Suspension issues....

[mrsmackpaul]

On 4/29/2025 at 7:02 AM, 70mackMB said:

l remember seeing him at New England Dragway in Epping NH a long time ago.

 

When we pulled garden tractors we always loaded up the beak to keep the nose on the ground. That way you maintained the 12" hitch height to pull down on the drive tires. The trick was as to how much weight you hung out out there to get it to float the front axle just off the ground.   

Chamberlain farm tractors, a Australian brand of tractor 

Anyway, the owners manual used to say that exact thing 

Fill the tyres with water, both steer and rear tyres 

Hitch the implement high enough that the front tyres are touching just enough to allow steering 

Those old Chamberlains would pull like a 16 year old, really bog down and pull

A couple of photos for reference of Chamberlain tractors 

 

Paul 

 

 

[Joseph Cummings]

21 minutes ago, mrsmackpaul said:

Fill the tyres with water, both steer and rear tyres

We used to use calcium chloride here. It was good for ballast, but corrosive as hell. If you use it in tubeless tires it destroys the rims

[Brocky]

Actually the calcium chloride was to keep the water from freezing.. before perminamate antifreeze.. Most of Australia does not have that problem..

[Geoff Weeks]

I always hear it was Methanol that was used, and that was the reason for 160 deg 'stats, to try to keep from boiling the alcohol out of the mix.

Calcium Chloride would eat the block, I would think, esp when heat is added to the mix.

Calcium and or magnesium chloride are used a ballast in tires, but can be hard on the rims.

[Brocky]

Geoff, I did NOT make myself clear!!! I was talking about tires,, Not cooling systems.

[Geoff Weeks]

Just now, Brocky said:

Geoff, I did NOT make myself clear!!! I was talking about tires,, Not cooling systems.

The fault may be mine also. I thought we were talking engines, and I see tires was the topic.

[Joseph Cummings]

2 hours ago, Brocky said:

Actually the calcium chloride was to keep the water from freezing.. before perminamate antifreeze.. Most of Australia does not have that problem..

It's also about 35% heavier than water and relatively cheap

[70mackMB]

Beet Juice. Says it's about 11 lbs a gallon. https://www.rimguardsolutions.com/      .....Hippy

[other dog]

I had a Muncie 4 speed in my hot rod Nova that I had when I was a kid (18), then I put it in a 70 Chevelle SS that I bought. I had a Hurst Competition Plus shifter on it, but when I saw some guys small block Vega with a vertigate shifter in it I thought I had to have one, just because it looked so cool.

But it wasn't nearly as quick as the Hurst, had a longer throw too, but it did look cool!

[Freightrain]

I have two of those shiftera under the bench.  Ran them for year with 4 spds.

Same basic shifter for the Nash 5 spd I used to run.  Reverse was back from 5th gear so no extra handle needed like in a 4 spd.

[Joseph Cummings]

Remember Linda Vaughn??

Speaking of suspension issues, I'm not sure how her suspension worked

 

 

She is the woman who brought down 

 

Edited yesterday at 02:33 AM by Joseph Cummings

[Freightrain]

She had air ride..... 😲

[70mackMB]

16 hours ago, Joseph Cummings said:

Remember Linda Vaughn??

Looks like she could be Dolly Pardon's sister!  👀     .....Hippy

                                                                          

[Mark T]

God..... she's gotta be around 80 if she's still around.

[Joseph Cummings]

4 hours ago, Mark T said:

God..... she's gotta be around 80 if she's still around.

81

[other dog]

4 hours ago, Mark T said:

God..... she's gotta be around 80 if she's still around.

She's 81 now. Here's a photo of her from this year.

[Joseph Cummings]

[Mark T]

🤔 I wonder if Freight train has one of those and he's not say'n.

[Joseph Cummings]

 

The Love Machine: Sex and Scandal in the Penn Central

Q. What did you do while you were in New York for EJA [a Penn Central subsidiary]? A. General Lassiter said I could be of great, great service to him if I would help in the social life of [Penn Central officers] General Hodge and Dave Bevan, since he [Lassiter] was under a lot of pressure from them due to the company having financial problems ... .

Q. Did you do any of this .. . ? A. Yes On one occasion General Hodge asked if I knew of any young ladies who would go on a business trip to Europe that he was taking with General Lassiter.

Q, What did you do? A. I found a young lady that-that was agreeable to taking a European trip with an amiable group.

-J. H. Ricciardi, EJA's former PR director, to House investigators O N FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 1970, JUST A FEW hours before \ the nation's financial markets closed, lawyers rep- ' resenting the Penn Central Transportation Company filed a petition in Philadelphia to reorganize under the provisions of the Federal bankruptcy regulations. The news that the world's largest transportation company had gone belly up was not overlooked during the weekend by America's corporate and financial titans. About $82 million of the Penn Central's lOUs, now practically worthless, were sloshing around the big Eastern banks whose liberality towards the company was in no small measure responsible for its excesses. Rather quickly, bankers began to regard the lOUs of several other big corporations including Chrysler, SCM and Avco, with their more customary flintiness. Three billion dollars in short-term corporate loans were called in a twinkling. And a rush began on credit windows everywhere. The full story of the Penn Central crisis, according to Federal Reserve Board member J. L. Robertson who helped supervise the sandbag operation on the nation's financial structure, "has never been told and it never will be. But it's not extreme to say that we avoided another 1933." Help arrived chiefly in the form of Arthur Burns personally manning the FRB's money pumps, but also by way of enormous overseas loans drawn from European money markets. Somewhat later President Nixon got Congress to apply $125 million worth of balm to soothe the Penn Central's creditors. But in the inflationary tide that rose following the salvage operation, Nixon's deflationary economic game plan had to be scuttled. And the country still feels the effects of the bankruptcy on our bloated balance of payments deficit—since the money borrowed in Europe had to be paid back. Because the Penn Central fiasco did for corporate capitalism about what the Lusitania did for ocean travel during World War I, it seemed inevitable that the culprits—any culprits—would soon be found. Months passed. The seasons changed. Over a year went by and the Nixon administration did nothing. By way of explanation of the collapse, it was generally maintained by administration officials that the railroad business was inherently a money-losing operation. However, a lurid and spectacular counter-explanation prepared by Wright Patman's House Banking and Currency Committee appeared in December 1970. Entitled "Executive Jet Aviation," it described a wild scenario of inside self-dealings, corporate pimping of women employees and high-level financial swindling on the part of three principal Penn Central aides. The men were David Bevan, ex-chairman of the railroad's finance committee, General Charles J. Hodge, erstwhile partner in DuPont. Glore Forgan (the Penn Central's investment banker), and General O. F. "Dick" Lassiter, who used to head up a company known as Executive Jet Aviation, Inc. (EJA), in which the Penn Central held the major interest. Copies of the meticulously researched report were forwarded to the Justice Department, the Interstate Commerce Committee and the Security and Exchange Commission. Still, no action. Finally after 18 months, on January 4, 1972, a local Philadelphia district attorney, Arlen Specter, who acknowledged the help of the Patman Committee staff, handed down indictments against the Penn Central Three. The indictment charges that Messrs. Hodge, Bevan and Lassiter "conspired in their corporate activities to divert in excess of $21 million from the treasury of the Penn Central for themselves and others." Their activities allegedly "drained the resources of the Penn Central, contributing to its bankruptcy." The specific charges include the following; —Causing the Penn Central subsidiary, Executive Jet Aviation,to enter into money-losing agreements with a travel agency, which the three, together with their friends and relatives, controlled. —-Manipulating $85 million of Penn Central pension funds which Bevan and Hodgt controlled, in order to benefit an outfit known as "Penphil," a private investment group, which they also controlled. —In addition to these charges, General Lassiter is charged with personally "misappropriating" $130,000 of Executive Jet funds and siphoning them off to his own company, the now-defunct Lassiter Aircraft Corpwration. David Bevan, the middle-class boy who after years of corporate in-fighting emerged as Richard King Mellon's hand-picked candidate to head the Penn Central's finance committee, says he's a scapegoat. "Except for the fact that I am experiencing it myself," he has been quoted as saying, "I would say this sort of thing just cannot happen in America." And while General Lassiter is asking Governor Reagan to block extradition from California, Bevan wants a quick trial, "so that I can at last be vindicated." Nevertheless, attorneys for Charles Hodge, who incidentally is Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans' former business partner, estimates that the legal proceedings will stretch out for at least two years. This makes it all the more necessary, without prejudging the case, that the Patman report which served as the basis of the indictments be given the widest exposure. As we review the stumbling performance of the Penn Central corporate variety show, however, it's important to remember that nearly all the dealings described were accomplished using other people's money, e.g., money bel

https://www.unz.com/PDF/PERIODICAL/Ramparts-1972mar/28-35/

[Freightrain]

9 hours ago, Mark T said:

🤔 I wonder if Freight train has one of those and he's not say'n.

Lol....sorry, no Linda Vaughn around me.