Testing Forgotten Car Accessories

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[conman]

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.

[backcountryme]

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,

[stev]

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.

[MrTechKey]

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.

[johnsnow]

For off roading the spark plug inflator would be a great back up if u have a v8

[surgemeister]

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.

[fishua]

Why didn't you put the curb feelers on Nolan's car? Oh right... it's a stationary art piece now.

[dafalzonAUS]

I would like to add the tire retreader would of been more safer back in the day because tires had tubes

[lanedexter]

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.

[andrewrife]

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

[Mrdrdxse]

I love that this Windshield Wiper add became a parody of toilet paper commercials lmao

[bpPrductionz]

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

[immDroidz]

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 :)

[NeroVingian]

That spark plug tire air compressor thing is pretty creative, I’ve never heard a product like that before.

[northstarracingd-d]

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.

[Handle]

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"

[aaronleonard]

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.

[geraldtrudeau]

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.

[tiptonite]

I forgot about curb feelers! Used to see them at car shows when I was a kid.

[flyinghigh]

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.