Hanging parts for car repairs in old-time Phoenix


I was talking to some friends of mine about automotive repairs today, and the subject of diagnostics was discussed. One of my friends, who had been a mechanic for Chevrolet, was in favor of the value of diagnostics, which includes not only hooking up a modern car to a computer, but also includes having someone with a high level of expertise look at the problem. My other friend, who gives more of a layman's point of view, asked, "Why do they charge for that?", and sees no value to it at all. And I can see both points of view.

If you're like me, you've done most car repairs by doing your best guess at what's wrong, going to the auto parts store, buying a part, attaching it, standing back, and hoping that it fixes the problem. If it doesn't, you go back, buy another part, and so on. Auto parts stores do a brisk business in this, and even offer simple diagnostics, and lend tools. This is called "hanging parts."

Hanging parts as a technique for car repairs is as old as cars. In fact, in old-time Phoenix, my best guess is that it would only be men who had very little self-respect who actually went to a mechanic and paid them to diagnose a problem, and fix it. And yes, I mean men, as in not women, as old-time cars were very unreliable, and a driver was expected to do repairs as needed, all of the tiime. There was a popular song "He'd Have to Get Under – Get Out and Get Under (to Fix Up His Automobile)" in 1913 that expressed what driving a car was like. This has dramatically changed in the 21st Century, and you can expect a modern car to give you many miles of service without a breakdown.

And speaking for myself, I always enjoyed hanging parts on my cars, which I did up through my twenties (once I got into my thirties it had lost its entertainment value for me), and it's still very popular today.


Hanging parts on cars can be a lot of fun, and can give a lot of entertainment value. I like to imagine men in old-time Phoenix talking to their friends about what might be wrong with their car, and going to an auto parts place, or even a junk yard. Men can spend quite a lot of quality time together hanging parts on cars, and if the first part doesn't fix it, that just means that they get to spend more time, hanging another part. And if that doesn't fix it, so on and so on. And no one is to blame, not the person hanging the parts, not the friend, not even the parts store.

I kind of feel sorry for men who have never had the enjoyment of spending a whole weekend hanging parts on their car. It gets you out into the fresh air (sometimes a little too fresh, if it's January in Phoenix, and sometimes a little too hot, if it's August), teaches you about the price of car parts, and where to get them cheaper, and when to use new versus used, and original equipment versus non-original. And where it gets really fun is NOS (New Old Stock). If you know that one, you've done some repairs on old cars!

What's that? Your car won't start! Let's go get a new battery! That didn't fix it? How about a starter! Yes, we can go to the junkyard! I have all weekend!
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please consider subscribing to History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more