F. George McDuffee wrote:
On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:18:40 -0800, Tim Wescott
wrote:

To me, the Vega was frustratingly near miss -- they could have spent
5-10% more on the thing and had something that really was a good,
inexpensive car.

===============================
I think you have just identified *THE* cause for the current
problems at both Ford and GMC. The value analysis people did not
know when to stop, or the manufacturing people were over-ridden
by styling.

My current complaint is the use of plastic headlight lenses
and/or projector style lights in place of the standard size glass
lens units. After a few years the plastic lenses start to be
come cloudy and cut down the available light. New units are not
availalbe for most older cars and new ones that are available
cost 100$US and sometimes a lot more. I now have to use fine
compound and a buffer 2 times a year to keep the lenses clear.
Older sealed beams and even halogon units were 10$ each tops.

Yup. I got a rock hole in my Toyota's GLASS headlight, noticed the
problem before the mirror was wrecked and cleaned it with detergent
and water. Then I dried it out and put clear vinyl tape over the tiny
hole. It is still working fine, and the fix is so invisible the
safety inspection people can't even find it. Those headlights
are now 16 years old.

On our Dodge Ram van, the plastic headlights are very white and
hazy. I tried to buff them, and finally realized they were hazy
on the INSIDE, too, so I could buff till they wore through before
they would get clear. Those plastic headlights are only 6 years
old!

Jon

F. George McDuffee wrote:
Vega is the only car I ever heard of that warranted fenders for
rust through. Friend of mine had one in Connecticut and the
front fenders rusted through just behind the headlights in *ONE*
winter.

Well, they use salt here in MO, too, but it took about 8-10 years
for the doors to rust out.
Engine was built upside down, had an aluminum block and cast iron
head! Any truth to the rumor this engine was developed by the
Dixie corporation that developed the Dixie cup. Their motto "use
it once and throw it away" seems to fit.
This was totally insane. If it ever overheated, it either cracked
the head or warped it. I got lucky, mine only warped a little, and
bound the cam when it was hot soaked. Once the oil got circulating,
it was OK.

It was actually a pretty innovative engine, the oil pump was concentric
to the crankshaft and driven by a keyway, and the water pump was
driven by the timing belt. That is fairly common today, I don't
know if the L-4 (Vega and Luv truck) was the first to do this.
The valve adjusting system was pretty neat, too. But, that iron
head was a disaster waiting to happen.

Jon

carl mciver wrote:
"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...
| Since I want to go around corners weight is a concern, and since I want
| to pay for this in my lifetime an aluminum block is probably not in the
| cards. But I'm putting a 5-speed behind the V-6, which should be
| equivalent to an automatic and at least 25 more horsepower (automatic
| transmissions are for weenies).
|

Sure they are! Buick 215 V8. All aluminum. Go looking for a BOPR
(Buick, Olds, Pontiac, Rover) V8 which can be had from the original 3.5
liter/215 up to 5.2 liter (with money of course!) They're still out there.
Where? Revco gobbled all these up years ago to make indy engines. They
destroked to the 168 Cu-In limit at the time, put new heads on it and
a bunch of other mods, and it made a great engine.
Used in the Buick Special from about 59 to about 63 and in the Olds Jetfire
(and even turbocharged from the factory.) They cast the blocks with
sleeves, and that never worked out so well. Rover cast the blocks first and
then pressed in the sleeves, which was a whole lot cheaper and a more
consistent process. There's lots of aficionados, mostly because the whole
motor, soaking wet, only weighs ISTR about 320 pounds and put out about 180
horse originally, give or take, depending on the configuration. This is one
of those underappreciated motors due to the lack of use on this side of the
pond and the reliability issues built into the processes of the time.
Yeah, it was a really good block, at least. But, I think they must be
VERY hard to find now. We are talking about an almost 30 year-old engine!

There was a thing about a V-8 powered chain saw that two guys pick up
and essentially drop on a big log. It goes through the log about as
fast as dropping a brick from a 2 foot height. But, for two even
pretty beefy guys to pick the thing up, it couldn't weigh much more than
400 Lbs. I was wondering what engine they used, but nobody seemed to know.

Jon

"Jon Elson" wrote: (clip) I could buff till they wore through before they
would get clear. (clip)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"Let me make one thing perfectly clear."--Richard M. Nixon

Tim Wescott wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:

Tim Wescott wrote:


J. Clarke wrote:

Tim Wescott wrote:



J. Clarke wrote:

snipity

Ditto for the Pinto, except I think Ford came closer to the mark than
Chevy, particularly in the engine compartment (but the styling sucks,
IMHO).


And then there was that annoying bolt next to the gas tank.


Drive anything into anything else that fast and one of them will burst
into flames.


You've been watching too many action movies. "Burst into flames" is not
the normal outcome of a vehicular collision.

I know. But I still think that both the Pinto and the Chevy side-tank
issues were way overblown.

The "Chevy Side Tank Issues" were shown to be a fabrication of an
unscrupulous journalist who purposely set out to get one to light and
didn't quit until he managed it--google "gm nbc rigged". NBC ended up
paying GM 2 million dollars in damages over that one.

Different animal from the Pinto gas tank where it was proven in court that
Ford knew that there was a problem, that they had evaluated an alternative
design used in another Ford product that has been shown to be safe in 60
mph impacts and rejected that, that it would have cost less than $12 per
car to correct the problem with the design that they chose, and that they
ran a cost analysis and found that it was cheaper to pay off the victims
than to fix the problem.

Further, an NHTSA study showed that at the time 24% of cars on the road wer
Fords but 42% of the collision-ruptured gas tanks occurred in Fords.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

top posted

Many good, insightful responses by people who actually drove
these cars.

FWIW -- a automotive research/news organization [Wheelbase
Communications] had an article in our Friday Fed 24 major metro
paper about providing "Detroit" with advice and insight.

Writer was Rhonda Wheeler.

if you have some "words of wisdon" or suggestions for Detroit
about how they can improve their cars goto
http://wheelbase.ws/mailbag.html

Uncle George
========================================
On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 09:33:01 -0800, Jim McGill
wrote:

If you need a laugh, find a copy of Richard Porter's "CrapCars"
(Bloomsbury 2005, ISBN 1-58234-638-0) which is a list of the 50 worst
cars of the last half century. Very opinionated and occasionally wrong
headed but often dead on and funny. He lists such milestones as #34 the
Maserati Biturbo ("If this car was sold without a steering wheel it
could barely have been less erratic") and #2 the Yugo ("When Yugoslavia
descended into war, at least someone had the presence of mind to bomb
the Yugo factory"). His winner? 1974 Mustang II - or Sports Pinto as
people called it at the time.

Jim

On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 21:27:26 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "J.
Clarke" quickly quoth:

The "Chevy Side Tank Issues" were shown to be a fabrication of an
unscrupulous journalist who purposely set out to get one to light and
didn't quit until he managed it--google "gm nbc rigged". NBC ended up
paying GM 2 million dollars in damages over that one.

If it were totally bogus, why did all truck manufacturers stop making
passenger-compartment gas tanks? This was before the crew-cab era.


Different animal from the Pinto gas tank where it was proven in court that
Ford knew that there was a problem, that they had evaluated an alternative
design used in another Ford product that has been shown to be safe in 60
mph impacts and rejected that, that it would have cost less than $12 per
car to correct the problem with the design that they chose, and that they
ran a cost analysis and found that it was cheaper to pay off the victims
than to fix the problem.

Yeah, stupid move, but why didn't anyone bother to ask the owners if
they'd give $12 to fix a potential problem IF their car was hit from
behind at a pretty good speed? In 3 words: The Frackin' Lawyers. It
was the legal climate combined with some stupidity which prevented
Ford from immediately making the changes and doing recalls. One could
almost guarantee that it would have been cheaper to do the recall
without any lawsuits, and that it -would- have been done but for the
ambulance-chasing speaking weasels. Feh!

But you never answered my question the last time this subject came up.
How can engineers foresee things like this? It's only through complex
destructive crash testing scenarios that problems like this appear.
Software testing and modeling are vastly improved nowadays but weren't
even available at the time.


Further, an NHTSA study showed that at the time 24% of cars on the road wer
Fords but 42% of the collision-ruptured gas tanks occurred in Fords.

All because of a bolt facing backwards on a Pinto rear-end. What was
the total number of explosions, J? I never have found that statistic.
How many ruptures vs. how many explosions and the percentage which the
Pinto took in that are the stats I'd like to see. Has anyone ever
found them?


- Woodworkers of the world, Repent! Repeat after me:
"Forgive Me Father, For I Have Stained and Polyed."
-
http://diversify.com Comprehensive Website Design

"Jon Elson" wrote in message
...
carl mciver wrote:
"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...
| Since I want to go around corners weight is a concern, and since I
want
| to pay for this in my lifetime an aluminum block is probably not in
the
| cards. But I'm putting a 5-speed behind the V-6, which should be
| equivalent to an automatic and at least 25 more horsepower (automatic
| transmissions are for weenies).
|

Sure they are! Buick 215 V8. All aluminum. Go looking for a BOPR
(Buick, Olds, Pontiac, Rover) V8 which can be had from the original 3.5
liter/215 up to 5.2 liter (with money of course!) They're still out
there.
Where? Revco gobbled all these up years ago to make indy engines. They
destroked to the 168 Cu-In limit at the time, put new heads on it and
a bunch of other mods, and it made a great engine.

Not to mention that it won the World Manufacturer's Championship (Formula 1)
in 1966 and 1967, in a Brabham. In the then-new 3-liter formula, it made
something like 350 hp. 'Beat the Ferraris, Lotus-Climaxes, etc. However,
don't ask what those Ferrari and Climax engines were. g They were old junk
or 1.5-liter engines from the previous formula. Many of the Climaxes were
2.5-liter four-cyl. engines built originally for the Tasman series.

I'm sorry I didn't read this thread, but did anyone mention that American
Motors owned this engine for a short time? GM sold it to them, and it was
used in the Jeep Wagoneer for one year or maybe two, IIRC. AMC couldn't
afford it and it wound up back in GM's lap -- the tooling, that is. And GM
then sold it to Rover. GM decided it was too expensive to build for the cars
they were putting it in, and Buick dredged up their c.i. V6 truck engine to
replace it. That was *before* they figured out how to offset the crank
throws. It vibrated like hell.

Used in the Buick Special from about 59 to about 63 and in the Olds
Jetfire
(and even turbocharged from the factory.)

With the old GM diesel-truck turbo, the same one used in the Corvair Monza
Spyder. I made a few bucks back then wrapping the exhausts in insulation and
aluminum foil. In a Spyder, you'd get 10-15 more hp. I'd do the "conversion"
for $25. Today, $250. d8-)


They cast the blocks with
sleeves, and that never worked out so well.

The (ribbed steel) sleeves were OK except they were too thin, and they'd
flex if you tried to get any decent horsepower out of them. Revco made a
nice, thick press-in iron sleeve for it, to go in their SOHC Formula 1
engines.

--
Ed Huntress