You're welcome, jgroub.
Good question about when this stopped being necessary. I really don't know, but as a rough guess I'd say the late 50s. As a very little kid I actually remember seeing a couple of vehicles still toting those water bags in Arizona in the late 50s, but by the early 60s I never saw such a thing, in real life or in movies of that time. I'm curious now too and know someone to check with, so I may have something more definite later.
EDIT: As promised, more information. The water bags were made of burlap, usually lined with rubber. While hanging them on the hood ornament was done in part to make sure there wasn't a huge difference in temperature so that the metal in the radiator wouldn't be adversely affected by the abrupt introduction of cold water, they were mainly kept outside the car because they had a tendency to leak and you didn't want that happening inside the car. Hanging them outside also made them handy when needed.
More to the point, the reason for carrying water is that before the interstate highway system, there were often great distances between gas stations, and you needed to carry water in case you overheated between stations (though the amount of water was probably only good for ten miles or so). When highways improved, speeds increased and gas stations became more frequent, the need to carry water sacks began to disappear.
Also, the shift to using antifreeze made water obsolete as a coolant, but the big changes were the development of a combination coolant-antifreeze liquid to cool the engine (late 50s), and then of a coolant recovery system in the late 60s. This system superseded the old one, where used coolant-antifreeze was simply allowed to drip out of the engine onto the roadway. The recovery system kept the liquid in a plastic bottle in the engine and recirculated it, keeping it full and making sure the car didn't run out of coolant. Eventually of course it would have to be changed, but it was still circulating in the engine keeping it cool.
Water bags of the kind seen through the late 50s began disappearing quickly in the 60s and would have completely been a thing of the past by 1970 or so.
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jgroub
8 years ago
Excellent. Or, should I say, cool . . . ant.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
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hobnob53
8 years ago
I checked with my uncle, a notorious car expert and a resident of un-cold Arizona for decades. Got all the gory details! (He also told me about the mesh tops on the gas pumps, per your other thread.)
I forgot to mention the obvious, that such bags were indeed mainly seen in very hot climates, deserts and so on, less so anywhere else. The other thing about the absence of interstates is that the previous roads were also narrower and in less good condition (in deserts, often just sand or dirt), so it would physically take longer to get to the next service station anyway, apart from having fewer around. So carrying water was even more necessary, not only because of distance but the time element in traveling. And you could even drink it in an emergency.
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baran_erik
8 years ago
And the mesh top on the pumps??
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hobnob53
8 years ago
Here's my reply in full to jgroub's question about the mesh hoods, which I posted on his thread about that subject on February 3. (That thread is still on the board.)
Pumps in those days had glass globes that were designed so people could see that gas was being pumped into the car. This was before the development of gauges indicating the amount of gas being pumped. You could see the gas being pumped from inside the pump proper, through the glass globe and then through the hose and into the car. The mesh covers were to protect the glass.
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