Another car questions + opinions
 

Well, in order not to start so many subjects, I've decided to concentrate more in just one. It may cause some mess, but a lot of subject can cause a mess too.
So
I. Was there any car front seats that had the seafty belt (modern type, that comes over you chest too) atached only to the seat. I'm curios if you can retrofit some old cars with seats that have seatbealts and that thing that you lay you head againts (I don't know how they are called in English, the Romanian term is of French origins);

II. How relaible/unrelaible where the '30-'40's cars? Since oil wasn't of so excelent qualty back then (oil = gas (fuel), but also grease oil) the grase oil change had to be done at shorter intrervals then today. Also I don't know when central greasing was adopted, so at some cars some points needed manual greasing. But leting the grease alone, if proper or at least decent meintainance, how long you could use a car from that period without needing repairs (like reboring the engine)?;

III. What options do you think are missing from modern cars? One intresting option was the light dimmer switched postioned on the floor of the car. And the ammeter.

Here in Wisconsin the way I understand it, even if a car never offered seat belts you have to add lap belts at a minimum. Even if a seat wasn't designed for a headrest (American term for them...some car words are different in UK English*) or seatbelts (either kind) they can be added with a bit of enginuity.

I seem to recall reading that Nash cars of the 40s could last better than 150k. When you say grease do you mean wheel bearings or ball joints....cars here in the US don't self grease either of those... though the higher line 58 Lincoln's had a button to push that would automatically grease all the ball joints...there is a neat feature I'm surprised didn't last.

One thing that I miss (aside from floor mount high beam switches you meantioned (and my 78 Lincoln has) is hood ornaments....there were a lot of cool ones down through the years but pedestrian crash safety standards have pretty much killed them in current production cars.

*The Britt's can keep their sissy bonnets, I want an American car with a real hood... though I do gotta give them props for calling their sedans saloons....If they got their UK name the way I think they did there must be a lot of 4 doors there with whiskey dents....:D

The model A Fords were quite reliable for the time made but not by todays standards, or even 1950's standard.

The Ford V8, started in 1932? was a good design and they modified it thru the years. With regular oil changes they could go 100,000 miles "sometimes". The oil bath filters were not so great if you lived on a dirt road and Im sure shortened most of the engines lives with dirt (my opinion). You had to be religious about changing engine oil to make them last.

Most of the straight 8 engines were good as far as lasting and Hudson made that 6 cylinder (I think 6) with a factory 2 carburetors that could blow most cars away in a race. They were durable.

I think a lot of the cars and motors were only as good as the owners were with mainanence of the car.

I dont think seat belts attached to seats would be very good in an accident but possibly better than nothing. the G force of your body would pull the belt's attaching point off of many seats. Or a side collision could strangle your waist if things got bent. the ones Ive added attached to the floor behind the seat.

In the 1980s there was an elderly racer who came out of retirement at my local stock car races. he used one of those Hudsons i already mentioned and routinely won the races against modern cars and engines. Beefed up 350 Chevy's mostly. it was fun to watch. There was a Buick straight 8 in those races too who i dont remember winning but if he bumped another car they flew off the track pretty quick, lol That car was heavy.

What would I like to see in modern cars? Vent windows. Ford quit it in 1996 on their trucks, unsure with cars. its nice to open a window without that loud sucking sound without one. If I ever get a modern truck it will be something I will have to modify and Ive heard it can be done. Fins on pickups are something else that was never really done except on Rancheros but Ive been waiting for someone to try it. Add some class to the ugly box trucks now. I agree about hood ornaments too.

That stock car story is hilarious.

I know my Lincoln Mark V offered power vent windows in 78.

IIRC Dodge had a 1 year only finned pickup based on their forward look cars (also the 59 Chevy el Camino)... I'd imagine the camper shell crowd probably would have some choice words if anyone made a finned pickup today... I sort of wish they would make finned cars again. There are a few nice cars today but styling has been fairly bland since the 70s.

One thing I forget about and miss is full size sedans with big trunks (and for that matter any car with a good size trunk that doesn't have a mail slot for a door making the space inside almost useless) also the station wagons based on the full size sedans....I would have liked one more than my suburban but they are all pushing into rust bucket territory or held on to by their owners.

You can atach seatbealts to old cars without damaging them?
Greasing... like this: http://users.aber.ac.uk/caj55/htm%20..._500_miles.htm
When in U.S.A. you got read of greasing diagrams like that?

And after 80,000-100,000 miles what did you had to do at an "Ford" V8?

Ventilation windows where cool. At some cars you could rest your arm on them.

I am going to dig online for a pic of that Hudson car. He was a famous local racer and one of his cars still exists and races in vintage races as far as I know. The racer died long ago. But if i dont quote you again it means I had no luck.

Seatbelts, you find a strong part of the car behind the seat and either drill holes to attach them or if your lucky there is a hole there or something strong to attach too. They have to be bolted very secure or they wont do any good in an accident, just break off.

Greasing, every car came with a manual that usually told how often to oil and grease things. Oil and grease were poor quality compared to modern oil now.

The ford V8's or any other engine, once they ran bad or started using a lot of oil they were overhauled or rebuilt. If they were cracked badly or too worn out to rebuild they were scrapped. I drove more than one car that used a quart of oil every 100 miles (200 KM?) but they never ran real well. Modern cars with all the pollution control and other gadgets will not run at all, usually, when it starts using a lot of oil.

Many late 90s and mid 2000s GM cars had the seatbelts entirely mounted to the seat. Cadillacs, Buicks, etc. Those would be exactly what you are looking for. However, A. Good luck finding those in your country, and B. those were those god-awful power seats that you couldn't really adjust up or down.

Let me explain. See, a NORMAL 6+ way power seat operates by having forward/back, front up/down, and rear up/down, and the rear part of the seat is connected to the back of the seat. So when you control the rear up/down, it moves the back of the seat with it. Now what GM (and a few others) decided to do, was to make the seat bottom separate from the seat back. So only the rear of the seat bottom would move up/down, and the seat back stays in one place. Sounds good on paper, but in practice, you'll find that it somehow manages only to move your ass up and down, instead of moving your whole body up or down.

In other words, those seats are terrible for tall people like me, and for short people. Because you get no real height adjustment.

---

Now, the thing you need to understand about old cars is that everyone understood that they required regular maintenance. They had to be greased and oiled, and valves lapped, and cylinders honed, and brakes adjusted - a lot of big heavy maintenance. However, it was also a lot easier back then. Cars were simpler, so were repairs and maintenance. In those days, pulling a cylinder head and grinding valves was maybe a 1 hour job. Ordinary cars today, doing that, easy 10 to 12 hours. So they were considered very reliable. Even today, our measure of reliability includes how easy it is to fix.

I'm short. Circa 5'6" and 1/2 (169 c.m.s.).
But you could run a "Ford" V8 for 100,000 miles (circa 160,901 kilometers) without having oil loss?
Cylinder honing and grinding valves because of Carbon deposit on them?
Anyway, a car from the '30' or '40's (if I will get one) I will use it for no more then 1,000-2,000 miles per year. Longer trips, probably no more then 200-300 miles in one way - to be onest, between cities I preffer the train.

Seats out of most convertibles will have the entire seat belt mechanism attached to the seat.

If you mean a Ford V8 from the '30s (hell, even up to the '70s), then no. Seal technology was not very good back then, neither was piston ring tech. Cars were expected to burn oil, and leak oil. Think about all the old timey movies, where a car pulls into a filling station, and the attendant comes out. They would open the hood and check the oil, and sell you some if you were low. It was such a normal fact of life that life worked around it. Imagine in the future when all the cars are electric (or something else?), people will look back on the past, and think - wow people had to stop at a place... for gas?
Well, maybe I was exaggerating a bit with cylinder honing. Maybe. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. Piston rings were pretty basic back then. But valve jobs were very common. Carbon deposits, I think, were not a big problem. Valves would actually burn up, or more likely the valve seat. A large part of the reason for leaded gas was that it lowered the temperature of combustion (and reduced detonation which caused knock), and that reduced the damage it caused to valves and valve seats. Still, the metallurgy back then was not great, and valves required maintenance. Nowadays, without leaded gas, the metals had to be improved to handle higher temperatures - and they do it very well.

Actually, just about the only thing to do to convert a leaded gas car to unleaded is to replace the valve seats. For a flathead engine, it would likely mean taking the engine out of the car and to a machine shop. Not sure.
Well, a car that old is usually not driven much. But then... there are still people who drive a Ford Model A every day. There's an engine machine shop near me that ONLY does Model A's. Just imagine for a minute. There's a shop that makes a profitable business by working on one type of engine that's from 80-90 years ago.

My grandad said cars back then (30s-60s) were overhauled every 30k miles and you were lucky if you got past 100k. Nowadays if it doesn't do 200k on routine maintenance then it's considered junk. I'm going to try to get the Miata to 300k and I'm halfway there......

As far as seatbelts, the ones in my Dodge truck are attached to the body, in the miata one side is attached to the body and the other to the seat, the Peugeot? i don't remember......

And for old timey car features, I've never owned one with a high beam switch on the floor, even my '79 Hilux was on the column. My truck has the vent windows though, I wish it didn't because they leak and the correct fitting seals are NLA. And my Peugeot (1985 model) has an oil bath air filter and it works quite well, I just hate cleaning/refilling it.

So after 100,000 miles the engine was junk?
At "Dacia" 1300 ("Reanult" 12 licence) no matter what the engine (French or Romanian) you needed to do some working around 50,000 kiloemters (31,000 miles).

Probably I will have to spent 300-400 Dollars per year for maintaing the car (carbon cleaning, 2-3 oil changes).

There was no set amount of miles that an engine was junk (the 100,000 mentioned). It was a lot how it was maintained, short vs long trips, car or truck, how hard it was driven, etc. Many could make it 100,000. Many years ago I bought a 1950 3/4 ton Ford V8 (same engine as a 1948 model) with over 100,000 from the original owner and all it needed was a basic overhaul, rings, valves, bearings, etc. And that was a farm truck which would not have been used easy. There is nothing set in stone about how many miles you could get out of them.

Madmen is right, they all used oil to some extent, with maybe just a few exceptions. It wasnt all bad as it kept some fresh oil going into it.

Oil improvements has helped engines a lot.

Burning carbon out of an engine hasnt been needed for decades. But its fun to do! A good reason to drive fast.

My dream is an vintage car, British, '30's-'40's. So I wonder what I may expect... can I run 20,000 miles without serios problems? But also I have a general curiosity.
That good thing about old cars is they are generally easy to fix and some problems can be fixed on the edge of the road.
And automobiles built on underneath frame you can lift the body and work on the inside, just like removing the chassies from the case at a tube (valve) radio to get better acces at the compoments. Bad thing about cars built on frame: they aren't so safe in the case of impact as a unibody one.
Burning oil is bad when you get too much oil burnded or leaked.
People will stop for electric charge. But gas station have at least 20 years ahead from now.

I have a '51 Ford; it doesn't have the famous V8 but a flathead straight 6; actually a better engine than the flathead 8 in some respects. I don't know the full history of this engine, only that the car has around 86k. (I have to wonder if it was rebuilt at some point). I change the oil every 2,000 miles and it uses about a quart in that time which I find outstanding for something that age. Most of the older vehicles I've owned either burned or leaked oil, or both. The first couple vehicles I owned, as a teenager, were a 67 Impala with a 283 V8 & a 78 Ford F100 with a 302 V8. Both needed at least a quart of oil per week.

Most oil until at least the 60s was non-detergent. A large percentage of cars didn't have oil filters. The dirt in the oil (and there was plenty, thanks to the air filters in use back then) would gradually sink to the bottom of the oil pan. If you changed the oil regularly you might keep it fairly clean. My '51 had some deep black oil in it when I got it, which I promptly changed. At first it used about a quart every 150 miles or so but quickly improved. After a couple oil changes the dipstick looks so clean you can barely see the oil, even after a couple thousand miles. I still use non-detergent oil out of concern that there could still be some sludge inside that modern oil could stir up. There are stories of this causing the engine to suffer a "stroke" as the oil pump screen stops up.

My old car gets used quite a bit; I use it for errands, going to church, day-trips. I've taken it on some weekend trips, maybe 3 hours one-way. Stuff does wear out faster than on modern cars but they're so simple that, really, only so much bad can happen. The only time this Ford was Found On Road Dead with me as the owner? Vapor lock, the first summer I had it. I added an electric fuel pump as a backup and when it acts up I just flip the switch.

Old British cars have a reputation for poor reliability (especially electrical parts) but some of them are very easy to get parts for and should be simple to work on. That's what I'd look for, something basic, not loaded up with tons of options. It's nice to have power this and power that but on a car that age, all of that stuff is very failure prone.

Yes, it is bad. Burning it will foul spark plugs, leave carbon on the valves, and cause piston rings to stick - causing more oil burning and loss of compression. Leaking is another problem - when oil leaks, it tends to leak only the thinnest part of the oil, leaving the thickest part of the oil behind. If the oil is not changed regularly, the engine could suffer damage.

British cars are notorious for leaking oil. And electrical problems. And carburetor problems. And reliability in general. lol. Actually that reputation is likely from the '70s, god they were awful in the '70s. Anyhow, it would probably be easy for you to find a British car. And half the fun of owning an old car is fixing it.

I know British cars from that period are awfloul. I've seen documentaries, read opinions.
Electric problems... "Lucas":
1) "Lucas" - prince of darkeness;
2) What is the slogan of "Lucas"? "Get me home before dark;
3) "Lucas" haves 3 light positions: dim, flicker, lights outs.
In a way, British motor industry was quite like the Romanian one. But I think Romanian automobiles from the '80's and '90's had better electric equypment.

Well, my dream is older...'30's-'40's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x00aXHI2tTY&t=137s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EvFEcbalCk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7dgRTmIUz8

Italian cars also had reputations in America as being not very good. spotty electrics, rustaholics, unreliable, terrible parts availability, few qualified mechanics, & the ones I've been associated with, seemed like everything seemed too small, cheaply made, & fragile.. But Americans tend-I think-to be rather hard on things, we never check oil levels, or transmission oil levels, brake fluid levels, etc, & then RAISE HELL when the vehicle konks out...And I'm as guilty of it as anyone, I'll be the 1st to admit as much..

At one time it was so bad with Italian cars that people used to joke FIAT was an acronym for "Fix It Again Tony" :D

those straight sixes were better as far as longevity and I dont think they had problems with cracking like some of the V8's (trucks were better).

Im not so sure about using non-detergent in it. That causes a lot more wear on the pistons/rings for one. Some mechanics used to use non-detergent after a rebuild for the 1st 100 to 1000 miles to wear them in quicker, the rings. But I can understand your logic too, worrying about junk coming loose in the engine. Ive just never heard of doing that. Interesting.

the only close thing Ive had happen was a 1985 Bronco with 351w I bought 9 years ago. Of all the cars and trucks Ive owned i never saw any oil half that dirty. It was trailered home as it wasnt licensed. I changed the oil and filter (cheapest oil I could buy) and ran it 10 minutes, changed oil and filter again and ran it an hour. Even after 2 oil changes it was quite dirty from cleaning the engine. i changed it the 3rd time and all was good. Anyway, if you ever go the detergent oil route, keep this in mind, what I did.

lol I'll have to remember that one! But yeah, I think in the 30s and 40s the Brits still had some self respect. Those old Daimlers are nice too. Come to think of it... I'll bet you could get a Ford Model A with little effort, as well. Pretty sure lots were sent overseas. I know they're still common in the UK. The advantage to something like that is parts are still available. Even in a worst case, you could order a part from US, there's still plenty here. And they are, apparently, still very drive-able cars, from a modern point of view.

Another acronym:

Loose Unprotected Corroded Always Shorted

:D

I've been tempted to get a Model A myself; I've seen a "driver" quality car for around $6500. There are quite a few hidden away-there are probably a half-dozen around our small town. Very simply built with good aftermarket support.

fixmeplease, I've read quite a bit on the non-detergent/detergent conversion and I'm still undecided. Some report making the switch caused oil pressure crash, or oil burning/leaking. Others had no trouble at all or even saw oil consumption decrease. I did have one car from the "fill up the oil and check the gas" school. I finally switched because non-detergent is so expensive; I think at NAPA it's higher than Mobil 1, per quart. I didn't really see any difference at all, good or bad, on that car. It's very tempting to make the switch to a decent 10w30 for my next change. I know that the mere mention of that to some "old-timers" makes them grumble.

For a couple years I was using Kendall 20w20 non-detergent. The stuff was crystal clear! That's what FoMoCo called for in the manual, but it's obsolete now. The only 20w I can find now is el Cheapo stuff for compressors & such, so back to NAPA 30w. I just want to do what's best for a great running engine. 60-70 lbs pressure on the highway.

In one old brochure I've seen they recomended to wash the oil with parafin.
This is a good solution.
My cars of interest did have oil filter.

"Ford" A it's intresting, but it haves one problem: clasicall manaul gearbox.
It's a manual gerabox? No. It's an automatic gerbox no? But then what it is? It's semiautomatic. It's a preselector gerabox. "Daimler" had that. It get close to the ideea of perfect gerabox for me, except for the fact that you can't skeep speeds (for eg going from 4th to 2nd directly) while the car is on the move without the risk of harming the gerabox. At least at classical preselector. Electropneumatic commanded like at the "Cord" 810/812 or post-war "Arsmtrong-Siddeley"... don't know.


Anyway, no matter the car, I must have a garage. Because parking is horrible in my are and there a lot of dumb people. This year 3 very young boys devasted a school because they went angry because of a toy. A week later, some very young girls devasted a few cars just for fun...

Yeah, an A model has a manual gearbox. Automatics really weren't available til right before the War, & in America, they weren't available in cheaper cars til the start of the Fifties. It was 1951 when you could finally get a 2 speed auto in Fords & Chevys-"Powerglide" in Chevy, & Ford-O-Matic in Fords. I think it was even later in Chryslers. My parents had a '51 Chevy w/Powerglide, my mom learned how to drive in it. My dad said you could NOT make that car slide, even on glare ice, the Powerglide had so much slip in it. But my Mom did manage to get arrested in it-for going 19 MPH thru the enlisted Men's barracks area, where the speed limit was 17 ! The Judge Advocate General & my dad were buds-Dad told him to REALLY give my Mom "The Business"... They hauled her into this courtroom, the Judge was WAY above her, squinting down on her, & from what Henry told me, they REALLY read her the Riot Act... She figured she was gonna be stood up against the wall & SHOT or something... I think all that happened was they fussed at her, scared the Shit outta her, & fined her 3 dollars... I heard about it all a good 25 years later, & Mama was still pretty fuzzed up about it all, even if me, Henry & anyone else who was around were just laughing our butts off.. But, Mama , to the best of my knowledge, NEVER, EVER got pulled over again...On the Army base, or any time after that...

The model A has a normal manual gearbox. Unlike the model T which you had to hold the pedal to apply first gear. I know you like the preselector gearboxes though :P

You guys oughta check out "Scions of Laughter", a site dedicated to us longsuffering wretches who own, love, cuss/discuss Vehicles British... BIG section devoted to Joseph Lucas & Sons, AKA "Lords of Darkness.."

Oh, this: http://www.team.net/sol/humour/index.html

Well, there is ANOTHER thing about an A model that would give today's drivers pause-the "Mule Ears" right under the steering wheel. Its been a long time since I piloted an A-Bone, but one of 'em, I think was a throttle, & the other was a spark advance/retard control. It sounds all complicated & confusing, but in actuality, most of us could likely figure it out within a trip or 2 around the block of yr home street.. There is a moderately long, moderately high hill outside of town, & a couple "Old Timers" told me when I was a kid, that it had to be a STRONG Model A that could pull that hill in high, with both the "Ears" pulled back... That was the thing...Most of the motors in cars , prewar, & for awhile after, had plenty of power, but you had to know how to get it OUT of them. Hence, that was why, especially after the war, a huge industry grew & thrived about "Hopping up" cars. Fords were the prime beneficiaries, as they were popular, & maybe had the greatest amount of untapped potential, but there were quite a few tricks that could be done to & for Chevys, as well.

Here is something intresting: http://www.andrewalston.co.uk/manual/p03.htm
I think only 1931 models still had such a big throttle lever: http://www.andrewalston.co.uk/instruct16-20/p02.jpg
Older ones had a smaller one.
Idiotic thing: I was Gooogled directly for manual for those cars (and "Lanchester" LD10)... nothing. Googled another things about those cars, found results.

Lancasters were British cars, in the same class as Rolls & Bentleys, but the guy who designed & was the head dude of the company was "Different..." they had tiller steering, you sat in them about the same height as if you were standing, he felt you could judge distances better that way, the motors were made rather narrow, & ran longitudinally thru the passenger compartment, consequentially, they were quite roomy, there were several other quirks about their overall design. Few remain, I dunno if many, if any have survived out of England. Especially the really early ones, they were as ODD as latter day Saabs were-Maybe even more so.

The models that I'm looking that are made after they where taken by "Daimler". The 14 (Fourteen) and 18 (Eighteen) where still top models, but they wheren't the very luxury vehicles that where before the '30's.
It's intresting that you can still find LD10's in a pretty large number for such an old car, trough all that there where only around 3,000 of them made. Probably if the people would have had more money (the model was released after the war and it was expensive for it's class) more could be made (maybe 10,000) and the more airstreamed model could also might have had been put into production (airstreamed: a liitle bit faster at the same engine power). LD10 should have had been released in 1940, but the war camed and... Anyway, unlike the older models you could install heating systsem as a option. You can adapt heating to cars that wheren't designed fot it, but you have to drill holes.

I still wonder: it was so hard to put automatic greasing on old cars, even if it was needed for 2 separate greasing systems (front and back).
And I also wonder: how mechanicals brakes (that had rods in stad of pipes with liquid) behave compare to brakes with liduid on them.

P.S. I appologize I my grammar is bad (I don't know if it corect to put so many would have had)

I've never driven a car with mechanical brakes. I think if they are adjusted properly, they should work the same as comparable hydraulic brakes. The thing that really made a difference was the power brake booster. There are a couple cars with boosted mechanical brakes. Packards, I think. But it's funny how some cars even up into the 60s didn't have power brakes standard.

Mechanical brakes that use rods are decent. if they use cables, not so much as they stretch out which changes braking.

Once you have a car with power brakes, you will never want one without them, trucks even more so. Ive had my share of both.

I've only heard of cable brakes before.

Your power brake comment is especially true of hydraulic (instead of pneumatic) powered brake boosters...my 78 Lincoln has one that operates off the power steering pump....It will lock up the the wheels with much less effort than the vacuum based systems in modern cars...one could argue you loose road feel, but when a deer or turkey hoops in front of your car when you're doing 45mph and you don't feel like you need to brace yourself to push the pedal hard enough to stop in time you come to appreciate it.

I think my dad's 59 Mercury power brakes were pneumatic, but they had much stronger assist than any car I've driven since. Maybe they had drum brakes on all 4 wheels and that made a difference as well? Power steering was also full-assist, only finger-tip pressure required, with practically no feel of the road at all.

Yeah, a '59 ANYTHING would have drum brakes. Lincolns got front discs in '65, I think Caddys only got 'em in '68 or '69... I remember reading in a car mag of the time that the guy who wrote the article really ripped into a PR flack from Caddy telling him that the brakes the car came (an Eldorado) with were incapable of stopping it. This was in '67, the Eldos got 'em in '68.

I've never driven anything with mechanical brakes; I came close to driving a Model A once but we found the gas tank was filled about 50% with water. I've owned several vehicles with manual hydraulic brakes and never found them to a be problem, aside from getting used to them a bit if you've been driving a modern car. When I was a teenager I alternated between an old Ford pickup with manual brakes (odd because it wasn't a total stripper) and an Impala with typical over-boosted power brakes. Drive the Ford for a week then jump in the Chevy and at the first stop sign you nearly threw yourself through the windshield!

(I once had a later model International pickup, plain Jane. Power brakes were standard, and worked well, but it had manual steering. On a light car, no problem. Heck, with skinny bias plies you hardly notice it. But, with 235/75R15's that truck was downright brutal! I nearly threw my shoulder out more than once in a parking lot, and sometimes the steering wheel would snap backwards and hit my fingers HARD.)

I drove a customer's c.1975 Newport once. Both the brakes and steering were so over-boosted that it was almost dangerous. I felt like I could twirl the steering wheel with my pinky and it would just spin like a top.

There's always a different amount of power boost for steering or vacuum assist. Depends on what the manufacturer wanted. Changing steering assist is usually as easy as changing the regulator spring in the power steering pump.

Only car I recall driving with manual brake - single cylinder master - all drum, was a Ford... Fairlane? 500? From the 60s. Between the no power nothing, loose steering, and IIRC bias ply's - basically no brakes, no steering, and no seat belts - that thing was a death trap. Test driving it up and down the block was a lot of fun, but 'fun' as in 'I'm probably gonna die' kind of fun. I grant, if it had good tires and tight steering it would be better. But if it was my car, it would get, at minimum, vacuum boost power brakes with a double cylinder master. And good tires and tight steering. Maybe seat belts, maybe. No power steering wasn't that bad in that car, it just made parallel parking a pain in the arms.

I wonder how it will be for me to drive a car with no power steering. Smaller cars ain't so bad, but a bigger one may be nasty for a non-powerfoul person like me.
I know about mecahical brakes with power assist. On the old British cars they where vacuum asisted. In 1960 it was required that all British cars to have hydraulic brakes... and this sent some of my dreams into the scraping yard :(
Old ads for my dreams: http://www.hifi-archiv.info/Auto-Wer...ley/index.html
http://www.hifi-archiv.info/Auto-Wer...ler/index.html
http://www.hifi-archiv.info/Auto-Wer...ter/index.html
It's manily a Hi.-Fi. and audio site, but you can find another thing there too!

Well, I forgot to mention this: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/post-...ry-saloon.html