I’ve driven countless manual cars, am adapted to driving manual from the tight seat, hell I drove a manual semi once
but I had no idea there used to be manual shifters in steering columns! that’s crazy and might actually throw me off
I’d have to practice in a big parking lot or something, trying to ride a motorcycle with shifter on the right makes my brain short out
“Smoking a butt”? Mickey7, Cmon, bro.
Driving a manual car of any kind and smoking isn’t hard at all. Generations of people managed it just fine.
I did it for years. Shit, I once ate an entire cheeseburger while driving with my knees in a manual car. That was LHD, it was a shwarma driving manual RHD.
Fun Fact: Did you know you can hold a cigarette in between your lips for up to however long it takes to smoke the whole cigarette?
Butt goes in the left hand, near the vent window. Steering is feather light so you only need two fingers to steer, leaving the others free to hold the butt.
I remember and miss the small vent window
I’ve still got one and it is as great as you remember
A trained chainsmoker can shift with the butt hand just fine!
This is the only true right answer.
We used to call that 3-on-the-tree. There where a lot more fender benders at stop lights, it was easy for new drivers to end up in reverse and not first. If you had 4-on-the-floor you had to push left to get reverse so not so oops prone.
I always thought four-on-the-floor was an odd name for the music style, but maybe it was reused from this
4 notes on the bass drum, which is on the floor.
Such a simple explanation, ha! That is a pretty effective shorthand, i suppose 🥁
I’ve heard the term for late 60s early 70s music beats, about the same time as I know it was used for transmissions so who knows what came first.
Stripped my clutch twice on that damned system. Then dad found a magazine article titled, “Why you shouldn’t buy your left-handed son a column shifting truck.” tl;dr: They’ll strip the clutch.
3 on the tree
PUT IT IN H!
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Being a distracted driver isn’t a flex
Sure, but that 68 horsepower 3 cylinder won’t really get you in danger too quickly.
I was with you until you said send a text, that shit kills people all the time
Damn more gears on the column just seems like a bad design
I do not miss those.
Neither do I. I’m too young to have experienced three on the tree. But I do miss column shift automatic transmissions.
My Dad had an old Fargo truck with it and I had a van for a short stint with one. I swear those linkages must have been made out of rubber bands for how sloppy it was, but it got the job done I guess.
Don’t miss manual choke either, or bench seats.
Honestly I liked the manual chokes over the automatic ones, at least in the winter.
Those old “hot as hell/cold as balls” vinyl bench seats I hope are all sitting in hell now tho.
bench seats were the best for cruisin with the GF
pretty good for parking too
Stick shifts and safety belts
Bucket seats have all got to go
When we’re driving in the car
It makes my baby seem so far
Sorry, choke? Like on a chainsaw? Did you mean clutch?
Yep, choke, before fuel injection cars had carberators just like small engines in lawn mowers, chainsaws, etc. In the 70s cars started to haves “automatic chokes”, it was just a bimatalic coil that opened the choke more when the engine got hot. Prior to that there was knob on the dash that pulled out to close the choke.
This is also why in old horror movies the car never starts when you want it to. It was pretty easy to “flood the engine” - put to much fuel in the carburetor - if you were in a hurry. Then you had to let it sit for a while and let some of the gas evaporate so you could try again.
Nope. I remember choke as on the chainsaw in cars too.
Aaaaaah! Glad I’m born too late
On cold start choke was a nightmare. My grandpa left my mom a truck that requested a choke and it was painful to be a kid watching her struggle with it
Yep, in Cold climates it was common to see a can of starting fluid on the front passenger slide floor. The procedure was, crank the engine once, pull out the choke, then give it a go pressing the gas up and down slightly but not to much, if no start pop the hood and spray starting fluid under air filter cover, give it another go . . .
So let me get this right, you’ve got one hand on your stick, the other on a pretty smoking butt
