did not have enough meat on them to make a big difference. It probably took me between an hour to 2 hours to do one tire. Needless to say, it was much cheaper to pay me $4/hr. to regroove a tire than to replace the tire.
this👆 in Europe truck tires are also marked as regrooveable and are indeed being regrooved to this day. The reason is that truck tires have a lot of meat on them but would wear faster and be more susceptible to tearing during tight turns which there are plenty especially in more mountainous regions like Italy or Greece. Car tires don’t have “extra meat” on them to save cost and save weight. Any extra unsprung mass reduces driving comfort and with todays tire technology and intricate grooving the tire looses a lot of performance in wet weather only after about half thread is gone.
My grandfather owned a tire shop and I remember regrooving tires as a kid. That was about 30years ago. I’ve wondered if new tires would have enough rubber to retread. With the price of tires today you could still pay someone to retread and make money.
@@jonnykarlsson582 generally they cut the tread off and put new tread on the tire and seal it all back up. Hence the term retreads. I've been a truck driver for a good 5 years now and haven't seen regroovable tires yet.
@@codysimonson6260 yes. When the thread is all used upp you have to retread them. But usually they have enough "meat" on them for a regroove. Usualy we regroove like a half worn winter tyre. And then ofcourse solid rubber fork lift tyres.
@@norman1907 the reason we dont use that anymore is people dont even know how to open their own hood. Imagine them removing the spark plug! way too difficult for them!
That tire tread regrover tool takes me back right to the mid 80's. I knew a guy that re-grooved tires for friends, hooked me up a few times. It is an art, never had an issue with any tires he did for me.
Problem today is the tires arent meant to be regrooved. in the 80's the tire tread was like half of the total thickness and you could regroove them... legally without any problems. Boys on this video tossed it in ancient crap, but it really is a good tool for tires that are meant for it, there are some still sold today. But not very common in Western world, except racing.
@@SergeyPRKL Tires were never meant to be regrooved. Retreading tires was and still is a fairly common thing in the trucking world, but that is an entirely different process that's done by actual tire manufacturers. The tool they are showing here was a gimmick, and a dangerous one, and has always been crap.
I've never used one, but tires have obviously changed since that tool has come out. Car tires today aren't meant to be re-treaded, they're meant to be replaced. Bad example by the boys, since they said the tools like it are still being used for specific vehicles. If this one specific tool is a gimmic, than they probably made the right choice.
@Mike Newman In order to be regroovable they have to conform to 49 cfr 569.3 (c). The only tires that do are some tires for tractor trailers or large equipment, and some special order stuff designed for offroading and rock crawling. There are no tires you can go buy at your local tire store for a standard vehicle that are regroovable.
12:30 It's used in the trucking industry, it's cheaper to regroove tyres rather than buy new ones Also there's a special marker on the sidewall that says "Regroovable"
There are tyres specifically made for re-treading them once they wear out, commonly found on wheel-loaders that dont have air in tyres, but also trucks, busses etc. Re-treading is still a thing, just not on normal cars :)
It's actually 2 different things: - Re-grooving is carving out rubber to deepen the grooves on an existing tread. Tire manufacturers even design some of their products to be re-groovable and specify in the tech. datasheets where and how much rubber you can remove. - Retreading is basically gluing / curing a new tread onto a used casing (old tread buffed away).
The spark plug “chuffer” air pump used to be common, and I think Cepek sold them to offroaders into the 1970’s. On Dad’s 1950 Plymouth with flathead six, it was very convenient. The swamp cooler was only worth the effort in hot country, not here in the PNW. I still have a tread grooving iron, and I used to have a Goodyear truck tire marked “regroovable.” But I only used the iron to improve offroad tread on a 4x4. Today, there are laws against regrooving, which would be dangerous with today’s tires. Curb feelers actually help, and I had them on my 1958 Cadillac. The many uses of that vacuum gauge represent some creative marketing. But in The Day, a Mechanic was a guy with timing light, dwell/tach meter, vacuum gauge and a box of tools (and a lot of know-how). The wiper arm pressure gauge is a marketing tool for service stations. Thanks for taking me back, guys.
My dad was a mechanic and his go-to tools were just what you listed. Timing light, vacuum gauge and a small screwdriver for the carb screws. Some of my first memories are of holding the flashlight for him, under the hood of a car. Trauma, I’m telling you.
They still use similar tools to recondition airless tires for a lot of equipment. The old tires when regrooving tires were mostly bias ply and had thicker rubber than tires today, so regrooving was both less dangerous and in a lot of those tires, actually designed as a feature.
The swamp coolers are still used in low humidity areas,deserts... I've tried using them in East Texas,and they blow a little cooler,but not as well as in the desert.
The air pump thing used to be taken one step further back in the day with whole air compressors made out of ford model t and model a engines. Two cylinders would be disabled from firing and getting fuel and would just be used for compression to build air
They used to have a "kit" for Vw air cooled engines to make them a compressor. 2 cyls ran the engine and 2 were for the air compressor. It had a special cam so it would run on 2 cylinders a little smoother.
after testing that Schrader tire pump tool, you guys should have taken the Schrader valve out of the tire after pumping it up and put a lighter to the air coming out to see if it actually didn't pump air/fuel mixture into the tire :P
@@srichard6237 I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I get that it saves a lot of money. On the other hand, retreads are what cause 90% of the road alligators that litter highways.
Regrooving is quite different than retreading. A retread is pretty much glued onto a refinished carcass, where-as a quality virgin tire will have a certain amount of regrooving ability planned into the rubber thickness beyond the original tread depth.
@@blze0018 It's actually 2 different things: - Re-grooving is carving out rubber to deepen the grooves on an existing tread. Tire manufacturers even design some of their products to be re-groovable and specify in the tech. datasheets where and how much rubber can you remove. But still needs a care and a hand of a professional to be done properly. - Retreading is basically gluing / curing a new tread onto a used casing (old tread buffed away). Again, tire manufacturers provide some tech. specs as to how to do it properly for their products, which in many cases is not followed and then we get all of these "road alligators" (love that name btw :D)
I used that Wipe-O-Meter, hoping for a better wipe.... Let's just say the Highway Vision Authority (was that it? 🤔) doesn't know what they're talking about!
Kinda cool to see that the tire groover hasn’t changed much at all in so many years. We have a few at our shop, we use them in dirt oval racing to put different tread patterns in our tires if we want a bit more bite going around the track.
Curb finders do actually work. Not so much for actual parallel parking, but for if there’s a couple empty spots in a row and you can just pull in. Especially good for the land yachts of the 60s.
When Ford came out with their flathead v8 almost a century ago, some people would replace one of the cylinder heads, such that half of the engine was an ordinary 4cyl engine, and the other half was an air compressor. It was useful in industrial applications. The idea of using a piston to pump stuff is surprisingly ubiquitous.... Engines produce power through combustion, where compressors consume power to convert rotation back into linear actuation. Neat, huh?
@@ads1035 pretty neat indeed. Im just wondering, why we didn’t see the product anymore nowadays? How did it fall out of style (or whatever it is that made it not exists today)?
@@NeroVingian40 Newer cars have spark plugs that are much harder to get to, and the creation of small, electric pumps that could run off the car battery, or cigarette lighter. So, these type of inflator became obsolete
@@NeroVingian40 Yeah, electrification is really what killed that idea. Even in industrial settings, if you need an air compressor, its usually an electric one, even if it consists of multiple compression chambers with multiple electric motors driving them.
The main thing why the re-grooving is not much used anymore is because tires used to have much more rubber in them. Nowadays even the most expensive tires might have only 5 millimetres of rubber after the tread.
Those retreading tool are used in refurbishing or modifying the thread block angle. Those thread block wear down and some lost its shape with use and reduces grip. So you can trim down the slopes into new smaller blocks and regain some of those grip.
Back in 1966 when I was driving cross-country, with my newly pregnant wife, I had to buy one of those swamp coolers when I started across the Mojave Desert. It was no air conditioner, but it was better than nothing. The only other accessory that went with it was a canvas bag of water that you hung in front of your radiator as you were driving. The theory is that the slipstream of the air would keep the water cool. Again, better than nothing.
The swamp cooler very much would still have a place today. I lived in the Mojave for a while and saw many many cars broken down in the mountains that ignored the “turn off a/c” signs. A swamp cooler would have been pretty great in that environment.
@@P4hko the ac compressor makes your engine work harder and produces a lot more heat in the system. When the ambient temperature is 120-140 degrees near the road surface, your vehicle struggles to manage and remove heat from the system. Combine that with the increased load from the steep inclines and it’s common for head gaskets to blow or radiators to rapidly empty themselves of coolant. Turning off engine loads is advised especially the ac.
@@P4hko In addition to what Leonard said, today's cars both run hotter normally and also have minimal cooling systems to save cost and weight. It's all to gain fuel efficiency and reduced emissions, but when you figure in the exorbitant costs of repairing today's cars the increased efficiency doesn't compensate. And I'm not sure emissions are really that much worse on a cooler engine.
My dad bought one for a family trip thru the southwest from LA to Texas in July back in 1969. It didn't work very well. It just made the interior humid. I hated it.
There's a guy from Chicago, Matt Ligouri - goes by "The Tire Sire", who uses a tire re-treader to make custom treaded tires for OneWheels. Artistic and useful in our little community.
I actually put a vacuum economy gauge on my 86 camaro project and it has helped with fuel economy. It makes you really feel how your pedal movements influence your long term economy and not only that, but where to shift your engine because what I’ve seen from it is if you shift your car too early, it kills vacuum and therefor economy because you’re lugging the car to where it’s not at an efficient rpm. So yeah, it really does work. Also companies put it in their cars from the factory in the 60’s and 70’s
For the tandem and single axel trucks I work on, I sometimes have to sipe the tires with a "regrover" essentially I'll just cut a new pattern in a new tire to match a previous tires tread pattern. It works really well
The curb finders I've always heard them called in the lowrider community aren't traditionally used for backing into spots. It's for driving forward into a spot and maintaining proximity to the curb as CA wants wheels in the gray part where it's not asphalt. Even the photos shown of the older cars they're all in the front
Those tyre groovers haven’t really changed much even today. Newer ones have a pistol grip handle, but other than that it’s pretty much the same. We still use them to groove speedway tyres.
The tire groover is also used on semi truck tires that are rated to be regrovable. I've done it several times when I worked at a lube shop when I first started. It takes some elbow grease and the usual charge for it was 10-15 a for groove done. A tire usually needs 4 grooves so fairly easy and could be done within 15 minutes for an entire tire.
When my brother bought his first car, a 1958 Pontiac, it had "Curb Whiskers" or "Curb Feelers" as they were called. They were supposed to be angled down so that they would touch the curb when parallel parking. I thought they were cool. I remember seeing a lot of those swamp coolers when I was a kid, particularly in the desert like Palm Springs. The Anco wiper pressure was in a lot of service stations. They would measure the pressure on the wiper blades. If it was too low, the blades would leave streaks. The solution was to replace the wiper arm spring, or bend the wiper arm some to stretch the spring some. I had one of those spark plug tire pumps, and it worked very well. I bought it from the J C Whitney catalog in about 1972. Yours has a much better hose. Mine had a regular rubber hose that eventually rotted, but it may still be in the garage somewhere. The tire regroover was for large truck tires that were designed to be regrooved, but they were often used by less than honest used car dealers who would use one to make worn tires look better.
Around 1950, spare tires had long rubber air tubes connected from a spare tire schrader valve to one that stuck through the rear of the trunk behind bumper-so you could check the pressure of a spare without having to move your luggage-stuff around. Some cars had a distilled water reservoir over the battery, with an automatic filler to replace what evaporated out of the battery in use.
That would be handy for hidden spares or tires held upside down under the vehicle. Most often spare tires are mounted in such a way where the shrader is not accessible without removing the tire from it's mounting location.
Compression was much lower back in the day, swamp coolers work great in low humidity environments. They were very common in southern California and had one Hugh unit on our home in sylmar cal, and so did most of our neighbors. The regrouver was very common and my grandpa worked for RTD for almost 30 years, and they used the regrouver on buss tires..
I would say most of this stuff was definitely useful when a lot of normal cars didn't have these options (swamp coolers were exceptionally better the hotter the area you lived in), though y'all should have tested them with older vehicles! The mobile oven however, ugh. Every dude knows you just wrap it in foil and stuff it close to the header pipes...
A fair number of folks who 'live on the road' cook on their engines and have mastered the art. Most folks today don't realize how simple life can be with the right approach.
I own a 1966 bel air, all the weird gadgets I got with it when I was a 16 still work to this day and I’m 21 now. It’s weird how well and weird everything was built back then but I feel like they had some innovation back then that was just a little more “advanced” then us now a days.
@@trippzy8048 Well I mean, back then the worlds population was booming, you could def make money with things that lasted a life time. With the population aging, eh. Don't forget, The USA was unable to print money out of nothing due to a gold pegged dollar.
@@trippzy8048 yep Mercedes realized the 240d was too good and they stopped building em like that. When's the last time you disassembled a fuel sender and cleaned it so it would work again? Silly me almost bought a new one without looking up about it. (which ironically probably wouldn't last as long as the original)
My theory is that, back then you didn’t have advanced analysis tools to be able to design something precisely for your life cycle. So things were over engineered, the safety factor assumed to cover all your load cases. Now we can precisely engineer something to only last 1-2 years and have the customer buy more.
Yes and no, a lot of the older gadgets work on much simpler tech which is why they last longer, the swamp cooler, for example, uses the basic principle of evaporative cooling. as the air passes through the water soaked medium absorbs the heat and cools the air which evaporates the water. Now we use air conditioning instead of evaporative cooling.
They did the windshield wiper commercial reminded me of what my kids dentist said. He said that you have to floss which is kind of like cleaning your butt you can't just wipe the cheeks off you have to get in between to be clean
Who remembers vacuum powered windshield wipers? These things speed up the more you put the engine under load, but a the mpg gauge and the gauge for windshield wipers are surely straight from that era!!
@@immDroidz Retread and regroove are different things. Retreading (better known as "capping") is gluing new tread on top of an existing tire. Regrooving is cutting new grooves into an existing tire surface.
@@eric_d Yeah these tyres had extra to regroove, The cutter would take around 2mm out the original tread paths. Hell of a job when you have a few to do.
The tire retreader is "take me back" material, because I've seen it successfully used before. BUT not on an old tire, but a new tire. My dad had a friend who used to race dirt track cars, and he would cut extra grooves into the tire for more traction.
Yes, a vacuum gauge was an option on many cars in the early to mid '60s and as a dealer add-on. Also available from the aftermarket too. They were a useful tutor for learning how to drive using less gas. A lot of Pontiac's (roughly '61-'67) came with them from the factory. That was smart because with Pontiac being the next move up from Chevrolet, people knew that Pontiac's used more gas. It was notable talk about going from a Chevy 283 into a Pontiac 389. Pontiac's coming with a vacuum gauge gave salesmen a useful tool on how to save gas when working with prospective buyers.
I could be wrong but I think the tire regroover made more sense in the past because they had tubes inside the tire to hold the pressure and tires used to be thicker. Obviously very different than now. Great content as always!
You gottir...Technically in a pinch you can actually run tubes in your tubeless tires today at the expense of some ride quality. But since tubeless tires have cords and rely on the thickness of the tire meat itself to hold air and keep the bead sealed I wouldn't recommend carving up a modern tire for any serious use case.
They are still used today, though mostly for semi tires when they re-tread them. Most car tires now days are fairly thin once they wear down and there isn't anything to re-tread. Done in the name of efficiency since the tires weigh less..... And likely because then you have to buy new ones so win-win for tire companies.
The battery charger thing is meant to cause the generator to produce more output at lower revs. The generators did not charge the battery at idle. Valiant was the first car to use an alternator to solve the problem. The tire regroover was a useful thing back in the days of bias ply tires with tubes. Also, most truck tires are "regroovable". I have seen the remaining number of times for the carcass before it needs retreading right on the sidewall. Tires that have been regrooved or retreaded may not be used in a steering axle.
I use a variation of that vacuum gauge 4:05 on my classic car. It’s a doctors stethoscope but for your car. You can use it to adjust air to fuel ratios, timing, you can tell if your valves need adjustment, you can even see if you have some kind of air restriction in the air intake or your exhaust manifold depending on where the needle points all by using vacuum. It’s honestly an amazing tool. Great for diagnosing problems.
Curb Feelers still existed in the 80's. I remember seeing them on Chrysler K-cars and other mom-mobiles.They were an updated design, and looked hilarious.
I’ve owned plenty of cars and the Subaru ranked only average as for as spark plug difficulty went. American V8s were always a bitch with theirs right up against the firewall and rusted into place
Next time you see your mail carrier, ask them about LLV AC. I worked for the USPS and those trucks don't have heat or AC. The AC is a 5-6" PVC elbow that is bungee corded through the window and around the door with one hole outside, facing forward and the other end inside the LLV.
Tire re-groovers make more sense when you have large offroad tires because they can be $500-$1000 a tire. Also, you can tailor your tires to a specific offroad race when the type of tire needed doesn't exist for the conditions you're in.
I would definitely like to see more old school tools being reviewed it's pretty neat to see what folks had back in the day to work with in the automotive world
Tire re-groovers are good for mudding trucks because you can add channels to help get rid of mud, or even use it to cut lugs off to get more space between lugs, so the tire will clean out better. You could also probably use it for a lawn mower tire or something, if its almost bald and you don't want to buy a new one
that is a really old regroover. The newer (yet still old tech) groovers use a u shaped blade. You adjust the depth of the blade before you begin, to prevent getting down to the thread areas. Tire treads often cannot go down the wear bars as it becomes too squirrely due to deflection, so the micro sips are only down for maybe 3/32. You can actually use the groover to add new sips and create new water channels as the tire wears down to the existing ones.
If you think about it, the spark plug compressor isn't really any different from the pancake compressors seen at most gas stations. Just your engine is the pancake. I'm pretty sure that "oven" falls into the same level of heating as the "defroster heaters" sold today. For the retreader, a couple of things. Tires back then were thicker (they didn't have the modern belts and radials of today) and made with a completely different rubber.
Remember that a lot of those inventions were from times when cars tires and wipers were made very differently. The old tires were bias ply essentially a solid chunk of rubber so recutting groves is achievable safely. The wiper gauge is actually quite neat and I beg to differ on those feelers. Those are quite useful if installed properly. Great vid guys
Tire retreading is still around today, some tires are ment to be retreaded as stated on sidewall, the hot iron is also useful to modify your existing tires to make it more efficient to shed water
The yellow progress bar to show the sponsor part progress is fkn genius. I liked the progress bar so much I didn't even skip the ad. Nice stuff. This channel has always been "different". That's what I like about it.
Tire grooving tools are used today in various types of racing. Sprint and Midgets often have custom grooved tires, off road racing cars/trucks will have custom grooved tires as well. Lots of road racing series that allow an intermediate rain tire will be custom grooved. You can buy a new tire grooving tool from all the big racing parts suppliers and you will find grooving tools in many toolboxes at races across the country. Oh I almost forgot, flat track and motocross motorcycles can/have custom grooving done to their tires. The use of a tire grooving tool is an art, I have watched pro's groove road race rain tires and it is a work of art.
My '67 Barracuda fastback (with leaning tower of power 225 Slant 6) had a vacuum gauge in the dash next to the speedometer. It was basically an "efficiency" meter that reminded me to keep my foot off the floor when pressing the accelerator.
The oven is not for cooking, it's for heating lunch boxes for people working in the field. In that capacity, it works great, and many work vehicles still have them.
We swear by those tire groovers in rally racing. A lot of times you'll use it to add cuts in the tread if it's particularly muddy or square off the edges of the tread blocks if they've gotten too rounded
I never saw much of the products themselves but I did spend plenty of time reading about them in the Warshawsky catalog. That was in Chicago - elsewhere it was the JC Whitney catalog. Just looking at the product descriptions would be a great look back. One product I really loved and actually saw fairly often was a small plastic cylinder that would be installed in a drilled hole in your brake lights lenses. That little bit of blue turned your brake lights, a vivid purple - so cool.
Helped a neighbor use a tire pump tool back in the 60's to fix a hay wagon out in the field a half mile from home. Spark plugs easy access on old Farmall tractor. Don't rev the engine, let it idle for most efficiency. Pumped up the flat in a few minutes. In those days the only portable air compressor would have been powered by Briggs & Stratton (rechargeable ni-cad batteries were used in satellites only). Device was pretty common before then as tires were much less reliable than now.
Fun fact, The legend of old GP motorcycle racing Kenny Roberts had to cut his own rain treads because the european tyre companies would not sell him any. He cut his tyres and won the race.
Found a vintage car item in my Dads garage.. kept a while, but the rubber/plastic tube was so gooey, I threw it away. But it was a 25' long small sized yellow tube with Schrader coupling at each end and it was to transfer air from a tire with air in it to a flat tire. Either your own car or another.
Its seven in the morning and I haven't slept and my mind was wandering into some really bad places, so glad yall uploaded like right now lol. Donut love
Curb feelers are great when set up properly, have them on my classic beetle and always know i’m the perfect distance from the curb. Make enough noise you can hear them they kinda bounce off the curb
verry cool vid, laughed at the add aswel. for the tyre re groover, in the old days tyres had simpler patterns (msot were just longitudional lines or a zig zag line). also im pretty sure due to increased accuracy with production techniques the thread runs closes to the carcas now than back then. There is one brand in europe (kingmeiler) that sells tyres that legally can be regrooved however a polish tyre test did try it a few years back and regrooved tyres are just worse than brand new chinese ones. so yeah it can be done but please dont do it.
That spark plug tire pump was actually freaking sweet. If spark plugs weren't so hard to access on modern cars they would maybe still be for sale.
Man I hate modern spark plug setups. On my old Aveo they were buried under the ignition coil, the coil connected directly to the plugs instead of using wires. Then don't even get me started on how much I hate Subarus and their boxer engines....
Well, it's also that a DC powered tire inflator is like $15 and doesn't require a spark plug wrench and getting your hands greased up from the engine bay to use it. If the battery is dead A) you're not going anywhere anyway B) the engine couldn't be running to use it. Cool for its time before in-car DC power was common/standardized, but there's just no reason to go that way anymore.
@@nunyabusiness896 i dont get why so many people dont get this. Its just a old solution that has been since replaced by a better, faster and more convenient solution. Its a relic of the past like many things that were great then but have improved replacement todays
Well quite a few 4 banger engines from various makes are actually very accessible. But everything is so reliant on electronics now.... I'd hate to see it throw codes and go into limp mode until it can be reset (which not alot of people keep OBD2 scan tools or laptops in their vehicle lol). I don't think I could use this on my truck....I dread the day I have to replace my 16 spark plugs on my F250 6.2....nothing like pulling wheels and plastic flares *ugh*
@@DeadBaron That's coil on plug, probably the best type of ignition system and pulling a coil off takes a minute. Much easier pulling them off than remembering the plug wire orientation
The tire groover is still in use today. We use them all the time on our Midget and Sprint Car dirt tires. It is also common practice to sipe the tires and even take a grinder to them to take the outer layer of rubber off so that you have some fresh rubber before hitting the track. With that said, I would never groove a street tire. That is nuts,
Regrooving is common practice in semi trailer tires (clearly marked on sidewall "regroovable") due to the high cost of new tires when there is still 1/2" or more tread rubber even after they get to the wear bars
@@timothyjunkin2506 I didn’t know you could regroove them. I know I put a ton of recapped tires on rigs when I worked at a tire shop in high school.
Its actually used here in Poland by some public transport busses, you know, you gotta squeeze every penny to make them not loose money
@@backcountryme I'd rather a new tire that's been regrooved than a retread where I'm at in the summer they come apart regularly
Used to be super common, but these days about the only things on the road that run regroovable tires are big industrial/commercial vehicles, semi trailers, and RVs.
Worth noting that when the tire re-treader was a thing, everyone had Bias Ply tires which had very thick solid rubber treads, unlike modern radials, so retreading them was entirely safe and viable.
Yes, and similar tools are still used today, just not for regular passenger vehicle tires. These kinds of tools are still common for reconditioning airless tires used on a lot of equipment.
Yeah haha, I was thinking the same. They were just much thicker back in the day. Probably why you will hear old guys complaining about how often they need to replace their tires now and how much longer they used to last.
They still use these on tractor tires today
Even modern passenger car tires can be retreaded. Obviously not with a simple tool like the one in the video. It's just an entirely different process & not something you can do at home. They basically sand off most of the tread, lay on new rubber, & cure it again in an oven/mold.
When I was a teenager, I must have re-grooved hundreds of bus tires. Many truck tires are (or at least 40 years ago were) marked as regrooveable. My brother-in-law had a business where he and his father bought old school buses, cleaned them up, and re-sold them. It actually worked well on most tires. Some tires did not have enough meat on them to make a big difference. It probably took me between an hour to 2 hours to do one tire. Needless to say, it was much cheaper to pay me $4/hr. to regroove a tire than to replace the tire.
truck tyres are still usually regroovable.
this👆 in Europe truck tires are also marked as regrooveable and are indeed being regrooved to this day. The reason is that truck tires have a lot of meat on them but would wear faster and be more susceptible to tearing during tight turns which there are plenty especially in more mountainous regions like Italy or Greece. Car tires don’t have “extra meat” on them to save cost and save weight. Any extra unsprung mass reduces driving comfort and with todays tire technology and intricate grooving the tire looses a lot of performance in wet weather only after about half thread is gone.
My grandfather owned a tire shop and I remember regrooving tires as a kid. That was about 30years ago. I’ve wondered if new tires would have enough rubber to retread. With the price of tires today you could still pay someone to retread and make money.
@@jonnykarlsson582 generally they cut the tread off and put new tread on the tire and seal it all back up. Hence the term retreads. I've been a truck driver for a good 5 years now and haven't seen regroovable tires yet.
@@codysimonson6260 yes. When the thread is all used upp you have to retread them. But usually they have enough "meat" on them for a regroove. Usualy we regroove like a half worn winter tyre. And then ofcourse solid rubber fork lift tyres.
For off roading the spark plug inflator would be a great back up if u have a v8
Would do fine wit a well running engine all the way down to a 4banger
The only reason we don't use it today is because there is an easier place to plug something in. It probably still works better.
@@norman1907 the reason we dont use that anymore is people dont even know how to open their own hood. Imagine them removing the spark plug! way too difficult for them!
@@1nicube good point, and spark plugs aren’t as accessible as they used to be 😂
@@loganthompson5961 if you have a boxter... yes, but they are really accessable if you have any normal car.
That tire tread regrover tool takes me back right to the mid 80's. I knew a guy that re-grooved tires for friends, hooked me up a few times. It is an art, never had an issue with any tires he did for me.
Problem today is the tires arent meant to be regrooved. in the 80's the tire tread was like half of the total thickness and you could regroove them... legally without any problems. Boys on this video tossed it in ancient crap, but it really is a good tool for tires that are meant for it, there are some still sold today. But not very common in Western world, except racing.
@@SergeyPRKL
Tires were never meant to be regrooved. Retreading tires was and still is a fairly common thing in the trucking world, but that is an entirely different process that's done by actual tire manufacturers. The tool they are showing here was a gimmick, and a dangerous one, and has always been crap.
@@SergeyPRKL Yeah, I would never feel comfortable regrooving a radial. A bias ply on the other hand...
I've never used one, but tires have obviously changed since that tool has come out. Car tires today aren't meant to be re-treaded, they're meant to be replaced. Bad example by the boys, since they said the tools like it are still being used for specific vehicles. If this one specific tool is a gimmic, than they probably made the right choice.
@Mike Newman
In order to be regroovable they have to conform to 49 cfr 569.3 (c). The only tires that do are some tires for tractor trailers or large equipment, and some special order stuff designed for offroading and rock crawling.
There are no tires you can go buy at your local tire store for a standard vehicle that are regroovable.
12:30 It's used in the trucking industry, it's cheaper to regroove tyres rather than buy new ones
Also there's a special marker on the sidewall that says "Regroovable"
- $$$ × 9 months
There are tyres specifically made for re-treading them once they wear out, commonly found on wheel-loaders that dont have air in tyres, but also trucks, busses etc. Re-treading is still a thing, just not on normal cars :)
It's actually 2 different things:
- Re-grooving is carving out rubber to deepen the grooves on an existing tread. Tire manufacturers even design some of their products to be re-groovable and specify in the tech. datasheets where and how much rubber you can remove.
- Retreading is basically gluing / curing a new tread onto a used casing (old tread buffed away).
Sometimes i do get normal civilian cars with re-treaded tires🤔 Mostly on imported cars from neighbouring country's.. (EU)
@@Mato309 cheers for clearing that up, not native to english but i definetly meant re-grooving then 👍🏼
It’s also pretty common in India as well. I’ve seen a bunch of videos of truck tires being retreaded and they’re pretty interesting
@@DeUnoReverseKaart Wow. Higlhy illegal here, you lose your driving license and get fined if u do that to your car. (EU)
The spark plug “chuffer” air pump used to be common, and I think Cepek sold them to offroaders into the 1970’s. On Dad’s 1950 Plymouth with flathead six, it was very convenient. The swamp cooler was only worth the effort in hot country, not here in the PNW. I still have a tread grooving iron, and I used to have a Goodyear truck tire marked “regroovable.” But I only used the iron to improve offroad tread on a 4x4. Today, there are laws against regrooving, which would be dangerous with today’s tires. Curb feelers actually help, and I had them on my 1958 Cadillac. The many uses of that vacuum gauge represent some creative marketing. But in The Day, a Mechanic was a guy with timing light, dwell/tach meter, vacuum gauge and a box of tools (and a lot of know-how). The wiper arm pressure gauge is a marketing tool for service stations. Thanks for taking me back, guys.
My dad was a mechanic and his go-to tools were just what you listed. Timing light, vacuum gauge and a small screwdriver for the carb screws.
Some of my first memories are of holding the flashlight for him, under the hood of a car. Trauma, I’m telling you.
The tire grooving tool is still used today but while it is spinning on the back of a vehicle (offroad truck mostly) to help with terrain fixes
They still use similar tools to recondition airless tires for a lot of equipment. The old tires when regrooving tires were mostly bias ply and had thicker rubber than tires today, so regrooving was both less dangerous and in a lot of those tires, actually designed as a feature.
The swamp coolers are still used in low humidity areas,deserts... I've tried using them in East Texas,and they blow a little cooler,but not as well as in the desert.
Yep. My wife is from southeast coastal Texas. Hot with near 100% humidity is a tough combination. @@mikewhite3123
Why didn't you put the curb feelers on Nolan's car? Oh right... it's a stationary art piece now.
facts, dude gave up quick.
Stop, he's already dead 😭
He really needs to get rid of it
gaddamn
I thought it was running after.... What's his name came and worked on it.
The air pump thing used to be taken one step further back in the day with whole air compressors made out of ford model t and model a engines. Two cylinders would be disabled from firing and getting fuel and would just be used for compression to build air
I've seen a few old v8s converted to air compressors, one bank gets a regular head, and the other is used as the compressor
They used to have a "kit" for Vw air cooled engines to make them a compressor.
2 cyls ran the engine and 2 were for the air compressor.
It had a special cam so it would run on 2 cylinders a little smoother.
@@MrTheHillfolk that's actually pretty cool, more in line with a traditional compressor, no water loop to deal with
after testing that Schrader tire pump tool, you guys should have taken the Schrader valve out of the tire after pumping it up and put a lighter to the air coming out to see if it actually didn't pump air/fuel mixture into the tire :P
nah, gasses in tight spaces (tube) + fire = nothing good, ever
Idk how it wouldn't have fuel/air mixed
Would it really matter if you didn't have something to start it even if it came out?
@@BusinessWolf1 Unless the tire is totally flat and partly off the rim, then a can of aqua-net and some matches are the perfect fix.
@@NukerMunkyGames May be, but I don't likr to fuck woth pressure of any kind
I would like to add the tire retreader would of been more safer back in the day because tires had tubes
Also many tires were bias ply, and we're re-groveable, many said it on the sidewall of the tires.
We still do this to trailer tires in the trucking industry
@@srichard6237 I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I get that it saves a lot of money. On the other hand, retreads are what cause 90% of the road alligators that litter highways.
Regrooving is quite different than retreading. A retread is pretty much glued onto a refinished carcass, where-as a quality virgin tire will have a certain amount of regrooving ability planned into the rubber thickness beyond the original tread depth.
@@blze0018 It's actually 2 different things:
- Re-grooving is carving out rubber to deepen the grooves on an existing tread. Tire manufacturers even design some of their products to be re-groovable and specify in the tech. datasheets where and how much rubber can you remove. But still needs a care and a hand of a professional to be done properly.
- Retreading is basically gluing / curing a new tread onto a used casing (old tread buffed away). Again, tire manufacturers provide some tech. specs as to how to do it properly for their products, which in many cases is not followed and then we get all of these "road alligators" (love that name btw :D)
I love that this Windshield Wiper add became a parody of toilet paper commercials lmao
Ad*
I thought it was for a bidet attachment for a sec, then some sort of man wipes or such for a sec after that.
one of the few ads i didn't actually didn't skip lol. that and uncle jerry with keeps are my favorite ones
I used that Wipe-O-Meter, hoping for a better wipe.... Let's just say the Highway Vision Authority (was that it? 🤔) doesn't know what they're talking about!
not gonna lie also 3 guys living in so cal where it rains twice a year added to the comedy
Kinda cool to see that the tire groover hasn’t changed much at all in so many years. We have a few at our shop, we use them in dirt oval racing to put different tread patterns in our tires if we want a bit more bite going around the track.
Curb finders do actually work. Not so much for actual parallel parking, but for if there’s a couple empty spots in a row and you can just pull in. Especially good for the land yachts of the 60s.
That spark plug tire air compressor thing is pretty creative, I’ve never heard a product like that before.
When Ford came out with their flathead v8 almost a century ago, some people would replace one of the cylinder heads, such that half of the engine was an ordinary 4cyl engine, and the other half was an air compressor. It was useful in industrial applications. The idea of using a piston to pump stuff is surprisingly ubiquitous.... Engines produce power through combustion, where compressors consume power to convert rotation back into linear actuation. Neat, huh?
@@ads1035 pretty neat indeed. Im just wondering, why we didn’t see the product anymore nowadays? How did it fall out of style (or whatever it is that made it not exists today)?
@@NeroVingian40 Newer cars have spark plugs that are much harder to get to, and the creation of small, electric pumps that could run off the car battery, or cigarette lighter. So, these type of inflator became obsolete
@@copo2835 that makes sense, yeah.
@@NeroVingian40 Yeah, electrification is really what killed that idea. Even in industrial settings, if you need an air compressor, its usually an electric one, even if it consists of multiple compression chambers with multiple electric motors driving them.
The main thing why the re-grooving is not much used anymore is because tires used to have much more rubber in them. Nowadays even the most expensive tires might have only 5 millimetres of rubber after the tread.
Its still done pretty heavily in other countries on large vehicle tires where they dont have so strict rules
@@terryfloyd3505 recapping is still allowed for non steering tires but I think that is slowing being more regulated or outlawed in some states.
@@terryfloyd3505 almost every heavy/medium duty truck on American roads is running retreads on the drive axles
@@icanhazgoodgame3845 Retreads aren't illegal anywhere in the US, they're just not economical in most cases so nobody uses them.
Those retreading tool are used in refurbishing or modifying the thread block angle. Those thread block wear down and some lost its shape with use and reduces grip. So you can trim down the slopes into new smaller blocks and regain some of those grip.
Tread
Lol. Beat me to it.
they are also widely used on truck tires. or tractor trailer tires for you yanks...
@@shadowrg1 Thought you guys called em lorry's? But I'm assuming your from the UK 'cause idk if any other people call us yanks LMAO 🤦🏻
@@jdmmike7225 Tääläpäin sanotaan näin: "Vitun jenkki"
Here we say "F***ing yanks"
MAKE THIS VINTAGE STUFF A SERIES NOLAN YOU'RE A GENIUS
Back in 1966 when I was driving cross-country, with my newly pregnant wife, I had to buy one of those swamp coolers when I started across the Mojave Desert. It was no air conditioner, but it was better than nothing. The only other accessory that went with it was a canvas bag of water that you hung in front of your radiator as you were driving. The theory is that the slipstream of the air would keep the water cool. Again, better than nothing.
The swamp cooler very much would still have a place today. I lived in the Mojave for a while and saw many many cars broken down in the mountains that ignored the “turn off a/c” signs. A swamp cooler would have been pretty great in that environment.
@@Leonarco333 What's the reason for turning of the ac? So high temps so the compressor breaks down maybe?
@@P4hko the ac compressor makes your engine work harder and produces a lot more heat in the system. When the ambient temperature is 120-140 degrees near the road surface, your vehicle struggles to manage and remove heat from the system. Combine that with the increased load from the steep inclines and it’s common for head gaskets to blow or radiators to rapidly empty themselves of coolant. Turning off engine loads is advised especially the ac.
@@P4hko In addition to what Leonard said, today's cars both run hotter normally and also have minimal cooling systems to save cost and weight. It's all to gain fuel efficiency and reduced emissions, but when you figure in the exorbitant costs of repairing today's cars the increased efficiency doesn't compensate. And I'm not sure emissions are really that much worse on a cooler engine.
My dad bought one for a family trip thru the southwest from LA to Texas in July back in 1969. It didn't work very well. It just made the interior humid. I hated it.
I forgot about curb feelers! Used to see them at car shows when I was a kid.
Fun Fact : That fender thingy is what Sheriff from Cars had on the side.
"May Doc have mercy on your soul"
@@observationsincars5083 doc doesn't rock these, sheriff does.
My first car was my grandma's last, and she had these. They do work, kinda.
I've only ever seen them on the old pimp cars.. tricked out classic Caddies and Lincolns.
@@ganster2263 if you saw the movie you'd know that line is said by the sheriff to McQueen. So yes I'm referencing the sheriff.
There's a guy from Chicago, Matt Ligouri - goes by "The Tire Sire", who uses a tire re-treader to make custom treaded tires for OneWheels. Artistic and useful in our little community.
Sounds like a jerk
Haha sweet
I can see this working with some kind of jig that slowly rotates the tire and holds the tool steady. At least for the straight grooves.
@@ranwolf7650 great idea :)
Like the old SHO one wheel?
I actually put a vacuum economy gauge on my 86 camaro project and it has helped with fuel economy. It makes you really feel how your pedal movements influence your long term economy and not only that, but where to shift your engine because what I’ve seen from it is if you shift your car too early, it kills vacuum and therefor economy because you’re lugging the car to where it’s not at an efficient rpm. So yeah, it really does work. Also companies put it in their cars from the factory in the 60’s and 70’s
For the tandem and single axel trucks I work on, I sometimes have to sipe the tires with a "regrover" essentially I'll just cut a new pattern in a new tire to match a previous tires tread pattern. It works really well
The curb finders I've always heard them called in the lowrider community aren't traditionally used for backing into spots. It's for driving forward into a spot and maintaining proximity to the curb as CA wants wheels in the gray part where it's not asphalt. Even the photos shown of the older cars they're all in the front
Those tyre groovers haven’t really changed much even today. Newer ones have a pistol grip handle, but other than that it’s pretty much the same. We still use them to groove speedway tyres.
The tire groover is also used on semi truck tires that are rated to be regrovable. I've done it several times when I worked at a lube shop when I first started. It takes some elbow grease and the usual charge for it was 10-15 a for groove done. A tire usually needs 4 grooves so fairly easy and could be done within 15 minutes for an entire tire.
When my brother bought his first car, a 1958 Pontiac, it had "Curb Whiskers" or "Curb Feelers" as they were called. They were supposed to be angled down so that they would touch the curb when parallel parking. I thought they were cool. I remember seeing a lot of those swamp coolers when I was a kid, particularly in the desert like Palm Springs. The Anco wiper pressure was in a lot of service stations. They would measure the pressure on the wiper blades. If it was too low, the blades would leave streaks. The solution was to replace the wiper arm spring, or bend the wiper arm some to stretch the spring some. I had one of those spark plug tire pumps, and it worked very well. I bought it from the J C Whitney catalog in about 1972. Yours has a much better hose. Mine had a regular rubber hose that eventually rotted, but it may still be in the garage somewhere. The tire regroover was for large truck tires that were designed to be regrooved, but they were often used by less than honest used car dealers who would use one to make worn tires look better.
Around 1950, spare tires had long rubber air tubes connected from a spare tire schrader valve to one that stuck through the rear of the trunk behind bumper-so you could check the pressure of a spare without having to move your luggage-stuff around. Some cars had a distilled water reservoir over the battery, with an automatic filler to replace what evaporated out of the battery in use.
The Cadillac Seville drum thermometers were super cool if you're not familiar.
All of those sound like nice features.
That would be handy for hidden spares or tires held upside down under the vehicle. Most often spare tires are mounted in such a way where the shrader is not accessible without removing the tire from it's mounting location.
“Is there anything better than a good clean wipe?”
Me: This is either an add for windshield wipers or toilet paper.
It started the second I was reaching for my first piece.
ad
"add" is short for addition, "ad" is short for advertisement
I mean if it were for toilet paper the immediate and obvious answer would be 'yes, a bidet' lol
Compression was much lower back in the day, swamp coolers work great in low humidity environments. They were very common in southern California and had one Hugh unit on our home in sylmar cal, and so did most of our neighbors.
The regrouver was very common and my grandpa worked for RTD for almost 30 years, and they used the regrouver on buss tires..
compression was higher for leaded gasoline, 11:1 & 12:1 were pretty common
I would say most of this stuff was definitely useful when a lot of normal cars didn't have these options (swamp coolers were exceptionally better the hotter the area you lived in), though y'all should have tested them with older vehicles! The mobile oven however, ugh. Every dude knows you just wrap it in foil and stuff it close to the header pipes...
It’s all fun and games until you lose your brisket on the I-90 cause you forgot it was there XD
@@adriannash2705 or bring it home as ash.
@@PrograError or you catch the car on fire cause the greases leaked out
A fair number of folks who 'live on the road' cook on their engines and have mastered the art. Most folks today don't realize how simple life can be with the right approach.
This video is a low key honest infomercial of old stuffs
I own a 1966 bel air, all the weird gadgets I got with it when I was a 16 still work to this day and I’m 21 now. It’s weird how well and weird everything was built back then but I feel like they had some innovation back then that was just a little more “advanced” then us now a days.
Money. Can't make money when things don't break!
@@trippzy8048 Well I mean, back then the worlds population was booming, you could def make money with things that lasted a life time. With the population aging, eh. Don't forget, The USA was unable to print money out of nothing due to a gold pegged dollar.
@@trippzy8048 yep Mercedes realized the 240d was too good and they stopped building em like that.
When's the last time you disassembled a fuel sender and cleaned it so it would work again?
Silly me almost bought a new one without looking up about it.
(which ironically probably wouldn't last as long as the original)
My theory is that, back then you didn’t have advanced analysis tools to be able to design something precisely for your life cycle. So things were over engineered, the safety factor assumed to cover all your load cases.
Now we can precisely engineer something to only last 1-2 years and have the customer buy more.
Yes and no, a lot of the older gadgets work on much simpler tech which is why they last longer, the swamp cooler, for example, uses the basic principle of evaporative cooling. as the air passes through the water soaked medium absorbs the heat and cools the air which evaporates the water. Now we use air conditioning instead of evaporative cooling.
They did the windshield wiper commercial reminded me of what my kids dentist said. He said that you have to floss which is kind of like cleaning your butt you can't just wipe the cheeks off you have to get in between to be clean
Glad to see the tire regroover is already well defended.
Who remembers vacuum powered windshield wipers? These things speed up the more you put the engine under load, but a the mpg gauge and the gauge for windshield wipers are surely straight from that era!!
Pro tip (or "duh" tip) you could always deflate the tire without removing it from the wheel if you'd prefer not to have it blow up in your face.
But then they wouldn't be able to jump scare us!
Those tread cutters used to be used for cutting a extra 5000 miles out of our Truck tyres. They were ment to be recut though so were thicker rubber.
It's still a thing, i've had re-treadable tyres on trucks i've driven in the past few years
@@immDroidz Retread and regroove are different things. Retreading (better known as "capping") is gluing new tread on top of an existing tire. Regrooving is cutting new grooves into an existing tire surface.
@@immDroidz Not even the same thing
@@eric_d Yeah these tyres had extra to regroove, The cutter would take around 2mm out the original tread paths. Hell of a job when you have a few to do.
The tire retreader is "take me back" material, because I've seen it successfully used before. BUT not on an old tire, but a new tire. My dad had a friend who used to race dirt track cars, and he would cut extra grooves into the tire for more traction.
I'm remembering back to 1987 or so, but my friend's 1st gen Plymouth Barracuda had a factory gauge very similar to the "mile o meter" gauge.
back in the day Mercedes cars have an economy gauge :P
Yes, a vacuum gauge was an option on many cars in the early to mid '60s and as a dealer add-on. Also available from the aftermarket too. They were a useful tutor for learning how to drive using less gas. A lot of Pontiac's (roughly '61-'67) came with them from the factory. That was smart because with Pontiac being the next move up from Chevrolet, people knew that Pontiac's used more gas. It was notable talk about going from a Chevy 283 into a Pontiac 389. Pontiac's coming with a vacuum gauge gave salesmen a useful tool on how to save gas when working with prospective buyers.
@@discerningmind
drive with idle speed to save gas lmao 🤣🤣
@@Techie1224 If you think it's funny than you don't understand.
I could be wrong but I think the tire regroover made more sense in the past because they had tubes inside the tire to hold the pressure and tires used to be thicker. Obviously very different than now. Great content as always!
This is exactly right.
You gottir...Technically in a pinch you can actually run tubes in your tubeless tires today at the expense of some ride quality.
But since tubeless tires have cords and rely on the thickness of the tire meat itself to hold air and keep the bead sealed I wouldn't recommend carving up a modern tire for any serious use case.
They are still used today, though mostly for semi tires when they re-tread them. Most car tires now days are fairly thin once they wear down and there isn't anything to re-tread. Done in the name of efficiency since the tires weigh less..... And likely because then you have to buy new ones so win-win for tire companies.
The battery charger thing is meant to cause the generator to produce more output at lower revs. The generators did not charge the battery at idle. Valiant was the first car to use an alternator to solve the problem.
The tire regroover was a useful thing back in the days of bias ply tires with tubes. Also, most truck tires are "regroovable". I have seen the remaining number of times for the carcass before it needs retreading right on the sidewall. Tires that have been regrooved or retreaded may not be used in a steering axle.
That air pump seems like it could actually be useful!
Yeah its called a engine XD
@@hihaveaniceday9386 i see what you did there lol
I use a variation of that vacuum gauge 4:05 on my classic car. It’s a doctors stethoscope but for your car. You can use it to adjust air to fuel ratios, timing, you can tell if your valves need adjustment, you can even see if you have some kind of air restriction in the air intake or your exhaust manifold depending on where the needle points all by using vacuum. It’s honestly an amazing tool. Great for diagnosing problems.
Curb Feelers still existed in the 80's. I remember seeing them on Chrysler K-cars and other mom-mobiles.They were an updated design, and looked hilarious.
That spark plug tire pump would be so cool to use on my Subaru 😂
So would you take out the filter or battery?
@@dalentoews3418 whole engine, duh
I’ve owned plenty of cars and the Subaru ranked only average as for as spark plug difficulty went. American V8s were always a bitch with theirs right up against the firewall and rusted into place
Back in the day, when car tires still had tubes in them, the tire re-treader would actually be pretty handy.
Next time you see your mail carrier, ask them about LLV AC. I worked for the USPS and those trucks don't have heat or AC. The AC is a 5-6" PVC elbow that is bungee corded through the window and around the door with one hole outside, facing forward and the other end inside the LLV.
The milo meter is actually build in to the dash of a e46, also works with vacuum pressure and shows you the current mpg
✍️✍️✍️✍️.
make this a series. it's great testing old tools like that fuel economy meter
Tire re-groovers make more sense when you have large offroad tires because they can be $500-$1000 a tire. Also, you can tailor your tires to a specific offroad race when the type of tire needed doesn't exist for the conditions you're in.
and offroad and truck tires are significantly thicker so you don't have to worry about destroying the tire too much.
they had bias ply tires when regrooving was common, they had much thicker rubber and in some cases were designed to be regrooved
lol no
I would definitely like to see more old school tools being reviewed it's pretty neat to see what folks had back in the day to work with in the automotive world
✍️✍️✍️✍️.
Tire re-groovers are good for mudding trucks because you can add channels to help get rid of mud, or even use it to cut lugs off to get more space between lugs, so the tire will clean out better.
You could also probably use it for a lawn mower tire or something, if its almost bald and you don't want to buy a new one
that is a really old regroover. The newer (yet still old tech) groovers use a u shaped blade. You adjust the depth of the blade before you begin, to prevent getting down to the thread areas.
Tire treads often cannot go down the wear bars as it becomes too squirrely due to deflection, so the micro sips are only down for maybe 3/32. You can actually use the groover to add new sips and create new water channels as the tire wears down to the existing ones.
If you think about it, the spark plug compressor isn't really any different from the pancake compressors seen at most gas stations. Just your engine is the pancake.
I'm pretty sure that "oven" falls into the same level of heating as the "defroster heaters" sold today.
For the retreader, a couple of things. Tires back then were thicker (they didn't have the modern belts and radials of today) and made with a completely different rubber.
Commercial tyres are regrooved a lot still to this day
Remember that a lot of those inventions were from times when cars tires and wipers were made very differently. The old tires were bias ply essentially a solid chunk of rubber so recutting groves is achievable safely. The wiper gauge is actually quite neat and I beg to differ on those feelers. Those are quite useful if installed properly.
Great vid guys
Tire retreading is still around today, some tires are ment to be retreaded as stated on sidewall, the hot iron is also useful to modify your existing tires to make it more efficient to shed water
Re-treading and re-grooving are 2 different things.
All I’m saying is, you guys make way better commercials than most ad agencies today.
The yellow progress bar to show the sponsor part progress is fkn genius. I liked the progress bar so much I didn't even skip the ad. Nice stuff.
This channel has always been "different". That's what I like about it.
I was just about to buy new wipers lol good timing with that ad. And Nolan’s old timey voice is perfect 😂
Thanks for constantly bringing unique car content for us, it's always a great escape from stressful real life when watching you
The comment is good I just cannot allow that spelling of unique
instead of watching videos maybe go read a book and re-learn how to write.
@@dc7993 sorry I fixed it Hebrew is my main language so I miss spell alot
Tire grooving tools are used today in various types of racing. Sprint and Midgets often have custom grooved tires, off road racing cars/trucks will have custom grooved tires as well. Lots of road racing series that allow an intermediate rain tire will be custom grooved. You can buy a new tire grooving tool from all the big racing parts suppliers and you will find grooving tools in many toolboxes at races across the country. Oh I almost forgot, flat track and motocross motorcycles can/have custom grooving done to their tires. The use of a tire grooving tool is an art, I have watched pro's groove road race rain tires and it is a work of art.
Okay that’s how you do a wiper blade ad. It’s dumb and made me laugh my ass off. Perfect 😂
I can't wait to see Nolan's car refurbished. It's such a work of art
@Jack Wrath who cares??? 👀
One thing to note. The mile-o-meter was meant to work on carb engines. So a carb would more or less have a permanent vacuum
My '67 Barracuda fastback (with leaning tower of power 225 Slant 6) had a vacuum gauge in the dash next to the speedometer. It was basically an "efficiency" meter that reminded me to keep my foot off the floor when pressing the accelerator.
same thing was on dashboard in classic lada models untill very end of production in 2012, called «economometer»
you guys are awesome, just a bunch of buddys doing what you love.
The oven is not for cooking, it's for heating lunch boxes for people working in the field. In that capacity, it works great, and many work vehicles still have them.
That sponsorship from the wipers genuinely helped me, I’ve been trying to look for some good wipers for my 89 celica and now I have some!
That fish gag was HILARIOUS. Top marks.
I want to know what "A" was. 😂
We swear by those tire groovers in rally racing. A lot of times you'll use it to add cuts in the tread if it's particularly muddy or square off the edges of the tread blocks if they've gotten too rounded
You guys need to let Justin host his own show!
Plz
Daniel Espinoza from Lucifer🤯
Agreed! He’s been a great addition to the crew and I’d love to see a new segment with him as the host.
@John Connor we know why
They already did that
Semi tires are still regroovable. I don't think you are supposed to do it with air in the tire though. 🤔
9:00 on average ,it takes 20mins of driving to recharge the battery back up to where it was before you started the car.
I never thought I'll listen to james, nolan and Justin talk about wiping for 1 minute and 30 seconds straight.
Donut media being the only channel I don’t skip the ads on.
I feel so sorry for the fish, that its life had to end by being thrown into the garbage. 08:27
R.I.P Fish, We will never forget you. 🕊
NEED MORE VIDEOS LIKE THIS!!!
The "owen" are for heating up your tin can lunch box with already cooked food. Works great.
And that's really a truck driver accessory that you can still buy in truck stops. Also, they do NOT use them while the vehicle is moving.
I never saw much of the products themselves but I did spend plenty of time reading about them in the Warshawsky catalog. That was in Chicago - elsewhere it was the JC Whitney catalog. Just looking at the product descriptions would be a great look back.
One product I really loved and actually saw fairly often was a small plastic cylinder that would be installed in a drilled hole in your brake lights lenses. That little bit of blue turned your brake lights, a vivid purple - so cool.
The people who do the animation are awesome
Happy to see Justin again! 🙌
This was fun. Cool that so many of the old products are actually still useful after all :)
Yeah. Sometimes people get featured for a bit and disappear.
Remember Aaron?
He's over on Motor Trend, now, doing some 'Dirt Every Day' style show.
Helped a neighbor use a tire pump tool back in the 60's to fix a hay wagon out in the field a half mile from home. Spark plugs easy access on old Farmall tractor. Don't rev the engine, let it idle for most efficiency. Pumped up the flat in a few minutes. In those days the only portable air compressor would have been powered by Briggs & Stratton (rechargeable ni-cad batteries were used in satellites only). Device was pretty common before then as tires were much less reliable than now.
The explosion Clip that’s makes me jump scare already 13:33
Fun fact, The legend of old GP motorcycle racing Kenny Roberts had to cut his own rain treads because the european tyre companies would not sell him any. He cut his tyres and won the race.
The tire regroover is not old crap, people still use them. But only on tires listed as regroovable.. don't use on regular car tires.
3:01 You missed a frame 😂
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that sparkplug tire pump seems like it could be amazing if it were made better
Found a vintage car item in my Dads garage.. kept a while, but the rubber/plastic tube was so gooey, I threw it away. But it was a 25' long small sized yellow tube with Schrader coupling at each end and it was to transfer air from a tire with air in it to a flat tire. Either your own car or another.
I'll buy a set of those wipers and see how they hold up to a Minnesota winter. Never had a set be good after winter so it'll be interesting.
Wow, a fellow Minnesotan Kancolle fan. This is the last place I'd expect to find one.
@@kiyote437 I go where I am needed.
Its seven in the morning and I haven't slept and my mind was wandering into some really bad places, so glad yall uploaded like right now lol.
Donut love
Curb feelers are great when set up properly, have them on my classic beetle and always know i’m the perfect distance from the curb. Make enough noise you can hear them they kinda bounce off the curb
Pulling out that whole fish to cook is your in-car oven has to go into your hall of fame. A great moment in TV history.
verry cool vid, laughed at the add aswel. for the tyre re groover, in the old days tyres had simpler patterns (msot were just longitudional lines or a zig zag line). also im pretty sure due to increased accuracy with production techniques the thread runs closes to the carcas now than back then.
There is one brand in europe (kingmeiler) that sells tyres that legally can be regrooved however a polish tyre test did try it a few years back and regrooved tyres are just worse than brand new chinese ones. so yeah it can be done but please dont do it.
Tire regrooving is common on commercial tires, works great. Just be sure your regrooving tires that are actually rated for it.
Fender guards will always have a place in my heart. They just look so cool even on 90s jdm cars