Quote:
Originally posted by Peter Bro10:
Here in North Central Illinois we are currently at minus 18 F. wind chill is at minus 30 something. Technically speaking it's colder than a witches bottom!
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LOL Peter
OK New Jersey is chilly, but nothing like what I experienced in the 60's in Montreal.
I was telling Susan this morning the common practice if one's car got very cold overnight was to place the battery in the oven to warm up and hopefully restore a modicum of voltage together with removing the spark plugs
I initially had a superb 1962 Buick Special super-compact
Ah such sweet memories!!!
which featured GM's then revolutionary 3.5 litre
aluminium V8.
Yes it was in Canada so it was aluminium whatever the makers thought the metal's correct name was!You know aluminium just like sodium and not at all like cadmum!!
(that engine was later made down under as the Brabham/Repco V8 and built by Land Rover in the UK:I had strongly suspected that current Range Rovers, now part of the Ford range still use "my" engine but no the inevitable wiki
shows in a great write up at:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_V8_engine
that now the Jaguar V8 is used
Anyway the engine was shoe horned in making access to the two rearmost spark plugs "tricky"
This meant that after a few winter's plug removal and the subseqent wear on the threads from inadvertently cross threading,
not hard with frozen fingers, and a series of thread inserts installallations it became impossible to remove those two plugs for
fettling and I then had a V6!!!
Would anyone from say Edmonton care to comment here
In Montreal we took solace from the story that over there it got so insanely cold that it was customary to plug your engine's dipstick replacement oil heater into upstands in car parks which had electrical sockets
(My Buick did have a sort of plug in hotplate under the battery)
I also still shiver at the thought of one February morning when Montreal was minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit
and I was the only one of my class of 6 beginners who turned up for our weekly 2-hour ski lesson at Sun Valley in the Laurentians at
St Adele
but in a necessarily shortened hour one to one with my French Canadian ski instructor I leaned more than in any ten other lessons
Warning ski pix to follow when i find some more spare time!