Who remembers?

[ZMiller]

In the late 1960's if you worked the weekends in a Union Oil gas station as an attendant there were occasionally potato mortor gun fights with the Chevron or Standard Oil station attendents across the street. Air compressors back then could put a half pound spud into orbit.

[ZMiller]

If you closed the station overnight you propped anything on the lift with a 4 x 4. Most all were air or hydrolic leakers back then.. and wheel weights were pure lead you could use when you went fishing.

[Kperlow]

Now I feel older than dirt.

[ZMiller]

So you feel old? Seasoned maybe..


I remember having to keep a "B" average in collage to avoid the draft, regular leaded gasoline for 24.9 cents a gallon and re-refined motor oil for those with a leaking rear main for 20 cents a quart. At a Gran Auto parts store you could buy a "Sneaky Peat" crank rear main seal puller or a rebuild kit for a master brake cylinder and do the repairs yourself. Earl Scheib could paint ANY car, ANY color, for $29.95..and you got $10.00 worth of free body work or a set of moon hubcaps.

It was then "work hard, be on time, and don't worry about how much money you make"

[ZMiller]

Tokheim stp's with 3" motors? I found two in Milledgeville, Georgia today. 1970's maybe? Funny as their DPDT relay was found actually in the extracted pump head and the Deadmans all wired closed of course. Broken flange bolts replaced with vice grips.

[ZMiller]

How about Fiber Trench? Precursor to water slides.

1985

The integrity and design of secondary containment for piping systems with lined trenches
are not easily evaluated because the end points of the liner are difficult to locate without
removing surface features. Testing usually consists of filling the liner with water or
removing surface features, and performing a visual inspection. Of the three sites where
trench liners were known to exist, two were improperly designed/installed and
two sites were improperly monitored. If a leak develops in the primary piping
it may not be detected if the trench liner is improperly designed, monitored or leaking
itself. Additionally, water intrusion into a trench system at one site caused
nuisance problems that may have resulted in bypassing the monitoring system, similar to
problems with turbine sumps.

Bypassing the monitoring device? Sounds familiar.

[ZMiller]

This might be a hard one to remember but at the time everyone had to know.


Who remembers what the model number(s) of the box(s) where was found, a 3 volt, a 6 volt and a 9 volt power supply? Which one controlled the legibility of the LCD's on the dispensers?

[fogle622]

I remember. Gilbarco or maybe some other company made a silly replacement electronic dispenser head and display to replace VR mechanical computers when the price per gallon went to .999 plus. They were kind of short lived. Or you could switch to liters and drive customers nuts. That was short lived as well. Or you added the reducing gear to the old mechanical and with a black marker or white liquid paper added a 1. to the computer display PPG window three little screwed on cover.

You always had a junk box full of VR number wheels and shims to replace penny and dime wheels with bad reset clutchs. You didn't replace meters you just took them apart and replaced gaskets.

You remember when you could buy replacement LCD's for Tokheim 162's at Radio Shack for a dollar?

Gilbarco's electronic head was called a Retropack. Chevron was the largest customer for the product. A Retropack weighed forty pounds plus, used green, vacuum florescent displays and jump jacks for programming. They weighed so much because the shell and faces were explosion proof. The display glasses looked like they were more than a quarter inch thick.

Retropacks and first generation Highline H-111B dispensing units were the only two products I remember that were designed to connect to electronic consoles through two-wire or T-8, T-9 or T-10 mechanical consoles.

There was a competitive product to the Retropack but I don't remember the product name or the manufacturer. The competitive product used LCD display boards that plugged into a motherboard and did not have the explosion proof containment shell. However the product had the most memorable advertisement. The advertisement was a picture of the head powered up while sitting in a pan filled with water.