Rickenbacher

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Model T Ford Forum: Forum 2013: Rickenbacher
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Dexter Doucet on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 08:32 pm:

Early four wheel Brakes.. I know others had them in the early 20's. Any stories about Rickenbacher cars? Someone please post the photo from the link.

http://www.retronaut.com/2013/05/driving-a-rickenbacker-car-down-hope-street-ste ps/


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 08:56 pm:

Duesenberg had 4-wheel hydraulic brakes from their beginning in 1921. Mebbe somebody else can open that pic.

This came from the internets the other day;
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This is a true story. Hope you appreciate it and want to pass it along. It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.

Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier... Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.

Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and his bucket of shrimp.

Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier. Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, 'Thank you. Thank you.'

In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn’t leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place. When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.

If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like 'a funny old duck,' as my dad used to say. Or, 'a guy who's a sandwich shy of a picnic,' as my kids might say. To onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.

To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant.... maybe even a lot of nonsense. Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida. That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better. His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.

Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft..

Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap.

It was a seagull!

Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck... He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then they used the intestines for bait.. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait.......and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued (after 24 days at sea...).

Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull... And he never stopped saying, 'Thank you.' That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.

Reference: (Max Lucado, "In The Eye of the Storm",pp..221, 225-226)

PS: Eddie started Eastern Airlines. Before WW1 he was race car driver. In WW1 he was a pilot and America's first ace.

As you see I wanted to pass it on. It was a great story that I didn't know. You got to be careful with us old guys. You never know what we have done.

Thank you for your time.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Paul Hunter on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 10:10 pm:

Guys, my grandfather had a Rickenbacher here in Australia in the late 1920's. to the day he died he reckoned it was the best car he ever had. Smooth, powerful and a pleasure to drive.

Love the story of Ed feeding the seagulls, we do tend to write off old people as eccentric and of no use....our loss.

Paul


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Wayne Sheldon, Grass Valley, CA on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 10:24 pm:

RDR,
I thank you. A wonderful story.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Gilbert V. I. Fitzhugh on Sunday, June 09, 2013 - 11:36 pm:

No way I can top Ricks's story. But here's one in a different vein.

In the late '60s I lived in Minneapolis and was a member of the Minnesota Region of AACA. For about a year and a half I was editor of the region's 8-times-a-year magazine, the Northern Lights.

One of our older members had been restoring a Rickenbacker, when he had a massive stroke. I didn't quite kill him, but it came mighty close, and left him essentially paralyzed on one side. His long-time wife refused to let him lie around the house. She insisted he finish restoring the Rickenbacker. He said: "How? I can't even walk!" She said: "Find a way." Every night she dragged him out to the garage, helped him down to the ground, put him on his creeper, and shoved him under the Rickenbacker. She slid his tool box to him under the car, and walked away. A couple of hours later she came back and fished him out, and took him to bed.

A couple of years later, that car was finished. The couple drove it from Minneapolis to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to an AACA judging meet where it got a national second prize.

As editor, I was looking for photos for the magazine cover. I got into that car with the owner/restorer, and he drove it to a golf course where I got a cover shot. That was one of the scariest rides I've ever had. He would start to turn this great beast with one hand, raising his knee to hold the wheel while he moved his good hand so he could pull the wheel a bit further. Meanwhile, shifting gears and double-clutching. When he'd made the turn, he'd reverse the steering procedure. But it was also one of the most inspiring rides I've ever had, and the cover shot came out just fine.

Gil Fitzhugh


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Tom Lovejoy, So Cal on Monday, June 10, 2013 - 12:32 am:

Fantastic stuff guys, thanks for sharing.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Darel J. Leipold on Monday, June 10, 2013 - 11:17 am:

I remember that Rickenbacker. I have been a member of the AACA in Minnesota since 1949-50. I knew that Ed Rickenbacker had survived on a life raft for a month or so, but did not know the full story.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Howard D. Dennis on Monday, June 10, 2013 - 12:50 pm:

Here's Eddie in 1914-15 Driving for Maxwell:Maxwell 1Maxwell 2


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Roger Karlsson, southern Sweden on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - 03:36 am:

Here's the picture from the original post:
Rickenbacker
"L.T. Shettler, the Rickenbacker car dealer in Los Angeles, demonstrated the effectiveness of the 4 wheel brakes on a new 1924 Rickenbacker C6 Touring sedan by driving the car down the Hope Street steps leading from Hope Street to 3rd Street. Bunker Hill, 1924. Maurice E. Ideses"


The Rickenbacker cars claim to fame besides the four wheel brakes and Capt. Rickenbacker himself was the double flywheels - one in each end of the crankshaft. About 35,000 cars were sold until end of production in 1927 and the remaining parts were sold to Audi in Germany according to Wikipedia - they produced their Zwickau and Dresden models using six- or eight-cylinder Rickenbacker engines.

Hat in the ring


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By wayne tomlins on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - 04:43 am:

I can remember seeing a superb mid ''20;s 6 cylinder roadster, rescued complete from a local wrecking yard & restored & finished in 'coach' painted [hand brushed] maroon & black.You could not see any brush marks.
Much later, I had two Rickenbacker....electric guitars. Adolph Rickenbacker was a distant cousin of Eddie & was one of the first instrument designers to produce a playable electric guitar in about 1930 in Los Angeles. They were and still are quality and stylish instruments famously used by The Beatles and The Byrds in the 1960's.


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