That spark plug tire pump was actually freaking sweet. If spark plugs weren't so hard to access on modern cars they would maybe still be for sale.

When I was a teenager, I must have re-grooved hundreds of bus tires. Many truck tires are (or at least 40 years ago were) marked as regrooveable. My brother-in-law had a business where he and his father bought old school buses, cleaned them up, and re-sold them. It actually worked well on most tires. Some tires did not have enough meat on them to make a big difference. It probably took me between an hour to 2 hours to do one tire. Needless to say, it was much cheaper to pay me $4/hr. to regroove a tire than to replace the tire.

Worth noting that when the tire re-treader was a thing, everyone had Bias Ply tires which had very thick solid rubber treads, unlike modern radials, so retreading them was entirely safe and viable.

That tire tread regrover tool takes me back right to the mid 80's. I knew a guy that re-grooved tires for friends, hooked me up a few times. It is an art, never had an issue with any tires he did for me.

Why didn't you put the curb feelers on Nolan's car? Oh right... it's a stationary art piece now.

The tire groover is still in use today. We use them all the time on our Midget and Sprint Car dirt tires. It is also common practice to sipe the tires and even take a grinder to them to take the outer layer of rubber off so that you have some fresh rubber before hitting the track. With that said, I would never groove a street tire. That is nuts,

after testing that Schrader tire pump tool, you guys should have taken the Schrader valve out of the tire after pumping it up and put a lighter to the air coming out to see if it actually didn't pump air/fuel mixture into the tire :P

The spark plug “chuffer” air pump used to be common, and I think Cepek sold them to offroaders into the 1970’s. On Dad’s 1950 Plymouth with flathead six, it was very convenient. The swamp cooler was only worth the effort in hot country, not here in the PNW. I still have a tread grooving iron, and I used to have a Goodyear truck tire marked “regroovable.” But I only used the iron to improve offroad tread on a 4x4. Today, there are laws against regrooving, which would be dangerous with today’s tires. Curb feelers actually help, and I had them on my 1958 Cadillac. The many uses of that vacuum gauge represent some creative marketing. But in The Day, a Mechanic was a guy with timing light, dwell/tach meter, vacuum gauge and a box of tools (and a lot of know-how). The wiper arm pressure gauge is a marketing tool for service stations. Thanks for taking me back, guys.

I love that this Windshield Wiper add became a parody of toilet paper commercials lmao

For off roading the spark plug inflator would be a great back up if u have a v8

Back in 1966 when I was driving cross-country, with my newly pregnant wife, I had to buy one of those swamp coolers when I started across the Mojave Desert. It was no air conditioner, but it was better than nothing. The only other accessory that went with it was a canvas bag of water that you hung in front of your radiator as you were driving. The theory is that the slipstream of the air would keep the water cool. Again, better than nothing.

The main thing why the re-grooving is not much used anymore is because tires used to have much more rubber in them. Nowadays even the most expensive tires might have only 5 millimetres of rubber after the tread.

I would like to add the tire retreader would of been more safer back in the day because tires had tubes

There are tyres specifically made for re-treading them once they wear out, commonly found on wheel-loaders that dont have air in tyres, but also trucks, busses etc. Re-treading is still a thing, just not on normal cars :)

There's a guy from Chicago, Matt Ligouri - goes by "The Tire Sire", who uses a tire re-treader to make custom treaded tires for OneWheels. Artistic and useful in our little community.

Kinda cool to see that the tire groover hasn’t changed much at all in so many years. We have a few at our shop, we use them in dirt oval racing to put different tread patterns in our tires if we want a bit more bite going around the track.

That spark plug tire air compressor thing is pretty creative, I’ve never heard a product like that before.

The air pump thing used to be taken one step further back in the day with whole air compressors made out of ford model t and model a engines. Two cylinders would be disabled from firing and getting fuel and would just be used for compression to build air

Glad to see the tire regroover is already well defended.

The battery charger thing is meant to cause the generator to produce more output at lower revs. The generators did not charge the battery at idle. Valiant was the first car to use an alternator to solve the problem. The tire regroover was a useful thing back in the days of bias ply tires with tubes. Also, most truck tires are "regroovable". I have seen the remaining number of times for the carcass before it needs retreading right on the sidewall. Tires that have been regrooved or retreaded may not be used in a steering axle.

Fun Fact : That fender thingy is what Sheriff from Cars had on the side.

12:30 It's used in the trucking industry, it's cheaper to regroove tyres rather than buy new ones Also there's a special marker on the sidewall that says "Regroovable"

Next time you see your mail carrier, ask them about LLV AC. I worked for the USPS and those trucks don't have heat or AC. The AC is a 5-6" PVC elbow that is bungee corded through the window and around the door with one hole outside, facing forward and the other end inside the LLV.

Compression was much lower back in the day, swamp coolers work great in low humidity environments. They were very common in southern California and had one Hugh unit on our home in sylmar cal, and so did most of our neighbors. The regrouver was very common and my grandpa worked for RTD for almost 30 years, and they used the regrouver on buss tires..

Curb finders do actually work. Not so much for actual parallel parking, but for if there’s a couple empty spots in a row and you can just pull in. Especially good for the land yachts of the 60s.

“Is there anything better than a good clean wipe?” Me: This is either an add for windshield wipers or toilet paper.

When my brother bought his first car, a 1958 Pontiac, it had "Curb Whiskers" or "Curb Feelers" as they were called. They were supposed to be angled down so that they would touch the curb when parallel parking. I thought they were cool. I remember seeing a lot of those swamp coolers when I was a kid, particularly in the desert like Palm Springs. The Anco wiper pressure was in a lot of service stations. They would measure the pressure on the wiper blades. If it was too low, the blades would leave streaks. The solution was to replace the wiper arm spring, or bend the wiper arm some to stretch the spring some. I had one of those spark plug tire pumps, and it worked very well. I bought it from the J C Whitney catalog in about 1972. Yours has a much better hose. Mine had a regular rubber hose that eventually rotted, but it may still be in the garage somewhere. The tire regroover was for large truck tires that were designed to be regrooved, but they were often used by less than honest used car dealers who would use one to make worn tires look better.

The curb finders I've always heard them called in the lowrider community aren't traditionally used for backing into spots. It's for driving forward into a spot and maintaining proximity to the curb as CA wants wheels in the gray part where it's not asphalt. Even the photos shown of the older cars they're all in the front

MAKE THIS VINTAGE STUFF A SERIES NOLAN YOU'RE A GENIUS

All I’m saying is, you guys make way better commercials than most ad agencies today.

I own a 1966 bel air, all the weird gadgets I got with it when I was a 16 still work to this day and I’m 21 now. It’s weird how well and weird everything was built back then but I feel like they had some innovation back then that was just a little more “advanced” then us now a days.

I forgot about curb feelers! Used to see them at car shows when I was a kid.

I would say most of this stuff was definitely useful when a lot of normal cars didn't have these options (swamp coolers were exceptionally better the hotter the area you lived in), though y'all should have tested them with older vehicles! The mobile oven however, ugh. Every dude knows you just wrap it in foil and stuff it close to the header pipes...

One thing to note. The mile-o-meter was meant to work on carb engines. So a carb would more or less have a permanent vacuum

I never saw much of the products themselves but I did spend plenty of time reading about them in the Warshawsky catalog. That was in Chicago - elsewhere it was the JC Whitney catalog. Just looking at the product descriptions would be a great look back. One product I really loved and actually saw fairly often was a small plastic cylinder that would be installed in a drilled hole in your brake lights lenses. That little bit of blue turned your brake lights, a vivid purple - so cool.

This video is a low key honest infomercial of old stuffs

The tire retreader is "take me back" material, because I've seen it successfully used before. BUT not on an old tire, but a new tire. My dad had a friend who used to race dirt track cars, and he would cut extra grooves into the tire for more traction.

Tire re-groovers make more sense when you have large offroad tires because they can be $500-$1000 a tire. Also, you can tailor your tires to a specific offroad race when the type of tire needed doesn't exist for the conditions you're in.

Those tyre groovers haven’t really changed much even today. Newer ones have a pistol grip handle, but other than that it’s pretty much the same. We still use them to groove speedway tyres.

Around 1950, spare tires had long rubber air tubes connected from a spare tire schrader valve to one that stuck through the rear of the trunk behind bumper-so you could check the pressure of a spare without having to move your luggage-stuff around. Some cars had a distilled water reservoir over the battery, with an automatic filler to replace what evaporated out of the battery in use.

Curb Feelers still existed in the 80's. I remember seeing them on Chrysler K-cars and other mom-mobiles.They were an updated design, and looked hilarious.

that is a really old regroover. The newer (yet still old tech) groovers use a u shaped blade. You adjust the depth of the blade before you begin, to prevent getting down to the thread areas. Tire treads often cannot go down the wear bars as it becomes too squirrely due to deflection, so the micro sips are only down for maybe 3/32. You can actually use the groover to add new sips and create new water channels as the tire wears down to the existing ones.

For the tandem and single axel trucks I work on, I sometimes have to sipe the tires with a "regrover" essentially I'll just cut a new pattern in a new tire to match a previous tires tread pattern. It works really well

Pro tip (or "duh" tip) you could always deflate the tire without removing it from the wheel if you'd prefer not to have it blow up in your face.

Remember that a lot of those inventions were from times when cars tires and wipers were made very differently. The old tires were bias ply essentially a solid chunk of rubber so recutting groves is achievable safely. The wiper gauge is actually quite neat and I beg to differ on those feelers. Those are quite useful if installed properly. Great vid guys

you guys are awesome, just a bunch of buddys doing what you love.

I actually put a vacuum economy gauge on my 86 camaro project and it has helped with fuel economy. It makes you really feel how your pedal movements influence your long term economy and not only that, but where to shift your engine because what I’ve seen from it is if you shift your car too early, it kills vacuum and therefor economy because you’re lugging the car to where it’s not at an efficient rpm. So yeah, it really does work. Also companies put it in their cars from the factory in the 60’s and 70’s

If you think about it, the spark plug compressor isn't really any different from the pancake compressors seen at most gas stations. Just your engine is the pancake. I'm pretty sure that "oven" falls into the same level of heating as the "defroster heaters" sold today. For the retreader, a couple of things. Tires back then were thicker (they didn't have the modern belts and radials of today) and made with a completely different rubber.

Tire grooving tools are used today in various types of racing. Sprint and Midgets often have custom grooved tires, off road racing cars/trucks will have custom grooved tires as well. Lots of road racing series that allow an intermediate rain tire will be custom grooved. You can buy a new tire grooving tool from all the big racing parts suppliers and you will find grooving tools in many toolboxes at races across the country. Oh I almost forgot, flat track and motocross motorcycles can/have custom grooving done to their tires. The use of a tire grooving tool is an art, I have watched pro's groove road race rain tires and it is a work of art.

I could be wrong but I think the tire regroover made more sense in the past because they had tubes inside the tire to hold the pressure and tires used to be thicker. Obviously very different than now. Great content as always!

I'm remembering back to 1987 or so, but my friend's 1st gen Plymouth Barracuda had a factory gauge very similar to the "mile o meter" gauge.

in flat track racing we still use tire regrovers on tires to keep the tire fresh or add our own tread pattern

My '67 Barracuda fastback (with leaning tower of power 225 Slant 6) had a vacuum gauge in the dash next to the speedometer. It was basically an "efficiency" meter that reminded me to keep my foot off the floor when pressing the accelerator.

10:35 you have them upside-down... they're supposed to point down, you know, towards the curb. Not up like you have them 😂

They did the windshield wiper commercial reminded me of what my kids dentist said. He said that you have to floss which is kind of like cleaning your butt you can't just wipe the cheeks off you have to get in between to be clean

Found a vintage car item in my Dads garage.. kept a while, but the rubber/plastic tube was so gooey, I threw it away. But it was a 25' long small sized yellow tube with Schrader coupling at each end and it was to transfer air from a tire with air in it to a flat tire. Either your own car or another.

Who remembers vacuum powered windshield wipers? These things speed up the more you put the engine under load, but a the mpg gauge and the gauge for windshield wipers are surely straight from that era!!

That air pump seems like it could actually be useful!

Those tread cutters used to be used for cutting a extra 5000 miles out of our Truck tyres. They were ment to be recut though so were thicker rubber.

Curb feelers are great when set up properly, have them on my classic beetle and always know i’m the perfect distance from the curb. Make enough noise you can hear them they kinda bounce off the curb

The oven is not for cooking, it's for heating lunch boxes for people working in the field. In that capacity, it works great, and many work vehicles still have them.

I can't wait to see Nolan's car refurbished. It's such a work of art

Semi tires are still regroovable. I don't think you are supposed to do it with air in the tire though. 🤔

I cut tires quite frequently for tractor trailers and they seem to do fine

Fork trucks have solid rubber tires and often need cutting. Modern groovers have a U shaped blade that heats when you press it.

That spark plug tire pump would be so cool to use on my Subaru 😂

the vacuum gauge is helpful for any old car it tells you lost of info like vacuum leaks from intake mani, heads carb/tb and lots of this

The tire retreader was used mostly on tractor trailer rigs back in the day the rubber was a little thicker that it is today and that left ample rubber for a shop to put new groves in the old tires and you could get another few thousand miles out of that old tire. Also some race car drivers would add extra groves to their circle track cars and even wider groves and cross groves for dirt track cars

Also I use a regroover pretty regularly to this day for various purposes. Such as adding different grooves to brand new race tires, siping truck tires in certain ways for different off road traction conditions, etc. never regrooving down to the cords though

The milo meter is actually build in to the dash of a e46, also works with vacuum pressure and shows you the current mpg

13:00 the teams at the Nurburgring 24 Hours this year used re-treaders to make cut slicks in the mid-morning hours due to inconsistent rain on the track meaning that neither full wets nor slicks were ideal to be running on

I remember kerb feelers and the spark-plug air pump being sold in auto accessory shops in my early years of driving. My dad had the re-groover, which I remember him using on his truck a couple of times when I was a kid.

12:20 most lorry/bus tyres are still regroovable.

that sparkplug tire pump seems like it could be amazing if it were made better

Thanks for constantly bringing unique car content for us, it's always a great escape from stressful real life when watching you

Commercial tyres are regrooved a lot still to this day

The swamp cooler will work great, provided the ambient humidity is low. Lived in SE Arizona for nearly 25 years, and for most of that time I used a swamp cooler on my house. Humidity was about 8-20% most of the time and it worked great. Once humidity got up about 40% during monsoon season, it didn't work so well.

Donut media being the only channel I don’t skip the ads on.

Fun fact, The legend of old GP motorcycle racing Kenny Roberts had to cut his own rain treads because the european tyre companies would not sell him any. He cut his tyres and won the race.

I use a variation of that vacuum gauge 4:05 on my classic car. It’s a doctors stethoscope but for your car. You can use it to adjust air to fuel ratios, timing, you can tell if your valves need adjustment, you can even see if you have some kind of air restriction in the air intake or your exhaust manifold depending on where the needle points all by using vacuum. It’s honestly an amazing tool. Great for diagnosing problems.

A lot of tires in the Trucking Industry (Hauling/Transport) are retreadable too. Pretty cool. These are quite the items. The vacuum gauge was intriguing.

9:00 on average ,it takes 20mins of driving to recharge the battery back up to where it was before you started the car.

make this a series. it's great testing old tools like that fuel economy meter

You guys need to let Justin host his own show!

We swear by those tire groovers in rally racing. A lot of times you'll use it to add cuts in the tread if it's particularly muddy or square off the edges of the tread blocks if they've gotten too rounded

NEED MORE VIDEOS LIKE THIS!!!

The plug for the wipers is the best thing I have seen I bought some immediately damn these guys are good…..

I was just about to buy new wipers lol good timing with that ad. And Nolan’s old timey voice is perfect 😂

I've had the same silicone wipers blade for over 3 years and they are still working just fine... I just clean them off because they build up a bit of gunk after a while.

Absolutely cool stuff! That MPG meter thingy also has much less lag. The computer in the car integrates over a longer period so it's never (ok, rarely) instantaneous.

Tire re-groovers are good for mudding trucks because you can add channels to help get rid of mud, or even use it to cut lugs off to get more space between lugs, so the tire will clean out better. You could also probably use it for a lawn mower tire or something, if its almost bald and you don't want to buy a new one

Back in the day, when car tires still had tubes in them, the tire re-treader would actually be pretty handy.

9:50 fender guards were alot longer, and similiar to a slinky (flexed). most of the time you'd fine triple or double on each corner of the vehicle. they worked well.

Tire regrooving is common on commercial tires, works great. Just be sure your regrooving tires that are actually rated for it.

The tire regroover was actually a tool I had to use once at the commercial tire retreat factory. You're supposed to be using it with a fresh hunk of rubber bonded onto the crown of the tire

Why'd it look like you were about to be hijacked at 10:15?

13:20 Jeremiah almost gets killed.

Tire groovers are still used for some forms of racing. For instance sprint cars and other dirt track racers.

I never thought I'll listen to james, nolan and Justin talk about wiping for 1 minute and 30 seconds straight.

The "owen" are for heating up your tin can lunch box with already cooked food. Works great.