Detroit auto makers try some new tricks

Actually its REPAIR costs that keep me away from foreign cars. Far more
expensive and no less frequent, so cost of ownership is much higher.

 

You clipped where I said "Oh wait a minute - that's what used to be in
cars all the time. DOH!" When he was talking about "springs", I was
thinking of a skinny tall coil spring strut type thing shaped like the
gas charged lift rods. Then I remembered the giant clock spring type
hood hinge mechanisms.

BTW - I got my driver's license in 1966.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

What you asked was irrelevant to my situation.

She doesn't. She was instructed a few decades ago as to the
problems it causes.

This area has few if any full service gas stations.
Toyota EVAP failures area a common problem that have not been
corrected.

I don't on either one of my Dodges, nor does my wife.
On my Plymouth, it wouldn't matter except for getting a wet and
highly flammable foot.

 

Good point, Edwin. A person with chronic back problems will be amazed
at their improvement when they quit driving a manual as their daily
driver and switch to an automatic. And some clutches are way worse than
others. The '86 Subaru wagon I drove for years had a very light clutch.
The '80 Chevy Citation I had before that had a horribly stiff clutch.
But it was still a *big* help for me when I replaced the Subaru with
an automatic tranny vehicle.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

That sounds like a contradiction.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

But that will make you go blind.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

If both you boys will look down at your keyboard, you'll discover you're
both playing with 19th century technology The QWERTY keyboard layout was
invented in 1867.

Charles of Schaumburg.

 

My '49 Plym has "clockspring" springs. My '66 Dodge has torsion bars
that criss-cross up next to the cowl. My '69 Dodge and '73 Plym have ~2"
diameter coil springs that work under tension with the linkage. So there
are *lots* of ways to skin that cat without a stinkin' prop-rod.

 

For all you know, all of us except you could be typing on Dvorak keyboards.

But that misses the point- there aren't emissions and fuel economy
regulations working against our use of QWERTY keyboards. There are such
regulations making it less likely that we'll continue to see as many
conventional manual transmissions on the market in future years as we
see today, and we already see far fewer than we saw 30 years ago.

 

I know. By 1993 most of the Corollas in this country were sold with the 4
speed AT. I see very few 3 speed AT's and even fewer 5 speed manuals.

AT's seem to be a lot better than the old ones. We had a two speed
Powerglide on our old Corvair and it had a hard time getting up to 60 mph.
We used to say it had two speeds, slow and slower.

BTW, the chances of all of the rest of you except me typing on Dvorak
keyboards are less than 1%. They're really not selling that well. Even the
simple ergonomic split keyboards aren't selling that well.

At least the Detroit products quit using the three-on-a-tree shift with the
wasteful and often sticky linkage. We had a lot of trouble on our H35
(Chevy II) with the 1-3 fork. When it was new, it would jump out of 3d on
the highway. (Dealer couldn't fix that, either.) As it got older, it would
lock in 1st, and Dad would have to pull over to the side of the road and
jiggle some plates near the firewall to get it to shift out of first.
(Dealer couldn't fix that, either.)

Charles of Schaumburg

 

Absolutely. The practice also ruins evaporator canisters,

The company I work for owns 120,000+ vehicles, including zero Toyotas.
We go through lots of canisters, because people like to squeeze every
last drop of gas into the tank so they don't have to refuel as often.

This dosen't at all mean that Toyota canisters might not stink, only
that overfilling tanks on a regular basis will ruin them, regardless
of the brand of car.

 

Nah, all the good manufacturers still build a good manual. Infiniti,
BMW, Acura, Porsche.....

 

Toyotas chronic problems with EVAP canisters doesn't stem from
overfilling the fuel tank.

I guess you just needed your chance to offer something that you
knew about your company's 120,000+ vehicle fleet.

 

I stand corrected!!

I got mine in 1973...

 

I got mine in 1974. Took the driver's test on a 1962 Corvair with
Powerglide.

Charles of Schaumburg.

 

I have to admit that back in the70's, nobody talked about Pintos catching on
fire. Then one day it was on the news, and now everybody just acts like
that's all you need to know about them. Every Pinto ever built caught on
fire, that's why there aren't any around today. I've never understood how
that go to be so universal.

The old Mustangs were built the same way, and had the same defect. I'm not
sure about the Falcons, but what I'm saying is it was just an overall Ford
Corporate cheapness decision. There was history there before the Pinto was
developed.

 

I can answer that one. Heck no. Cars in the 60's and 70's were spaghetti
compared to cars now.

 

Al Gore....

 

Right - you can't say Ford didn't know how to make a small car, or a FWD
car. The truth is, they were a huge force in Europe with those cars. The
early Ford FWD cars we got were just world cars. Nothing wrong with that.

Building cars is not really all that complicated. This old stuff of "they
couldn't learn how in 40 years" is just silly. Obviously they all had
plenty of resources to build a good car. They just didn't always use them.

 

Heck yes. Ever seen a crew cab VW bus pickup? That's really an oddity.