Why, Ford, Why?

I've got one of those!

They weren't new, they were just kits that were meant to make their way to Bulgaria but didn't. I have to say the bodywork on my car is remarkably good for a Maestro registered over nine years ago.

Snip

fashion/advertising that is driving the fast, complex, car movement.

Mrcheerful

Wasn't this tried many years ago with the Hindustan Ambassador? (based on the old 50's Morris Oxford). Certainly very easy to maintain - every village in India has a garage that can do everything to them, and not a laptop in sight. Sales in Britain were very not encouraging as I remember.

I ran a 1967 Ford Anglia Estate 1200, bought at 3 years old, for 14 years. I never had a breakdown and the car was never in a garage for (so-called) 'servicing'. I did everything myself and we travelled the length & breadth of the country in that car (with wife & 3 kids). Having said that, it was a load of s***e to drive!

Terry D.

The Hindustan Ambassador had a major problem for this country, the engine was not clean enough running, by the time they had fitted a decent engine the price was too high, coupled with pretty poor quality on the rest of the car it was not surprising it failed to sell.

In message , gazzafield writes

Lucky Bulgarians is all I can say. (Yes, I had Maestro once)

Plenty of modern cars run 100,000 miles and more with *no* replacements to the EFI system. Or ignition - some even plugs. A 'simple' car with points and carbs simply won't.

Not so. A car with a simple carb and ignition system won't pass emission regs. It's a whole different argument about these regs - but they certainly make the air smell better in city traffic. As anyone following an 'old' car will have noticed.

an su carb. can get through emissions tests in conjunction with a cat, I wouldn't be surprised if a points dissy can't be accurate enough too.

My point is that there cannot truly be the need for so much complication in a low tune runabout.

But don't they make the rules stricter every year? I think it might be hard to make a car that passed the latest new-car rules with points and carbs (not that you'd want to IMO).

Before catalysts were made compulsory (around 1992?) most shopping cars had a single carb, which was cheaper, simpler and more reliable than putting injection on them.

But if you have a cat you really need an O2 sensor and the feedback from that has to be processed by an electronic box of tricks. There's no way of doing it with vacuum pipes or mechanical Rube Goldberg contraptions.

There were a few cars with cats and carbs together for a short time, but I don't think it worked very well.

have you tried changing the pollen filter on a new V.W Beetle, what a pain in the arse that is, you have to take the top of the dash off & then un-screw the cover the house's it.

SU went to surprising lengths with electronics to make a carb pass the then emission regs - and maintain that performance. Same with points ignition - it might just be ok for a short while.

Complication? A decent carburettor is an extremely complicated piece of precision engineering. EFI may actually be cheaper to make - regardless of what is charged for spare parts. Same with electronic ignition. A decent distributor isn't cheap to make either.

I was referring to the umpteen sensors and computers that everything has nowadays

But most efi/electronic ignition systems manage 100K without giving any grief, I can't remember a points/carb system taht didn't need servicing/tuning/retiming & spare parts in a 100K.

In these colder mornings I'd dispute that. When I take my dog out for it's morning walk some of the modern stuff that passes me has what I can only describe as a "flowery, sweet" smell, and it doesn't half make me gag. I don't know if it's cats or modern petrol or what but it stinks.

Ben C (Ben C ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

But back then, the electronics were complicated and expensive. Now, basic injection is utterly simple. The electronics cost peanuts to make.

Heath Robinson, please, this side of the pond.

Because of the difficulty of access on most cars as detailed in the previous posts, pollen filters will invariably never be changed during a so-called 'service' at a garage. I bought a 4 year old Nissan Almera and, although it had been regularly 'serviced', the pollen filter was original (when I eventually located it hidden behind the glove box). The evidence was that a plastic snap out section had to be removed for access to the filter, and this was still intact. I simply removed it, washed and dried it, and replaced.

Terry D.

These probably cost pennies to make - regardless of what they sell for as spares.