I'm currently 62, when I was in school you could not even really think of taking typing class until your freshman year and even then it was mostly for girls. One requirement was you had to have good grades in English in order to qualify for the typing class.

When I was in high school dad brought home an old L.C. Smith with the full legal carriage. The keys were pretty stuck together with rust and the accretion of time so he more or less gave it to us kids.

Right about that time I discovered WD-40, I cleaned up the machine with it and my older sister who was in typing class started to use it for practice. I tried long an hard to master that beast but could at best use one finger on each hand.

I do a little better now, hate using the onscreen keyboard on my tablet and phone so I got one of those stylus things that is an ink pen on one end and has a rubber bulb on the other.

Using that thing reminds me of the hunt and peck days of my youth.

 

Yeah, I'm looking at 50, but not there yet, so some of you have got a few years on me.

Those IBM Selectrics were bought with a state grant, and Heaven help anyone who somehow managed to break one of them.

As best as I can recall, they were close to $1,000 each when Cabarrus County got them, and I still troll e-bay looking for a really nice one for our office.

There are still plenty of FAA and NTSB forms that need to be filled out on a typewriter, and the 1990's vintage Brother typewriter at my office is a bear to get ribbons for, the local Staples kind of hates us.

 

A year or two on the sprig of boy! He's in his mid forties! Why I got socks older then him! I'm 61 on the outside and 17 on the inside!

Now back to the issue at hand, while we were typing down memory lane, did you get the proper valve installed?

 

Oh, I don't know....at 65, my socks from back in the day are pretty much gone but I might have a shirt or hat that's more than 40+ years old.

 

Me thinks perchance that kewatin hasn't made it back to the auto parts store yet.

 

NAPA has a " R134a repair kit" 765-4103 for $3.99. 2 valve cores 2 caps and a core tool.
They also have individual valve stems for less than $10.