The Quadraphonic Gremlin Progress report....

[MidiMagic]

It looks like you need a steering wheel more than an 8-track.

 

[mandrix]

Heck, my '59 Chevy had a 2 speed automatic cast iron "Powerglide" in it. It stayed in low up to about 40MPH or so and, from then on... It would still do 120, though.

Doug

Yes! My '62 Bel Air Chevy had a powerglide. My 65 Buick Gran Sport had a 401 C.I. engine and a Muncie 4 speed manual trans. Very light fast car. The powerglide 2 speed trannies are still used in drag racing of course. Some people might know this; there were two flavors of powerglides, one had a pump setup that would let the trannie engage by the driveshaft and via that the engine. That meant you could push the car to crank it, albeit you had to with another car (30-40 mph?) before the trannie would engage and turn the flywheel. (not a powerglide expert, just what I remember from my '62 Chevy).

Anyway back to music I'm trying to remember if any of the Pioneer "Super Tuner" FM/8 track players were Quad capable? I know someone here knows......?

 

[furui_suterioo]

Yes! My '62 Bel Air Chevy had a powerglide. My 65 Buick Gran Sport had a 401 C.I. engine and a Muncie 4 speed manual trans. Very light fast car. The powerglide 2 speed trannies are still used in drag racing of course. Some people might know this; there were two flavors of powerglides, one had a pump setup that would let the trannie engage by the driveshaft and via that the engine. That meant you could push the car to crank it, albeit you had to with another car (30-40 mph?) before the trannie would engage and turn the flywheel. (not a powerglide expert, just what I remember from my '62 Chevy).

Anyway back to music I'm trying to remember if any of the Pioneer "Super Tuner" FM/8 track players were Quad capable? I know someone here knows......?

Pioneer QP400 has Q8 with radio tuner but I think it predates the "Super Tuner" name. The TP900 Super Tuner 8 track(stereo only) players go for big bucks online.

QP-400

TP-900

 

[Quadwreck]

Way ahead of you. This is the Quadraphonic Gremlin, after all. But I'm not normally one to turn down a good deal. Whatchya got?

View attachment 71170

Its a Pioneer, some letters/numbers on the back label are rubbed off, might be Q 400. It needs some cleaning up, and probably a tune-up, it worked when last used 35 years ago, but that was then...

 

[Q-Eight]

Almost 20 years ago now, when Gremlin was my college daily.... I had a TP-900 in the car. This is the only picture I have to prove it, scanned from an honest-to-goodness physical photograph. God, remember those?

I would love a QP-400! That way I could ditch the FM converter for the radio, and receive stereo FM over the 4-speaker system, rather than FM mono through the single speaker in the dash!

 

[mandrix]

Good pics, guys!
Got out of the Army I think early '73 and worked my butt off and bought a new Ford Van that winter.
I had some brand of Quad player in the van back then but I don't remember details now. I do remember taking the 4 large-ish bookshelf speakers that came with the Panasonic Q8 player/recorder I bought in the PX and put them in the van, as I remember.
I'm wondering now if I didn't use an inverter to run that Panny deck in the Van...might have, just don't remember. I mean it had it's own low-output amp built in as I remember or you could patch out the RCA ports to a separate amp. IDK the years have robbed enough details but I know it would play stand-alone with no amp.

 

[DuncanS]

What? There has to be a story there somewhere Duncan. 23 huh?

We could learn to drive at 17, so I asked my father he said yes, I said "when will you give me a lesson", he said "I said you could learn, not that I'd teach you" Way too expensive to take lessons, plus I suspect my father didn't want his car wrecked! So I went to Uni in a smallish city and carried on living there afterwards for a few years, so I walked everywhere (sometimes caught a bus!), and lived a beer fuelled life, until at about 23 the girl I was going out with nagged me to take lessons as if I booked 10 she'd get a free one!

 

[DuncanS]

Heck, my '59 Chevy had a 2 speed automatic cast iron "Powerglide" in it. It stayed in low up to about 40MPH or so and, from then on... It would still do 120, though.

Doug

How times have changed I now drive an Audi A5 which is Automatic with 7 gears, Sports mode is fun!

 

[mandrix]

How times have changed I now drive an Audi A5 which is Automatic with 7 gears, Sports mode is fun!

Indeed!
But the old Powerglide lives on at the drag strip; you're only going at most 1320 feet usually and they can be built tough for really high HP cars especially e.g. engines with a good blower and even higher HP dragsters.
I could see a sports car being really fun through the twisties with 7 gears though! If I ever get back across the pond you can take me for a ride!

 

[Owen Smith]

Manual transmissions in the UK were 4 speed in the 1980s and even 1970s. The only 3 speed manual I remember as a child was in my mum's Ford Anglia but it was an old car when she got it in the mid 1970s. And then a wheel fell off when she was driving it (the wheel cracked, the centre remained bolted to the car but the rest of it went rolling down the hill).

Automatics on the other hand were almost all 3 speed in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, you don't need as many gears with a torque converter.

For the last 19 years I've been driving a 6 speed manual on my 2002 Mini Cooper S. Bought it new, still driving it 19 years and 71K miles later. I love that car.

 

[mandrix]

Manual transmissions in the UK were 4 speed in the 1980s and even 1970s. The only 3 speed manual I remember as a child was in my mum's Ford Anglia but it was an old car when she got it in the mid 1970s. And then a wheel fell off when she was driving it (the wheel cracked, the centre remained bolted to the car but the rest of it went rolling down the hill).

Automatics on the other hand were almost all 3 speed in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, you don't need as many gears with a torque converter.

For the last 19 years I've been driving a 6 speed manual on my 2002 Mini Cooper S. Bought it new, still driving it 19 years and 71K miles later. I love that car.

My family's 1964 Pontiac Catalina had a 3 speed Automatic, as did many US cars at the time. My '65 Buick Gran Sport had a 4 speed Muncie manual transmission. But (US) cars and trucks in the '50s often had 3 speed manual "on the column" shifters, and I learned to drive in Dad's 1955 Chevy truck which was also a 3 speed manual. Darned shifter used to lock up and was a PITA. But Dad let me drive it all over the place in the countryside of the early '60s. I remember I had a Honda S90 motorcycle (and a paper route) but I loved driving that old truck just as much.

As far as torque converters and the need for more or less gears, the US car manufacturers weren't too adventurous back in the day. For a good bit, buying a car with an automatic trannie cost more than buying a stick shift in the US. That eventually reversed. But torque converters were made back then, IMO, to a sort of middle ground. These days you can buy any sort of aftermarket converter you desire, such as the 3500 stall I had in my Z28. But torque converters, gear ratios in the trannie, gear ratio of the rear end, engine HP and more importantly torque "at the wheel", all play a part. I would not say less gears are not needed with a torque converter, however; but I would say they are more of a boon for the smaller engines / lower torque many cars have these days.
As I say, the ole Powerglide two speed automatics are still tearing up the high HP lanes on the dragstrip. The engines already have the necessary torque, so they don't need 5 or 6 gears.

The Ford Anglia was imported here as early as when I was a boy, maybe early 60's? Maybe sooner IDK but I never saw many of them. I remember the kid across the alley got one and put a straight exhaust on it. It always looked so different than the US cars on the road, except maybe my Aunt's old rambler. Boy was that a strange looking thing! But the Anglia sure brings back old memories. Don't believe I've seen one in prolly 40 years or more (in the US).
Thanks for the Anglia bit, sure has been a while. Sort of reminds of my '64 Opel Kadett before Buick started selling them here. Never could get a proper voltage regulator for it.

 

[Owen Smith]

It's been a long time since I saw a Ford Anglia too, and yes they were an odd looking car. We used to say "my feet are getting wet!" when mum drove through puddles since the floor was half rusted through. That floor was held together by the carpet.

The only automatic my parents ever had was a 2.0 litre Peugeot 504. It weighed just over an (Imperial) ton, 23 cwt to be precise. Loads of torque in an engine that big (big by UK standards, clearly not US) so the 3 speed auto box with torque converter was fine. The car was bought for towing a 15.5 foot caravan for holidays. The car did 22 mpg normally and 18 mpg towing the caravan, my dad says you barely noticed the difference when driving. We beefed the rear suspension up though to take the weight of the caravan, I helped dad work on that car.

 

[MidiMagic]

These are all the cars I have driven on a regular basis over my life:

1957 Chevrolet Del Ray - 8 cyl- 3 phase auto
1961 Pontiac Tempest wagon - 4 cyl - 2 speed auto
1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass wagon - 8 cyl - 2 speed auto
1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass - 8 cyl -3 speed auto
1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme - 8 cyl - 3 speed auto
1966 Chevy II - 6 cyl - 2 speed auto
1960 Corvair - 4 cyl - 2 speed auto
1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme - 8 cyl - 3 speed auto
1982 Ford Econoline 150 van - 8 cyl - 3 speed auto with man 1 and 2
1995 Ford Windstar van - 6 cyl - 4 speed auto with man 1 and 2
2002 Pontiac Bonneville - 6 cyl - 4 speed auto with man 1 and 2 (I added)
2009 Mazda 5 wagon - 4 cyl - 5 speed auto with manumatic
2010 Nissan Versa - 4 cyl - 4 speed auto
2012 Chevrolet Cruze - 4 cyl - 6 speed auto with manumatic

The number of speeds increases with smaller engines needed to meet gas mileage requirements.

 

[Doug G.]

My'50 Ford pickup was a 3-on-the-tree, long throw and was a bit tricky to shift without clashing. Double clutching helped. Onetime, I pulled into a truck stop to eat and there was a truck driver who saw me pull in.

He said, "Boy, if you can drive that pickup, you can drive any semi." I never had the interest, however.

Doug

 

[Owen Smith]

The number of speeds increases with smaller engines needed to meet gas mileage requirements.

I'm not sure the one causes the other. In the UK engine sizes have stayed the same over that time period or got larger, depending on whether you're buying at the top or bottom of the market. But our number of gears has increased in exactly the same way.

 

[furui_suterioo]

I'm not sure the one causes the other. In the UK engine sizes have stayed the same over that time period or got larger, depending on whether you're buying at the top or bottom of the market. But our number of gears has increased in exactly the same way.

Lots of new cars now have CVT(which have no fixed gears) and which I found out I cant stand after renting one last year. Mash the pedal nothing happens, then the engine shoots to 5k rpm after lagggging and the rubber band action finally lurches forward. The car will also roll backwards while in gear on the slightest incline and the shifter was basically an electric window switch, I will stick with older cars for as long it is still possible. I'm still trying to locate a clean manual supra transmission to swap into my 89 cressida(and the funds to do so).

 

[mandrix]

Hat's off to the OP for doing all this work on The QuadraphonicQuad Gremlin while unemployed, and for reviving an older car. I think it's cool as hell.
I've wanted to drop a big V8 into the old '96 Ford Ranger we bought new for a while now. But a guy can only do so much these days.

 

[Quadmon]

Mid 70’s I owned a VW van with the slide open sun roof. Had a Panasonic Q8 player hooked to a 12 volt battery (VW was 6 volt) that I had to recharge. I would drive to a local wooded area after work (2nd shift) or after the bars closed. I’d slide open the roof and slap in a Q8 and lie down on the mattress in the back. It was great lying there with music all around me. Had that van for a couple years. Drove it from Ohio to California and back during the five weeks I was laid off my job. Got to see Johnny Otis (with Shuggie and Big Mama Thornton and Pee Wee Crayton) opening for Little Richard and Chuck Berry. Also attended the premiere of “Gimme Shelter” at the Westwood One Theater. All this on a $130 a week unemployment check! Those were the days my friends.

 

[doity]

It looks like you need a steering wheel more than an 8-track.

He can steer telepathically. Of course the 4-channel tape deck has to be operating for this trick to work correctly.

 

[Doug G.]

It looks like you need a steering wheel more than an 8-track.

It's been ElonaMuskitized and will be a self-driver from now on.

Doug