01-05-2016, 09:01 AM
Just to add a little about my first car !
It was a 1956 A40 Cambridge with a 1200cc 'B' series engine and therefore fairly underpowered for a heavy car.
It was one of the first production Austins with a 'monocoque' construction - the previous A40 Somerset had a separate chassis/body.
The column change was very sloppy/worn and you had to 'scrape' the steering wheel with the gear lever to get 1st or 2nd,it had Drum brakes all round,the fronts were hydraulic but the rears were mechanically actuated by rods from under the pedal assembly LOL.
It had a dynamo to 'charge' the battery but it was always flat - which is why the Starting Handle was useful
.
Of course it had a manual choke - the choke control had no inbuilt friction so would not stay 'out' - it was quite normal in those days to carry an old fashioned wooden clothes peg to place over the choke rod to prevent it springing back in.
The Ford cars of the time had a much better design of column change which stayed 'tauter' but the gear 'pattern' was t'other way round with 1st gear selected away from the steering wheel.
When I was an apprentice (RAF Halton,Bucks) my family lived in Peterborough and the first time I drove the car home I went onto the M1 just to say I had been on a Mway (the Mway network was much smaller then) - and when I was thrashing north at probably 50mph I saw a 'Van' in my rearview going like the clappers - he shot past me doing an estimated 90mph and it was my first (fleeting) glimpse of a Range Rover (or it may have even been a pre production 'Velar')
The only good thing about the Cambridge was that it had electric wipers - a few of my mates had Ford cars with vacuum operated wipers - so if you took your foot off the throttle they almost flew off the windscreen
but when you were going flat out they would almost stop 
.
It was a 1956 A40 Cambridge with a 1200cc 'B' series engine and therefore fairly underpowered for a heavy car.
It was one of the first production Austins with a 'monocoque' construction - the previous A40 Somerset had a separate chassis/body.
The column change was very sloppy/worn and you had to 'scrape' the steering wheel with the gear lever to get 1st or 2nd,it had Drum brakes all round,the fronts were hydraulic but the rears were mechanically actuated by rods from under the pedal assembly LOL.
It had a dynamo to 'charge' the battery but it was always flat - which is why the Starting Handle was useful
.Of course it had a manual choke - the choke control had no inbuilt friction so would not stay 'out' - it was quite normal in those days to carry an old fashioned wooden clothes peg to place over the choke rod to prevent it springing back in.
The Ford cars of the time had a much better design of column change which stayed 'tauter' but the gear 'pattern' was t'other way round with 1st gear selected away from the steering wheel.
When I was an apprentice (RAF Halton,Bucks) my family lived in Peterborough and the first time I drove the car home I went onto the M1 just to say I had been on a Mway (the Mway network was much smaller then) - and when I was thrashing north at probably 50mph I saw a 'Van' in my rearview going like the clappers - he shot past me doing an estimated 90mph and it was my first (fleeting) glimpse of a Range Rover (or it may have even been a pre production 'Velar')
The only good thing about the Cambridge was that it had electric wipers - a few of my mates had Ford cars with vacuum operated wipers - so if you took your foot off the throttle they almost flew off the windscreen
but when you were going flat out they would almost stop .