In March of 1995, with my first Spring Break approaching, I persuaded my parents to let me fetch the Valiant from Denver and drive it back to the University of Oregon. They adjudged my grades good enough and my plans sound enough, and said okeh as long as I planned my route in advance and called in every night by 10:30.
I guess I’d adequately honed my persuasive skills convincing them to buy the Lancer.
For reasons I no longer recall, I took about an 1,830-mile route through Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Weather might have factored in, though I don’t recall how I would have checked it at that time. And once I did have my route picked out, I wrote out my directions in longhand on a yellow legal pad which I kept on the seat next to me.
The car still had its cheesetastic “LearJet Stereo” FM-AM-cassette, a cheaper model than this shown here; mine didn’t have preset buttons. I never did change it for something better. But it was better than nothing, and so I had some choosable tunes; mostly the selection I’d been listening to in that car since I’d bought it: Men Without Hats (Rhythm of Youth), a good lot of Beatles albums, The Police (Synchronicity), Wang Chung. At one point I couldn’t eject a slightly warped tape, but I—motivated by dread of having only the one tape to listen to—pressed a plastic knife into service as a repair tool.
Despite whatever weather-related concerns might’ve gone into the route plan, I woke up to find myself snowed into Billings, Montana: highways all closed.
So I entertained myself by going to the local Dodge dealer and trying out one of those big new ten-cylinder Ram trucks. The salesman surely knew I had utterly zero intent to buy, but the store was empty, and he had nothing better to do, either.
I watched “Fletch Lives,” I had dinner at the Olive Garden, et cetera. There was a hot tub at the place where I was staying. So eh, whatever, no big deal. Eventually the roads opened up and I left Billings.
By and by I had a blast eating up 200 miles of curvy road out of Missoula, Montana at 75-85 mph in the dark; this was illegal and foolish. I was 19, though, and the part of the mind that handles risk assessment and long-term linkage of actions to consequences doesn’t properly come online until the early-mid 20s. About 10pm I pulled in at a motel in Spokane, and noticed a distinct clunk as I would steer to the right. In the next morning’s light I squatted down and had a look under the car while reaching up and moving the steering wheel. The clunking was the idler arm, flopping up and down more than half an inch. Eep!
There was a garage just down the street and around the corner from the motel. Taking the car there was traumatic for me, for I hated letting other people touch my car (did I mention I was 19?), but they didn’t ruin it or anything—hey lookit there, an object lesson! They put it on the hoist and found that tech who’d installed that idler arm about a year before at Colorado Chry-Ply had not installed the cotter pin in the retainer nut (hold the phone on that object lesson…), and the nut was now finger-loose. Had it backed off much further while I was bombing around at speed the night before, I would have lost all steering control and likely wound up as a fine red mist amidst a pile of metal and rags.
And speaking of the steering linkage, this trip made me truly detest the power steering in the Valiant. Oh, sure, it was nice when I was parking the car, but awful on the freeway: no road feel, no torque resistance, no self-centring action, and so dead and light in the centre that at the end of the driving day my arms and shoulders ached from constantly trying to find the centre. I resolved to ditch the power assist, which could have gone just fine—more about that another time.
I rolled into Salem, Oregon at 10:30 at night and dutifully found a payphone to ring mom and dad, who were in the middle of melting down. I’d forgot about the time zone border, and it was 11:30 their time. They had been about to ring the Oregon State Patrol. I’m not sure how much good it would have done to report a tan Valiant an hour late calling in, but we never found out because eventually I did. Oops, though.
Once I arrived in Eugene, there was some adaptation required: no intersection clearance interval; the traffic lights in one direction went green at the same instant as the cross direction went red. Low highway speed limits, aggressively enforced. And no self-service gasoline, which peeved me because I really didn’t like others touching my car (sloshing gas on the paint, dropping/losing the gas cap, having to wait in line because fewer attendants than pumps, etc). I’m sure my whingeing about it was just as tiresome to Oregonians’ ears as their lame excuses were to mine—it’s a fire hazard, eww I don’t want to get icky gasoline smells on my hands, etc—and as often as I could get away with it I just stepped up and operated the pump myself, waving away the indignant attendants with “It’s okeh, I’m from out of state so I know how to do it” types of smartass remarks.
Speaking of gasoline, I was tickled to be able to buy leaded. There wasn’t actually much lead in it; the phasedown begun in 1977 was almost complete, and leaded motor fuel would disappear completely from the American market on 1 January 1996, but for most of 1995 I happily bought the leaded. Not because my car really needed it or ran better on it, nor because it was less expensive—by that time, it wasn’t—nor for any other good reason. No, it was just because I was a nasty little mealymouthed reactionary, and I thought I was pissing off eco-weenies with every gallon of leaded gasoline I burned, hurr hurr hurr (have I mentioned I was 19?). And even after leaded went off the market at the first of the year, I could and did still buy bottlecans of tetraethyl lead, sold “for marine use” at GI Joe’s, a now-defunct Oregon-based sporting goods and auto parts store. Like the aggressive solvents I unwisely fooled around with, I fervently wish I hadn’t sloshed around with hideously neurotoxic, readily-absorbed-through-skin liquid lead like that. Sigh. If youth only knew; if age only could.
I also found Oregon’s roads underlit and poorly signed, and it kept occurring to me that I really ought to be able to see better at night than I could. Dad’s high/low beam demonstration 12 years before had planted the seed, and now here was what pushed my nose into the vehicle lighting field. There’ll be more about that eventually, too.
I bought a campus parking pass, which came with a neat little map showing me all two parking spaces I was eligible to use on odd Tuesdays of even months under full moons when the barometer was at 30.12 and rising with winds out of the northwest at 3 to 3.12 miles per hour, assuming I got to one of them before the other 7,750 undergrads with cars. I exaggerate, of course, and I don’t recall having much difficulty parking the car a couple blocks from my dorm. The lot was convenient in other ways, too. It had these high concrete curbs, which I figured out I could carefully reverse up onto when I needed to change the speedometer cable so there was enough clearance for me to get under and do it, and the nose-down tilt of the car kept the transmission fluid in the transmission, out my eyes, and off the pavement.
A few days before my birthday in early 1996 I found myself standing in the rain, in the dark, with the car’s hood up and the engine inoperative. The chain of events leading up to that unhappy situation had been set in motion the previous year, when I drove up to see my grandparents in Seattle. On the way I stopped at the home of a fellow Slant-6 club member, who had worked out an early version of the HEI swap. Together we replaced the points-condenser ignition with a Chrysler electronic distributor and a GM HEI ignition module. Hey, cool, the car was running without breaker points!
We also made provisions to install an MSD box he sold me. MSD stands for “Multiple Spark Discharge”, and the claim was better performance by dint of firing each spark plug a bunch of times in a quick row instead of just once. A few weeks later, I bought a bunch of wires and terminals, and wired in the MSD box. I used the same cruddy consumer-grade crimp terminals as had been used in wiring up the rest of the system, and that’s what came back to bite me.
When I left the car at Eugene Airport to fly home for Thanksgiving, I opened the hood and pulled the feed wire from the ballast resistor shunt to disable the ignition so roving bands of Valiant thieves would have to go “Curses! Foiled again!” or something. HEI and MSD don’t use a ballast resistor, so we’d just made up a little wire shunt to connect the two wires originally on either end of the ballast, with a tap wire out the side to power the MSD box. As I pulled it at the airport, the wire pulled out from the terminal. “Geez, I’d better fix that” I thought as I hurried to catch my plane. But other things occupied my mind, as other things are notorious for doing, and the car started right up on my return and ran fine until that day in January when I went to NAPA for a fuse puller and six spark plugs. Figured I’d do some recreational spark plug changing and install that headlamps-on reminder buzzard I’d picked up.
At NAPA I recalled that loose wire, so thought I’d get the replacement terminal and install it at home. But when I just barely touched the old terminal, it fell off the wire and wouldn’t go back on. Oops, that wouldn’t wait til we get home. So I bought the new terminal, came out and installed it.
I plugged the feed back into the shunt, thinking to myself that maybe the improved contact would make the engine run better; the gods heard this and laughed: plenty cranking, but no fire. Back under the hood, I spotted the problem. When I was plugging it back together, one of the shunt terminals had pulled apart, speaking of cruddy crimp terminals.
How courteous of the car to fail in a NAPA car park, eh! I went back inside and bought another new terminal, installed it, plugged the shunt back together, and…still plenty cranking, still no fire. H’m, that other shunt terminal didn’t look so good; maybe I knocked it loose as well? Oh, the hell with it, I’ll drink the pieces!
Back into NAPA again for a roll of black 14-gauge wire and more of the fancy non-cruddy terminals with heat shrink tubing attached ($4.49 apiece in early 1996) and a new wire tap. I made a whole new shunt, installed it, and very quickly found myself separated by the car’s firewall from exactly zero internal combustion.
It was getting considerably darker and wetter—ideal conditions for underhood electrical work. My mind began torturing me in that sadistic way it does, coming up with conclusive, sturdy, highly plausible explanations (in Technicolor IMAX THX surround) for what surely must be causing the trouble—perfect and airtight in every way except that they were wrong.
I tightened every connection I could reach, which wasn’t all of them because some of them were, erm, wrapped in, um, duct tape (go right on ahead and judge me; I sure as hell did!). This time I thought I was finally getting somewhere, because the car began acting like it had a dead ballast resistor: it would kinda try to fire with the starter engaged, but die as soon as the key was released. Gotta be that shunt! And here I’d thought I was so superior, not having to worry about a ballast resistor.
Back inside to NAPA, buy more terminals, repair old shunt and reinstall, which resulted in plenty cranking, but no fire no mo, not even with the starter engaged. I was well past exasperated sighing and into grim-determination territory, certainly glad I’d installed a very good battery, very thick battery cables, and a very good alternator, and beginning to wish for my breaker points back.
I wheedled one of the NAPA countermen into coming out to the cold, dark, wet car park to crank the engine for me; while he did so, I ripped the brand new $4.49 terminal off the feed wire and touched it to the shunt terminal to see if maybe the tap wasn’t tapping. No such soap.
It was 7:52, and NAPA closed at 8. Counterman had to go in and start shutting stuff down. Crankity-crankity-crankity-crank: denial is an anagram of my first name, but enough was enough; it was just not going to start.
Sigh. Curse. Close hood, wheedle back into NAPA, call AAA, get told by a cheerful computerised voice that my call is very important,but all agents are assisting members like me. Lather, rinse, repeat-repeat-repeat; it is now 8:07. The NAPA guys begin turning off the lights. Agent comes on, tow arranged, but no guarantee of when it might happen. Rest of lights go out at NAPA.
It’s dark, it’s raining, and the car won’t start. And worst of all, it’s my own stupid fault. If not for putting in the MSD in the first place, then for doing a cruddy job on the wiring. Hey, waitamin…the wiring! That GM HEI system was still all there in the engine compartment, just not hooked up!
Roll up sleeves. Sheeyoot, cruddy terminals on the HEI job, too; half of them have gone missing. Unplug MSD feed from shunt. Unplug MSD trigger signal 2-way disconnect from distributor. Plug HEI trigger signal 2-way disconnect into distributor—or try to, anyway; one wire has no terminal, and it’s a tiny little flat blade I’ve got to connect to. But it’s a tiny little blade with a hole in it, so I grab the wire crimper-strippers I’d borrowed from NAPA—I said I’d bring them back, I didn’t say when—and strip an inch of insulation off this tiny 20-gauge wire. Twist strands, cram through hole, wrap.
Unplug coil leads from MSD wiring. Hello, what’s this? Oh, lookit there, that had to be the problem all along: one of those wires had come out of its terminal, too. Musta been making intermittent contact with its mate an hour ago when it was spluttering with the starter engaged, and now it’s pulled clean out. Okeh, well I can (»snap!«) DANGit! This coil lead’s terminal just broke off, too!
Grab wire strippers, strip an inch off this 12-gauge household wire (did I mention this wiring was not done properly?). This time it was a ¼” blade, with a hole. Attempt to cram wire through hole: nope, too big, won’t fit.
Make primitive noise. Seize wire cutters. Cut five strands off wire. Cram the wire, now it fits. Push it through, wrap it. Remove duct tape from dangling lead adjacent to coil. Plug it in to lead 3 off the positive side of the coil (which I had provided with a plug-in to use in just such a case).
Wipe greasy hands on soaked lawn. Hop in car, turn key. We’re cranking—noticeably slower now than however many hours ago when this whole fiasco started—and…that’s all we’re doing. Cranking, no fire.
Inhale deeply through nose in an effort to stop myself breaking something. Smell gasoline strongly. Oh, hey, now this one I’ve known since I was four: put a stick in the choke!
Hold accelerator to floor, turn key. Crankity-crankity-crankity-oh-you-have-got-to-be-kidding-crankity-crankity-crankity-Putt-crankity-PuttPutt-crankity-CoughPuttPuttPutt-crankity-PuttPuttPuttPuttVROOM! Big cloud of black smoke out the tailpipe, primal yell of victory out of me.
Ammeter said CHARRRRRRRGE!!, which I took as a directive and get going. I left the car in 2nd gear for about a mile to keep the alternator speed up for the benefit of its charging and cooling. Eventually the gauge centred and I dropped back into Drive. Red light: car idled as smoothly as always. Green light: car accelerated normally. Returned home with no incident, paused in driveway: engine still ticking over smoothly.
I was soaked and greasy, I had missed The Simpsons and the State of the Union Address, and I was multiple hours behind on homework and housework. Also, I learned a few object lessons: wiring is worth doing properly, aftermarket “upgrades” don’t necessarily live up to their extravagant marketing claims, wiring is worth doing properly, and wiring is worth doing properly.
The UO had a terrific craft centre on the bottom floor of the student union. It was really intended and configured more for pottery and suchlike than for any kind of car repair work, but it had a sandblaster I used on multiple occasions. One of those was when I finally, after a great deal of trying and waiting, got my paws on a South African 2-barrel Slant-6 intake manifold. The sandblaster did a fine job of removing the factory orange paint to reveal the manifold’s bare cast iron, and an equally efficient job of removing the grease and carbon to reveal the manifold’s fatal cracks. There was also a bench grinder fitted with buffwheels and a variety of compounds—I brought in the Valiant’s taillight lenses one day and buffed them to a glossy sheen.
And there were well-lit workbenches just perfect for whatever which projects might come to mind and hand. I don’t imagine many carburetors got built there, but I built one. In Part I of this set of stories I mentioned a new-in-box carburetor in the parts stash that came with the car, and the necessity of replacing the complete throttle linkage to accommodate the retrofitted –factory– aircon. The former met the need of the latter, and so the car had a Holley 1920 carburetor on it. Not my favourite carburetor; it has some fairly serious design flaws, like carburetor bowl gaskets below the fuel level and a side-hung float notorious for causing stalling in hard left turns, but it was a new carburetor with the needed linkage hookup, so that’s what I’d installed.
It generally ran reasonably well, but it suddenly began to run much better, which is not usually a thing, at least not the way entropy works in this universe. Nevertheless, there it was: a ’65 Valiant behaving like a fuel-injected late model with perfect driveability, starting immediately on the first try every time, even from dead cold, without the choke. It came at a steep cost, though: 9.8 whole, entire miles per gallon (24 litres/100km). Not sustainable! I pulled the carb apart and found two shiny little ball bearings and two little brass rings on the float bowl floor. The “economizer” (power) valve ball retainer rings, poorly staked at the factory, had fallen off the end of the metering block. This left the power valve wider-than-wide open full time, hence the E-Z starting and rotten mileage.
So I built a more thoughtfully designed Carter BBS for it, on one of those well-lit workbenches at the craft centre. I think I probably got the throttle body rebushed at one or another machine shop, and really went to great effort to get everything exactly right. The car got less warmblooded; now I had to engage the choke and feather the throttle a little until the engine warmed up, but the fuel consumption dropped just about in half.
And I guess that sets the table pretty well for the next batch of stories, so…tune in next week!
Daniel, I’m really enjoying hearing about your experiences with old Darts and Valiants. Your learning curve sounds very familiar to me.
Power steering & even retrofitted factory A/C must have been rare options on Valiant/Darts of this model year?
Even here in Hot & Humid New Orleans I don’t recall seeing that many factory air conditioned Darts/Valiants.
And Power steering…….WoW !
Factory A/C got quite a lot more common on the Darts and Valiants the following year (’66); the ’65 system I found in Texas was a real score—the ’65 and ’66 systems were the same except for the dashboard bezels, but that was a crucial part because the ’66 dash pieces wouldn’t fit the ’65.
Power steering was very far from standard equipment, but it also wasn’t all that uncommon. One ’63 Valiant new-car road test I recall discouraged its purchase, saying it was unnecessary and “in fact, we think all power-steering compacts should be reserved for the infirm” (as if there were some limit or constraint on availability, which there was not).
Some of these cars even had power brakes! That really was completely unnecessary, and it was much less commonly ordered than the power steering. It was a complex system with a large, cubical vacuum reservoir on the inner fender, a bunch of hosing and valves, etc, plus the round booster behind the master cylinder.
I used to be unable to not overdo everything I did.
Every repair was thicker, stronger, more attachment points, better/more of everything. Everything had to be indestructible in case the car had to be put into combat service on Mars or something. Which worked out great unless I did have to redo something. Then undoing my work was a nightmare. I took me forever to just do it the way it’s supposed to be done and get on with my life.
That really was the nub of many of the unnecessary difficulties, costs, and unsatisfactory results I struggled with on my cars for many years: I was a theoretically fundamentalist superfectionist. If I read a Chrysler engineering paper about (say) an improvement in mixture control by dint of a particular advance in carburetor engineering, I would get fixated on having that improvement on my car. This would necessitate a new carburetor, which would require adaptations to the linkages and vacuum lines and a different air cleaner, which wouldn’t work correctly without an exhaust manifold configured to accept a heat stove, et cetera. Completely lost in my fervour was the magnitude of the improvement: measurable with sophisticated test equipment, and maybe detectable in the statistics of how much warranty effort was put toward idle adjustments or something, but imperceptible in the driver’s seat versus the properly-tuned earlier setup.
Or for another example, my high-minded transmission “upgrade” and its knock-on effects and bad result described in Part I of the ’65 Valiant stories (resolution to be described in Part III).
I focused way too much on what I imagined could be and not enough on enjoying what was. Kind of a version of caring less about what’s on TV and more about what else is on TV.
I’ve got much better, but I, too, had great difficulty learning the lessons of leaving well enough alone and framing projects around reasonably practicable results.
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”
–uh, Someone
Again I appreciate these stories from an old Dart and Valiant fan in Maine. Thank you for your stories and sharing them with us! :)!
Gladly! There are many more yet to come.
Great series Daniel! I can relate to so much of it having driven a ’65 Barracuda for several years (225/auto). I can say from experience that if driven long enough on un-leaded gas, the valve seats will recess significantly. I finally ended up swapping in a later head with induction hardened valve seats. You’re description of the power steering is spot on. You weren’t always sure something was even connected down there… I went with a capacitive discharge ignition (which still kept the points) and had no trouble with it (even though it came from J.C. Whitney)
In all fairness, the power steering systems on FoMoCo and GM compact cars was little better than the Mopar set-up.
My Dad swore by capacitive discharge ignitions. I swore AT them. I put one on my 1972 Dodge Polara and like an idiot, I couldn’t figure out why, after a year or so, it started running rough. Plugs looked good but put the old ones back. No change. Put the newer ones back. Burn hand on exhaust manifold doing it. Check all the spark plugs wires with an ohmmeter. They’re OK too. It has a Chrysler electronic ignition module, so no points to check and gap. Oh, the capacitive discharge ignitions box has a bypass switch on it. Try bypassing, and things improve but there is still some roughness. Check spark at each plug. They all put out a little arc. What’s left? THE COIL! Dig out an old one from the junk box, ask myself as I’m wiring it up, why did I replace this old coil to begin with? Fire up the engine, which now runs as smooth and as strong as the Dodge Brothers, Walter Chrysler and Mother Mopar could want.
Upshot of it all: the high voltage of the capacitive discharge ignitions was causing internal arcing and progressive damage to the coil!
Fast forward a couple of decades. More, actually. My “new toy car ,” the 1963 Corvette convertible, has been running fine but starts to miss and run rough one Saturday when I’d just as soon be out cruising as fiddling under the hood. Regap the points, check with dwell meter. Remove spark plugs, burn one hand on the exhaust manifold…sound familiar? Then I spied the bypass switch on the very same capacitive discharge ignition box that the former owner had installed. Switch to bypass…and it’s 1972 Dodge Polara all over again.
A new, cheap import NoName coil later, and all is right with the Corvette, except that the damned capacitive discharge ignition ruined the genuine, original numbers-matching Delco-Remy coil that went into the Corvette when it was built. PHOOEY!!!
That may be what happened to our ’73 Ranch Wagon. Of course later that year the first gas crisis occurred and my Father like a lot of people reacted strongly to it, he decided to add electronic ignition. He bought one of those Radio Shack capacitive discharge kits, which I helped him build (really my first electronics project). We put it in the wagon, and it worked for awhile, till we were driving to relatives about 200 miles away, and the car died (fortunately not too far from them, but embarrassing to have to call them for a rescue). Turned out to have fried the ignition coil. My Dad pulled out the capacitive discharge as soon as we got home (it had a button on it to disable it but he wanted it gone completely). I still have the box somewhere. He kept the Ranch Wagon until 1978, without the electronic ignition, suffering the fuel economy of the 400 2bbl.
He also traded his smaller car ironically for one that got worse fuel economy, but his reasoning was that he wanted my Mother to drive the smaller car rather than the Ranch Wagon when both cars were available, and my Mother never was comfortable with standard transmission, so he traded his ’68 Renault for a Datsun with an automatic..still no electronic ignition though.
@Zwep ;
99% of aftermarket breakerless ignition failures are caused by failure to have the proper impedance ignition coil .
-Nate
The Slant-6 has small, well-cooled exhaust valves and the 225 version, especially, lives at low RPM. So seat recession is relatively slower and less severe—enough so that my standard advice for the years I was involved in giving it was to avoid fuel additives (lousy cost/benefit) and not to take apart the engine just to upgrade the valves and seats…but not to skip valve/seat upgrades when the engine is apart for an otherwise-necessary overhaul.
“Not connected to anything” is a perfect description of Chrysler’s power steering of that era. It can be tremendously improved with heavier reaction springs in the steering gearbox, but from the factory? One-finger whirly-wheel.
Gotta love the leaning tower of power!! I always loved those spark plug tubes with the dried out O ring seals. Happy day when Chrysler got rid of those on the /6.
The Slant Six people will disagree with me here; but I always preferred Mopar’s small block V8 engine over the Leaning Tower of Power.
In all but the smallest, lightest bodies the 273/318 V 8 engines were MUCH more peppy, easier to work on and gave close to the 6 cylinder’s engines gas mileage.
Easier to work on? Okeh, let’s have a race with two Darts, Valiants, or Dusters of the same year. I’ll take the one with a Slant-6, and you take the one with a 273, 318, 340, or 360. You might win at changing the breaker points, but I’ll win at changing the spark plugs, replacing the starter, adjusting the tappet clearance, replacing the water pump, replacing the oil pump or cleaning and servicing the oil pressure relief valve, and cleaning and servicing the manifold heat control valve. It’ll be more or less a tie on servicing the carburetor, replacing the manifold gasket(s), and replacing the alternator.
My ’64 Dart (273) was markedly more of a pain in the nuts to work on under the hood, and was not substantially peppier than my ’65 (225).
I agree with your first sentiment, but not with your second. The spark plug tube seals cost something like 39¢ apiece and need to be replaced every five years or so, at utterly minimal incremental effort and time. And the gasket-seat spark plug selection is much greater than the taper-seat plugs Chrysler went to on the Slant-6 when they eliminated the plug tubes in ’75—which matters practically, because the optimal plug for the Slant-6 combustion chamber is an off-label application of a plug with an extra long set of electrodes, designed for AMC in the late ’70s when they had trouble getting reliable ignition of highly stratified mixtures due to strangulation emission controls. The long electrodes move the spark away from the quenchout zone and give a modest but noticeable improvement in starting, idling, and driveability. Not available in a tapered-seat design. Also, the ’75-type heads without plug tubes are heavier than the earlier heads, and you can’t remove the lifters without removing the head, as you can on the earlier heads.
Your comment on self centering of the power steering reminded me, my “61 Valiant would not self center.Finally got a factory tech to take a ride with me and on a sweeping curve,he said you need a “self centering valve”.Case Closed
H’mm. There is nothing such as a “self-centering valve” in the power steering system. There is a valve body atop the steering gearbox that needs to be dead-on-balls accurately centred in order to avoid the car wanting to self-steer towards the right (if misadjusted too far forward) or towards the left (if misadjusted too far rearward); maybe that’s what your tech was talking about.
Welcome to Eugene! We must have crossed paths, although undoubtedly I would have noticed the Valiant badges on your Dart if I had ever come up close to it.
Your “young reactionary” attitude reminds me much of my son Ted at that age, when he was at the UO too. It’s a natural consequence of having grown up in such a deeply liberal environment. He ended up as the editor of The Commentator, a conservative student publication, as well as a thorn in the side of every one of his profs. He eventually grew out of that phase too. 🙂
I drove my parents’ ’65 Coronet wagon most of the way from vacation in Colorado back to Baltimore in ’70, when I was 17. The power steering fluid must have been Novacaine. Dead. Even my father wasn’t a fan, after the manual steering in the Fairlane and his ’68 Dart.
I’ve had so many folks urge me to install one or another kind of electronic ignition in my ’66 F100. But it always starts instantly, even after sitting in the winter for any weeks, and I’ve never had an ignition failure, so if it ain’t broke… But I understand the benefits and appeal.
That route you took from Colorado to Eugene was very much a long detour. Scenic, and inherently much snowier than the more southern route.
Stephanie was thrilled about no self-serve gas when we moved here. And she really resents having to pump her own when she’s in CA. I wonder how long that will go on for?
For context I started driving in 1987 and have lived in Indiana most of my life.
I can’t recall anyone having pumped my gas.
When it was an option the price was higher and I just went to the self-serve “island”.
By the 2000s it was only a thing at small stations that had a repair shop from decades before, but I never visited one of those either. They had a dedicated older local population that had always gone there and that’s about it.
Now the shops are long gone and I may have to visit Eugene if for no other reason than to experience hands-free gassing-up at least once in my life.
NJ is another state that has never allowed self serve. One set of Grandparents lived in Philly and once Grandpa passed Grandma would go across the river to NJ to get gas as Grandpa had always taken her car to get it filled once a week, even if it had 3/4 of a tank.
Oregon did pass a law that rural areas can do self serve.
Ohhhhhh, yes, I do remember the snide, snotty, smug, smarmy Commentator. That lot were at the spearhead of a lawsuit nominally organised by a group of conservative students—actually bankrolled by very definitely non-student groups—against the university’s funding of OSPIRG, the (progressive) Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group, from mandatory activity fees attached to tuition. Of course I joined right in. We got to dress up in suits and ties, give depositions, go to the 3-martini-lunch place in town (I don’t recall its name; it was a fancy steakhouse) and make ever such cleverly scornful repartée about liberals.
Oh, it was grand! We felt so superior; so utterly, brassily right! In fact we were just a bunch of thoughtless, overprivileged children, mealymouthedly misquoting Winston Churchill and eager to bask in the grown-up feeling of being taken seriously—without regard to the deliberate evil we were cravenly being used for. It was a valuable educational experience, but it came at an unjustifiably high cost and I am profoundly ashamed to have participated.
More I think about it, more I dimly recall there was a walloping snowstorm in the mountains via the more direct route, which prompted the long northerly diversion.
Ignition: totally. A good electronic system works better than a points system, but that’s irrelevant if the points system lights every cylinder every time. And electronic requires a whole lot less periodic maintenance, but that’s irrelevant on a vehicle that doesn’t rack up a lot of miles. With (properly-wired, ahem) electronic ignition you’re less likely to need a roadside fix, sure, but if you do—and you’re not carrying a spare module or trigger plate or whatever—you can’t improvise a fix like Gus Wilson did that one time. And then there are the knock-on needs: electronics are a lot more sensitive than contact points to fluctuating line voltage, so the alternator and regulator perfectly adequate with points are questionable (or out of the question) with electronic, and so on and on.
I will likely never understand the aversion to pumping one’s own gasoline.
Yes, the OSPIRG jihad! Their cause de celebre. They were fighting the good fight! And it carried on into other fights about student fees being used to support subversive organizations.
FWIW, The Commentator is no more. RIP.
Oddly enough, their opposition to student-fee funding of conservative organisations was much more muted. So much so, in fact, that I don’t recall ever hearing it.
(Oh, they folded, eh? Okeh by me! I remember at least one time they went round campus removing all copies of the Oregon Daily Emerald from its distribution stands, and deliberately discarding them in the trash—not the recycling, so as to pwn the libs—because they didn’t like a story in the Emerald. But yeah, by all means they were champeens of free expression and stuff.)
…and come to think of it, I do kind of wonder how we didn’t manage to knowingly cross paths. I remember marvelling at the rotating collection of cool old cars to be found at…Skinner’s Butte, I think it was. I almost remember a Mercedes fintail or W108 wagon with what I’m pretty sure was a 4-on-the-tree.
And I was just amazed at the thriving ecosystem for keeping old cars in good repair, but if I say too much about that now I’ll let the air out of next week’s tires!
Daniel, your series is excellent and transcends “mere” automotive journalism in a vein that reminds me of Peter Egan. Having warred with the various angry gods of antiquated machinery frequently myself, the victories are sweet.
That is a great comparison (and a high compliment).
Daniel could write about scrambled eggs all day and I would be entertained by it.
Thank you! I will endeavour to avoid writing about scrambled eggs, though; I’d rather write about love and quiches.
Thanks kindly, Jon. Wikipedia tells me Mr. Egan wrote/writes for magazines I don’t read. Perhaps I should go look at his work!
You should, his automotive columns have been republished in several volumes titled “Side Glances” by Peter Egan. I met the man once many years ago at the Laguna Seca historic races and got one of my volumes signed. A very down to earth, friendly, and genuine person. Who writes entertainingly and interestingly, not just about cars, in addition to Road&Track was once on the staff of Cycle World and also a private plane magazine, so lots of columns about lots of stuff, not solely cars.
You are very welcome Daniel, Peter Egan was my first exposure to automotive writing that went beyond (far beyond) a fairly straightforward analysis of the tangible aspects of a vehicle. Philosophical automotivism if you will. Very much looking forward to future installments.
I drove from Denver to Eugene in the summer of 1973. I-25, I-80, I-84, US 20, Oregon 126.
Ooooh, there are few things more irritating than taking a car that runs perfectly fine and doing things to it that make it not start. Like Paul, I kept the points in mine for my entire ownership. Like you I got a crank-no-start during a tune-up I did in the parking lot of my apartment by installing what turned out to be defective points or condenser – both the first and second set I bought from the discount store. At least that was what the shop told me after I towed it in. “Bad parts.”
I made my peace with several of those power steering setups over the years – even my 71 Scamp was a PS car. My highway posture was with the side of one hand resting on my lap while the wheel was held by a thumb and forefinger. The alternative was palm resting on the bottom center of the wheel (which is why I preferred the 2 spoke wheels on these cars). I will tell you that the Fords of the day were no better.
Yep, I do remember trying to find some position of elbow-braced-against-armrest that would let me drive without my shoulders tensing up. Trouble with this (or the one you describe) is it leaves one very badly positioned to react quickly and acurately in an emergency.
Ahh, the fabled “MSD,” the “accessory” that brought more no starts into my shop than any other reason. GM’s HEI is about the best electronic system of the era, better in fact than MSD, by a longshot.
We always said, “MSD” means, “My Spark Don’t.”
Edit: MSD was the second most common reason for a no start. An aftermarket alarm was always #1.
I’m sorry I’m just not buying it, there just aren’t that many MSD units in use that a general repair shop sees that many cars so equipped. Of units in use I’m betting the majority were installed by DIY’ers that aren’t going to have their car towed to a shop for a no-start. Note in this case it wasn’t the MSD that failed.
I’ve replaced far more HEI modules or HEI coils than I saw vehicles with a MSD box and those that did have a MSD weren’t there for no starts.
Maybe it’s because there were hundreds of millions of HEI equipped cars made and far less MSD things made.
This week’s stories focused on my poor wiring, but Canucklehead, your experience with MSD matches my own: it does not even begin to approach OE levels of dependability, not even when wired in and installed with a high level of workmanship. And that was with the boxes (and coils, etc) actually made by MSD in the States; ten or 15 years ago they outsourced it all to China and quality and dependability took a(nother) steep dive.
There is neither a theoretical nor a practical advantage to an MSD box versus HEI. Spark duration is comparable, as is voltage potential and current supply. The difference is nothing but marketing; there are no “HEI” toolbox magnets, bumper stickers, baseball caps, etc.
There are lots of theoretical and practical reasons that a MSD is better than the stock HEI installations.
Yes the OE HEI module is a good unit that can sink a fair amount of current reliably. The problem is the execution.
Locating a module in/on a distributor as a heat sink is a bad idea, even when left hanging out in the wind like TFI Fords. The one remote possible advantage is that the module can fry before the engine overheats to the point that serious damage is done.
Being inside the distrubtor also makes it susceptible to damage caused by an errant spark due to a bad plug wire/plug. Putting the coil in the cap or inside the distributor only makes it worse. Again not just a GM problem there is a whole era of Hondas with the same issues.
The coil location being the cap is even worse than being in the distributor thanks to the crappy grounding system and the crappy contact set up.
Take a high quality HEI module mount it on a proper heat sink that is not attached to the engine, trigger it with a VR pickup of your choice and use it to fire a Ford TFI coil and you have a strong reliable ignition system. Assuming of course you do a decent job of wiring.
Multiple sparks are a good thing many mfgs use/have used multiple sparks to improve emissions and fuel economy. Ford started doing it in the 90’s and at least Nissan, BMW and Mercedes have joined the fray. https://www.underhoodservice.com/multi-spark-ignition-systems/
In this context, dude, we’re talking about HEI versus MSD as an upgrade to a car not originally equipped with either—and we don’t have an quarrel here; the setup you describe (“Take a high quality HEI module and mount it on a proper heat sink…”) is exactly what was on the Valiant, alongside the MSD box. The place to debate the merits and drawbacks of module-in-distributor stock HEI packaging is here.
Theoretically, long spark duration improves the completeness of combustion, whether it’s one long spark, three medium sparks, or twelve short sparks. Practically, I’ll wager that just like GM’s HEI, the multi-strike systems from the automakers you mention are more dependable than any of MSD’s aftermarket parts. They have to be; aftermarket levels of dependability are nowhere near good enough to meet automakers’ requirements.
Good old guaranteed failure points, commonly known as insulated crimp terminals, and corrosion accelerators, known as heat shrink made me a lot of money back in the day.
The actual problem with the GFPs is usually the installation, since it is very hard to get a cold weld that excludes oxygen from between the strands and terminal that doesn’t damage the insulation barrel.
The heat shrink that is sold at the parts stores that is not adhesive lined does not seal out water, but it does like to hold it in.
Another great read Daniel.
I laughed at the 2-barrel manifold story. During high school I procured a 2-barrel AMC six manifold from a mid sixties 232, and combined that with some sort of Carter carb off a 318 with visions of keeping up with my friends’ Chevy V8s. It accelerated well enough, but the throttle linkage didn’t work well and was sort of a binary arrangement where I’d push harder on the pedal and nothing happened until it flopped fully open and off we went. After a couple of days I decided that drivability was a more desirable feature than unpredictable acceleration, and went back to the stock 1 barrel. 🙂
Possibly you are being a bit hard on your 19 year old self, I’d say any one of us who was NOT an idiot in some way at 19 can cast the first stone. On much later self reflection I figure I was 5 years behind on the maturity curve in those days, pretty much akin to a 10 year old in high school and a 15 year old in University. But we got through those days and do our best in the here and now.
Thanks, Doug. I’ve reached the point where I’m able to laugh at my younger self—and write about him. For years I said if I were to see him approaching me I’d cross the street and duck into a shop or something to avoid him, because throwing him against a wall and hollering “GROW UP!” wouldn’t work.
These days I think it’s more likely I’d pull him aside and say “Listen, this is important: you will escape your faulty mother’s grasp, and life will get a whole lot better; just keep your head down and your eyes and ears more open and your mouth more closed.”
I have enduring memories of both GI Joe’s and 104+ Real Lead which I used on my motorcycle. The 104+ would dissolve plastic, as I found out the hard way on a trip, fortunately the bottles got soft before they leaked so I disposed of them.
When I moved to Beaverton from New York by way of Missouri in 94 I thought of Portland as new York with less attitude, sadly the last half decade has soured me on Portland.
I was also doing some epic repairs at the time since in 95-96 I rebuilt my motorcycle engine and replaced a CV axle in my Jetta.
I remember 104+ Real Lead and Lead Supreme 130, but neither was what I bought at GI Joe’s. This stuff came in round metal cone-top cans with screw-on lids (hence “bottlecans”) and I don’t recall the brand.
Portland has surely changed a whole lot over the last 10-20 years, and I would argue not for the better. Same with Seattle. Denver, too. It’s tempting (and not entirely unfair) to put the blame on people moving to those places from California, and bringing along with them everything they claim to be fleeing—insane prices, congestion, traffic, gentrification, etc—or on the likes of Amazon and Google and that lot. But the root problem is a cancerous socioeconomic system based on untrammeled growth. Or in fewer words: too many people!
Yes, everybody in all three of those locales hates on Californians but curiously I have yet to meet a single one that refuses to take their money when they want to purchase their house…no growth policies just exacerbate the pricing issues.
Actually, someone once explained that it wasn’t the long-time locals that disliked Californians, it was the Californians that moved there just before any more recent batch of arrivals, fearing that the newest newcomers would finally change it for the worse somehow.
People change, as do locales, and for as many bad aspects as some new people bring, they also bring good new aspects. A given population can only inbreed for so long before all goes really weird anyway.
“Yes, everybody in all three of those locales hates on Californians but curiously I have yet to meet a single one that refuses to take their money when they want to purchase their house…no growth policies just exacerbate the pricing issues.”
Many of the Seattle area’s biggest years of home price appreciation, pre-crash, coincided with large numbers of people moving here from CA. Yes you have those people who are quite happy to have Californians “over pay” for their house, on the other hand a lot of people of course get frustrated as they feel pushed out of the market by the rapid appreciation.
“Actually, someone once explained that it wasn’t the long-time locals that disliked Californians, it was the Californians that moved there just before any more recent batch of arrivals, fearing that the newest newcomers would finally change it for the worse somehow.”
I wonder how much of this phenomenon accounts for the “Seattle Freeze” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze as it is a relatively new phenom that showed up after the tech boom had drawn a lot of new people, from all over the world and country to our area.
I should have asked the Matterport guy today if he had experienced the Seattle Freeze, since he had shared in the past that he moved here from CA last fall.
I’m seeing the same thing happen in Bend Oregon now, skyrocketing real estate from remote workers seeking “the lifestyle” and a significant leftward political shift from the combination of Portlanders and Californians.
Great write up. I can certainly empathize with the youthful over ambition to improve things.
I never could fathom the benefit of an MSD ignition on a street car. Pertronix II for the four Fords and the HEI for the Dodge and avoid all the other temptations. The improvement in mpg would not be enough to sway me at all. A 1 mpg increase is nothing but IF it could get me 5 mpg every time then I would listen. That is how I deal with phone/internet providers calling me in my office trying to get me to switch. OK, save me $20 over my bill, put it in writing, and we have a deal. I still don’t have a deal after 30 years.
That Valiant sure kept you busy OR did you keep yourself and the Valiant busy?
Good stories well told as usual Daniel .
You would have been very useful on any farm, junkyard or used car lot in the 60’s & 70’s =8-) .
I too experimented with various non breaker point ignitions, my old Motos all still run points (and 6 volts !) but the only breaker point non Moto ignition I have is a ’59 VW Beetle and once I get it road worthy again I’ll begin searching for a Pertronix Ignitor typ system .
I’ve been using a cheap Chinese Ignitor in my 1959 Nash Metropolitan for decades and never a hiccup ~ most have failures because they’re too lazy to check and match the coil’s impedance to the system’s requirements .
My son when still Hot Rodding, got on the MSD bandwagon on his various Hot Rods and track cars, they’d fail no matter what he did, same as the other track rats cars so eventually he discarded all his MSD add ons .
I await your next missive ! .
-Nate
I’m really enjoying this series, Daniel. Your approach to car ownership seems to have a lot in common with mine back in those dark ages of The First Car – being determined to incorporate every possible low-budget upgrade to have the best possible running example of ‘Insert Marque Here’, in my case without necessarily knowing what I was doing or why the factory built it that way in the first place.
In the early 1970’s I built 2 of those transistor ignition “boosters” in the finned aluminum cases. I gave one to my friend who drove a 1969 Jaguar XKE.
The car began missing and he stopped and open the bonnet. He left the car running. A small bypass cooling hose was leaking onto an ignition wire. The ground was damp. He pointed his finger at the leak and got closer.
He was knocked across the sidewalk. His arm and shoulder hurt for a week.