That is well before my time but I can imagine what an awesome feeling that must have been. And before fuel efficiency was known.

LOL and I thought this was only going to be between close friends

8 Track's are the stuff of legend.

How many minutes did you get on a track?

Sorry it's the geek within me.

Those Panning Album Cover shots

The longer the 8-track, the thinner the tape and less flex available inside the case. Both of these conditions resulted in short-lived tapes when you exceeded the 90 minute length (four 22 minute stereo tracks), although I think 180 minutes tapes were available. This was rarely a problem unless you tried to do a single track with one of the infamous guitar solos: Lynyrd Skynyrd: Free Bird: part 1 + part 2


foot note for any which might care:
In a cassette tape, the tape is wound snuggly on two reels, with the take-up reel pulling the tape onto the reel. The capstan spindles are used to control the overall speed and alignment of the tape across the fixed head.

In an 8-track, the tape is wound loosely on a single reel, with the capstan spindle pulling the tape from the middle of the reel, and the tape winding up on the outside of the reel. The reel in this design is passive and only serves to hold the tape. This results in the tape forming a long continuous loop which never ends (until the splice breaks). I seem to remember that there is a full twist in the tape to assist in the feed action. The head actually moves up and down to switch between the four stereo tracks, which often resulted in alignment issues between different machines. This type of tape was also not happy in cold weather as the loop tended to tighten up and pinch the center feed, and the tape lost some of it's needed flexibility.

I think I've got a wind up gramaphone and some 78's somewhere

ah.....so HE's the one that started those fires