Hey guys. Where’s your sense of adventure? People are spending themselves into debt financing expeditions to Everest and weekends base jumping when just as much adventure could be had driving a '59 Edsel from Detroit to Denver. Enjoy ‘life on the edge.’ Buy a ‘classic’ '50s car and hit the open road this summer. Install an 8 track player and keep this playing
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=route+66+theme&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-003
@“Rod Knox” There ya go!
I can’t buy into those cherry picked examples and especially so as a lot of the repairs shown are more than likely inflicted upon the car by the owner.
Failed distributor bearing on the Dart as an example. Distributor bearing or bushing failure at comparatively low miles is caused by not changing the oil often enough. Owner needs to go to the bathroom and look in the mirror for the cause of the problem.
EGR valve problem on the Granada. Was that EGR problem caused by someone using leaded fuel? I have no idea. You tell me. Cramming leaded gas into unleaded engines was common back then and has caused a lot of grief.
Some may remember that many car parts stores, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, etc sold “adapters” just for that purpose; a small funnel which allowed the leaded nozzle to work on the unleaded filler neck.
Mopar distributors through the late 60s had an oil port that required pumping full of oil during normal maintenance.
@Rod_Knox A local indy TV station shows Route 66 every afternoon. Unfortunately I’m usually too busy making a living to watch. I enjoy all the old cars on the show, not just the NEW Corvettes that Tod and Buzz were able to afford by doing odd jobs all across the country. The Mako Shark was featured on one show, driven by the episode’s “love interest”. IIRC the Mako Shark was sort of the prototype for the Stingray.
I drove my father’s 1960 T-Bird 1100 miles home after his funeral. I checked the belts and hoses, repacked the wheel bearings, and lit out. It never missed a beat.
In 1971 our family drove from OK to NJ in a '56 Olds and a '65 Olds with no problems except a loose grounding strap on the '56 in the first 150 miles. Clear sailing the rest of the way.
Another major difference from years ago is greatly improved resistance to rust damage.
And, even if you spent…big bucks, cars of the '50s were almost always very susceptible to rust problems.
In the latest issue of Hemmings Classic Car magazine, they have an article about the restoration/rebuilding of a '57 Dual-Ghia. In case you aren’t familiar with these cars, the bodies were built in Italy, by Ghia.
Then they were shipped to the US for installation of the Dodge running gear. Despite being priced in the same league as a Continental Mark II, the body/chassis of the Dual-Ghia had no drain holes, so these expensive playthings of the wealthy tended to rot-out their floorboards, fenders, and rocker panels w/in just a few years.
Another major difference from years ago is greatly improved resistance to rust damage.
Syracuse University did a study on how cars rust…and ways to prevent it. Since Syracuse is the snowiest city in the US…and SU has a good research center it was a good choice. It was partly financed by the Fisher Body Plant that was in East Syracuse.
After their study was published in the late 70’s many manufacturers started to adopt some of their findings.
@OK4450 My Dart had oil and filter changes at 1500 miles from the day I got it new. The dealer was puzzled as well about the distributor shaft bearing. This item was strangely not covered by the otherwise great 5 year 50,000 mile warranty on the power train.
The EGR valve on the Granada is still a mystery. This was the infamous 351 Windsor engine which was very difficult to make emission compliant, as compared to the 351 Cleveland engine.
Ford was just beginning to install catalytic converters and I remember this model was available with or without. Mine did but had so much back pressure that the car was sluggish and I had it (illegally) removed. The muffler and resonator provided just the right amount of back pressure. I bought this car when it was just a year old and had had no work done on it yet. You may be right that the first owner used leaded gas and partially plugged the cat, which was a matrix, I recall and easily plugged.
The next 50,000 miles for both Dart and Granada saw all sorts of thing fail that would be unheard of today. On the Granada the signal stalk broke and fell off, both back leaf springs needed to be replaced, the power steering pump failed and had to be replaced, and the A/C compressor failed at only 90,000 miles. The engine had a smog pump and it failed as well and the pipes to conduct air into the exhaust all rusted out and had to be plugged up.
The Dart needed a new gas tank, new rear leaf springs, new torsion bars, more new shocks, complete paint job and 90,000 miles.
However, neither car was as bad as my 1957 Plymouth 6 which did not even reach 100,000 miles before being scrapped, as it was too dangerous to drive. The front seat literally fell through the floor on that car.
I remember looking at the old Consumer Reports back in the early 1950s through the 1960s. In the early 1950s, used cars were put into three categories: A, B, and C. Specific problems were noted. For example, pre 1950 Studebakers had alignment problems due to its “planar” suspension. The 1946 Chevrolet had problems with piston rings. The 1949 Nash suffered from problems with rain leaks while the 1946 Buick had clutch problems and certain Ford and Mercury cars had volt regular problems. Most of those problems don’t occur in cars today in the relatively low mileage that they occurred back then.
The distributor bearings on early mopar were supposed to get "a drop or two " of oil, not get filled up. Later cars without the oil cups were supposed to get a dab of vasoline the sixe of the head of a paper match from a matchbook spread on the distributor cam every time the points and condenser were replaced. Annually, not to exceed 10,000 miles. And don’t forget to pull, clean and regap the plugs at 5000 miles and replace at 10000.
You could use that same matchbook and gap the points at .017 with the cover although I usually went with the high side of the spec at .021.
I almost threw up on my shoes with the Granada… Ugh…and a NEW one at that…LOL. I picture it in that Green that they seemed to coat almost every Granada of that Vintage. LOL
No they definitely do NOT make them the way they used to…Progress is good sometimes.
Blackbird
Growing up in the 70s and driving used 50s and 60s cars at that time I can tell you that cars run without problems better today and rust less. My buddy got a 1975 Vega for high school graduation and it didn’t make it though 4 years of college. All of my cars, Mopars, Fords, Chevys, imports (yes, they were called imports in those days) were dogs compared to today. But boy, would I give anything to have my '69 Torino, my '71 'Cuda, my '68 Mustang, my 67 Dodge Van, need I go on? Loved those vehicles, even though fixing them was a daily part of it. Me and my buds were always doing something, mechanics or body work. Rocketman.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have traded my beautiful '71 Dodge Charger SE for a '74 Volvo 240GL.
This was in the aftermath of one of our gas “crises”, so I was looking for better gas mileage and I also wanted to own one of those…legendarily-reliable…Swedish cars. I should point out that the Charger never gave me even one problem, but its best gas mileage was only 17 mpg on the highway, and in local driving it only produced ~13 mpg.
As it turned out, the Volvo maxed-out at 24 mpg on a long highway trip, and my usual mileage with it was ~16 mpg–a very meager improvement over the Charger’s gas mileage. And then there was the reality that I went from the ultra-reliable Charger to the POS Volvo–which was the least-reliable, most expensive to maintain car that I ever owned.
As the old saying tells us, Hindsight is 20/20.
…and speaking of…They don’t make them the way they used to… feast your eyes on these restored Desoto and Checker taxicabs!
I would love to own that Desoto.
@VDCdriver I have a real fond memory of the DeSoto. Just before I started 8th grade in 1954, my mother went back to work and my parents needed a second vehicle. The common wisdom back then was to buy a used Chevrolet or Ford. Unfortunately the good used ones were beyond our budget and the ones my dad could afford were over the hill
He came home with a,1947 DeSoto coupe with faded maroon paint. I made the typical junior high brat remark about the DeSoto not being cool. My dad didn’t say a,word, but the next day he came home with rubbing compound, auto polish and wax and I was told to make the car look cool. I went to work and after three days, I had that car gleaming. The car had,a radio that didn’t work, so I fixed it. Since our good car didn’t have a radio, the DeSoto was the car I preferred to ride in. That DeSoto was very reliable. Outside of normal maintenance it never needed a,single repair the entire time my dad owned it. I also learned about respecting things,and I kept that DeSoto looking nice.
That stretch De Soto is a beaut. It could be a great limo outfitted with the proper seating. Not this one, of course, but another that was used as a limousine.
DeSoto made a model from 1946 through, I think 1952. I think it may have been called a Suburban. It was on a long wheelbase and had 3 seats. It was like a hatchback and the third seat folded down. It came with a roof rack. The car had beautiful wood trim inside. Chrysler had a similar model. The DeSoto model came in a taxicab version with jump seats. I remember riding in a DeSoto cab in New York city back in 1950.
Desoto was actually the dominant make of car for NYC taxis in the '40s & early '50s.
Checkers were relatively popular with taxi owners, but they were far outnumbered by the Desoto taxis.
The next time that you view a film from the '40s or early '50s, take note of the taxis and–more than likely–you will see that most of them are DeSotos.
DeSoto, Checker and interestingly, Packards were the common cabs in big cities back in the 1940s and early 1950s. The cabs had to be limosine size vehicles. In the mid 1950s, this law was changed because of the heavy traffic. Checker redesigned its cabs and the earlier version that somewhat resembled a 1946 Cadillac was replaced with a new design that lasted until Checker folded. Plymouths replaced the limosine based DeSotos. Chevrolet and Ford cabs became common.