Vintage Shop Equipment
Meet the machines that kept generations of hot cars running at their peak.
by Tom Shaw
photos by Tom Shaw
We all know, this hobby is not just the cars. It’s the whole cultural package. It’s the cars and the related items — dealer signs, gas station stuff, promotional items and the like. And part of that package is the shop equipment used in tuning those hot engines.
The machines kind of mirror the cars themselves — they flourished after World War II, and grew in size and technology, peaking in the 1970s, then went through a wholesale change with the introduction of electronic ignition, and later onboard computers.
Today, a giant, elaborate, top-of-the-line console with all the trimmings which originally cost more than a house, can be picked up for a couple hundred bucks.
But the big consoles, cool as they are, are not the center of this market. Bob Masters (Masters Company, 30 Willow Drive, Suite A, Fort Thomas, Kentucky, 41075, www.distributortester.com, (859) 441-8778), who operates a full-time business buying, selling, and working on these old dinosaurs, tells us that the distributor machines, in their various configurations, are far and away the lion’s share of his business. Nothing else is even a close second.
“The distributor tester market is the strongest,” Bob explains, and for good reason. “They’re not huge machines, and they perform a very valuable function.”
That’s for sure. These machines were designed for working on old cars with non-electronic systems, and if you know what you’re doing, they are without equal. They were also about doing commercial work in high volume. Pinpointing a specific problem was a snap for an engine analyzer with an oscilloscope. Where a local garage may rely upon educated guesswork and changing parts until it found the problem, in the right hands, a Sun machine’s scope could blow the whistle on a specific bad plug wire, distributor cap, condensor, spark plug or points. It was all in how well the technician read the trace. Moving the cars through in less time justified high finance of the buying a Sun machine.
In 1969, Sun’s top-of-the-line engine analyzer carried a price tag of $2,635. Eleven year later, their top unit, now computer powered, had soared to a staggering $49,995, while at $10,285, the more commonly found Infra Red Engine Analyzer had broken the five-figure mark.
Then manufacturers began to build in computer capability into the cars, and part of those high-tech talents became the ability to tell mechanics in code form, which system or component had the problem.
Today the prices have reversed. These big consoles are at the bottom of the price curve. Got a couple hundred dollars? It’ll buy you a lot of Sun machine on eBay. Plan on spending more if your bidding on a distributor machine.
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