Gas Station Bell

[Timd32]

Anyone have an old Gas Station drive over bell for sale?

Looking to add on to the garage.

McMaster has them for $153 plus the hose, never knew they were electric.

 

[Timd32]

Guess I should have looked first.

$57 for just the bell, a whopping $132 for the kit.

Amazon product ASIN B000NNECX0

 

[Timd32]

Will await to see if anyone has one they want to part with.

 

[Regcabguy]

I hadn't thought of those bells in decades. Wasn't there a hose you ran over?

 

[Timd32]

Yep. Only time we rolled it up was in snow for the plow.

Besides a paper route when I was 11, that was my first full time job end of sophomore thru summer after I graduated HS, worked at a small 2 bay Sunoco station in NJ.

Was a great job, and made some lifetime friends there.

The building is still there not sure if they demo'd the bell, it's most likely still there.

 

[Regcabguy]

I remember attendants coming out in uniforms and washing your window with spray and some green colored paper towels. Not scraping it with a squeegee. They'd check your oil cause every vehicle ate oil back then. Next would be the tires. Nice era when a guy could make a decent living being a gas station attendant

 

[SnoKing]

And you had to learn where are the different make and models had the fuel fill hidden. SnoKing

 

[TFucili]

I hadn't thought of those bells in decades. Wasn't there a hose you ran over?

Yep, when I was a little guy we'd go to my uncle's service station, and I couldn't resist jumping on that hose until I got chewed out

 

[TJJEEPER]

Wow, memories! Senior year of High School. Texaco Station. $2 tire repair which was my job most of the time. Had a manual tire machine. I'd get home and my hands would be black. Loved summertime. Short skirts got the cleanest windows!

 

[mfurrh55]

We still have a full service gas station here, don't use it much because gas is always around .40 gal. higher then the rest, but there's quite a few do use it, it stays in business.oh and is non ethanol gas

 

[Timd32]

We had a COATS 4040 center post, and a flat horizontal balancer.

It was alot of fun to use. Learned the hard way to use it.

The first time they let me put a tire back on it was already off head mechanic said go ahead throw the wheel back on, so I did, few minutes later he was doing it again, I had put the acorn lug nuts with the taper facing out, I asked him to let me know next time and show me what I screwed up and I will fix it and reminded him I did not take it off and was a flip of a coin and I should have asked. After that I usually asked or they let you know you screwed it up in some sort of fun way.

Oil was always pricey, $2.50qt/$2.65 w/Tax.

A plug was $5.35 w/tax.

At one point gas was .98 but for a very short time. That's the lowest I've seen/remember.

Spent some cold, some wet, some hot nights there, worked 3:30pm to 9:00pm couple days and week and longer on weekends. Would open on Sunday AM and listen to a radio show called flashbacks where they would play all sorts of classic rock and tell stories.

Worked 2 Thanksgiving's 13hr days solo, got more food and beer then a 16/17 year old knew what to do with, folks would stash it in the ice machine for me for after work. The one year I had like 3 full turkey dinners and dessert. How can you pass that up as a kid.

 

[Regcabguy]

At our local independent station they dispensed bulk non-detergent reclaimed oil "Contains paraffin wax". Ridiculously lousy oil but it worked for my friend's '51 Ford. It was dispensed by an island pump! His car used so much oil we joked that a gravity system with a roof top mounted tank would shorten the intervals to the station.

 

[SnoKing]

I can remember gas wars in late 50's/early 60's pushing gas below .20. Normal price was in the high twenties / low thirties.

 

[Regcabguy]

$23.9 was the cheapest I remember. Super-Cal-a Gas in Ocean Beach SoCal. Of course,I was making $1.50 hr.
I drove to Mazatlan from San Diego in 1970 and gas was $0.20 gallon. They threw in the pre-detonation for nothing.