True. How well do plastic body panels hold up in the sun for like 20 years? I know some of that cheap patio furniture becomes so brittle after one year that it is junk. I know that body panels are made of better grade materials but how well does sun-exposed plastic recycle? Aluminum wouldn’t have this problem. Also, some plastics are considered non-recyclable. I don’t know if these would hold up any better but you never know. Also, I understand some of the “non-recyclable” plastics that cannot be broken down chemically or with heat can be reused by grinding them up and adding another polymer to serve as a matrix to bind them together. I understand these have a limited number of re-uses.
As for the Suzuki parts, you might check eBay. There are all kinds of things you never thought you would ever get for sale there. I own a Geo Metro which is a Suzuki Swift. You can usually find anything you need online somewhere. It also helps that a variant of this same car is still made for some overseas markets in Pakistan but you get what I am saying.
I miss the Western Auto stores that were common through the 1960s. My first bicycle came from Western Auto. The brand name was Western Flyer. In 1951, my dad needed tires for his 1949 Dodge. The service station where he traded was able to get 2 Goodyear tires, but that was it. These tires were a common size, 7.10 x15. I think that the Korean conflict made tires hard to get. At any rate, he found two more tires at Western Auto under the Western Auto brand name Davis Deluxe. The tires were put in service about the same time and the Davis Deluxe tires outlasted the Goodyear tires. I needed a fuel pump back in 1963 for my 1954 Buick. I bought the pump at Western Auto for half the price that the pump cost at NAPA and the pump worked just fine. Western Auto sold radios and television sets under the brand name “Truetone”, and had refrigerators, stoves, and outboard boat motors with the brand name “Wizard”. The stores also had the nuts and bolts of typical hardware stores.
Speaking of hardware, the mom and pop hardware stores are disappearing. We have one left in my community of 60,000 people. It’s great to go in and match up a bolt or other fastener and buy the quantity needed rather than going to Lowes or Menard’s and have to buy a package of two hundred million when I need only 10 bolts.
We used to get tires at the Gamble Skogmo store. They had most everything like Sears but are now defunct.
The first carb parts for my 4 stroke Suzuki I got at the Toro dealer but alas, they were the wrong ones. Later I found carb parts on-line and did a general overhaul. I have found the parts on line again in the last year or so but think its just a thorough cleaning of all the little holes will do it.
I have come across some of the Western Auto guns. They are just a rebranded Marlin, Mossberg, or something similar. Some even have the same basic model number but with the Western Auto name on them. They are nothing fancy but shoot just fine. I don’t know when they started this whole making things cheap for certain retailers but expect maybe this wasn’t such the norm back in the day. Now I see things made for certain retailers that are of such low quality I don’t know how they make it out of the door in one piece. The model numbers even designate that it is meant to be sold at one chain and one chain only.
As for working on carbs, more than 50% I come across are fixed by just taking them apart and spraying them with carb and choke cleaner. I always find good stuff on those big trash days where people put out appliances, furniture, and the like. You always find lots of old mowers, trimmers, blowers, and such. Most are fixed by cleaning the carb. Some have been so neglected that the best thing is just taking them in as scrap. Others are just so cheap that the repair parts cost as much or more than a new one. Again, these become scrap.
@"oldtimer 11. I was recalling a Car and Driver article of a few years ago where they pointed out the many changes in the Model T between its early days and later models. Construction on the early cars varied between body styles and who made them. The most common models had wooden body panels, but couple of body styles we really aluminum over wood, and there were over a thousand, and possibly several thousand. They are described in various ways so it isn’t clear whether two articles are talking about one group of cars or more than one. Later, in 1924, there was an additional run of aluminum bodies made. Those probably being the ‘experimental’ models, as it did seem to be a test of relative body costs.
Ford didn’t proclaim black the only available color until a couple of years of production was complete. At first it came in various colors, but not black. Searching for ‘Model T aluminum bodies’ gave me some useful hits as well as others. Enough to confirm that a fair number (if a minority) of the earliest Model T bodies were aluminum, and the rest wood. I don’t know what year the first of them were made with steel body parts. Another project, I guess.
Car and Driver has repeatedly said they think modern rustproof in works very well and that they are almost never seeing meaningful rust on cars and it is getting good reported on their surveys as a problem infrequently. I suspect Car Talk participants are older than average, remember well the problems they’ve had in the past, and are more likely to own older, high mileage cars. They also seem to be mostly found in the Northeast and Midwest. If I lived in somewhere the roads were heavily salted I’d be doing what I could to minimize it’s ill effects. In California, and for the half of the population that is never (or almost never) exposed to road salt rust is not much of an issue. When I was kid we lived a couple of miles from the beach. Within a couple of blocks of the beach things got rusty. Wrought iron, hardware, barbecues, lawnmowers, and cars, especially the Japanese models so popular in LA in the seventies. Our cars looked fine, but near the beach the blown salt spray was rough on everything. Car paint jobs, too. In five years they would already be chalky and wearing through. Good place to own a Saturn (the true that plastic-bodied ones.)
The “Fiberglass” front ends on class 8 trucks hold up just fine,probaly better then thin guage sheetmetal and are easy to repair hold paint good , and the list goes on,quality plastic is availible if we have the will to demand it(and were is my plastic lawnmower deck(cant afford cast white metal)-Kevin
I don’t see cars ment to last 20 years unless they can have key components changed out. I have an abs composite plastic boat JY15 that has spent 20 years in the sun. It has a clear plastic 3M coating. No indication of sun damage. The body parts could be self supporting as the hull on this boat is many times the strength of FG. Simple painting also protects FG; has for years.
I think many modern cars would run 20 years without too many issues if all the basic maintenance is taken care of. This includes things like oil changes, coolant changes, and transmission flushes. Of course there will be bigger items like the timing belt (if applicable), water pump, as well as routine things like the battery and brakes.
The problem is that people often neglect all maintenance or some key things that need to be done. I know people who won’t change their oil at all. I also know some who change oil very regularly but think nothing about the transmission or cooling system.
I have seen many older cars that just keep running and running. I have a 1994 Geo Metro of course as well as a 1997 F-250 with close to 300k on it. Both had been neglected when I got them but run great after some basic work that needed to be done. My other 2000 S-10 was gotten much newer so I have kept up on things with it and not had the problems to get it back in order.
Is your 1997 F250 the light duty version with the 7 bolt rims or the super duty version with the 8 bolt rims?
Getting parts for that era F250 can be annoying, because the parts guy never knows if you’ve got the the light duty or super duty version, and you always have to explain which one you’ve got
@MarkM
Excuse me for saying so, but Car and Driver is a shill for the auto industry in general. A few weeks ago I saw an 8 year old 4Runner with rust through around the rear window the only area that isn’t " hidden" by plastic cladding in the too typical rust areas. Today in the parking lot of the golf club, parked next to me was a less then ten year old Jeep Grand with both from wheel wells and fenders rotting like there was no tomorrow. . If they are that bad now, it started years before and they are only technically passing non perforation warranty limits of 5 to 6 years. Look at the frames of any truck after two years in the rust belt and you will see it’s just a race between time and frame thickness. When a good friend’s 10 year old Mitsubishi has holes you can put your fist through in the rockers, Car and Driver imho, then is making claims on cars less then five years old.
The auto makers make these claims all the time and though there are incremental improvements over time due to other factors having to do with weight and mandates, in general, the five year claim can’t be disproven when they hide it so well. Obviously rust belt cars are on the extreme end and cars do well with good care and dry weather elsewhere, but cars can easily be made to withstand that onslaught in worse situations, even in the Northeast and Midwest. . Again, they are just better at hiding it. Heck, cars of old would last forever in dry areas. It’s never or seldom an issue with some areas of the US.
I agree; we are all old, but we aren’t all senile or blind. The same crappy rust prone connectors in non safety aesthetic areas are still used. I often change them out with SS connectors from my sailing parts box on vehicles over five years old. It’s still work in progress.
I have an F-250 light duty with the 7 lug wheels. You don’t have to tell me about buying parts for this truck. I first learned how the parts guy were when I took the heavy duty ball joints home and started to tear the front end down. It became obvious that I had the wrong parts. I took them back to the parts store and they guy insisted that he had given me the correct part. I even had the VIN number and told him it was the light duty. This involved another trip back with the old part and he said, “Oh, that is the ball joint for the F-150.” I said, yes, this is more like an F-150 in some ways and that this was the ball joint I needed. Sometimes the parts also apply to the 1996 or the 1998 but not what is in the computer for my truck. There have been many other return trips back with the old part to make sure I get the correct one.
I replaced the clutch and was going to replace the flywheel instead of just having it turned. They sent me like 6-7 different models of Ford flywheels from that era before I gave up and just had it turned. I have a 6 bolt crank on this model. I understand the majority of these used 8 bolts or something. They did once send me a 6 bolt flywheel but the holes were too small or spaced differently.
This truck also has an IMRC or Intake Manifold Runner Control or Air Intake Tune Valve. This is a secondary throttle butterfly that is opened electronically. When you get an old truck that wasn’t kept in proper running order and was burning dirty, this tends to get all crudded up with carbon and stick. I figured out what this was but the dealer told me that my year truck didn’t have this feature. I had to show them where it would be on the parts diagram and they told me my truck didn’t have one. I finally insisted that they come outside and look at the truck and they said they had never seen one like mine before. Either way, I dumped some Seafoam through and the sticking is now tolerable. I am not going to take apart the upper intake when the problem is now only very intermittent. If it starts to act up, a half can of Seafoam through the intake keeps at at bay for a while.
I would have avoided this truck had I known about all the issues I was going to have like this but I didn’t know about the situation then.
How many mags who accept paid advertising aren’t ? Their articles are hardly independent and often just mouth the claims the auto industry makes in general. They are entertaining but taking their word for products is like taking the word of any car dealer who is selling you a car…
I ditched Motor Trend completely a few years ago when they published that hokey story about the newer Mustangs saving 10 gallons of gas a year because of the use of LED taillamps as compared to the models with incandescent bulbs.
Well I can live with brake lines not being stock and have to custom fab for a 10 year old vehicle. But imagine I have probably 10 computers on xp, ok your car is no longer supported? Leave manual windows and keep microsoft windows out of my car!!!
Stop Gilding the Lily for Petes sake! some improvements now are so incremental now its ludicrouis;we need a “Jitterbug” model automobile,no power anything ,vinyl interior good AM/FM radio, a lack of power steering is not a defect in my opinion-Air conditioning ready(dealer installed-give the Mechanic bay something to do rather then fixing built in defects-Kevin
ps Why did Ford create such a monster as a light duty F-250?kinda like Chevys heavy duty 1500?
Likewise, I got tired of car magazines never saying anything bad about the cars they tested. And “long term” tests were about 10,000 miles or so, just enough for break-in.
Most mechanics I talked to found car magazines to be polyanna literature. Difficult to service items and those subject to rapid wear-out or early failure were never mentioned.