PEA RIDGE — The weather was so warm this February afternoon that I got to thinking about the really cold winters that I remember from years ago. I guess I’m feeling a little uneasy that we haven’t had much cold weather this winter so far.
But, I’m hoping that winter doesn’t dump the whole load of cold on us in the way it has happened some years in the past.
Back in the 1940s, wintertime often presented some real challenges for driving a car or truck. First was the challenge of getting the motor started, and keeping it running until it warmed itself enough to run smoothly. Second was the challenge of getting the vehicle’s heater to work well enough to warm you as you drove. In today’s computer-assisted cars, all this happens almost automatically, with little effortfrom the driver. But in the 1940s, it was far from automatic. The vehicle electric systems were usually sixvolt systems, which meant not too lively in the firstplace. So you wanted to be sure your battery was well charged.
Then you needed to be sure your oil had been changed to 10 weight or five weight for the winter.
Regular 30 weight oil back then got very stiff in cold winters, making motors hard to turn for starting.
Then you needed to know how to handle the choke button on the dash - plenty of choking, but not so much as to flood the motor. Every motor was different on how much choking was needed, so you just had to learn the character of your particular motor.
Since I was thinking about really cold weather today, I got to remembering those grill covers that people put over the front grill ahead of the car radiator. That was the one situation that I remember whenpeople resorted to a strategy for making a car motor run hotter. Back then, only in really cold weather did we want our car or truck to run hotter; so the car heater would put out more heat. Back then, car and truck radiators didn’t work all that well, and most of the times, especially in summer, we were more concerned about keeping the motor cooler, not hotter. Thermostats back then were designed to try to keep engine temperatures down to about 140°, the cooler the better, we thought. But when the weather outside got down to five below, and ice and snow covered everything, we wanted the car to run hotter. So we put on those grill covers.
The grill cover had to match the front of your car, since it’s job was to block the wind from coming in through the radiator in front of your motor. That way the hot water from the motor wasn’t cooled so much and more heat was available to the car heater.
As I recall them, those grill covers had stretchy straps to hold them in place, and flaps that could be closed or opened to adjust the air flow. You didn’t want to block out all the wind, or your motor might overheat, even in cold weather.
Driving a vehicle back then gave the driver more to watch for, and more to manage.
I’m still amazed when I drive today. My car just starts when I turn the key, and the heater starts putting out heat by the time I have driven four or five blocks. We used to turn on the key, open the accelerator just so, maybe pump it a little, pull out the choke button just so, then push the starter button. It might not “hit” the first time, so you pump the gas pedal a time or two, and hit the starter again.
When it “hits,” you need to push the gas pedal to “gun it” several times, not too much, but enough to keep it running. It’s bad for the motor to race when it is cold, but you need to “gunit” enough to keep it going.
Otherwise, especially if your car was an old Chevy, it would probably “hit right off,” then sputter, starve out and die. We had to leave the choke pulled out on our old Chevys while we drove most of the way into Pea Ridge. The heater might be putting out a little heat by the time we reached town. Even with a grill cover, I remember many times driving the short stretch of our road just north of today’s high school with the motor sputtering and running cold, and the heater blowing cold air. The old days were in some ways good old days, but I’m not hankering to get back to the days of car grill covers in winter.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.
He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 02/29/2012