Re: GM, Ford reputations take a hit

Mike, if you can't back your claims, then you it like they don't exist.

We already know you are an 80-year retired engineer who thinks he knows what he is talking about. We have little evidence to back up this belief.

Jeff

Do you believe in God? ;)

mike

Irrelevent. What I do beleive that if you make a claim, it is up to you back it up.

You have yet to do this for your claim about the Japanese auto makers or your claim that the first digit of the WMI and VINs have anything to do with US content.

Jeff

Why is it irrelevant, I believe in God. If one would site the Bible you will ask for proof. You're the one with the problem with believing things you read, show me were I'm wrong. ;)

mike

Not really, if you are going to snip my entire post then also snip my name so it does not appear as if I posted something I did not. OK ? Double Tap

The Chrysler slant 6 was a very reliable engine, much better than others of the day. I've read of taxis with this engine going over 500k miles without engine work.

Please give Mike a break. Intellectual honesty is not is strong point.

His strong point is...Well I am not sure he has a strong point. ;-)

Jeff

Managing to keep threads based on ridiculous claims alive.

Those engines were legend for longevity.

On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:04:23 +0000, Double Tap got out the hammer and chisel and etched in the wall:

Of course, since you top-posted, you completely lost your argument on whatever it was.

HTH!

But then, since you're using Windows, I guess that can't be helped.

Here - at least replace Virus Express with something halfway (for a Wintendo program) decent:

I've used all of the above when forced to downgrade to Wintendo.

Keeping awake by posting old history as current facts.

Yep. Although as I've pointed out, I've had a 318 and a 383 last longer than that slant-6. Pretty much all Chrysler engines from that era were legends of longevity, and very much on a par with engines of today. Better than the ones with rubber timing belts, IMO.

With all due humility, (and I am not a Chrysler man) every engine that I can remember that was actually manufactured by Chrysler was virtually bulletproof.

Chevy made their turds, and Ford had some pretty sorry engines, but the REAL Chrysler engines were spectacular.

Unless I have missed something along the road;>)

Yes, I think you are correct. It was the Mitsushitty engines that really sucked; the only non-stellar Chrysler-made engines I can think of are the more modern V-6 engines, some of which had sludging problems.

nate

You have a point. Most bygone Chrysler engines were pretty tough and ran almost forever. Two terrible things about them, though; they were worse than Harley motorcycles about leaking oil, and many of the carb designs were crap. Let's not forget the ubiquitous ballast resistor (ok, so that's 3). Mopars biggest problems were things "around" the motor, up to and including the rest of the car. Don't get me wrong, Chrysler muscle cars are some of the most impressive ever made. It's just that I was "there" back in the 70s when most 60-70s Mopars were just used cars. The oil leaks, carb problems and rust were enough to make me want to avoid them for my personal cars. I take care of 6 1960s-70s Mopars for a local car collector. Rust isn't an issue as they are basically garage queens. It's still a chore keeping up with the oil leaks and carb issues. The Holleys on the 6-Pack cars are the worst. (They are all FUN to drive, though! :) )

I have seen a website in the past with examples of these failures, Mike. I havent tried to find it lately. Apparently some engines were ruined very quickly when coolant entered the oil.

This website espoused a class action suit against GM. Maybe GM defused the site...I just dont know.

I cant say from experience how serious the range of failures tended to be. We got away with ours because I recognized it immediately. The engine went from normal (no coolant consumption to speak of) to total failure of the plenum in a mile or two.

snipped-for-privacy@nospam.nix wrote:

I'd have to agree. The mid-70s "lean burn" engines had some problems, but that was because the lean combustion process was *incredibly* hard on them, with very high peak temperatures and pretty much continuous detonation. The fact that they worked as well as they did was a testament to the underlying mechanical design. And of course all through the 80s they wrapped very solid drivetrains in wretched K-car garb...

I'm a fan of all American cars from that era. Really my only engine gripe among the American automakers was with Chevrolet and to a lesser degree Pontiac. And don't get me wrong, I'd still take either of them over a Toyota or Honda! The small block Chevy was a basically good engine- actually a superb basic design and far ahead of its time as anyone will tell you, but the constant push to make it *cheap* to produce really compromized the implementation. It was pushed all the way to 400 cubic inches without an increase in deck height, and that really hurt longevity because of the terrible rod ratio that resulted. Even the venerable 350 has a pretty bad rod ratio, the 327 and 283 being far superior in that regard. But the soft block material was a real killer on all of them. And the rather weak ball-stud valvetrain was a huge problem on the big-block Chevy engines. Oldsmobile made very bulletproof engines, Buick made a very solid v8 engine and still does in the 3800 v6. And the aluminum Buick v8 that got sold to Rover and was used in British cars for 40 years was also a work of art. The true Cadillac engines were great in the 50s-70s, HORRIBLE in the 80s (HT 4100 anyone? Or a V8-6-4?), and good again after the switch to the Northstar series. Fords could be "quirky," with some odd oiling system characteristics and the FE series had that funky manifold/head setup that liked to weep oil and made service a pain. And the 429/460 were just WAY heavier than they had any right to be, but they were pretty solid. The small-block Fords (Windsor) were in a way opposite of the SB Chevy. On paper they *looked* worse than the Chevy (tiny deck height up through the 5.0L displacement, etc.) but yet the implementation was always pretty darned good without as much of the push to cheapen things that seemed to dog the Chevy.

Well, I'm not a fan of any of them built in the late 70s to early 80s. By that time the tooling was getting OLD and neglected because of the financial condition of the company, and when you start tearing one from that era down you find that there was a lot more slop than 10 years before or from the mid 80s on. I'm not talking about things like clearances, which were controlled during assembly, but things like the decks not being perfectly parallel to the crank axis, lifter bores not being perfectly perpendicular to the cam axis, combustion chamber volumes varying all over the map, cylinder wall thicknesses being very non-uniform, castings with flaws that would have made them rejects in earlier years, etc. That kind of thing is where the 50s Chrysler Hemis were SO superb despite being at a disadvantage in terms of materials compared to later engines. They left the factory "blueprinted" practically to a level that required a custom machine shop in the 70s or

80s. Its also why they were phased out as being too expensive to produce.

But not half as leaky as a Ford FE!

Umm... there was nothing special about Chrysler carburetors. They were just Holleys and Carters like everyone else used also. In fact both GM and Ford used most of the same models except the Carter Thermoquad, but it was used by International Harvester.

3/4 of a million miles driven in 60s-70s Chryslers and I've NEVER had a ballast resistor fail. I've no idea where the myth that the ballast resistor is a particular problem got started.

Good one. I cant deny that FEs were as bad as any Chrysler engine for leaking.

Uh, no. Ford generally used Autolite carbs, and GM used mainly Rochester. I believe most Chrysler products used Carter. They all used Holley carbs from time to time. You will find the occasional Quadrajet on a Ford, but this was an exception. The most common 4 barrell on Mopars was the AFB(?) and it was a very good unit. The TQs were leaky and temperamental, as were the 2 barrell carbs. Holleys are a PITA no matter what they were used on IMHO.

No myth Steve, I've seen it for myself many times. You just got lucky. If I had a nickel for every ballast resistor I replaced back then, I would be pretty well off. I used to carry one in the glove box of my car to help out stranded motorists. If you saw a Chrysler product broken down beside the road, most often it was due to the ballast resistor.

Don't get me wrong Steve, I'm not saying this just to rag on Chrysler products. All of the manufacturers had their quirks. I always preferred Fords and dealt with my share of flaky chokes, hard starts on damp days, bent pushrods and cracked exhaust manifolds. Now that these cars are collectible, folks tend to forget the faults that were common when they were in daily service.