Righty Tighty - Or Not

 

For my first year in the Army, I hitchhiked home every weekend and took the bus back to Ft. Hood on Sunday evenings.  Then, in the summer of 1969, I took a week's leave and came back to KQUE-fm, in Houston, where I worked my program director's show while he was on vacation.

I took the money I earned and bought a 1960 Plymouth Valiant station wagon.  Still one of the ugliest vehicles ever manufactured, but it had a slant six engine that was darn near bullet proof.

Prior to 1965, Chrysler used left-hand (reverse thread) lug nuts on the driver's side of their cars.  This was left over from the days when wagon wheels only had a single nut holding them on the axle.  Using reverse thread nuts on the left side of the wagon kept them from unscrewing as the wagon went down the road.  Once car manufacturers went to multiple lug nuts, reverse threads were no longer necessary, and really didn't make much sense.

A few months after I got it, the old Valiant lost a spindle on the way home, the right front wheel took off across a pasture, and I spent the weekend scouring junkyards for a replacement.  I didn't think about it at the time, but the one that broke was on the right and the replacement I found came from the left side of a car.  It worked fine for years after I replaced it, but I probably had the only car around with left handed lug nuts on three of the four wheels.