With all this talk of lovely old cars that give many of us fond memories (we forget the heartache times!) it has made me think again of one big thing these cars had that now no modern car has.
The manual choke! That great knob you pulled out which decided if you started or not. Make the mixture too strong and the engine didn't with you ending up with a flooded engine. When I think about it (my brain is now hurting
) the cars of today we take for granted will start 999 times out of 1000 times; but the engines of yesterday, or at least with the already old cars we could just about to afford to own and run, did not always start. In fact often the bonnet was up and you were checking if the movable air intake was in the relevant seasonal position; the plugs were receiving a spark; the distributor was fully functional, with the 2/6d capacitor working, and, oh yes, the leads were not arcing somewhere (best seen in the dark!). Then there where thoughts about if one of the tappets had become out of adjustment, or you had broken a push-rod.
Yes, Ron joked earlier about the myth these cars never went wrong; the fact was most of them did, and not at very high mileage. The times you would pass cars at the side of the road with the bonnet up and, usually, a man not women scratching his head wondering what was wrong. Those were the days!!