Well… This is hard to do. Sometimes it takes your car breaking down on the highway for you to really take a step back and see where you are in life.
Doing so let me see that I am a 22-year-old man, late for work, letting his 31-year-old Plymouth be towed to a shop less than a mile down the road. He is cold, tired, hungry, and about to start crying. This is the third time in as many months that his car has left him stranded, and the third time it’s needed to be towed in his eight months of ownership since he purchased it in February of this year.
There comes a time when we have to make a choice, and I had already decided to sell Helen before I set out this morning, having plastered her with For Sale signs on Monday. 
Taking the above picture shortly after calling the tow truck, I had a melody pop in my head. This is not uncommon, as I almost always have a snippet of a song or a phrase that will loop endlessly in my mind regardless of what is happening. The song “They can’t take that away” started to play softly on the jukebox of my mind as tears came to my eyes. I realized that for all the heartache Helen has caused me, we’ve made some great memories during our short time together. I took my first big road trip in her, going to a car show in Austin and staying the weekend exploring the town. She made the four hour trip there and back without complaint. I lost two center caps off my wheels as I went over some rough roads. While at Cars and Coffee in Austin, I met a man who made the whole trip for me.
He ran up to where I had parked in the back of the car show lot with the other oddball cars the show organizers couldn’t figure out where else to put. He explained breathlessly that he had met his wife in high school while driving a car like this and practically begged me to let him sit in it. He climbed in and I let him fire her up. He rolled down the window and beamed as his wife took a picture. I never would’ve thought some old family car, a far cry from the brutish muscle cars and sleek exotics at the front of the show, could make anyone other than myself so happy.
Here is a transcription of the For Sale paper on her window if anyone is interested. I’m local to North Texas. I paid $2400 for her and have maybe another two thousand in repairs and other things. If anyone is interested in buying her, drop a line in the comment section below. If she’s sold before this goes to print, I’ll be sure to update this post.
1987 Plymouth Gran Fury
“Helen”
318 V8 with two barrel carburetor
3 speed Torqueflite automatic transmission
85,000 original miles
Steering components (steering gear box, idler arm/sleeve, pitman arm, bushings, ect.) replaced
Two freeze plugs replaced, and others checked
Coolant flushed last month
Oil changes given every three months
A/C and Heat work
Power windows/ locks work
Cassette tape player works
Tagged and inspected until Feb 2019
Will come with: Title, service records, owner’s manual, original shop manual, shop parts catalog, and Haynes manual
Asking price: 3,500 OBO! (cash only)
Contact: Dakota Overton-Wright
No matter what car I get next, I’ll always have Helen in my heart. I hope she goes to someone able to treat her right. I’ll be doing what I should’ve done from the start and am buying a modern car that I can rely upon fully. Hope is not lost for me yet… because I have a line on a project car that I don’t have to rely on to get me home.
It’s been sitting since 1998 in an abandoned house and was only pulled out a few weeks ago. A friend and I desperately want to see it on the road again. It’s currently sitting in an industrial yard owned by the nephew of the man who found it. It’s got a regular two barrel 350 and a TH350. It’s your average family car.
Despite a few dents, it seems to be in good shape. The motor isn’t locked up and none of the wiring is chewed. The old insurance paperwork we found shows that was owned by a Miss Stone until 1998… and that’s where the story goes cold. It was a car local to Dallas.
Hopefully I can begin a new series as I try to bring this old boat back to life! There’s always a bright side. A sun behind the clouds, and sometimes, there’s a 1970 Impala sedan just waiting to be saved.
Enjoy your project-it will be easy since everything is available at NAPA.
As for the Grand Fury, well, live and learn. Driving an old car as a DD is always a crap shoot. You win some, you lose some. I have won more often than losing, fortunately.
Seems like a potentially happy ending to what could have been a melancholy story. Selling a well-loved car is hard but necessary sometimes when daily transportation is at stake. Have fun with that ’70, those are great cars and well worth saving!
I know how you feel.
Just last week, I made the decision to sell my Crown Victoria, which I’ve loved driving for the last 11 years. My wife and I are buying a new minivan to replace our current 2010 Honda Odyssey, so I had to choose — keep the Crown Vic and sell the Odyssey, or the other way around?
I know what I WANT to do. I love the Crown Vic, and it’s always been a dream of mine to drive big, traditional sedan. However, it has several irritating-but-expensive repair issues, and it hasn’t exactly been trouble-free over this past year (only left me stranded once, as opposed to your 3 times, though). BUT, the Odyssey doesn’t need any repairs, and the hard fact of life is that between a needy house, tons of kid-related medical expenses, and lots of other rising costs, I have to make in impartial decision. So the Crown Vic’s gonna go. Sorry to say.
But like with your example, all is not gloomy. We will still have our ’95 Thunderbird for use as an occasional driver, so I’ll look on the bright side.
I hope you keep us posted on your updates.
I wish I had $3500 lying around.
Sounds like nothing that couldn’t be cured by stripping all the primitive emissions crap off of the engine, slapping a 4 barrel intake and carb on there, wake up the 318…
(I kid I kid – just a little.)
😉
I’ll take 1k at this point. I’m being serious. If someone is wiling to pay for shipping.
Kidding or not, I think youre spot on. Wonky, half baked malaise era emissions garbage rarely worked well when new, let alone 30 years later. I think most of the problems of this car would be solved in short order. Of course that does take time, money and determination…
It was a gentle teasing. My time to pick one of these up has passed (it would have been a good idea about 10 years ago, pre kids and pre snagging the “family heirloom” 67 Mustang.)
The beauty of the M-bodies is that they are much more modifiable than people realize. 360 V8 fits heck a Magnum V8 from a Grand Cherokee will fit and you can add the 4-speed auto from the Grand Cherokee and matching solid rear axle.
But even “as is” – dropping Lean Burn and the maze of vacuum hoses will help cure many ills.
That is exactly what I was thinking. I it is hard accept that a 318 car can’t be reliable, even one from the 80s. Get rid of all that crap, install a decent carb and should be enough.
Helen is even a low miles car.
If it doesn’t hurt too much to tell, what has happened to strand you since the Gran Fury was all fettled in your prior post about it? It seemed pretty sound then, including ditching the Lean Burn system.
A freeze plug worked loose behind the bell housing and began to leak coolant at an alarming rate. That was a $600 fix because they had to move the transmission back. I switched the wires when trying to install to install a new ignition coil and blew the box…
Long story short, it was a simple loose connection at the ignition coil this time.
Enjoyed your post. Why the handcuffs?
Long story. Maybe I’ll share later.
At some point I decided that I was no longer going to rely on an old car for daily driver duty. It can work if there is another car in the household so that you can park it for several days until you have some time to give it some attention. But that is the key, any old car must get attention on my schedule and not on its.
My last really old car that served as a DD was the 1968 Newport Custom. But it was still not quite 30 years old at that point. And a lot simpler.
” any old car must get attention on my schedule and not on its”
Words to live by! And hopefully its problems aren’t ones that leave you stranded on the side of the road.
Yup, project cars are a lot more fun when you don’t have to rely on them.
I hope Miss Stone’s Impala is free, or close to it!
If Miss Stone’s Impala was free it still would be an expensive mistake. The “few dents” are actually a fairly hard hit, and it needs tires. Then there are the issues that only Miss Stone knows about. It’s a 4 door post too, usually the domain of lowly Bel-Air’s and Biscayne’s.
Oh, and it hasn’t been run in 20 years. That’s twice as long as most 70 Impala’s ever ran new out of the box. That translates to 20 years of deterioration by neglect and the elements. I don’t mean to be a party pooper but, your Plymouth is light years ahead of this Chevy. (And I like 70 Chevy Impala’s and used to have one.)
About a month ago I realized that I was relying on a 30 year-old car I purchased for 1000 dollars in the New Mexico desert to bring me on a 200-mile round trip every month so that I don’t go to jail. So I switched back to my modern car, which is 16 years old. I was reminded of this by an actual failure. As I had just fixed half the wear parts on my 30 year-old car, I switched back once again to that one.
Grass is always greener on the other side. Unless the other side is jail. Then it’s greener on your side.
I would trust my 1962 GT Hawk for daily driver duty if I had to, but I would feel guilty about doing so, so I can definitely understand your predicament. The classic battle of pragmatism vs. desire has been raging in the past and will continue to rage long after the automobile is made obsolete.
I have owned 6 big Healeys, 6 old Jaguars, and 6 Triumphs. I worked on many MG s from TDs to As to Bs and lots of Midgets. I do not care for Midgets. My wife wanted one and a friend had one at a good price. I bought it and someone i knew slightly said he was sorry he missed the deal.
Maybe 2 weeks later my wife calls and the Midget is dead. She says the clutch went south. She is an excelleant stick shift driver. I went to pick her up. She asks who will be towing the Midget. I said I don’t know or care, after she called I called the want to be buyer and sold it to him where is as is. I really didn’t want to pull a Midget motor.
Sorry to here about your bad luck with the Gran Fury. It is very hard to rely on an old car for a DD when you haven’t already lived with it for a long time to know the history and maintenance. And using an old car as a DD usually means you should be pretty mechanically skilled. Unless you desperately need the cash right away, don’t give this car away for $1000. The right buyer will come along and give you a fair price. Or better yet, if financially feasible, why not keep it as a project car and get a modern reliable daily driver? This car looks like it needs way less work than the Chevy.
In any case sorry for your troubles and wishing you all the best of luck with the sale of the car. If you do end up with the Impala, it should make a decent project car. At least Chevy’s are pretty much dirt cheap to fix up.
My sentiments exactly.
P-Fox: The Gran Fury as you know is supremely comfortable. It is an order of magnitude in better condition than the Impala. If at all possible keep the GF as your project car.
Forget the Impala. Keep the GF.
I dunno man. I get the frustration, really I do. But from where I sit, the Plymouth looks a LOT more solid of a car than that chevy, which needs a LOT to get it up to snuff. The Plymouth will definitely need some work, but as mentioned above it sounds like it just needs to be freed of glitch malfunctioning emissions crappola.
With you on that. If author is down to the desperation of being willing to take $1k for Helen, why not just buy a cheap but reliable beater and let Helen be the project?
Because I have to sell her to buy another car. I need a down payment. This way, I can still get around without fear of breaking down and work on a car that is MUCH easier to fix. Parts are easy to find, lots of aftermarket support, etc…
First, let me say I’m sorry things haven’t worked out a lil’ better with Helen. There’s always going to be some ‘bugs’ that crop up when you begin driving a car frequently that hasn’t been driven frequently in years. Nature of the beast. I know being stranded 3 times in 8 months is highly annoying, but isn’t Helen fixed up now and ready to go go go?
→ Is there such thing any more as a cheap, late-model used car that isn’t one step ahead of the crusher??? Beats me. Did that CASH FOR CLUNKERS program from several years back take a lot of perfectly drivable used cars off the road? I’m honestly not sure — perhaps someone here knows. If you let Helen go for a $1,000 measly dollars, O Pioneer_Fox, that won’t be much of a down payment will it? You could easily end up with a ragged-out used car that you cannot “fully” trust to get you from Point A to Pount B without ‘issues’. Honestly, you’d have no way of knowing if whatever car you end up with will be “MUCH easier to fix”. It’s a crapshoot. Anyway, seems like Helen ought to be rolling along better now that you’ve had all these things fixed? (I hope so).
I do know something about daily driving an older car. When I was 22 in 1995 I was driving my 31-year-old 1964 Ford Falcon to college and work at Publix. Every day it was one place or the other and I wore myself out in mid-summer . . . but despite the fact I got very sick the Falcon did not. It kept motoring along doing its 6-cylinder duty without fail and I returned the favor by treating it as gently as I could despite fighting annoying traffic every day I drove to college. I had to make do without certain things: Air conditioning? Forget it. I existed in the near year-round South Florida heat without A/C and there was no way I could install an aftermarket unit without the car blowing up. Looking for a car with giddy-up? Look elsewhere! A ‘170’ engine mated with a 2-speed Ford-O-Matic is not a speed demon; it’s quicker than the ‘144’, but that’s faint praise! That said, I kept up with the flow of traffic well enough but as for quick acceleration off the line when the light turned ‘GREEN’ . . . yeah right. I got to where I thought it was funny watching how many people would motor past me while Cheapo Falcon got up to speed. Usually 45 mph on the route I drove to college. Old cars get grumpy sometimes but even new cars can get grumpy. I cannot recall any time where the Falcon left me stranded in the middle of the road due to a mechanical problem (which is a good thing since I have no emergency hazard flashers).
100 million vehicles have been junked since the C4C program ended.
^ Yeah, Cash for Clunkers was nearly a decade ago. A lot of new cars bought during C4C are probably now at your local pick-and-pull.
The Chevy will not be much easier to fix and no the parts that you’ll actually need to get it running and driving safely won’t be any easier to find. Sure it is a Chevy and all but it is generations older.
I get it, things have to happen sometimes we don’t always like.
I dailied my 86 Parisienne for one year, than as a fairweather daily since 2013. Luckily it’s never let me down yet.(looking for wood to knock)
You were jinxed from the start with that Plymouth. A 30 year old car? Could be a problem, but not necessarily. Very low miles? Now we’re getting somewhere (figuratively, not literally), perhaps an old lady had it, and drove it very little. While not as suspect as ultra low miles, it does lend me to think it may have been broken down a lot. In addition, one of the worst things you can do to car is…nothing. If CC has taught me anything, it’s that old cars that have not been very active develop serious health issues. Just like old people. But…and I say this with regret and from personal experience, Chrysler products are the spawn of the devil. I hear about he great ones, usually something like a ‘67 Valiant sedan with a slant six driven by Aunt Irma, but I’ve never actually seen one that I can recall. I feel your pain. With all due respect, someone got a great deal when they sold that car for $2500. That’s “sold it”, not “bought it”. But you probably already know that. Anytime I hear about failing freeze plugs, it means to keep walking; because you will be, probably sooner rather than later. My jaw dropped when you said you were asking $3500. But then again, when negotiating, hit ‘em high, then bring it down. But I see you’re willing to take $1000, now? That’s gotta hurt. The ugly truth always does. If it’s running with cold air, I say take the first cash offer of one stack. If it’s not running, well…take any cash offer. It hurt just reading about your ordeal. GOOD LUCK. Sincerely.
There is another way. Depending on if you have friends or family, or even an interested stranger, and you don’t desperately need cash, find a field or yard to park it in. And watch it sit for the next 30 to 40 years. It would be worth it just for the long term entertainment value.
You make a good point about the low miles. Even a really good car with low miles can be a hit or miss proposition. My son’s 89 Grand Marquis from a few years ago is a perfect example. We did the basics when he bought it and he drove it daily for about two years. But stuff that always seemed to go out before 100k on cars of that era (exhaust, U joints, water pump, autolamp switch) had never been replaced by the original owner. And so we got to do it. Low miles is not always a great place to start if you are planning on counting on the car.
I have to disagree with you on your other points. Chrysler has built its share (ok, more than its share) of lemons but something like the M body was not generally one of them. The basic components were tried and true and that car should be no worse than anything else in its class from the US.
I think the biggest point is the one Vince made – if you are good with doing most of the diagnosis and repair yourself the proposition can work. IF you have something else to drive during the downtime and IF you enjoy doing it enough that hours spent under a car dealing with old rust grease and dirt is your idea of a hobby. For someone who has to take the car in to a pro, the situation can soon get expensive.
I have always had an old car in my fleet and JPC has it 100% right. Old cars, even if gently used/low miles, require frequent attention. If you are on a short budget and don’t have or develop the skills to do most of the work, then you are sunk.
The Chevy looks solid and it would make a good platform to learn how to diagnose issues and fix them if you can swing it as a hobby car. However, I agree with some other commentors that a car that has been sitting that long will need some extensive mechanical massaging to make it roadworthy again. Entire brake hydraulic system (master, wheel cyl, calipers, hoses, and likely some hard lines) trans re-seal, tires, carb rebuild, fuel pump, pull gas tank/clean or new tank, suspension bushings, likely radiator/all hoses, etc. Once you Baseline the car, then you can find out what deferred maintenance you are up against.
In the old days some of the above was cheaper because you could source parts from a junkyard, but those cars a pretty much long gone and so you are left to purchase new/rebuilt parts and that is going to add up. My guess would be $2-3000 to make it roadworthy if you do the labor. Then you have a $1200 car…so it better be a labor of love because it will be a money-loser with that 4-door body style. Don’t let that stop you–lord knows it never stopped me–but just be realistic going in.
She runs as good as she ever has now that a loose connection on the coil was fixed. (That is to say… kinda meh). I’m going back to driving her three days out of the week until I get her sold.
My 2 cents: Don’t take less than $2000-2500 for her. A running car with A/C, good paint and no body nor interior damage is a $2000 car all day every day regardless of what it is. And just to play devil’s advocate, if you’re going to buy something new or newER, and you’re going to finance it, the $1000 down payment is only the beginning. Factor in the additional cost of full coverage insurance if you’re going to have a loan on the car, and try to have a payment or two socked away just in case of emergency, which between all of the above will make it less than prudent to take less than a couple grand for Helen. You’re frustrated right now, and you’re feeling the pressure to get into something that you’ll feel more secure in, but don’t jump the gun and do yourself a disservice. A smart buyer will smell your desperation and take full advantage of it….and so will a smart car dealer. Don’t let the bastards get you down, as Ke$ha would say.
With that fixed, keep Helen…you feel bad now, but she has the potential for bringing you much comfort and pleasure in the times ahead.
Something about the freeze plug that jogged my memory: Do you live where the weather seldom drops to freezing? In years past, some people would run their engine coolant at less than 50/50, mixing it according to a chart on the side of the antifreeze jug. GM even used to say you could run water, with a GM rust inhibitor additive. That was before the advent of higher temperature thermostats and aluminum in cooling systems…in radiators, heater cores and freeze plugs. If Helen has been maintained according to Chrysler specifications there should be no problem, but these days, running “just water because it doesn’t freeze here” is a no-no. I’m just wodering about the other freeze plug behind the bellhousing/torque converter. Did it appear sound, when the transmission was pulled back? I ask because I had to replace one where corrosion had built up around the periphery of the freeze plug, cauing keakage. The coolant I drained out was dark brown with rust…the car had been run with just water (I don’t think you can get GM rust inhibitor any more). Fortunately the heater core remained sound for the rest of the 160,000 miles I owned that car.
If all that was wrong was the loose wire, I would keep it. You’ve replaced many suspension parts and the freeze plugs, these are the things that go bad on old cars. The transmission/engine should be bullet proof for the long term. If it has lean burn system, I would seriously consider getting rid of it. You can get the distributor and module from a junker and do the retrofit.
Buying the Chevy means you’ll be shoveling more money into a car of unknown heritage and abuse.
While I’m no Mopar fan and would have zero interest in such a vehicle I have to say selling this at this point is a mistake. You’ve done the bulk of the work to have a relatively safe and reilable daily driver. You say you need the money for a down payment for another car but are down to being willing to accept $1k which will just get you into a new car that has a lot of needs or a BHPH special that will cost you at least twice what it is worth.
Get a AAA membership, Uber and Lyft apps as well as putting your local cab company in your phone.
Just run from that Chevy as far and fast as you can. It will need way more work than the Plymouth to make it in half as good condition and it won’t be any more reliable and parts availability of the things it needs will not be good.
Yes you payed too much and spent too much on the Plymouth but at this point running head first into an even worse mistake will only make you regret selling the Plymouth.
Ok, your car runs, drives, you’ve replaced most of the suspension and the freeze plugs and the air, windows, and locks work. The car made it 4 hours under its own power. The exterior and interior are in great shape.
You’re MILES ahead of where you would be with the basket case Impala. Someone has the money and resources to restore that car, but the Impala doesn’t run AT ALL and needs EVERYTHING replaced. I wouldn’t go anywhere near that car unless I had a starting budget of $7-$10K. To get it anywhere close to the car you have now, you’d have to spend a LOT more money even than that.
I guess I’ve had good luck with my elderly cars and drove a 1987 Grand National 35 miles each way to work from 2006-2008 and then in law school, and then from 2015-2017 I drove a 1991 Cadillac Brougham absolutely astronomical distances in Georgia. You’re just going to have to keep replacing and tweaking until everything is new/tight/solid/not leaking/not rotted. But the basics are solid, so it’s just a question of finding all the loose and rotted parts and replacing bit by bit, and you’ll have a wonderful car. The M body was not all that well built to begin with, but it will be worth it to get her completely right, and not take that much more money and time to do it. This car was one of the last examples of the era of cars where they weren’t completely finished at the factory and the dealer/first owner had a checklist of what all needed to be done pre/post delivery.
If you’re letting Helen go for $1000, honestly even in a bottom feeder $12K Spark/Fiesta/Versa payment, that’s not going to make that much difference on a monthly basis, you might as well keep Helen and tweak and do some things to her as you have time/money, until she’s 100%. I’d have a hard time letting go that cheaply, but on the other hand, you need something more solid as a daily.
And by the time you’ve spent that $7-10k making on that Impala you’ll have a $2500 car.
I have to agree with some of the others to skip the Chevy, it will NEVER be a problem to find a non-running project. But I also get the urge to sell the Plymouth. Three times in three months is a lot if you have to rely on it or face possibly losing a good job.
Total up what you are spending on it monthly. Include gas and figure out the gas mileage along with how many miles you actually drive or depend on it. Then draw up a list of potential replacements and BE HONEST about how reliable they will be. Then make sure you figure out what the new gas and insurance costs will be. Likely gas will be a lot less and insurance may be more. If it’s a brand new car it’ll likely not have any repair costs for a while, same with a nearly new one still under warranty.
Maybe make the whole thing into a new post. Some here are obviously very partisan to a particular make or model or era, others much more open to anything but overall I’d say everyone would give you an honest opinion. I did a similar one a few years ago when our Outback got wrecked, it was a good, fun post with lots of interesting inputs. (My ten or so choices were all over the board, admittedly).
On the bright side, the handcuffs aren’t on you and you aren’t facedown on the backseat. That’s more than many can say of their experience with that particular car. 🙂
And an alternative is to sock $250 a month into a bank account to replicate the car payment you may have to make on something newer. You will have your $1k down payment in 4 months and will be in practice for a monthly payment. Or keep the money and pay for the occasional repair.
Also, this Plymouth will not go down in value in any significant way while anything you buy new or late model used will lose hundreds of dollars every month. It all depends on your own situation, of course, but Jim Klein and some others are right that it would cost you thousands in that Chevy to get anywhere close to what you have.
I’d definitely go with the devil you know, Helen, (wait, have you just been to Helen Back?!?!?!? lololololol) rather than the devil you don’t in another good looking slightly used car or the Chevy which . . . no. You can get something relatively inexpensive and new that will last way beyond the warranty (I did this in 1996 and as a 20 year old college student bought a new Oldsmobile CIERA because I was over my old cars having something wrong with them). Don’t just go for cheap, get something that’s somewhat enjoyable or you’ll kick yourself for years, but don’t go with another used car and don’t get something worse. Something simple and serviceable will be a good choice and you can enjoy Helen. With Ford and others discontinuing or deemphasising sedans, there are some great deals right now. Re: J P Cavanaugh’s statement that a new car will go down in value every month . . . and Helen or something else could throw a rod and lose all of its value in one fell swoop, and it doesn’t really matter if the car goes down in value until you sell it. You’re paying for the use, so of course it goes down in value.
There’s a lot of good advice here! You are an exceptional young man to 1) be blessed/cursed with good taste in cars and 2) to be smart enough to be involved with a large community of car-smart guys at CC.
It seems the consensus is to avoid making a rash decision to dump Helen for next to nothing and to avoid the 70 Chevy. I’d agree with that. I can see the appeal of that Chevy, but it would best be undertaken with a generous budget and it doesn’t sound like you have that.
I would recommend continuing to advertise the Plymouth for a reasonable price (you paid about top dollar for it and can’t expect to get much of your repair money back) on Craigslist, AutoTrader, etc. Ebay is a good way to get a national audience for specialty cars like this (chances of finding a motivated buyer locally are unfortunately slim) if you are prepared to have it shipped. Buyer pays for the shipping. While you are waiting for it to sell, just pray it won’t leave you stranded or cost you a lot of money. If it doesn’t and its a long wait, maybe you will have second thoughts about selling your lovely old car!
P.S. My grandfather used to say “never let them see you cry or admit that you ever did” 🙂 I also always have a song running through my head.
Not wanting to sound like an old fart with plenty of negative comments (but actually being that person), park or sell the Plymouth but do not rely on it.
When I was 22 years old I did like old cars. I was tempted by, but fortunately did not buy, a ’56 Thunderbird with plenty of northern Illinois rust that I felt I could deal with. Somehow, reason prevailed and the T-Bird was never mine.
My now over indulgence in superfluous old cars did not get started until I was 33 years old and the first old car to make me a victim was a ’72 LeSabre convertible. But it was only a second car and I did not need it; I did have reliable other wheels. You may need to be more prudent and wait on hobby cars until you have a reliable vehicle to meet more important interests.
I bought a 30 year old (1988 MY) car this year and I have spent more than you have in your Plymouth on repairs to the car; it sat idle for six years and that is not good for fuel systems. But I absolutely do not need the car and I am financially secure so that spending on a collector car does not put me at any risk.
I know that I could indulge old car love for those years from 22 to 33 without owning an extra car nor with having one and only one unreliable car. It can be done. I’d get rid of the Plymouth somehow and go that Spark/Fiesta warranty route for a few years.
Finally, only take that Chevy if your are paid to do so and parking for it is free.
I’m sorry to hear about your troubles with Helen, welcome to dailying an old car. This only works if you have more than one car for yourself. I’m hard pressed to say what to do with the Plymouth, it seems like the car runs well, but some old age issues are cropping up. I don’t know what your money situation is like, but you’ve gotten pretty far with the Plymouth, if you truly like the car, I hate to see you abandon all of that effort.
I agree with others, the 70 Chevy is something to run far, far away from. If it were in good enough shape to daily that would be one consideration, but the way it sits right now, no. Hard pass.
If you find you don’t want to continue on with Helen, sell her, then shop like a MoFo for your next car. There’s no shame in delaying gratification. Find a nice inexpensive-to-run car to do the hard work of commuting and most importantly, keeping you in a job. Right now the job is more important than the ride. Besides your tastes will change and maybe Helen will just be a fond memory for you, like my horribly fragile 1983 WS6 Trans Am is for me. And once you have a few coins, you’ll find something you like a lot better than Helen or the Chevy.
If I may be so bold…assuming it’s not all rotten underneath and you’re selling the Plymouth, buy the Chevy.
And if you don’t score this one, you can easily find another.
IMO, unless you’re taking the car apart and engineering your own hot rod, BONES MATTER.
And the 1970 Chevrolet had the best bones of any mass-market low-priced car. Well engineered, well built, rock-solid drivetrain, good on gas for what it is…look up period road tests. It drove well, stopped well, and with the F-41 sway bar package, handles well. Front discs were standard.
Paul wrote a glowing post on the ’70 Chevy a few years ago. Like the Tri-Fives, 1969 and 1970 were high points for Chevy as an all-around great car.
Parts availability and cost are two more major factors that favor the classical small-block V8/Turbo 350 Chevy over, well, just about anything else.
With all this said, is it wise to just buy and make your daily driver? NO.
BUT I WOULD SAY THE SAME ABOUT ANY ANY ANY VEHICLE THAT’S BEEN SITTING FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME – EVEN A MUCH NEWER ONE!
So budget to replace seals, brakes and brake lines, fuel lines, etc. Just Do It. Get the cooling system flushed and tested. Rebuild the carburetor or buy an Edelbrock Performer 600. Take your time and reap the reward of having a cool old car you can also rely on if you wish.
I’ve done this. With the right car, you can too.
Best.
I must chime in on this Chevy. I do not disagree that a 70 Chevy could be a satisfying car. But the car in the photos is not it.
I have always broken a car down to 3 main areas – body, interior, mechanical. My rule for a fixer upper is that when any 2 of the 3 are good, go for it. If you really love the car I could see it if even 1 of the 3 is good. This car is 0 for 3.
I understand the desire to take a basket case and bring it back to life, but for all the time and money you will put into it, for the love of God don’t start with a 70 Chevy 4 door sedan. You will never get any money back out of it.
Go watch some videos from The Corvette Ben on YouTube. He hauls some mighty derelict cars out of hibernation and brings them back to life. He is mechanically skilled and needs every bit of those skills as he tries to turn back the relentless march of entropy. You can experience the fun parts by watching then you can step away from your computer with the warm feeling that the rusty hulk is not your responsibility. 🙂
You’re getting a lot of good advice here in this thread, but there’s also a fair amount of static (e.g., blather about how there’s nothing such as a reliable car built by Chrysler). More to the point, some of the good advice contradicts other of the good advice, so you have some choices to make.
Here’s my own unsolicited read of the situation:
You’ve discovered a hard truth about old cars: no matter what make or model, no matter how reputable for durability, no matter how low the mileage, they’re still old. The faults and failures that crop up with light use are different but roughly equal in magnitude to those that crop up with heavy use. There’s no sidestepping entropy. And even if we waved a magic wand and brought forth a brand-new, zero-miles, one-week-old car from 1987 or whatever other year…we don’t live in that year any more. Back then there were lots of service stations because cars broke down a lot more and needed a lot more periodic fiddlefutzing than they do now. You have a perfect right to expect reasonably consistent reliability from a car, but the practical definition of “reasonably consistent reliability” has been steadily shifting over the years. What used to be considered a normal level of scheduled and unscheduled attention due on a car is now considered horribly unreliable.
It sounds like you have got well on your way to addressing the faults and failures brought on by old age of your Plymouth. There are probably more to come, but it sounds like you’ve put in a fair chunk of the work. A loose wire doesn’t indict the car. An accidental fry-up of an ignition box doesn’t either; that counts as a learning experience for you.
As others have stated, the emission control system on these cars is something of a nightmare. The ’85-’87 M-body cars in US-spec configuration ran poorly even when they were new. There were a lot of tweaks and twiddles to get them to run acceptably without violating emissions laws. What they needed was fuel injection rather than the pathetic, holdover-from-the-late-’70s, hang-on-and-pray carburetor-based system they were saddled with. What to do about this depends in large part on what laws you have to comply with where you live. In some places you cannot legally alter any emissions-related system or component. In other places once the car’s a certain number of years old nobody cares or checks what you do. If you’re in a permissive area, a couple of easy and inexpensive parts swaps under the hood will dramatically improve the car’s dependability, driveability, and fuel economy.
So you’re kind of at a crossroads with Helen: things probably get easier and more successful from here on out, but you may very well be sick to damn death of the whole thing and want out. Either is a legitimate decision.
But don’t be fooled: that ’70 Chev will take a whole hell of a lot more time, money, and effort than you have in mind, to bring it up to any kind of practically usable condition. It’s also an inferior car (as such) by dint of being made before such things as effective seatbelts and effective defoggers and side-impact guard beams in the doors and bumpers that actually offer some crash resistance, and then there are the notoriously dangerous defective engine mounts on the ’65-’70 V8 Chevrolets, which GM “fixed” with a halfaѕѕed, rinky-dink cable and bracket.
A ’70 Chev in good shape would be a fine hobby car to tinker with and occasionally drive on leisure occasions. But to rely on as a daily driver? No. It won’t be better than Helen, and will very probably be worse on that front.
NO WHERE in the US is it legal to remove or render the factory installed emissions controls inoperative. That said yes there are jurisdictions that do emissions testing and only some of those lift the hood and see if the emissions controls are present and even fewer check to see if they actually work.
But there are jurisdictions where they check nothing at all. In NM the do emissions testing in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces. Otherwise no one is even going to look under the hood, let alone hook it up to a tailpipe tester.
If money were no object then say a 4 barrel intake and a universal TBI system (like say MSD’s Atomic EFI) would turn his nightmare into a dream. I’d also wager that a TBI and fresh CARB compliant catalytic converters might come out cleaner than the 1987 original.
However I also realize that money is absolutely an object – if it wasn’t I’d have a restored 67 Mustang in my garage instead of the project car I have now.
My point is that it is illegal to mess with the stuff period. Yes in CA and some other states there is a method of putting in a late model engine but it must carry all of the emissions controls that were present in the donor.
Just because there isn’t emissions testing in an area doesn’t make it legal, just means that you won’t have to yank it all off to license the vehicle.
Yes a properly tuned aftermarket TBI system will blow cleaner in HC and CO than the original system. NOx may be another story.
Fact is putting all that aftermarket equipment will lower the value of the car in this case and cost a lot of money.
A cat isn’t a cure all, it is part of a system and only works properly in conjunction with the rest of the system.
Well if laws in the state weren’t an issue then it wouldn’t be a lot of money. I’d ditch the carb, get a square bore adapter and use any carb I want. In my case I used a Motorcraft 2150 on my 73 Polara. The Holley carb was crap because every one of them was warped. Idle and vacuum were all over the place. The 2150 runs flawlessly plus I know Autolite 2100s insdie and out.
For ignition a “70s electronic distributor but not the Mopar box and ballast system. Mopar unreliable and Pertronix burned out twice. Plus, I wanted 12V to my coil and the way to get it was rewire for an HEI system. Piece of cake and used a relay to run it. Car starts faster than I can say “start”. There is a mount for under the distributor so you can put the module there. Get a coil, fabricate a coil mount, put a relay between the starter relay and the coil and you are ready to go. Maybe $100 for those parts. Yet, that is me…
Yeah the old Motorcraft carbs are a nice simple but effective replacement for the later emissions calibrated Holley and Carter carbs.
The HEI module is a great upgrade too, just make sure you provide a large enough heat sink and spring for a quality module, not the bargain basement ones. Ditto for the coil. My recommendation for the coil is one of the Ford E-core units, straight out of the wrecking yard with the plug of course. The male coil, female wire combination is more reliable and durable than the old school female coil and male wire connection. Plus the E-Core packs about as much power as the HEI can durably switch.
Har, I forgot about those engine mounts. They really did suck, my high school buddy’s Impala broke one and you could see the hood bulging up when he got on the gas 🙂
Later he had a 350 powered Nova, and he solved the problem with solid engine mounts. They did not break, but parts constantly vibrated loose..
Good times. Not really 🙂
Shifting gears completely- new Corolla can be leased for under $200/mo up here (3 yr lease, 12000 miles/yr)., $500 college grad money and $750 military discount also available. Toyota even pays the servicing for the first two years. A Camry LE comes in about $25/mo more if the Corolla isn’t big enough.
Yes it’s boring. Yes, your chances of having to be towed are about equal to being struck by lightening. You’ll lose all excuses for being late to work… along with the anxiety of hitting the starter of a 30 yr old car every morning. Project cars can be fun (I’ve owned enough of them), but I’ve NEVER used them as DD’ers.
PolarBear, I see you and I suffer from the same malady: we spend too much time on phpBB web forums and so have a tendency to use [b] [/b] type markup when we really mean <b> </b> . I’ve caught myself doing that several times here just in the last few days alone, usually after it’s too late to go back and fix.
The usual disclaimer for those leases is that those rates only apply to those with great credit ratings and they usually have a bigger than $1000 down payment and other upfront costs. Being a young guy he is probably behind the 8 ball on the credit score at this point in his life. So while some of us old guys will qualify for that rate not everyone does.
Understand- but Toyota (and Ford) are very aggressive in pursuing young customers with limited credit history, but no derogatory history. Credit Karma is an excellent tool- both to track credit, and see what suggestions they have for raising the FICO score. As a rule of thumb, 640 is buyable, 700 is good, and 740 will get you whatever you want. (Sales Manager of a Dealer Group for over 30 years in my previous life. Not much has changed in the credit landscape, other than the info available to the consumer.
They usually say “Well Qualified” in the ads and the last time I looked I think it said 720 in the fine print for a Camry. It stuck out as odd since it is in the middle of the “good” tier and not at the traditional cut offs of 700/740.
The other thing to think about with that new car lease, or purchasing any car on credit is the insurance. insurance companies love to stick it to young drivers and full coverage on a new car won’t be cheap and could be more expensive than the lease payment, even on a practical car like a Corolla.
Since length of history both overall and specific accounts it is good to start as young as possible establishing a credit history, and of course using it responsibly.
I’m with the guys that are telling you that selling Helen for peanuts and then taking on that rotted-out Chevy seems a bit…masochistic. Yeah, I get that emotions run high after it ditched you three times (three strikes you’re out), but what you need is the best late-model Honda or Toyota you can afford (5-10 years old, or maybe older) as a DD, and then keep Helen as your project car.
You’ll be in in past $1,000 in the Chevy before you know it, and then who knows how much more. Helen just needs a bit of sorting out, maybe.
But hey, it’s your money and your emotions (he says thankfully to be an old man and have sorted out these issues, mostly)
I have to agree with Paul here, P-Fox. I was faced with a much similar dilemma (albeit with a much newer, but much higher mileage car than your Helen), with my Mustang when her transmission went up.
My wife (a non-car-person) was actually the voice of reason here. Rather than get rid of my beloved 2007 Mustang (at this point I had already dropped $2400 to rebuild the transmission which now runs better than it did when new); it made much more sense to keep her as my hobby/pleasure car, rather than take a bath on her and buy a new Mustang.
Instead, I bought a new Civic as my Daily Driver for reliable transportation. There are affordable newer used ones out there too. My older neighbor bought a 2014 very reasonably priced when his W-Body Regal caught on fire.
The point is, I still have my Mustang, but it is no longer put thru the hell of rush hour traffic (unless it’s a day when my Honda is in for service, and then I adjust my hours to minimize her exposure to such foolishness).
Helen is paid for! – Why take a bath on her and get into a car you won’t be happy with? Get yourself a reliable and reasonable commuter car, and KEEP HELEN! – Then you can occasionally enjoy driving her to work on those days when your new (or slightly used) commuter pod is in for warranty work or an oil change. {Hint… Today’s Commuter Pods can be a BLAST to drive! – Ask me how I know!}
FWIW, even NEW cars have gremlins. My Civic had a loose connection like yours that was causing all sorts of issues, until they traced it to a bad two-pin connector in the turbo’s waste gate area. In that case, my old Mustang got me to work while they fixed the Civic; and finally it has no issues (also looking for wood on which to knock).
Lastly, I LOVE Impalas, especially the even numbered years from that generation. That said, whatever you do… RUN SCREAMING FROM THAT BASKET CASE!!!
Best of luck, man… we’re all pulling for you!
Give Helen another chance. The Chevy is a lost cause if your on a tight budget and plan to daily drive while fixing it up, even as simple and reliable as these old Chevy’s are. Don’t give Helen away, if you want to replace her drive for now and hold out for a decent offer. Old cars can be frustrating, but also can be sorted, I daily 30 year old car with lots of miles on it, but I do most repairs myself, and know this particular model very well, and do have back up vehicle, but breakdowns have been few and far between, luckily for me, over the years.
Or buy another identical car as a backup. No one will be the wiser! 😉
Izzat ‘Helen Wheels’?
Please remember that you got burned buying on credit before, and unless your financial situation has vastly improved, you are going to be in the same bracket as you were when you bought the 2008 Sephia.
Helen is the devil you know. Yes, it has problems. But you fixed a lot of them already, and unless something catastrophic happens, it’s all going to be a bunch of little things that may go wrong. Spend the $80 for AAA, keep on top of whatever Helen seems to want done, and expect a couple of issues. Anything you buy with $1000 down will have all the same problems, except it will be a newer beater rather than a comfy cruiser. Put aside whatever you can to go towards a better car for a daily driver. If you save for a year, $3000-4000 can buy you something that will be worlds more reliable.
Long story short, it gets better, but you have to work on making it get better. Trading one mistake for another does not improve the situation. Magic does not happen. Wishing does not make anything happen. You are young, talented, and have a great start on a successful life. Your situation will improve and the stories from your misadventures will make great conversation as you get older. But you have to make the hard choices well, and you have to put off temporary pain for long term gain.
In the era when the average price of a new vehicle exceeds $35k, I think that we need to reconsider the sale of our beloved rides because they need repairs.
I have a vehicle that I’ve owned since new – a 1997 Ford Escort LX – it stickered for around $10k and was one of the first 1997’s built (August 1996 build date). I had anticipated keeping this car for the life of the five year loan and then to reconsider whether to keep it after that.
Life without a car payment is a blessing.
I throw money into savings as if I were making a payment, but in reality, I know that one day this 22 year old ride with 176k miles will need repairs. And short of an accident, I will continue to make repairs.
That $35k new car will have to be financed and I’ll pay personal property take on the value at the time of the assessment each year. And this ride after five years of financing will be lucky to retain half of its value (unlikely to retain 33%).
With the new ride I’ll lose at least $17.5k in the process of five years.
I’ll never spend $17.5k on the Escort in the worst case scenario in repairs. So what if I have to put in $2k (never had it hit $1k yet even with tires and replacing its to meet state inspection where original parts are wearing out).
A vehicle that breaks down is due to a problem that hasn’t been fixed; repeated breakdowns mean the owner has not done his job in finding the problem or taking it to someone who could. I had a 1986 Lincoln Town Car that I had a persistent problem in it shutting down while hot; even repair places couldn’t (or wouldn’t) find the problem. I sold it because I could not take a second car to my new apartment. Regrettably several years after I sold this I found the problem was the car’s computer that was overheating and shutting off; cooled down it would restart. Common problem in the older Lincoln. I didn’t sell because I couldn’t fix it or didn’t want to deal with it – I just didn’t have a place to put it until such time as the problem could be fixed. A vehicle that was a dream had to be sold because of reality.
Let’s not be so fast on selling “problem” vehicles – especially ones we didn’t do our job on finding the flaw that was there when we bought it – let’s keep our older cars and repair them even if the repairs exceed the value of the car. Certainly any money spent on the older car will be far less expensive than a year of $400 car payments.
I fail to see how buying a basketcase makes any sense when the prior vehicle was beautiful and just needed a professional with skill to make it run dependably.
Average car at $35K. I guess if you put the high end cars into the group. If concentrating on the Corolla/Civic/Mazda 3 to Camry/Accord/Mazda 6/Fusion the average is a lot lower now. I just bought a Mazda 3 for my wife for $18K which includes the tax and license fees. That put the car at around $16,400 which is pretty much what I paid for my Focus… in 2004!
Once word got out that I was looking at the Mazda 3 and Fusion I started to get really great offers via email and I hadn’t yet walked in to talk or bargain.
I think a lot of folks misunderstand, as I don’t believe there’s any intention to use the ’70 Chev as a DD, but to have it as a shoestring budget project car along with something new-ish and dependable for commuting use, and probably with much better gas mileage to boot.
The Chev is a lot more interesting for most people as a vintage project than any malaise era M body, it’s super easy to get parts for and work on, rewards upgrading, plus it sounds like he has a friend to throw in with him on the project. Maybe they want to work on something they find more interesting without the stress of worrying if it can be driven the next day.
Who cares if a 4 dr car isn’t an investment? Real car nuts don’t buy a car as an investment anyway. With over 150 vintage cars as a “curbside dealer” on a science teacher’s budget we probably barely broke even when it’s all added up, but no regrets here. Get what you want, throw some $80 radials on it, a couple of Mex blanket seat covers, dry Texas junkyards for sheet metal, and have fun. Should be able to get enough out of that GF ( $2000 is reasonable ), to finance getting into something really practical and economical, something like a Corolla or Civic with 100k miles, cheap-ish yet with miles of dependable driving left in it, then go play around with that Chev. And if it gets back on the road and someday HAS to be sold there’ll be a lot more interest in it than any 80s Gran Fury… my $.02
That’s true. Disregarding the fact that one might just be starting over in throwing money at a car again there is that one undeniable fact. The Chevy has a wayyyy bigger interest group that any M body from the late ’80s hands down.
I just wished I had read this post some 35 years ago, and specially the comments……
Whatever you do, stay away from that Chevy, the money you are going to pour into that just to get it more or less reliable on the road, is more then enough to simply buy a good one.
And my vote goes to buying a simple used japanese cars as daily, and keep Helen.
Yes, but the point is he probably can’t afford a good one AND a driver at the same time, true though that all may be. I’ve had several similar Chevs and own a ’68 4 dr hardtop Caprice right now, you can’t touch a decent cosmetically solid good running ’65-70 big Chev 4 dr for 2 or even 3 grand these days unless you’re very lucky, and he must have a dependable driver, while he can always work on the Chev as funds allow… IF it’s really cheap, solid underneath and it’d be important to verify that the eng/trans aren’t toast.
And yes, that’s true also re: Japanese cars, nothing else is as trouble free as most Toyotas or Hondas, and a few select models of others at times (Nissan, Mazda). Almost always a solid choice.
I understand where you’re coming from and have been there myself years ago. But that Chevy is really not the answer. If you have any emotional attachment to the Chrysler, do yourself a favor and keep it. You will regret it otherwise, as soon as you have a couple of thousand saved up to invest into sorting it out properly. Yes, the Chevy can be easier and cheaper to work on, but by the time it’s roadworthy, you will have spent far more on it than the Chrysler will ever need.
My advice is to park the Chrysler for a year or so. Find a neighbor with an unused space in her garage and offer her a few bucks. Ask your friends. Just get the Chrysler off the road and buy yourself a nice reliable modern car for a daily driver. Then once the practicalities of your life are taken care of and you have some money saved up, get the Chrysler out of mothballs and pay a good mechanic to sort it out. And if at THAT time you decide you’d rather own something else, then go ahead and sell it and get another old car that will make you happy – a Chevy or whatever. The trick to owning a vintage car is A) not having to rely on it for everyday transportation and B) not making rash, short-sighted decisions just because it has stranded you.
Just keep the Plymouth you already did the hard work. Once you learn more about cars you’ll have no problem fixing things on the fly.