Re: Old American Cars in Cuba.

On 2008-05-05, John S. <hjsjms@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On May 1, 1:34 pm, cuhu...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
>> I was watching some noon day tv news.Something about Cubans are now
>> allowed to own their own farms and a few other things.Those old
American
>> cars in Cuba, they sure do know how to keep em rolling.
>> cuhulin  
>
> They are nice looking old cars, but if you look under the hood I
> suspect you will see all sorts of mis-matched parts pieced together.

I read articles way back when that detailed how the vehicles were kept
on the road. It seems ford and chrysler designs for engines and other
vital systems (maybe a few others) were copied by the USSR and eastern
european countries in metric form. So parts could be made to fit from
those vehicles. Chevy designs on the other hand had no soviet bloc
version and were more difficult to keep on the road. 

They also did some interesting things to repair vehicles. The one I
remember is worn gears. Metal was welded on and the tooth profile was
re-created by hand. 

In one article one of the articles brought with him some old Autolite
spark plugs that were just sitting on the shelf in his garage. He gave
them to a guy with a ford they met. The plugs were like giving out gold
pieces.