What is this?

[SLK]

We were looking inside the engine compartment of a 57 Mark II and saw this item on the passenger side inner fender. There is a place on the front for two wires. We were all scratching our heads trying to identify what it was.

Any ideas? One person thought it was an electronic corrosion protection gizmo. The lid comes off and there are electrical components inside the box. The owner is just as clueless.

By the way, the car was once owned by Henry Uihlein whose family owned Schlitz Brewery.

[Nick DeSpirito]

Ben,

I'm clueless on that. Maybe a flux capacitor? :D With no air, how did Mr. Schlitz keep the brewskys cold?

[Barry Wolk]

We were looking inside the engine compartment of a 57 Mark II and saw this item on the passenger side inner fender. There is a place on the front for two wires. We were all scratching our heads trying to identify what it was.

Any ideas? One person thought it was an electronic corrosion protection gizmo. The lid comes off and there are electrical components inside the box. The owner is just as clueless.

By the way, the car was once owned by Henry Uihlein whose family owned Schlitz Brewery.

Can you take a picture of the gizmos for us. That would help.

[SLK]

Can you take a picture of the gizmos for us. That would help.

See the picture attached to the first post.

[Barry Wolk]

That doesn't show the inside. Also, there seems to be some writing on it. What does that say?

[SLK]

Sorry, I didn't take a picture of the inside of it. The writing on the outside gave us no hint about it's purpose.

I also wanted to get a picture of the seatbelts that were in the car, but missed my chance.

[Shelly Harris]

It looks like an early radio model Garage Door door tranmiitter.

[Barry Wolk]

I've never seen one like that, but you may be right. However, how well would RF work under the hood of the car. Maybe that shape antennae emits RF downward and bounces out from under the car. I would have put it behind the grill. It looks like it would need an external power supply. Maybe one wire goes to ground and the other goes to a momentary contact switch tied to a 12-volt power source.

[SLK]

I was reading some old posts and noticed one about whether to restore or part out a car listed on ebay. When I looked at the pictures, I noticed a similar silver box on the passenger inner fender. This box is in the same place as the one on the 57 I saw over the weekend.

What could it be?:confused:

Ben

[Mad Scientist]

It looks like an early radio model Garage Door door tranmiitter.

That may be the best guess. To have been a door opener back then would have meant a "tube" type transmitter along with an appropriate high voltage power supply. This would have required a fairly large box.

[Shelly Harris]

I remember vividly when my Mother's brand new '56 Fairlane was equipt with the device. It had tubes of course, and the antenna was a long wire strung across the bottom of the front bumper.

[Barry Wolk]

What's the horseshoe-shaped piece?

I sent a picture of it to some old time garage door shops, but all the old-timers are gone. The tech that has been working there for 15 years said he had never seen one.

[SLK]

The horseshoe shape is a wire held away from the box by insulators.

[Barry Wolk]

I've posed the question elsewhere.

[Chuck Lutz]

Barry et al.. this has had me twisted over the past few days so today, on a flyer, I sent it to Jack Rosen who said he didn't know either but offered that it might have been part of the auto-dimming control for the headlights. Ya think? Who knows???.. I like Mad's suggestion of the Flux-Capacitor. Just sounds sexy.

[Jim Rohn]

could it be part of an alarm? The motion sensor?

[Barry Wolk]

I think Shelly's got it. I'd just like to know how it worked. There could have been a dash button that activated the transmitter. A receiver could have been hooked to a latching relay that would reverse the motor with each push of the button.

However, if there are tubes in it, it was probably on all the time the car was on.

[Shelly Harris]

Yes Barry, there was a switch which was mounted on the bottom edge of the dash. It was on all the time. As you say, pushing the switch would cause the door motor to reverse it's direction. Like any tube type radio, there was a 45 sec (approx.) warmup time before it functioned. So when exiting the garage it was common to back out of the garage and wait on the drive or street during the warm up to bring down the door.

I remember removing and reinstalling the unit for my Mom when she got her '59 Chevy.

[Barry Wolk]

I wonder if there's a patent number on it? That would tell me what I want to know to look it up.

[Barry Wolk]

I bumped into an old-timer that owns a large garage door concern around here. I described the box to him and he knew exactly what it was. He said it's a Stanley remote opener, the first commercial unit on the market. He said there was a switch on the dash, but the unit only came on when you pushed the button. He said it took about 5 seconds for the tubes to warm up enough to start transmitting a signal. He said you could push it again once you were in the garage.

He told me a story about a rich old guy that couldn't get his to work. several technician had looked at the problem and failed. he told the guy it would cost him $30 to come out to the suburbs and the customer had a fit as that was about double the normal charge then. He told the customer that he wouldn't charge him a dime if he didn't find the problem.

He went out to the guy's house, stared at the problem for a minute, went back to his truck and got a couple of crimp connectors and a length of black wire. He crimped a ring on both ends, hooking one up to the negative terminal of the battery and the other to the housing of the transmitter. He hit the button as the customer stared in amazement as his door went down.

Turns out that the new car was a Corvette.