Your problem was your dealer - pure and simple. Yes, thewre were some assembly problem issues (due to labour problems) but a properly done pre-delivery service solved the vast majority of them - and the dealer was paid to perform that inspection/service. It was not out of the ordinary to spend over 2 hours on a PDI - and the dealer was paid for something like 3 hours. Ford and Chrysler had every bit as many problems in those years - and GM? They've ALWAYS had issues.. Toyota and Honda had their issues back then too.(as did Datsun - and VW.
When they say "they don't make 'em like they used to" i say "THANK GOD!!!"
On Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 7:25:48 AM UTC-5, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote: .
One of my long time friends would certainly give you an "AMEN" on that. He loved early Mustangs and the old 240Z from Datsun.
The amount of knowledge needed to "authentically restore" the cars correctl y was staggering. The money needed to find original parts, just as much. The time to learn what to do, which parts went on which variant (depending on manufacturing dates, etc.) and on and on was a full time job. He gave u p on the last Mustang and sold it dismantled for parts as he couldn't get i t restored to his standards. After about 5-6 years in the garage, his wife stepped in, and that was that.
He got two 240s up and running and couldn't find the parts needed to restor e them. He found that certain pieces from 260s fit the 240s, so he went th at route. Now all he had when finished was a running sports car.
He lost money on all of his efforts. Restoring is 1) a labor of love and/o r 2) a full time job.
We went to a local car show after that, and he was crushed as he found what I had told him all along, you can buy a finished product for about 1/2 (or less) of what it costs to restore one in your garage by yourself. He hasn 't turned a wrench to restore a vehicle since.
Check out the prices on some of these mid 60s Mustangs:
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Check out the '69 Ford Fastback Mustang with the 351 Cleveland V8 and less than 19,000 miles. Great paint, Cragar mags, new shoes, and $28,500. No m uss, no fuss. My boy had 25K in the engine rebuild, transmission rebuild, new drive shaft and rebuilt rear end of the '67 he was last working on. Th at did include the J.C. Whitney (remember them?) interior kit that was form ed carpet, door panels, and seat covers that were sitting in the car when h e sold it. He needed a new steering wheel, appropriate AM radio, all knobs and handles, badges, body work, paint, and the correct age rims. He figur ed another 10K and a couple of years of his elbow grease and he would have it finished if he had found the time.
He sold the car (not running) with the papers on the rebuilds along with al l the parts and pieces he collected for $5500 after coming down on his pric e many times. The guy that bought it was a lucky break for him as he bough t it as a project for him and his son that was a 16 year old motor head.
My brother had "The Machine" when we were teenagers. It was geared so low that I could accidently take off in 3rd gear when being a careful designated driver - feathering the clutch because I wasn't accustomed to the car .. half way through the intersection I would realize that I didn't need to shift quite yet. :-)
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Previous owner < a friend & AMX fan > had it painted black and kept the stripe pattern but made it a white stripe - it looked pretty good, John T.
WOW! Things have changed. My son and I used to visit "Street of Dreams" in Sugar Land about 10~15 years ago. Old Mustangs were going for $40K+ They only had American that was 30+ years old and the average price was about 10 times original. I remember $65K for an old Road Runner with painted wheels and hub caps.
snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote in news:lcu8dc1fcbhpfdd1i213prqgk9r3m0i0on@
4ax.com:
Well, yes and no. They had some good engineering, but production quality was all over the map - sometimes great, sometimes abysmal - perhaps not worse than GM et al, but not different enough to be called "good".
Friend of mine had a pair of AMXs - a 69 with a 390 that he used for drag racing, and a 70 with the 360 that was his daily driver - at least, when he wasn't rebuilding the transmission (the 4 speed manual was a bit underspec'd for that engine, and ate first gear fairly regularly). He had a long list of stuff he'd fixed on both cars when they were new, but after correcting all the factory mistakes he figured they were good cars.
a new steering wheel, appropriate AM radio, all knobs and handles, badges, body work, paint, and the correct age rims. He figured another 10K and a couple of years of his elbow grease and he would have it finished if he had found the time.
I think one thing that has changed is that American cars 15-20 years ago were a shadow of their former selves. Now the performance is back with a vengeance--who'd a thunk we'd ever see a _stock_ Caddy that does sub-12-second quarters and tops out at 200?
And to get that roadrunner into that shape takes $75K. Takinf a rusted out '64 "Stang and replacing all the panels, rebuilding the engine, trans, and suspension, and putting in a new interior goes well over $50K - and the selling price has dropped a lot since 2008.
Model A and T Fords have lost almost half their "real dollar value" over the last 20 years.
Not with the stock aluminum 4 cyl unless you are running real skinny tires at high pressure. Even a Cosworth would be stresses to get much rubber in second with decent tires. Now something like a 1.0 liter Chevy Sprint or Pontiac Firefly with a
35+ lb flywheel COULD break 'em loose if you dumped the clutch at about half throttle - just the inertia of the flywheel produced significantly more instantaneous torque than the engine - - - But they didn't spin for long.
The AMC V8s are some of the most under-appreciated engines of the sixties and seventies in North America - both as far as reliability and performance.
Our family owned a fair number of "rumblers" - a 62 American, a '63 or '64 classic, '66 Classic, 68 Rebel wagon, 72 or '73 Ambassador wagon and '75 Pacer. Dad owned the American, and my brother inherited it, Dad owned the rebel, my sister owned the 63/64, I owned the 66 and the Pacer. All were bought used - the rebel was sold as a demonstrator but we found out it was a Budget Rent-a-car - all the rest were well used and abused. The 62 was a bell telephone car that dad bought and used as a truck for his electrical business. He traded it in on something else, and ended up buying it again about a year later. Couldn't kill that miserable beast - as ugly as they come.
'60s American cars had no shortage of horsepower and nothing changed in the laws of physics to change that. What changed was the law. The electronics let a car that is in compliance with the new laws produce as much power as one that was produced before the laws went into effect.
What was annoying was a small block V-8 with powerglide and a high ratio rear end. My mothers Olds would burn rubber at the drop of a hat--if there was even the slightest bit of moisture on the road it was difficult to get it to start moving. Finally caught up with me one rainy afternoon--went to cross an intersection, nothing in sight as far as I could see in either direction, and there I was a quarter of the way across spinning the wheel like all getout and not moving at all when some guy hit me. Of course the cop thought I had run the stop sign and there was no convincing him otherwise.
It also allowa them to make more power and still be streetable - think variable valve timing and cyl to cyl timing advance settings to tune out detonation under any condition. You forget that 1 hp per cubic inch was the "holy grail" in the sixties - 200 is not a big stretch today on a normallt aspirated engine running on pump gas. (600HP on a 300 cu inch engine, and 250 on a 2.5 liter) - and at those power levels they can still meet emissions and give significantly better gas mileage than the cars of the sixties/seventies.
That was more a function of really crappy tires than horsepower - particularly going through a "slip and slide powerglide" - and to the best of my knowlege NO oldsmobile came from the factory with a powerglide.. By the time GM was putting "corporate' engines into Oldsmobiles the "powerslide" was history - The chevy smallblock first arrived in Olds cars in about 1977. the last Powerglide slush pump was built in 1973. Olds used Hydra-Matic transmissions - and the 3 speed Turbo Hydra-matic replaced the 2 speed Powerglide in Chevies. by 1974.
Replacing the powerglide with a TH250 in an early Chevy 11 Nova made a HUGE performance improvement..
No, cars produce a lot more power now. It's not unusual to see a six delivering 300HP now. I recall any 300HP sixes from the 60s, or 650HP stock anything.
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