The aluminum block did not have liners, just some coating. It quickly wore off, and with the overheating problem, caused high oil consumption.
When I rebuilt my Vega Engine I had it steel sleeved. It added about 10lbs of weight to the engine…And it made ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD. That one little design change actually made the engine very very reliable. Chevy used silicon as their liner. Porsche uses silicon for their Aluminum engines…but they got the process right.
The rust protection on the body was non-existant; road salt quickly chewed away through the fenders.
The main problem with the fenders was there were no inner fender wells. But EVERYTHING on that car rusted. I saw a brand-new 76 Cogsworth Vega in a Chevy show room back in 78. The car had 1 mile on it…And every seam had some rust on it. The dealer was asking FAR TOO MUCH and the car wasn’t selling. He thought some collector would buy it.
Never had a problem with the exhaust being too loud. But I did have to replace it at 40k miles.
What a way to stick it to them. I’d have been very upset too, and probably threaten getting a lawyer involved if they didn’t pony up something viable, perhaps even pay for the Chevy truck that they had to re-rig the welder on.
I tried the lawyer method. He was billing me $300 a letter and it wasn’t getting me anywhere seeing as how Ford has a building full of lawyers on their payroll. After about 3 letters, I ditched the lawyer.
Kentucky is a screwd up state. Our lemon law is the lesser of 12 months or 12,000 miles. After that, there’s no statute for force them to do anything. Ford can put a 100,000 mile warranty on the engine but it means little in this state past 12,000 miles.
While everyone is bashing on Detroit I guess my PITAs are a bit different since I’m a predominantly “foreign car” guy. Here’s two; one from Japan and one from Europe.
Reason I’m bashing on Detroit Iron is because that’s what I owned through the 70’s and into the 80’s.
The reason I bring up the Asian and European problems is because I was actually employed by Asian/European dealers and saw their problems (many of them chronic) on a daily basis.
For every complaint about a Big Three automobile there is a comparable one on an Asian or European car.
1)Replacing the 8 plugs on my 1973 Mercedes 450SL
2)Changing the water pump on a 1974 Alfa Romeo GTV
3)Changing the water pump on a 1998 GMC suburban
4)1997 Mercury Sable wagon
5)Retrieving the throttle linkage from the top of the front crossmember on a 1974 GTV
When the engine is cold, I remove the air snorkel from the air cleaner housing & throttle assy. This makes it somewhat easier to reach around from the sides & top to access the wires & plugs. It’s STILL somewhat of a “PITA”, and your arms might get scratched up some, but it helps!
(BTW: I have a 1995 Windstar GL with 236,000 miles. Runs good, great in snow & ice, and has survived one deer & NUMEROUS road trips! Uses just shy of 1 qt oil every 5K miles.)
When I first got my Inspection License after being a tire man/backyard mechanic, one of the first jobs I got was a major tuneup on an early 80’s Buick ? (X car). 2.5L transverse engine. Everything went fine till I started to remove the distributor cap. I couldn’t even physically touch it with the car on the ground, and with the car on the lift I could barely even touch a screwdriver to the two clamps that held the cap
to the distributor. After about 2 hours of tying “this and that” hand positions, etc, I finally got it on. (I basically got the old cap off by destroying it.) Oh, and attaching the plug wires to their proper electrodes on the cap. A couple years later I worked at a shop where it was just me and the owner, who had 12 years under his belt at a GM dealership. When I mentioned this particular ordeal to him he just shrugged his
shoulders and said, “Yeah, 2 hours is about right for that job.” I didn’t feel so bad then!
