VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1937-1945 Engine Swap

Fun Times. Anybody else notice the line about "....pooling our change to buy enough gas to cruise the avenue....."

I guess that's what "THE GOOD OLD DAYS" means....

Bill.

I remeber when $5.00 would buy enough gas for us to cruise all night, now it will get you almost 1 1/2 gallons.

I worked in a gas station in 1956.Regular was .27 hightest was .32. Most people would get $2.00,some would get $3.00.

I also worked in a service station in 1948-50. Strange, very few people would say "fill er up", it was an even $2.00, or say $5.00 worth. We still had the hand pumped visible glass pumps. One for hi-test, one regular, one with white gas, and one with kerosene. No! those were not the "good ole days".

I remember "White Gas" at the pump. Did any body ever used it in there car? All I ever remember was that it was "Coleman Fluid" used in lanterns and stoves.

Also the filling stations had "Mineral Spirits", but I don't remember besides a cleaning agent that it was used for. Somebody said it was good for seating valves in motors by being poured through the carborator after a valve job.

It seems that I remember "Coal Oil" also being sold at the filling station also. but all that I remember that it was used for was the smokey old coal lamps out in our live stock barn for light.

Ray,
Did you imply that Kerosene was pumped up to the visible pumps as were gasoline? If so, I don't think I ever saw that. Interesting.

From what I can remember Kerosine was pumped from a square or round metal container or drum that sat on the ground with a hand cranked pump on top. Didn't know it was elevated as gasolines were.

Charlie

White Gas was sold by AMACO. It was advertised as being cleaner for your car. And yes you could use it in your Colman lantern.

As I understand it white gas was unleaded gas and did not have red dye added to identify it. Coal oil was kerosene and mineral sprits was paint thinner. The Standerd station I worked at in late 50's we had kerosene and cleaning solvent in 30 gallon square tanks in the lube room with the bulk oil. On the pump block we two islands with 9 pumps. four regular, four ethyl and one blue pump for Chevron custom supreme (102 octaine) it contained blue dye. During gas wars regular would drop to .18 cents a gallon. Solvent and kerosene was .25 in your container. Untill recently a local station had solvent in an underground tank with a dedicated pump to fill your container. They now only sell 5 gallon cans for about $40.
Jay

From what I remember "White Gas" smelled a little different than "Unleaded Gas". Was there an additive added to todays unleaded? besides the ethenol?
I was told to never use unleaded gas in my lanterns and stoves as it would not burn correctly.

Kerosene/coal oil was a big seller as it was the fuel for all the lamps and lanterns. Until the REA (rual electric association) was installed (this also allowed us to have better telephone service)the refrigerators operated with that fuel.

Down here there were 2 grades of kerosene (lighting and power), the power grade was used in a few tractors mostly from the UK but at least 1 from the US.
I only ever saw this delivered in 44 gallon drums though.
Tony

I need to find a picture of a runaway train, for when topics get off track.

The title of this posting doesn't match the content.

I might see whether I can "prune" the gas topic into a separate posting... It contains some interesting information that we might want to keep.

--bb

Smiles

You might need to buy the BN&SF for this project !!!!

smiles