Guys, i found this great oil add in 1961 HOT ROD magazine while browsing, the add goes for 3 or 4 pages describing oil performance on engine parts etc and has this great pic of guy filling 2x4 T bird with giant Kendall Oil type drum, these drums had different sized lids for topping up or just pouring it in. I have in back of my mind he looks like a young les ritchie but doubt it. Its a great photo. regards bill.

  AussieBill            YYYY    Forever Y Block     YYYY

 Down Under, Australia

We called them 5 gallon cans in my part of the world. Every oil marketer sold oil in them. Once they were empty, the customer would bring them back to be refilled. We had 55 gallon drums of each type of oil in racks laying on their side with a molasses gate in them. We had a funnel just the right size for the middle hole. We would remove the larger part of the cap so we could see when the can was full. When the level was up about where it had originally been, we called it 5 gallons. We had a total of 7 oil distributors in a town of 3000 people. No one ever questioned how accurate the 5 gallon measurement was. I still have a couple of those cans with the Conoco logo on them. We branded Fina in 1963 and I think it wasn't long after that when those kind of cans faded away.

Kenneth

Fredricksburg, Texas

I had to fill those things up at my Dads parts store/service station when I was a wee lad. I could barely carry the cans when I filled them. Ten cranks on the handle netted 5 gallons. That was one of my early jobs. Hated it but loved it. Wish things were like those days now.

55Birdman  Hickory NC

It looks like Les Ritchie from other pics I have seen and it might be the Emil Constantino car that Les tuned.

Refillable oil drums are a real blast from the past.  I carried a 2 gal square can in a $100 '56 with no rear main seal that I drove for a while.  At about 20c per qt for re refined oil (slogan: refined 3 times before it gets to you, original refinery, first engine and second refinery) the car didn't need fixing too much. I wonder what the ZDDP contant was?

Doug T

The Highlands, Louisville, Ky.

Speeking of oil advertisements, I have noticed Castrol (BP product) has come out with a high zddp oil for older cars and then the latest hemmings has another oil advertised for older cars which supposedly won product of the year at SEMA, Can't check the name at the moment cause the dogs and cats are on my lap while I am writing this on my laptop.

I have some of those older 5 gallon cans also.

55 Vicky & customline

58 Rack Dump, 55 F350 yard truck, 57 F100

59 & 61 P 400's, 58 F100 custom cab, 69 F100, 79 F150, 82 F600 ramp truck, 90 mustang conv 7 up, 94 Mustang, Should I continue?

I don't believe that's Emil's car.  He had no glass bowl fuel filter.  He had a fan shroud.  He had a Spalding Flamethrower with Mallory coils.  His carbs were mounted backwards from the above pic.  I don't think that's Les either.  I have a pic of him in a '62 Ford Performance Manual, he's somewhat older looking than the guy above, has lighter colored and thinner hair, and has a somewhat lower abdomen.  If that's Les, he sure aged a lot between '61 and '62.

My Dad used to buy oil in those cans, then painted them red and hauled gasoline in them for his farm tractor.  He quit buying in bulk when I started driving.  Probably because his oil kept disappearing.

John - "The Hoosier Hurricane"

Recycled motor oil was a big seller at the cut-rate station where I pumped gas in the early 60s (10 cents a quart). We kept a rack full of filled glass quart jars with a screw-on pour funnel, and refilled them frequently from a 55 gal drum spigot. Cheaper than a ring job, and our many regular customers could have rented their cars out for mosquito abatement (they were seldom tailgated). Those were the days!

6 VOLTS/POS. GRD. NW INDIANA

Oil Does not go bad, it only gets dirty or contaminated, In power plants and large ships they do not change the oil, they only have a superior filtering system. Beleive it or not I worked at a power plant and they had an Alfa Laval (or something Laval) filtering system that spun the oil in water, with many cone shaped disc, this would make any drops of water in the oil bond together with the water it was being spun in to separate it. Like spinning the water out of laundry) it also collected any contaminants between the disc. I used to have to clean the disc on a regular PM basis, say once a month.

I have an old filtering system that was used in garages back in the day and it is a barrel you poured your drain oil into and then it went through a series of cans full of cheese cloth before entering the barrel. the barrel then had 2 spickets, one higher than the other and you would use the filtered oil from the spicket higher up and then drain any water from the bottom one. This is how the original ys probably got all sludged up, they were poorly filtering the oil. Not changing cheese cloths etc.

55 Vicky & customline

58 Rack Dump, 55 F350 yard truck, 57 F100

59 & 61 P 400's, 58 F100 custom cab, 69 F100, 79 F150, 82 F600 ramp truck, 90 mustang conv 7 up, 94 Mustang, Should I continue?

That probably was an Afla Laval centrifuge on the boat, they made thousands of centrifuges for removing the fat from milk which is a similar problem. I would not be at all surprised if that was all the re refiners did unless it was even less.

John Aren't you neglecting the cigar? Wasn't that part of the Les thing?

Doug T

The Highlands, Louisville, Ky.