What Are These Pointed Tools Used For?

[Papaw]

Way back in the dark ages, a friend of mine had a license before I did, and his mother allowed him a certain number of miles of running around when he used her car, I think it was a Buick. She would send us on an errand and note the mileage when we left. We learned that you could jack up that car and run it in reverse and take off miles!
Worked great until once we ran off too many miles. She knew where we were to go on the errand and the appropriate mileage. Our mistake was bringing the car back with too FEW miles on it! Not enough to have run the errand.

[johnsironsanctuary]

In 1958, I was 14 and one of  the Milwaukee Plymouth dealers, Mr Al Stein, got caught selling last years repainted taxis as low mileage cars. Some nice lady got hit in the door and the guy at her body shop discovered yellow paint ant a cab logo when he sanded down the door. Mr. Stein lost his franchise on that one.

[john k]

In the early 70s, FoMoCo offered a 100,000 mile warranty.  We had some really beat cars come in for warranty work, tires gone, brakes squeaking, interiors filthy, only 40K on the  odometer.  Six months later same car would be back in, another set of tires worn thin, of course the bias ply tires would last maybe  10K, but there would be only 800-900 more miles on it!  Had a half dozen of these getting all this free warranty work.  Seen this some on the new cars today, but the owner did not know the true milage could be read with a scanner, electronically, and they were about 30K apart.  Hmm, makes a person wonder.

[rusty]

I must be old, I remember guys disconnecting the speedometer cable from the axle and attaching an electric drill to the end to unwind the mileage. Good idea to make sure the drill spins the correct direction before doing that tho...so I've heard....

[1930]

I must be old, I remember guys disconnecting the speedometer cable from the axle and attaching an electric drill to the end to unwind the mileage. Good idea to make sure the drill spins the correct direction before doing that tho...so I've heard....

I was waiting for someone to say that, we would do this as young teenagers just for kicks

[Lump]

I saw a kid try that once in a gas station I worked in, during night shift. He had found a speedometer gauge cluster in a junk yard, for a car with TOO low a mileage, and knew that no one would believe that in his car. So he planned to add some mileage, to make it seem more believeable. He hooked up a drill motor, locked the trigger on, running the car at a pretty good speed. Then he left to go somewhere for a couple of hours. Came back to find very little miles added.
I thought about that for a minute, and then realized, that if the speedo was registering one hundred miles per hour, then in one hour it would only gain one hundred miles! So even a 5 hour drill run wouldn't accomplish the 10 or 20 thousand miles that kid was after! LOL.
As I recall, he next tried spinning it really fast, and ended up ruining the speedometer, and had to take it back out again. Hahahaahhahahahah!!!