Old used car dealer tricks and how to spot some of those.

[64 f100]

As you know the speedometers on our trucks only go to 99,999 miles on the odometer. Many have been ran past that mark several times. This can sometimes be spotted by looking at how the digits line up. If not in a straight line, then the car or truck is suspect on mileage. Often the unscrupulous will run the odometer back either by taking it apart and or running a drill backward on the speedometer cable. Other tricks used, include sawdust in the rear end or standard transmission to quiet the grinding noises from worn parts. With automatic transmissions all kinds of products were used, but one standby for sluggish transmissions was to poor a juices sized can of lacquer thinner in the fill tube. What this did was to swell the rubber O-rings and make the shifts more firm. Surprisingly, it did not seem to harm the transmission and did help. I used the technic on a car or two I owned that were needing help in shifting. I suspect todays cars would not like this treatment as there are a lot of Teflon seals and lighter oils used today. Hard to say without trying it. I'm sure all of you have heard of different things being done in past years. I think this is an interesting subject and hope others will join in and post different things they've seen or tried. I have in the past used cardboard in front of the radiator to raise the temp in an engine, and have some heat in the cab, because I could not afford a thermostat. I did the same to 50 Ford flathead after I overhauled the engine and had cleaned the block with caustic . It ran so cool in the winter that even with thermostats, I had no heat in the car. I had to cover up almost all of the radiator to get some heat. I've seen baling wire used for spark plug wires, it's amazing what you can do sometimes and still have something work.

[9Fingers]

I rebuilt a 2.3 inline four cylinder in a ford ranger once. A friend was going to do the valve job in the high school auto mechanics class being taught at the local community college as a project for class, free for me..... Head came back, 3angle valve job, everything back together and the rocker arms were falling out from under the overhead cam. Turns out someone ground WAY too much off the end of the valves! Now what? I fixed it and it only cost me 40 cents. That's right, a nickel was the correct thickness to shim the lifters from their seats upward enough to hold the rockers in place. The edges were ground into a star pattern to let oil flow by. The engine ran well for a long time and was running well when I pulled it out to drop in a 302.

[foodstick]

I met a kid in my high school days who was trying to sell an old Toyota? Honey Bee?.... anyhow the front end was so loose and worn he actually took it all apart and wrapped everything with electrical tape, and sold it fast..

One of the funniest I have ever seen though was a parts truck Kids brother bought.. I don't know if the generator mount had broken? or they just UPGRADED.. but the generator was WELDED to the frame rail on the passenger side of the truck, and the belt ran over to it. !!!!.. There was some super funny gas tank line mod as well..but I forget what it was now.... You should have met the absolute hillbillies that he bought that from, and I might be insulting hillbillies when I say that ! If you knew a few of my relatives, you would know I am allowed to use that term !!!!!

[mercuryv8]

The joke where I work is bananas. Just 3 bananas in a rear end will get rid of that howl. LoL. I guess they must work like the sawdust mentioned earlier.

I once bought a truck that turned out to have a vacuum leak. When I went searching for it I found a line with only a cigarette butt plugging it... Ha ha.. at least it was filtered air.

Nic

[64 f100]

I had a friend that used to rebuild wrecks and sell as used cars. Nice guy and do anything he could for if you were a friend. I watched him take 4 Mustang 2's ( mid 70's ) and make 3 driving cars out of the 3. The last car he put together really kind of left me a little leery of ever buying a car from him though. One was badly wrecked in the front and the other in the rear. I watched as he splice the front from one to the back of the other, a lot of the sheet metal was overlapped and brazed together. Cut the two cars apart in the middle and overlapped a lot of the middle section. When he got done you could not tell where it had been done from the outside. I will have to say he was a master painter and body man in many respects. I learned a lot of good techniques from him. He did not have a paint booth and painted in his shop, and liked to fog the paint on ( this was back when you had good paint ) and could do show quality paint. This nearly killed him with paint poisoning and he was no longer able to paint after that.

[fmartin_gila]

This thread brings back a lot of memories to this old fart. Back in the late 60s & early 70s, I worked for Naumann Fork Lifts in Phoenix. When customers would trade in an old one when they bought a new forklift, the old one was turned over to me and my partner in the back for rebuilding and sale as a used machine. These machines varied in age from the 1930s up to about 1960 and would be of any origin one could imagine as far as make & model, foreign & domestic were concerned. Mostly we did a decent job on them and most all the customers were happy to buy a rebuilt machine at a much reduced price compared to new. Now and then we would receive one that was just not justifieable to rebuild and would receive a good clean up and a "Paint Can Overhaul". I learned and performed a lot of "Jury Rigging" & very questionable practices on some of those machines. Our Department Boss's favorite saying was "Paint can hide a multitude of sins". Good thing the statute of limitations has long since passed, LOL.

Fred

[64 f100]

The boss may not be right, but he's always the boss. Smart person does what he's told unless he has a better idea that works better, and costs no more, but better run it by the boss all the same before doing. I had a friend that went to work for Earl Schibe that did the 29.99$ paint jobs. Said a quick wash was paint prep, and he went to get the paint for his first paint job, and got a quart of paint, ran out and needed more. He went to get more and was told that was all he got to paint a car 1 quart.

[Michelle]

Taking a drill motor to run back a speedometer would talk forever. If you just removed ten thousand miles you would be there for days. I just always remove the odometer and realigned the numbers, it was a lot quicker. I wasn't doing it to sell cars but rather when I did a total restoration I would zero out the speedometer. There is a truck to lining up the numbers to keep them even.