The Night Mail

[AndyID]

When we moved to Arizona in '82 everyone was whining about the price of gasoline. It was $1 a gallon (US gal). Of course we thought was really cheap.

[J. S. Bach]

$3.499/US gallon this morning in town.

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

 

When I was a pump jockey it was five bob a gallon. I'll let you work out when that was 😁

About 1963 or 64.  I was at a camp iWest Runton, Norfolk and we did a treasure hunt in Sherringham.  One of the questions was who sold the cheapest petrol.  The winning answer was 4s 11d but I can't remember the name of the garage. 

 

Jamie

[AndyID]

56 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

About 1963 or 64.  I was at a camp iWest Runton, Norfolk and we did a treasure hunt in Sherringham.  One of the questions was who sold the cheapest petrol.  The winning answer was 4s 11d but I can't remember the name of the garage. 

 

Jamie

 

I think it was 67. Certainly no earlier than 65.

[Danemouth]

And now something to brighten @Happy Hippos day Danemouth now has another Pannier, a 15xx bringing the toal number to six

 

 

After all you can't have too many of them.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[MrWolf]

3 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

As there has been quite a lot of comment on classic cars lately can I offer this .   The incomparable Triumph 2.5 PI which to a younger me was the Classic Traffic Car.   Apparently there was only one fitter n the Leeds traffic garage allowed to touch the Injection system.

Taken in 1975.  It even had proper wing mirrors than needed manual adjustment.

Jamie

 

Now that is a proper jam sandwich! I like that a lot. I can remember Triumph Dolomite Sprint motorway patrol cars and Rover SD1s, but I don't remember seeing a 2500PI 150bhp in standard tune IIRC, the engine that America should have got in the TR6, but 1973 and all that! 

I remember Escort MK2 Panda cars, Austin Allegros and once, a Morris Minor.

 

I also recall one of my friends letting off a banger outside our school and a Mini Metro in a lovely shade of hearing aid beige pulled up in front of us

The first thing I noticed through the passenger window was the radio hanging from the dash and the female passenger all in black.

That was when we found out that the CID didn't always drive flashy Consul GTs like The Sweeney.

 

A proper telling off ensued...

[MrWolf]

1 hour ago, J. S. Bach said:

$3.499/US gallon this morning in town.

 

Approx $9.06 / imperial gallon in the UK, (About 3/4 of a pint more.)

[MrWolf]

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

About 1963 or 64.  I was at a camp iWest Runton, Norfolk and we did a treasure hunt in Sherringham.  One of the questions was who sold the cheapest petrol.  The winning answer was 4s 11d but I can't remember the name of the garage. 

 

Jamie

 

Somewhere in the deep litter file I have a tanker receipt to the garage my relatives owned dated 1928.

200 gallons of Shell motor spirit and 40 gallons of MEX commercial spirit.

 

28 pounds and 10 shillings.

Retail it was about one shilling and two pence per gallon.

[AndyID]

3 hours ago, MrWolf said:

 

Now that is a proper jam sandwich! I like that a lot. I can remember Triumph Dolomite Sprint motorway patrol cars and Rover SD1s, but I don't remember seeing a 2500PI 150bhp in standard tune IIRC, the engine that America should have got in the TR6, but 1973 and all that! 

I remember Escort MK2 Panda cars, Austin Allegros and once, a Morris Minor.

 

I also recall one of my friends letting off a banger outside our school and a Mini Metro in a lovely shade of hearing aid beige pulled up in front of us

The first thing I noticed through the passenger window was the radio hanging from the dash and the female passenger all in black.

That was when we found out that the CID didn't always drive flashy Consul GTs like The Sweeney.

 

A proper telling off ensued...

 

A fellow student had a minivan with some sort of coat of arms and "DUNBARTONSHIRE POLITE FORCE" on the sides. They didn't seem to see the funny side of it 😁

 

 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by AndyID

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

 

Approx $9.06 / imperial gallon in the UK, (About 3/4 of a pint more.)

 

UK pint or US pint 😁

 

The conversion is a nightmare because not even the fluid ounces are the same. The only safe way to do it is to convert them both to milliliters. A UK  gallon is very slightly more than 20% greater than a US gallon.

[AndyID]

Handy Hint:

 

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[Hroth]

2 hours ago, Danemouth said:

And now something to brighten @Happy Hippos day Danemouth now has another Pannier, a 15xx bringing the toal number to six

 

 

After all you can't have too many of them.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

 

Oooohhhhh!!!!!!

 

LOTS of matchboxes!!!

 

Don't take offence, I like them...

 

 

As for car fuel, I don't keep an eye on petrol prices, but the least expensive* diesel is at £1.51.9/litre around here.

 

* I'd not call it the cheapest because it isn't cheap...

Edited September 14, 2023 by Hroth

[MrWolf]

29 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

UK pint or US pint 😁

 

The conversion is a nightmare because not even the fluid ounces are the same. The only safe way to do it is to convert them both to milliliters. A UK  gallon is very slightly more than 20% greater than a US gallon.

 

It's bad enough converting cubic centimetres to cubic inches and vise versa.

And it's not you, it's us. Why we have always had a foot in both metric and imperial camps I don't know. Although metric is variously credited to the British and the French, it didn't come into total use until the 70s. Despite this, those of us who left school in the 80s had learnt both.

Useful if you're involved in engineering or a fan of old vehicles. Most people under forty haven't a clue about fractional measurements and don't think that they need to. I'm quite lucky, I can tell a 7/16" unified thread or whatever at a glance. Sign of a misspent youth or something.

Just to complicate matters, the first UK car makers to go metric c1967 was Ford.

 

 

[SM42]

I just wish beer was the same price as diesel. 

 

When I was learning to drive, diesel was around 42p / l. 

 

Here we ate 36 years later and it's only gone up by around £1.10. 

 

Not bad in the grand scheme of things  and probably comparable with a tin of beans in terms of inflation. 

 

Andy

[MrWolf]

2 minutes ago, SM42 said:

I just wish beer was the same price as diesel. 

 

When I was learning to drive, diesel was around 42p / l. 

 

Here we ate 36 years later and it's only gone up by around £1.10. 

 

Not bad in the grand scheme of things  and probably comparable with a tin of beans in terms of inflation. 

 

Andy

 

True, but I hear a lot of people say that if fuel prices in America or France went up like ours do, there'd be another civil war.

[SM42]

7 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

 

True, but I hear a lot of people say that if fuel prices in America or France went up like ours do, there'd be another civil war.

 

It's eye watering in France. 

 

Diesel is at least 30c dearer than in Belgium, up at around €2.20  cf €1.82in the low countries when I went through in August. *

 

It was quite a jump compared to Easter 

 

Andy

* I only had one fuel station in France to compre though. 

Edited September 14, 2023 by SM42

[AndyID]

56 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

 

It's bad enough converting cubic centimetres to cubic inches and vise versa.

 

 

The odd thing is the US adopted the 1706 Queen Anne wine gallon of 231 cubic inches and stayed with it.

 

Another oddity is the very useful British Association system for threads is and always was metric, from 1903 😅

[Northmoor]

11 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

It's eye watering in France. 

 

Diesel is at least 30c dearer than in Belgium, up at around €2.20  cf €1.82in the low countries when I went through in August. *

 

It was quite a jump compared to Easter 

 

Andy

* I only had one fuel station in France to compre though. 

A lot of European countries have learned that fuel duty is a difficult-to-avoid method to raise a LOT of tax, rather than more toxic increases in income tax or (the equivalent of) VAT.  It actually has the advantage to the motorist of shielding us from spikes in oil prices, because the duty is a fixed value.  When there is no duty or tax on fuel and the price of crude doubles in a short period, you get clobbered; in the UK it gets mentioned as about item six on the news.  When such a price spike happened around the second Gulf War, some American States - the ones with no tax on fuel - were in uproar.

[MrWolf]

3 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

The odd thing is the US adopted the 1706 Queen Anne wine gallon of 231 cubic inches and stayed with it.

 

Another oddity is the very useful British Association system for threads is and always was metric, from 1903 😅

 

The myriad of thread systems in use at one time were more attuned to the materials they were used to hold together or the purpose of the item constructed. Obviously with modern materials and construction methods we can generally get away with metric coarse and metric fine for most purposes, but there's something rather nice about assembling something that is made with ultra fine threads such as BSB (British Standard Brass 28tpi /32tpi)  that has already been working for the best part of a hundred years and knowing it will work as intended.

Whereas there's something very depressing about undoing an M8 bolt from a ten year old casting, knowing that it will drag the thread out of the alloy.

Of course the old item was over engineered just in case and the newer one was made to be supremely reliable just long enough to impress the buyer into buying another one.

Given the state of our throwaway society, this dinosaur is sticking with option one.

[br2975]

8 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

   The incomparable Triumph 2.5 PI which to a younger me was the Classic Traffic Car.   .

 

.

Fantastic Traffic Car - ours even came with a walnut dashboard.

.

The last South Wales 'pi' was used on the force driving school 'skid pan' - great fun.

.

On a driving course in 1981, the quality of cars had deteriorated badly.....and one morning  we were allocated an Austin Princess, a shed hated by everyone at the driving school.

.

Going south on the M5 past Gordano services I was ordered by the instructor "Sooty Morgan" to 'blow the f*****g thing up - you'll be a hero'

.

I bottled out at 127mph - the Princess won, and I wasn't a hero !.

[br2975]

4 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Morris Minor.

 

I also recall one of my friends letting off a banger outside our school and a Mini Metro in a lovely shade of hearing aid beige pulled up in front of us

The first thing I noticed through the passenger window was the radio hanging from the dash and the female passenger all in black.

That was when we found out that the CID didn't always drive flashy Consul GTs like The Sweeney.

 

.

I was just too late to drive a 'Morry Thou' Panda.

.

My first Panda in 1979 was a Mini, SKG969S - complete with loose engine mountings - I recall negotiating Ely Bridge roundabout in Cardiff, blue light on, beeping the ineffective horn (no two tones in those days), and the engine block lifting, then dropping with a thud as I corrected the steering wheel.

.

Seeing 4 overweight  'hairy @rsed' DCs on nights, getting out of a plain CID Mini was a side splitter.

.

Worst Panda ever, in South Wales, a solitary Vauxhall Shedvette - and the one was one too many.

.

Then we had Marinas and Itals as CID cars, the boots of which invariably contained a couple of paving slabs to stop "the @rse end going"

.

Here's one I wrecked earlier, circa 1989ish - 

.

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by br2975

[PhilJ W]

When I filled up a couple of weeks ago petrol was 1:42.9 a litre, now it's 1:52.9 a litre.

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[MrWolf]

I'd have been five or six in 1976 or 77 when I saw that turquoise and white Minor turn into the yard at Blackbird Road police station Leicester. I never saw another for about twenty years and that was at a classic car show.

The Vauxhall Chevette or Shove it was in my opinion, the company's low point and when they lost their identity, becoming part of the "World Car" platform. For all the faults, I liked the last Victor, the FE series "Transcontinental" and the similarly styled HC Viva, although that was soon damned with the cheapo "biscuit tin" engine from the last RWD Opel Kadett as fitted to the Chevette.

The only good thing was when they stuffed the 2300 twin carb motor from the Victor VX4/90 into the Chevette and called it the HS2300. They were fun!

 

The poor old Marina gets a bad press, no wonder it didn't handle well, BL built it on the running gear from the Minor, which was revolutionary in 1948...

 

They handle much better when fitted with the rear springs and front torsion bars from the van, stiffens the ride up nicely.

[MrWolf]

24 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

When I filled up a couple of weeks ago petrol was 1:42.9 a litre, now it's 1:52.9 a litre.

 

Or £6.94.166 per gallon if you're driving a Triumph Herald 1200 like I do.