Anyone into old cars or trucks?

[Bluenote]

awesome, bluenote! Mopar or no car!

The caveat though is that the Belvedere is only by the loosest stretch of the imagination a "street car".

Lotsa fun to take money from the crate motor Chevy crowd and the " tuner car" import guys , though one does need to keep a close eye on certain segments of the latter , there ARE folks who know what they are doing within that crowd , I've seen some VERY quick rotaries and Turbo-Supras , an occasional Skyline and few GSR based Hondas/Acuras.

 

[Robert]

BUT , have you attempted to work on a modern car lately? Every one of the items above the individual with mere cursory knowledge can accomplish quite easily , not so much nowadays.

To say nothing of fuel pumps you have to drop the tank to get to , the various smog systems tied into the CPU etc.etc.etc.

And I would dispute that " rust out in a few years" , sorry but I live where they still use salt on the roads in winter , 3-5 year old cars with body rot and rust are quite common here.

As an example of reliability , I put better than 400k on a 225 inch slant six with nothing more than routine maintenance.

I will agree vociferously as regards the plan for the increasingly obsolete that started in the early to mid '70s and ran through the early '90s , witness the atrocious series of Chevy small blocks with phenolic resin timing gears , cams that went flat at 30k miles , valves that would spit a head into the combustion chamber at anything over 4500 rpm , computers with no backup circuit , nightmare distributors that would lose the hall effect sensor , main bearings our of silly putty and connectings of taffy.

And though I'm rather a Mopar nut , don't even get me started on the "disposable" offerings from Chrysler , including the Caravan.

I grew up in Michigan. In those days, it wasn't uncommon to see cars rusted through in two or three years. The zinc oxide coating on the sheet metal wasn't applied very well. Big business for Ziebart rustproofing in that era.

400k on any engine would be the exception rather than the rule. Congrats on getting it out of a slant six.

Many of those maintenance checks don't even have to be done any more, and those that do are scheduled at longer intervals. But you're right, those checks were easy to accomplish. One of the great things about that 442 was that the points could be adjusted without removing the distributor. I'll be I still have the dwell meter.

I don't like working on computerized engines, either, but they are great when going from sea level into the mountains.

Agree with your comments on Chrysler's disposable offerings.