GM, Ford reputations take a hit

Tom Adkins wrote:


> You might appreciate the other muli carb one in the bunch, it's a 63
> Savoy Super Stock 426 Wedge. That car is downright scary.

Works of art, those early dual-quad long-rams with the carbs sitting way
out over the shock tower! The super-stocks were unbelievable, but just
a plain old dual-quad 413 in a Chrysler 300 is scary enough.


>
> I've often wondered why we fight our little battles with these old
> beasts. They were supposed to have been scrapped years ago. We spend
> money, time, money and frustration to keep these cars alive. Is it love?
> sentiment? nostalgia? Naw, I think it's a virus.

But truth be told, I spend the same or LESS actual money on the old car
than on my wife's modern one. More parts get replaced on the old car,
but 10 of those parts are cheaper than 1 sensor on the newer car.
Nevermind that the new car cost around 20k just to buy in the first
place. Some people would ask "what's your time worth," but since it
doubles as a hobby I can answer "my time's worth too much to waste it
playing golf when I could be spinning wrenches and having FUN." :-)



> We had about 2 feet of snow here yesterday. Excuse me while I go fiddle
> with the choke and dry the distributor cap on my Ford. Hmm, I think that
> accelerator pump is starting to dribble...again!

No snow here, but it was around 28 degrees this morning. The ol' 440
fired right up like any other day. Gotta love the electric chokes on
these new Carter/Edelbrocks :-)

Steve wrote:
Some people would ask "what's your time worth," but since it
> doubles as a hobby I can answer "my time's worth too much to waste it
> playing golf when I could be spinning wrenches and having FUN." :-)

I couldn't have said it better!!
I hope you noticed the tongue in my cheek as I wrote the last part of that
statement. I love old iron, no matter who made it. In addition to cars, here's the
other way I have fun: www.lakeshorerailway.org How much is my time worth? I actually
pay $20 per year to do it!

> No snow here, but it was around 28 degrees this morning. The ol' 440
> fired right up like any other day. Gotta love the electric chokes on
> these new Carter/Edelbrocks :-)

I haven't actually had a car with a carb in some time, Fuel injection is a wonderful
thing. Here's a bit of an oddity that you might appreciate. My daily driver is a 1984
Lincoln Mark VII. It's a 5.0 with Central Fuel Injection. The CFI unit actually has a
heated "choke" spring, fast idle cam and "choke" pulloff just like on the old Autolite
carb. It's just a fast idle system though, no choke plate.

Tom Adkins wrote:



>
> I haven't actually had a car with a carb in some time, Fuel injection
> is a wonderful thing.

I work with "kids" who've never even DRIVEN a carbureted car :-/ Fuel
injection is amazing to someone like me who grew up with carbs.... Until
something breaks ;-) No, I'm not a luddite who fears or dislikes it. Its
very reliable and easy to fix when something does go wrong... just tends
to be expensive. Mainly because there ARE no cheap parts in it like
there are in a carb.

> Here's a bit of an oddity that you might
> appreciate. My daily driver is a 1984 Lincoln Mark VII. It's a 5.0 with
> Central Fuel Injection. The CFI unit actually has a heated "choke"
> spring, fast idle cam and "choke" pulloff just like on the old Autolite
> carb. It's just a fast idle system though, no choke plate.

The only EFI from that era that I'm really familiar with was on the
gone-and-not-missed Cadillac HT4100 (talk about "reputations taking a
hit!") that I used to care for and feed for my parents. It was a full-up
digital throttle-body EFI, though, all idle speeds controlled by
computer. I've looked at the EFI used on the 81-83 Imperial a little,
and it was pretty far ahead of its time too. It was actually a mass air
flow system, but it reached a little far ahead of the state of the art
and was regarded as a failure. Still a number of them out there running
around though- they sometimes show up at Mopar shows.

In article >,
Tom Adkins > wrote:

> I haven't actually had a car with a carb in some time, Fuel injection is a
> wonderful
> thing. Here's a bit of an oddity that you might appreciate. My daily driver
> is a 1984
> Lincoln Mark VII. It's a 5.0 with Central Fuel Injection. The CFI unit
> actually has a
> heated "choke" spring, fast idle cam and "choke" pulloff just like on the old
> Autolite
> carb. It's just a fast idle system though, no choke plate.
Crude.
Before they figured out how to program a computer to sense what an
engine really needed.
My '86 Chrysler with TBFI also has a few crude remnants of past
approaches.

who wrote:
> Crude.
> Before they figured out how to program a computer to sense what an
> engine really needed.
> My '86 Chrysler with TBFI also has a few crude remnants of past
> approaches.

Crude for sure. It doesn't even have a way for the PCM to adjust the idle speed.
There's just a kicker solenoid to bump the idle up when the AC cycles on (just like on
a carb). A year or so later the same CFI system used an Idle Speed Control motor that
was controlled by the PCM. It always seemed to me that they pushed CFI into production
before it was quite ready.

Tom Adkins wrote:
> wrote:
>
>> "Steve" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>
>>>> Those engines were legend for longevity.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Yep. Although as I've pointed out, I've had a 318 and a 383 last longer
>>> than that slant-6. Pretty much all Chrysler engines from that era were
>>> legends of longevity, and very much on a par with engines of today.
>>> Better than the ones with rubber timing belts, IMO.
>>
>>
>> With all due humility, (and I am not a Chrysler man) every engine that
>> I can
>> remember
>> that was actually manufactured by Chrysler was virtually bulletproof.
>>
>> Chevy made their turds, and Ford had some pretty sorry engines, but
>> the REAL
>> Chrysler engines were spectacular.
>>
>> Unless I have missed something along the road;>)
>>
>>
> You have a point. Most bygone Chrysler engines were pretty tough and
> ran almost forever. Two terrible things about them, though; they were
> worse than Harley motorcycles about leaking oil, and many of the carb
> designs were crap. Let's not forget the ubiquitous ballast resistor (ok,
> so that's 3). Mopars biggest problems were things "around" the motor, up
> to and including the rest of the car.
> Don't get me wrong, Chrysler muscle cars are some of the most
> impressive ever made. It's just that I was "there" back in the 70s when
> most 60-70s Mopars were just used cars. The oil leaks, carb problems and
> rust were enough to make me want to avoid them for my personal cars. I
> take care of 6 1960s-70s Mopars for a local car collector. Rust isn't an
> issue as they are basically garage queens. It's still a chore keeping up
> with the oil leaks and carb issues. The Holleys on the 6-Pack cars are
> the worst. (They are all FUN to drive, though! )

Carb problems? only carb problem I had with a MoPar was one with a POS
Holley 1bbl. on a slant six, replaced it with a Carter et voila, problem
solved.

nate

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Steve wrote:

> But truth be told, I spend the same or LESS actual money on the old car
> than on my wife's modern one. More parts get replaced on the old car,
> but 10 of those parts are cheaper than 1 sensor on the newer car.

Also when you do replace a $5 part, you don't have to disassemble half
the engine to get to it due to the order-of-magnitude increase in number
of surrounding parts and super-tight integration.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')