Back in the good old days when you could do these things, I yanked a broken six-cylinder motor out of my '53 Studebaker and dropped in a nifty Chevy 283 V8. I generally drove home from Troy, N.Y. to Boston well after dark to keep the car's various illegalities from the prying eyes of police. One particular evening, on a long uphill section of Route 2, the motor started screaming.

I pulled into a gas station and discovered after some disassembly that the generator had seized. I needed a new rear plate of the generator with its sleeve bearing.

The helpful gas station attendant told me where I could find the nearest Chevy dealer. He pointed in the direction of a small town at the bottom of the hill and said there should be a salesman hanging around to capture the last customer.

Then I asked him the key question: "Is it downhill all the way?"

He thought it over carefully and said it was, so I threw the parts in the trunk and pushed off. A few minutes later, with no additional pushing, I found the salesman and convinced him to sell me a new rear plate of the generator with its sleeve bearing.

And to my amusement, the new part differed from the old part in one important respect: the oil reservoir was much, much larger.

This entry was submitted by Larry Baxter and edited by Rob Spiegel

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