I’m not really sure why I bought a truck in August of 2002. I wasn’t a farmer or a contractor, and I wasn’t doing any big project or anything else that required big or frequent hauling, so I didn’t actually need a truck. More, we lived not in a suburban or rural setting, but in Toronto. That meant narrow streets with tight parking at the best of times, aggravated by ice sheets and persistent snowbanks in winter. Expensive gasoline, too. I did no cost-benefit analysis, which surely would have come out on the side of no.
I don’t think it was a truck-urge I got so much as a rear-drive Mopar urge. Darts and Valiants and such were almost all in the distant past in that part of the world, and so were their unworthy replacements—not that I wanted anything to do with an Aspen or Volaré under those names or any of the many others (…Diplomat, Gran Fury, Caravelle…). So I guess it was sort of [RWD Mopar] – [A-body] = Dodge truck. Or maybe I’m misremembering it the wrong way round and I spotted the ad for this truck and rationalised backward from there.
Whatever which way, I trekked out past Oshawa to go see the truck: a 1989 D-100 with a 318 engine, an A998 3-speed Torqueflite automatic, a sliding backglass, an 8-foot bed with a hard plastic bedliner, and a rear bumper. Were rear bumpers still optional equipment on trucks in 1989? I don’t know. This truck had one, seemingly a factory item, painted argent silver. There was no discernible body rust or batterment, the interior was in very fine condition, nothing was faulty or broken, and the truck ran and drove, steered and stopped like a rear-drive Mopar—a big, portly one. The seller even agreed to drive the truck into Toronto for me. Very fine.
Before I even had the keys to the truck, I had my first haul-call, my first truckfriend—those folks who come out the woodwork calling me ol’ buddy ol’ pal because I had a truck and they, well, they wanted something hauled.
Very importantly, Bill liked the truck. Rare indeed is the vehicle Bill likes, so this was a major plus. Cars spook him; he saw a bunch of gory, gruesome car crashes as a very small kid, including one in which his pregnant dog got hit by a car and thrown like a water balloon, with similar results. Trucks were less of a trigger, plus he actually fit in the truck. It was easy for him to get in and out of, and the bench seat didn’t confine him; there was plenty of room for his head and his legs and his feet and his elbows and his shoulders.
So I had a real, actual rear-drive Mopar, and it even had wing windows! The driver’s one didn’t seal very well, and made an irritating wind whistle; eventually I figured out how to wedge a nickel between the catch and the frame when closing it to pull the wing tighter against its seal and stop the whistle. One of the first things I did, though, was to remove the Nippondenso starter. Functionally there was nothing the matter with it; it worked fine, but it grated my ears every time I used it. That’s not what starting a rear-drive Mopar is meant to sound like! Instead I put in a carefully-refurbished original 1962 to ’72-type Chrysler gear-reduction starter. The Highland Park (or Hamtramck) Hummingbird wasn’t just a single starter; there were numerous significant differences over the years that made the starters crank at different speeds and make different sounds while doing it (article eventually). I wanted one that sounded like my very early youth, and that’s what I got; it sounded exactly right. I beat this guy by a good bunch of years, but I had his same chortling reaction the first time I turned the key:
I also replaced the shift stick with a pre-1984 item that had the knob with the inverted-cone brushed-aluminum insert—again, just like the Darts my parents and grandparents had when I was little. Because that’s what the shift stick in a rear-drive Mopar is meant to look like. The truck equivalent of making a house a home.
The transmission engaged Drive or Reverse with a convulsive crash, even with the engine at a slow hot idle. There was a fix issued for the condition, involving a new valve body and separator plate for the transmission. Those parts hadn’t been put on this truck, and it was just a service bulletin, not a recall. I didn’t want to spend the money, so I just braced and gritted my teeth every time I put the truck in gear. –3-point– multipoint turns and parking manœuvres were especially fun: edge forwards…BANG!…edge backwards…BANG!…edge forwards…BANG!, lather-rinse-repeat.
That gritchment was aggravated by the primitive engine management system, a latter-day mutation of the 1976 Lean Burn setup. The fuel was laxly managed by an eh-who-cares shrug of a throttle body injection system: halfassed Holley hardware crudely controlled by a Chrysler computer full of flawed firmware (feh!). Idle air controllers were a well-known thing, readily available off the shelf in numerous configurations; Chrysler used them on just about all the rest of their engines, but not on trucks like this. Instead, the idle speed was controlled by a bulky external kick motor. Its plunger extended or retracted to move the throttle lever itself. This movement was as audible as it was sluggish; if the dimwitted computer thought it detected a condition calling for an elevated idle speed, the driver’s options were to wait (and wait) for the idle speed to slowwwwwllly meander back down to normal, or stand on the brake pedal, go ahead and shift into a gear, and brace for an even worse CRASH! from the transmission. This was the vehicle whereon I learned to use a scan tool—mine was an OTC Monitor 4000, same as the official Chrysler DRB but with the capability (which I never used) to talk to non-Chrysler vehicles. When I needed a break from this dumb idle game, I used the scanner to set the idle to 800 rpm and unplugged the throttle kicker. That brought sweet relief; the engine would obediently drop to a normal idle as soon as I let go the accelerator. But it caused other driveability problems, particularly during cold start and warmup, so I ruefully restored the idle motor’s power and resumed gritting my teeth.
When I took the truck for its emissions test, I had them check the ignition timing. It was around where the spec said it should be, 10° BTDC, but the spec was given as ±2°, so I had ’em bump it to 12 to see what would happen. They didn’t quite get it there; I think it wound up around 14 or so. This was not an improvement; the engine wanted to stall immediately after shifting into a gear. Managed to get it to stay running with some tapdancing on the accelerator, but as soon as I tried to drive, the engine protested with loud rattlety-ping on all eight cylinders. I babied it home, climbed into the engine compartment, put an end wrench on the distributor bolt, nudged the dizzy back the way it came, and the pinging went away. Beyond the basic advance, the spark timing was controlled by the engine computer; this was pure Lean Burn stuff except the distributor’s trigger was a hall effect item rather than the older magnetic reluctance type.
The miniature fuel injectors were clog-prone; Chrysler went through at least two designs—one by Bosch and one by Holley, if I recall rightly. The intake manifold was a lump of iron designed with apparently complete disregard for all expertise accumulated on the subject since the late 1950s. There wasn’t much of an unreliability problem with the Mopar system, it just didn’t work very well even when everything was exactly as intended. Oh, it was better than what passed for carburetors in the late 1980s, but only just barely; driveability was rough and fuel consumption high.
We had a laugh when, months after I bought it, Bill—who knew nothing about cars—casually flipped the seatback forward and stashed something behind it. Hey, neat, I didn’t know it does that! I’d never owned a 2-door car, let alone a truck, so it just never occurred to me.
The ammeter failed; I bought a new one and installed it, but its needle was a brighter red than the others in the cluster, so I painted all the gauge needles fluorescent yellow. That turned out nicely.
The truck came to me with half a ridiculous exhaust system: factory equipment all the way to the muffler, fine, but the muffler was a one-inlet/two-output polished stainless thing with dual tailpipes ending in extra-big tailspouts straight out the back. It wasn’t especially loud, it just looked dorky. The seller was kind enough to put the factory tailpipe in the bed before delivering the truck. It was in fine condition, including its side-dump tailspout. Trucks have side-dump tailspouts for a good reason: with rear-dump, the aerodynamics of the box would tend to pull a cloud of exhaust along with the truck. I had a shop remove the twin megaphone pipes, weld up one of the muffler’s outlets, and fit the factory tailpipe to the remaining muffler outlet. The exhaust still smelled considerably more obnoxious than ought to have been justifiable for a 1989-model North American-spec vehicle running on gasoline, but at least now I didn’t have to smell it as often. Eventually that stainless muffler rotted, and I put in a new high-capacity catalytic converter, a muffler for a late-model Hemi Ram (big, quiet, good flow), and new tailpipe with a tailspout inspired by ’60s Chevrolets: angled about 45° rearward and 45° downward.
The truck’s headlamp circuitry was cheap, nasty, and minimal (Hi, my name’s Daniel and I drive Chrysler products): long lengths of 18-gauge wire for the feeds and 20-gauge for the grounds; no relays. I never upgraded it, har-de-har-har, though I did install a small variety of different headlamps over my ownership: Bosch European-code H4s (fairly decent), Cibié European-code H4s (fairly good), then seldom-seen Cibié BOBI US-spec H4s (differently but equally fairly decent). The last pair I put in it was a set of GE sealed beams with yellow lenses. The subsequent owner bitched that they got him a ticket for improper lights. Donno what to say, dude; I never got hassled for ’em.
I found a replacement-lights-and-lamps vendor in Mexico whose product range included clear-lens taillights for the ’81-’93 Dodge trucks (the № 48C on the Chrysler page here). They had an internal red balloon over the bulb as well as the required rear and side red reflectors, and they didn’t cost much, so I took a chance. That worked out well; quality and performance were quite good—uncommonly so, for the product category. Might’ve looked slicker on a white or silver truck than on mine, but they looked nicer than the somewhat tatty originals I took off. Regular readers will know amber rear turn signals are one of the early Commandments in my religion’s holy scriptures, so I hunted up amber bulbs bright enough to be worth a damn that would fit in the reversing lamps and wired ’em up Australian style as combination turn/reverse lamps. The principle is exactly the same as the American combination stop/turn lamps, only with a different grouping of functions: red stop/tail, amber turn/reverse:
The truck was not air conditioned, but I let my fingers do the walking and found a dealer in rural Pennsylvania with the in-cab A/C package gathering dust on a back shelf (HVAC box with heater core and evaporator, controls, plumbing, ducting, dashboard parts, etc) for $125, and another dealer somewhere else with the underhood A/C package (compressor, brackets, filter-dryer, lines, condenser, wiring, etc) for $137. Yee! I could scarcely afford i>not to buy these, I thought; the shipping to Michigan cost almost as much as the parts themselves.
In early October, I got in the truck and headed to Michigan to pick up the A/C packages and have a go at making the truck earn its keep by hauling two Volvo B16B engines with 4-speed transmissions, plus a B16 block, back to Toronto. These would be dropped off in Mississauga for an individual restoring a late-’50s race car called the Davy Special. I also took the Canadian-made engine management system for my Volvo 164 to the place in Wisconsin where it was ever-so-slowly being not built.
I drove down the 401 to the 402, made my way to Sarnia, and crossed to Port Huron, Michigan. The boothkeeper was mumbling his questions into his computer screen, and I couldn’t hear him, even though I’d shut off the truck. I asked him to please repeat himself, which made him angry; He insulted and mocked me, then accused me of trying to smuggle merchandise into the United States. He meant the engine management system, which was right next to me on the seat, with the receipt on top, and I’d described it and declared its real value when asked what I was bringing in (all part of my ingenious smuggling technique). I tried explaining it was for my own car and offered him the receipt; he said “Right, right, you’ve got a ‘receipt’, and next you’re gonna swear it’s not fake. I see scams like yours a hundred times a day; you’re goin’ in for secondary”. The inspector in the office couldn’t figure out what was the booth guy’s problem; he looked at the system briefly and waved me away.
The weekend was great; I got to visit and drive the ’62 Lancer into Traverse City. It ran well and drove nicely. Got smiles and waves and thumbs-up signs. Put a smile on my face.
Eventually it was time to head back to Toronto. We loaded everything securely in the truck bed: greasy old Volvo engines with transmissions, extra engine block, two large boxes of A/C kit. Receipts for everything I bought. I drove across Michigan and took the Bluewater ferry—which I’ve just this minute learnt is no longer a thing—from Marine City, Michigan, to Sombra, Ontario. It was my favourite border crossing; small and fast and friendly, had been my experience…up to that night. The border guard asked a perfectly routine question: what is the purpose of your trip to Canada? That’s when things started going very badly wrong in a big hurry.
I’d entered Canada thirteen months previously on a NAFTA work permit based on a job offer by a headlamp company there in Ontario—or at least that’s how they’d billed themselves, which wound up being its own hornswoggle; details probably eventually. I left that job after being asked to falsify safety certification tests, then took a work-remotely job offer from an American lighting company after carefully checking with Immigration Canada to figure out if and how I could legally remain in Canada while doing so. Answer: that would make me a business visitor who needed no work permit because I was working for an American company. That’s what I repeated for the border guard at Sombra.
He decided that was a bunch of fish and picked up the phone and called it in. He did that thing where he punched the phone buttons with the same hand holding the receiver, never breaking his glower at me. I couldn’t hear everything, because he was shielding his mouth with his other hand, but I did hear him say “boxes of car parts…engines…truck has Ontario plates…uh-huh…uh-uh…oh really!…smoking gun, hell, that’s more like a loaded gun, right there!…yeah, I thought so…thanks.” He hung up and said “you lied! You didn’t tell me you used to have a work permit that has now expired!”
I said “It was expired, and I’m not at that job any longer; now I work for an American firm. I didn’t know I needed to disclose that previous job…you didn’t ask…”. He flew into a rage, screamed that I was lucky he didn’t have me hauled to jail, and refused me entry to Canada. Told me to go talk to Immigration at Sarnia.
Eep! I filed this under shit (comma) oh—a file that would grow very thick in the following days—and drove down the interstate to the Sarnia crossing. Told the boothkeeper I’d been turned back at Sombra and needed to speak to the Immigration officials. In the office, I told the guy everything. Former employer, current employer, old work permit, current business visitor status…everything. The guy stood there with his arms crossed, smirking the whole time. When I was done, he said “I guess you wised up and decided to be a little more forthcoming this time. That’s good, because if you’d left out anything the Sombra agent and I discovered about you, I’d’ve banned you from Canada for at least a year. I can do that; that’s within my authority”.
The “business visitor” advice was just plain wrong, he said. I did, in fact, need a work permit, he said. Which I didn’t have, so…back he sent me to the US. When they do that, you have to go through US Customs. 15 booths, and the one I pick has sitting in it…guess who? Yup, the guy who thought I was an old-Volvo-parts smuggler a few days before. He seemed not to recognise me; let’s hear it for small miracles.
I drove down to Ann Arbor, my former town, checked into a motel, and fruitlessly tried to get some sleep. Next day I called up a friend and secured free lodging and ersatz office space.
Now, I’d mislaid my passport in the Toronto apartment I used as an office (which always looked as though the proverbial cyclone had hit it), and hadn’t thought much of that; at that time you didn’t need a passport to cross between Canada and the States, and figured I’d find it when I got back. Oops…! I spent a frantic, frightening and very expensive week gathering documents. Official birth certificate, expedited. New replacement passport, expedited. School transcript, certified and expedited. Job description from my boss, expedited. Reference from former employer, expedited. Résumé. Application for a work permit.
Friday was do-or-die, because there was a holiday on both sides of the border on Monday. That day looked like this:
9:20: Passport arrives
9:40: Cab arrives
10:30: Cab drops me off in Detroit for $88, would be $133 now (why not just drive the truck? Find me a a place in Detroit to park and leave a truck with a full bed, where there’s even a shadow of a chance it won’t soon be empty or gone, then we can talk it over).
10:56: Staffer walks up line of waiting people, giving them little yellow “I was here before the doors closed at eleven” chits. She asks me what kind of permit I’m applying for, I say “Work”, she says “Oh, we don’t do that in person here, we do those by mail. It would take a few weeks. You should go to the border”.
11:15: I choke down a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza because I haven’t eaten yet at all that day.
11:20: Taxicab takes me through the tunnel ($35 → $53). Boothkeeper sends us
in to see Immigration, me and the cab driver alike.
11:32: Immigration officer, convinced I’m not very bright, gives me the permit and takes my $100 ($151).
11:40: Taxicab takes me back across the tunnel ($35 / $53) and from there to Ann
Arbor ($88 / $133…you keepin’ tab?)
3:30: I arrive at border with truck full of parts. Boothkeeper has no problem with me and my documents, but doesn’t like the Volvo engines without a receipt showing their worth. He patiently and politely explains, “Even though you were given them for free, even though you’re not selling them, the fact that you’re bringing them in for any purpose means they have some value in the eyes of Canada Customs and Revenue”. He decides the three of them are worth $300 and sends me to pay the Goods and Services Tax (CAD $56 or so). I also get to pay the $100 excise tax on the air conditioner I’m bringing in—this is one reason why historically, fewer cars in Canada had A/C.
Still, though: Oh, you want to charge me money to get back into Canada? That’s all? Here, have money. Have more. Take it all; take my wallet, have my charge cards, I don’t care.
8:30 pm: I arrive home with duelling cases of heartburn and walletburn, which of course explains why I very shortly later bought that ’85 Volvo…in the States. Maybe that Immigration officer was right about my being not very bright. Anyhow, Canadian Thanksgiving is in October, and I surely was thankful to be able to spend it at home!
My just-leave-it attitude toward the bangcrashy transmission might have suggested that I had learnt to shush those big ideas for vehicle improvements, but that isn’t so. I was getting better, but very slowly, and I had some ideas for this truck. First, of course, was the air conditioning system. This was the official genuine Chrysler Mopar system intended for dealers to put almost factory-identical air in trucks not built with it, so it would have to go much easier than in D’Valiant, right? Welllll…no, not really. Different difficulties, that’s all. The compressor was seized from sitting in a box for a dozen years. That was easy enough; I bought a new compressor—a Chinese copy of the Nippondenso original was all I could get, which made me grumble. The Chrysler/Nippondenso C171 compressor wasn’t the world’s worst design, but it also wasn’t the best. I’d’ve preferred a Sanden, but the Sandens specially built with Chrysler mounts were long extinct. And I should have fetched a high-efficiency, parallel-flow condenser, but I went ahead with the olde-tyme serpentine item in the kit.
By and by, the system got installed. Not by me; I had nowhere suitable to do such a project. I had a nearby shop do it, the owner of which was much like Fat Tony, the mafioso from The Simpsons. He did get the system installed. He charged it and overcharged me and voilà, the truck had air. It worked nicely on sweaty summer nights, but not very well during the daytime, for it was trying in vain to cool a completely uninsulated metal box, a solar oven on wheels.
The fake compressor was a lot noisier than a real one would’ve been (oh, but it was manufactured in an ISO-9001 certified facility, so that’s all that matters, then; who needs quality when you’ve got a piece of paper saying you have quality control!). The clutch cycling switch was a chunky metal Cutler-Hammer item mounted on the firewall, with its capillary tube sensing the temperature of the low-pressure line coming off the evaporator. Every so often that switch would go “Tick!”, then the relay across the engine bay would go “Click!”, then the compressor clutch would go “Clack!”, all three in rapid sequence. That’s an olde-tyme control strategy, and it’s the one I prefer. I don’t agree with the idea that vehicle A/C should work like residential A/C, where you set a temperature and the system (falsely) claims to maintain it. Regardless of how sophisticated such a system is intended to be in a car, I always find myself ceaselessly adjusting the temperature. With the cycling-clutch systems, there’s perceptible hysteresis around the setpoint. The periodic colder-than-ambient frosty breeze is much more refreshing than a steady stream of constant-temperature air, at least to my nerve endings.
I also tried to do something about the truck’s even-in-perfect-tune rough driveability and awful fuel economy. I took a hard look at the fuel system, decided better fuel atomisation might help, and placed a phone call; a couple weeks later I had a custom one-of-none fuel pressure regulator built to provide 21 pounds’ pressure (1.45 bar) rather than the stock 14 (0.97). I installed this along with a new, latest-design set of the smaller injectors meant for the 3.9 V6 version of the system. I had an adaptor plate made to put the throttle body, with its weird mount pattern, on a 4-barrel intake manifold. Somehow or other I wound up with an Edelbrock Performer; I don’t recall how. Before long I took that off and put on an Edelbrock SP2P, a manifold designed in the 1970s with small runners specifically for high flow velocity at low engine speeds. This truck had a 2.76:1 rear axle and biggish 235/75R15 tires, and I was driving it in Toronto traffic; it specialised in low engine speeds.
I also put in a set of my favourite extended-projected nose spark plugs. No bogus “magic” plugs, these; they’re in every major plug maker’s product line (I like NGKs best). They were originally used in AMC’s 6-cylinder engines starting in the mid-late ’70s to help light the lean, stratified mixtures resulting from the strangle-and-pray emission controls of that time. Chrysler themselves later used plugs like this in the Jeep 4.0, the LH 3.5, and other motors. The idea is to move the spark away from the quenchout area near the cylinder head metal, and I was always able to gain small but noticeable improvements in driveability and fuel economy by using these plugs in my Chrysler Slant-6s and 2.5s, and now in this 318. I figured it would help countervail the big, open, 1960s-type combustion chamber shape. There was a fast-burn/closed-chamber head for the 318, right on the shelf; it went in M-body Diplomat-Caravelle-Gran Fury cars and suchlike. Why didn’t they put it in the trucks? Chrysler only knows.
Each of these changes I made nudged things in a good direction. The engine ran a little smoother, the driveability was a little more polished. Nothing much happened with the fuel –economy– consumption; it was a not-very-advanced engine trying to push a brick through the wind via a tall axle ratio and tall tires, without overdrive. I had ideas for how to bypass the engine computer’s control of ignition timing and put in a vacuum/centrifugal advance distributor—this is a common retrofit for owners of Lean Burn cars, and it often makes them run and drive considerably better, but it would’ve been more complicated on my truck: no ported vacuum available, and there was a need to keep the computer informed of the engine’s speed even after removing the hall effect distributor it looked at for that knowledge. I’d like to think my plans were good enough to work, but I never tried them. That’s probably just as well.
See the nickel wedged under the wing window catch?
Bill and I used the truck for all our automobility needs. This involved certain other gritchments. It had rear-wheel ABS which I quickly grew to hate. It never kicked in, that I noticed, when I was actually driving the truck—not even when I tried to make it engage by finding slippery surfaces and standing on the pedal. But Toronto had these permanent banks of frozen, compacted road slush all winter long, and when I was trying to get in or out of a parking space the ABS would override my brake application just as I was trying to balance the truck on top of a little ice hill to get a bit of a gravity assist for the next manœuvre. I’d sit there with both feet on the brake pedal, listening to the rear wheel(s) turning and the ABS pump pulsing. What a damn nuisance! It was an overlay type with a regular master cylinder and a regular vacuum booster. I unplugged the ABS module and removed the dashboard ABS light bulb—problem solved.
The truck wasn’t very good for errands; the options were either put the groceries or whatever in the bed (not good in sloppy winter or broiling summer) or crowd them into the cab with us. It wasn’t very good for putt-putting around town, either (hard to park, thirsty to run, dangerous on slippery winter roads). But it excelled in other applications. One dark, snowy Winter afternoon I was sitting at my desk, struggling as I usually do to get actual work done, when Bill rang. He wanted me to come down to Queen’s Park immediately. He’d found a table, he said; he’d explain later. Just get in the truck, right now. Okeh! I slogged through the slush and found him sitting atop a long table outside the University of Toronto property disposition office. Pulled up alongside, stepped out the truck, and got a terrific soaker when I sank my foot ankle-deep directly into a chuckhole.
He’d been walking home when he spotted this discarded long chemistry lab table, sturdily built in U of T’s in-house furniture construction shop probably in the 1930s. It had pockmarks, burns, and scars from decades of use (wabi-sabi!) and was otherwise perfect. He’d been sitting on it the whole time, fending off any other would-be claims, getting snowed on and waiting for me to arrive. We horsed it into the truck—too long to allow the tailgate to close, and we didn’t have straps or ropes, but it was heavy enough to stay put if I drove carefully, which I had to do anyhow on account of the weather. It was a hell of a score, that table, and we still have it.
Oh, speaking of driving in slush: My truck, like many vehicles with automatic transmission and a bench seat, had a parking brake applied (Gzzzzt!) by stomping a pedal located far to the left of the brake pedal, and released (CHUNG-ta!) by pulling a brake release trigger handle located under the left side of the dashboard. A fine arrangement; leg muscles are generally stronger and the driver’s bracing against the seat, so a great deal more force can be applied to a parking brake pedal than arm muscles can apply to a handbrake lever.
The pedal even had a nice rubber pad on it, deeply grooved to stop my foot sliding off. Those nice deep anti-slip grooves also acted like capillaries when it was slushy and wet outside, so if I kicked the parking brake on a sloppy day, several gallons of slushy brine got slucked and packed into the pedal pad—much like loading a gun.
Once I’d done my errand and come back to the truck, you see, and buckled in and started the engine and turned on the lights and put the transmission in gear, then would come time to release the brake (CHUNG-ta!). Pedal, driven by spring-loaded parking brake cables, flies upward-rearwar and hits its up-stop, then the several gallons of unrestrained slushy brine obey the laws of physics and continue the pedal’s arrested upward-rearward trajectory, winding up on my hand, wrist, sleeve, arm, beard, face, and left lens of glasses. Whee! Do it again, daddy! I got in the habit of putting my foot on the pedal just before pulling the brake release, so I could slow its upward travel and keep the briny slush the hell in the pedal pad.
Carrying stuff in the bed wasn’t the only thing the truck was good for. In those early years of our relationship, I was still a damaged mess from having grown up in my behaviourally-defective mother’s house and losing my father too young. Beyond that, Bill and I hadn’t yet sanded down each other’s sharp edges and pointy corners, nor figured out how to hold a mirror to illuminate each other’s blind spots. There was a lot of work to do, and we often used the “therapy truck”, as we called it. We’d get in and drive, or even just sit there parked, and talk, sometimes for hours. We were right there next to each other, so we couldn’t be distracted by email or things on the shelf, or suddenly need to go look at something in the other room, or otherwise like that. We had to look and listen and talk with each other. I haven’t done the maths, but I don’t have to; whatever large money that truck cost to own and run, it did us more good than years of $250/hour therapy.
Meanwhile, I’d been working on becoming a Canadian permanent resident (like having a U.S. green card). That involved a lot of paperwork and waiting and fees and waiting and background checks and waiting. Finally in February 2005, the time came. It was an interesting day. Action-packed, as the movie posters say. Up at 5:20, out the door at 6:20, crossed the border with zero problem at 7:50, parked in the Consulate building’s garage in Buffalo at 8:10, gave my passport to the cheerful and courteous agent at 8:20. Exited the building, walked around a bit, found myself in a free-streetcar zone, found a likely corner, walked around a bit. Asked a random stranger to recommend a decent breakfast place, walked the 15 blocks or so to her suggested restaurant and the french toast wasn’t bad.
Went from breakfast to the public library. Finished my goods-to-follow lists and pored over Consumer Reports magazines from the early-mid ’60s; it is a terrible shame that magazine was permitted to de-evolve over the years into such selfgratulatory parody.
Walked back to the Consulate, picked up my passport (now with shiny new visa on page 15!) and landing papers, paid my $6 parking, and at 3pm pulled the truck out the parking garage. Got to the Canadian border around 3:45. “Hi there. I have a landing visa, so I need to see the immigration people”.
Got a yellow card, pulled into the Immigration parking lot.
“Hi there. I’m here to land!”
Pleasant back-and-forth banter with the agent while he clicked keys and did paperwork. “Initial here and here, sign here, sign and date here, please—keep your signature within the white box”, then he extended his hand and said “Welcome to Canada!”.
Next stop: Customs. I handed in my items-to-follow list (one 1971 Volvo 164 and associated parts, etc) and landing document. No pleasant banter from this apparently humourless agent, but no harrassment, either. While he was doing his paperwork, the only other customer at the counter was making a slow and massive trainwreck of himself, right before my eyes. He was a Canadian apparently trying to import a BMW from the states, and he was standing there screwin’ up every single question they asked him:
Who’d you buy this car from?
“My friend.”
Oh, where’s your friend live?
“Ummmm…I donno?”
You claim the car has an extremely low value. Why is that?
“It needs a lot of repair.”
You listed it at 25 per cent of its actual value; any car that needs 75 per cent of its worth in repairs isn’t roadworthy and we can’t let it in.
“Oh, no, I’ve been driving it, it’s not junk, it’s fine.”
You’ve been driving it? In Canada?
“Yeah…I mean…no.”
That’s two criminal offences, sir. False declaration and failure to declare.
“Um…ha ha ha ha ha..”
So when’d you buy this car, sir?
“February….ummmm…seven”
Yeah? So how come your name’s not on the title? ‘Cause that looks like a third criminal offence.
“Ummmmmmm…”
On and on and on. I couldn’t look away. When I came in, he had one agent talking to him; when I left, there were five.
Back at my own section of the counter, the guy issued me a tax exemption receipt for goods to follow, said they’d check off items as they were imported, no deadline, and…that was it! At about 4:20, I shifted into Drive and headed back home. There had been not a single hiccup. I no longer had to gamble on hassle or refusal every time I would try to return to Canada, nor fret every year when my work permit would expire. Or whatever document it was; every year at expiry time it seemed to be the same story: we can’t renew this for you; it’s not the right kind of document for your situation!. No more of that; big relief. Onward to the next goalpost (citizenship, which I attained a few years later).
I also tinkered with the truck’s cooling system, inspired by a nuisance event: I was heading home from work one night in April 2008, through West Toronto along Bloor St rather than on Dupont. More stop-and-go lights and congestion on Bloor, but also more restaurants; I wanted to stop and pick up a roti for dinner. I was within sight of the roti place, stopped at Lansdowne, when suddenly the truck and seemingly everyone else waiting at the red light and I were engulfed in big, dense clouds of burnt coolant…which I quickly figured out was coming from my truck. Oh, yay! I watched the engine temp gauge while I waited for the light to go green, and it didn’t seem to be rising, despite the thickening clouds of smoke; I bypassed the restaurant and drove straight home, a little over a kilometre.
Parked in the street, left the high beams on and popped the hood…found one of the heater hoses forcefully pissing coolant directly onto the exhaust manifold. Yeah, that’ll do it. I knocked the radiator cap to the stop and vented off the system pressure; the leak immediately decreased significantly in volume, and I closed the hood and went in to eat and go to bed.
Next morning in the sunshine, I popped the hood again. Really simple failure: one of legs of the spring-ring hose clamp holding the vent hose to the crankcase breather was in contact with the adjacent heater hose, and eventually wore a hole in it. I fetched some heater hose and made the repair, but shortly thereafter I switched to waterless coolant and put in a 205° thermostat, 10 Fahrenheit degrees hotter than the specified item. The waterless coolant has a much higher boil point and runs at atmospheric pressure (no water = no steam = no pressure), and I found it did what the maker claimed. The hotter thermostat seemed to do what Smokey Yunick said it would for engine efficiency; fuel consumption decreased slightly but measurably and consistently. Very fine.
Really, the truck did well for me. It was resolutely what it was, not more and not less, though I managed to nudge it closer to “more” in some ways. A couple of times, when small rust bubbles appeared in the lower body, I had it fixed straightaway so it wouldn’t get any bigger. But eventually I got tired of trying to park it, paying to feed it, and trying not to die while driving it in winter. Plus, the locking torque converter had begun to shudder on engagement, and I just didn’t want to know about transmission repairs. I told my mechanic (not the Fat Tony guy) I was looking to sell it, and a few months later he called and asked if that was still the case. Turns out the guy in the shop above his—a millwright who made big, expansive, expensive woodworks for custom homes—needed a new truck in a hurry.
“What happened to that blue GMC I always see him in?” I asked. Mechanic said that truck died when the oil filter rusted out. Think about that for a minute: the oil filter rusted out. I met with the millwright, he got in the truck, I drove him round the block once, and he said “I’ll take it! Wow, this thing has air conditioning?!”. He paid me (getting $4,500 for a 1989 Dodge D-100 in 2009 had to be some kind of neat trick), I went straight to the bank and deposited the money, and that was that.
But not really, because the truck moved just one block over. I think the millwright existed in a state of permanent stonedness on account of the solvent vapours in his shop, and he was reputed to like drinking his lunch out of a flask. Plus, his previous truck had died because the oil filter rusted out, so I got to watch my well-preserved truck very quickly regress to the mean condition of 30-year-old trucks in Toronto. That was difficult, but it was good practise at letting go.
Bill still misses it.
I used to think I was the only one that had such a thing for older Mopar starters. I guess I’m not. I would seriously love for you to do a post about the differences. I knew from the sound that they had changed over the years but had never really deviled into why or what the differences were. That 62 to 72 sound is the best!!!
I’ve always wondered, did guys back in the day buy Mopar just because they liked the starter? I know I would have.
You are not the only one. I did the opposite of Daniel – the starter got really weak on my 68 Chrysler (in about 1995) so I got a rebuilt somewhere. I was horrified that my car now sounded just like the 77 New Yorker I had once owned, with the super-duper-high-speed starter. I hated it.
Nostalgia can be a powerful thing, and the aural memory of the Highland Park Hummer gear-reduction starter firing up an old sixties-to-early seventies Chrysler (from the smallest slant-six to a monster Street Hemi) is a perfect example. They make a very distinctive sound that no one of age from that time period forgets. That simple sound, alone, brings back vivid memories to the Chrysler faithful.
In fact, although the old classic sci-fi movie The War of the Worlds was made nearly a decade before Chrysler used the gear-reduction starter, I swear that the sound of the Martian ray-gun is exactly the same and sounds like the aliens were using Chrysler-built starters on their spacecraft.
About 15 years ago I may have actually brought a box of AC parts across the border at Sarnia. It probably helped that my ’65 looks like the sort of car that you might reasonably carry a trunk full of spare parts with you.
Well that was a fun story, so many good points to unpack there:
I’m sorry your work permit adventure didn’t go smoothly but if it makes you feel better, compared to my green card adventure with US immigration yours was quick, inexpensive, and ultimately more successful. We should talk on that someday.
I’m with you on the ISO. I’ve worked for a couple of ISO certified companies and at best it means that your crappy procedures are followed, at worst it’s smoke and mirrors. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. Between ISO, SAP and CSA my life would be a lot simpler without them.
And I hope you have those frosty beard photos framed on your wall, that’s fantastic!
Nice truck too, full points for driving it in Toronto 🙂
Ahh, ISO 9000/9001 … Say what we do (in many cases paying a consultant to write it down, for big $$$), then just do what you said. It doesn’t have to be a good procedure, just follow it. But it was well intentioned. Just like ISO14001.
We’d probably have a fair amount to talk about, immigrationwise.
ISO nine-million-and-seventeen-point-five means your company has written procedures. Doesn’t matter if the procedure is for a rabid chimpanzee to sit on a yoga mat near the production line and fling poo, just matters that it’s documented—oh, and that you paid a lot of money for the certification…and then did it again when ISO nine-million-and-seventeen-point-five-revision-A came around, and then again when ISO nine-million-and-eighteen went live. Because all your competitors have the latest ISO certification, and, well, nice little business you’ve got here. It would be a terrible shame if nobody patronised it any more.
I was working for a Japanese tech company in 1995-1999 and they were certifying for ISO 14001 at the time. They were quite serious about it, too. They actually turned off half the lights in the employee locker room to attain their energy reduction goals.
Excellent writeup Daniel. Congratulations of surviving the gauntlet to which you were subject (subjected?).
Like Doug, I have a long story about obtaining the right work visa (it ended up being an L-1A) to enter the US for business meetings. Long hours at the border in Niagara Falls, Calls to lawyers in New Jersey, the whole bit.
Was Duffy’s Tavern still there on the corner of Bloor and Dufferin when you were there? That may have offered you a bite to eat, albeit not roti.
“Duffy’s Tavern” is a phrase that rings a very distant bell. I don’t think I ever went in there.
This is one I’d been waiting for. These old Dodge pickups are far from perfect but I would counter there was a sizable area in time in which they had better, less wheezy drivetrains than Fords and better rust resistance than Chevrolet. 1989 was admittedly leaving that zone but, based upon one single data point, I still see many more Dodge pickups of this era than I do Ford or GM.
Back in the early ’90s I also had a job where I drove tons of these, from model year 1987 to 1991. I could tell a person the model year as soon as I looked at it and hit the starter. There were also some mild differences in trim and steering wheels, too.
Yours was exceptionally well preserved for that part of the world and in a good color combination.
I don’t see many of these where I live in southern Arizona (quite a few of the next generation, though), but there are still a healthy number of ’em back in Montana. Most are fully optioned, four wheel drive, and equipped with the Cummins B Series, so 1989-93 model years.
I think the Cummins trucks are about the only ones people put money and effort into; the rest got used up and discarded.
The 1985-90 Dodge pickup grille was the last good one for that generation. For some reason, the ’91-’93 grille got weird. Maybe it was some sort of marketing ploy to get ready for the Kenworth styling that would make its appearance for 1994.
FWIW, I think Bob Lutz was the guy who was brought in by Iacocca to revamp the truck line during this timeframe and was a huge success for him (and Chrysler). In a strange twist, they ended up hating each other to the point that the process to find a retiring Iacocca became known as ‘ABL’ or ‘Anybody But Lutz’.
My truck had the ‘86 to ’90 grille. The ’91+ setup struck me as some manager somewhere saying I don’t care, just change it.
Fun with border officials is all entertainment. Your stories reminds me of the numerous times I crossed at Sarnia en route to London. One time, the agent at the booth directed me into the secondary inspection area. Two agents there looked through my car (finding nothing) and then laughingly directed me to go inside the building “where the lady at the counter hasn’t smiled all day.” True, she didn’t smile while I was there and then gave me the third degree as to why I was coming. Answer: business trip. Retort: we don’t want to lose any Canadian jobs. Answer: I’m not coming to work, just attend a meeting with a Canadian company (GM) who has a billion dollar contract with us. After several more pointed and intrusive questions, she decided that my visit would not ruin any part of the Canadian economy and let me in. Never a dull moment from people with nothing but time on their hands.
Oh, there’ll be quite a few more border stories in forthcoming entries. Some of them are entertaining. Others rather less so. But yeah, it seems like two kinds of people are overrepresented in those jobs: playground bullies who never outgrew it, and their victims bent on passing it on.
An old family border-crossing story: we were coming home to Michigan after a very pleasant fishing trip with my grandfather, who had been warned that the immigration officers had no sense of humor whatsoever. Pulled up to the booth, got the question about “Anything to declare?” “I declare that I had a wonderful time,” said my grandfather, with complete sincerity. The Customs people were either touched, or baffled, but they waved us on through. Never quite had the courage to try that one myself.
This seemed like the one remnant of the old ChryCo I had been in love with – this and the van. I never really had any firsthand experience with these, but would like to. It would be disheartening, though, to deal with the halfassery involved in mating “modern” with “antediluvian”.
I think you’ve just summed up the whole experience pretty perfectly.
It’s too late now, but I found a fuel injection system from Edelbrock that would have fit your truck
https://www.edelbrock.com/edelbrock-pro-flo-4-efi-kit-for-small-block-chrysler-318-360-engines-35900.html
Gosh, only $2,000 for a slightly different version of what the truck already had!
Wonderful tale. I remember test driving a new one of these in 1984 at Dodgeland here in NJ. Beautiful red with white inserts. Surprised that it produced a blue cloud of smoke out the tailpipe with only 10 miles on the odo.
Oh, de luxe. How’d they try explaining that one?
My wife and I were separately interrogated and had our car searched by the Americans at Pigeon River.
The guy was confused by the fact we were of different nationalities and not resident in either Canada or the US.
My wife said she had returned from working in Australia.
“What were you doing there?”
“Teaching English.”
“Yeah right, I know they speak English in Australia!”
Any suggestion that that is open to debate would of course be egregiously insulting.
I got “Where are you from?”.
“Edinburgh, Scotland”.
“I’m going there in the summer, what can a tourist see and do?”.
“Uh, dunno, the castle?”
(Yelling in my face) “I KNOW THERE’S A CASTLE, WHAT ELSE?”.
Fun and games. Our reason for visiting Canada was “because it’s there”. We went to A&W in Thunder Bay and came back.
Hehehe! I admire your wife’s quixotic optimism, given that teaching English to Australians is known to be about as effective as a real boat in the Todd River Regatta at Alice Springs.
As for egregious insult, not a bit of it, but some considerable mirth, this coming from a Scot: I’ll wager you wish you had one Aussie dollar for very time you were asked “Sorry, mate, beg yours?”!
Brand loyalty can really cause frustration and an empty wallet!
I lost my Chevy brand loyalty when I went to buy a new Iroc-Z in 1989. Those cars were completely lame, over priced POS’s. I bought a 5.0L Mustang instead, which I still have.
Then I had several excellent F150’s in the ’90’s. Then we needed a small car and Ford small cars were total crap. Ended up with several excellent Honda’s.
Then we needed a 1ton diesel truck in 2003. POS Ford 6.0L diesel? No thanks and my 1st Dodge truck. 2004 Dodge Cummins.
So we have:
1989 Fox 5.0L Mustang.
2006 Acura/Honda TSX.
2004 Dodge Cummins.
2016 Honda HRV. Winter beater, ski rig.
I have zero brand loyalty. Buy the best vehicle for the year and it’s intended use.
My point is that while that a 1989 D100 looks cool now, those trucks were not nearly as good as the Ford and GM counterparts back in 1989.
While the Dodge 1/2 ton was likely way cheaper than a Ford or GM 1/2 ton, setting aside your Mopar brand loyalty may have been wise!
Great stories though. My car stories are not nearly as dramatic!
Mostly about buying new vehicles and immediately hot rodding them.. Which is fun but not always wise.
I agree with you that brand loyalty is dumb (and creepy as hell, when you think about it). Beyond that: no sale. I’d already done my time with a V8/RWD GM product of that time period, and didn’t wish to repeat it. A Ford? Absolutely not, for a long list of good reasons starting with this one.
I bought what I wanted. It was what it was.
Another great Saturday-morning-breakfast-on-the-deck read. Quite the tale.
In 1973, I was heading back to Iowa after a brief work/romance spell in Baltimore. I had my VW packed to the gunnels with everything I owned, and the roof rack was piled up too, with my 10 speed lashed on top. I decided to take the scenic way back, via Quebec and the Michigan upper peninsula. Had a great time in Quebec city, having fallen in with some summer theater group that performed in English for the tourists.
Coming back though I got stopped by US Immigration; they made me pull over and empty the contents of my car, spreading everything out on the tarmac. Everything. Down to every little spice bottle opened and such. That was a fun unpacking and repacking job.
That’s all they did, was make you unpack? They didn’t take apart your car and leave you to reassemble it? They can do that, y’know. Don’t think they can’t, ’cause they can. Are you smartmouthing them? ARE YOU?!
In the late 80s my boss, who lived in Toronto, was working on a project in Montreal so he had an apartment there. One weekend he decided that instead of going home to Toronto he would visit Vermont. As his car was in Toronto he rented one for the weekend. When he arrived at the border they decided that they needed to search his car. They basically dismantled the interior and the trunk including, but not limited to, removing all the interiors of the doors. He never did find out what triggered it. He was a Canadian citizen, born in England, in his mid 40s. He travelled a tremendous amount on business, so his passport would be full of stamps,. He figured they just chose him at random, something like the third arrival after 11 am. I wonder how the car rental company felt about it?
“They didn’t take apart your car and leave you to reassemble it?”
They did that to me at the border at Nuevo Laredo. I was surprised I didn’t get a cavity search.
One of my high school buddies drove up to visit me at my college in extreme upstate NY in November in his beater MGB. Top was shredded, so top down, big parka, fur-lined “mad bomber” style hat, and a pretty gnarly scar on his cheek. While I was in class I sent him north to get us a case of Molson Brador. On returning, US customs agent looked at him and said, “are you sure you’re American, you look like a Canadian”. Being 19 or 20 his reply was naturally, “well, you look like an asshole”. And indeed he did have to reassemble his car. But the Brador was good!
CC effect?
Just this morning I was passed on the road by a Dodge truck of this same vintage., though this one was a white dually with a “work” bed on the back.
Of all the 70-80 Dodge trucks, I particularly like this version as it combines the right amounts of “macho” and maturity. Not sure if I would want an 8 foot bed, tho.
Thanks for the Saturday afternoon (here in Munich) entertaining read!
I have crossed the borders many times around the world. 99.95% of time was it smooth and uneventful for me. The 0.05% was crossing the border from Toronto to Rochester, NY in 1991 with my late best friend, James. The US officer saw my German passport and American resident alien card, then he asked me many questions in German. That was the first time anyone from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement had “interrogated” me in German. Due to me being deaf, we had to write back and forth on paper so it took us good 20 minutes or so. Just two of several booths were open that night so imagine the queue behind us growing longer and longer. Finally, he was satisfied and let me go.
Smokey Yunick: I have not heard his name in a very long time after he passed away in 2001. His column in Popular Science was the first one to read before I started reading the entire magazine. His development of the adiabatic (hot vapour) engines stuck to my mind when I was older kid.
https://books.google.de/books?id=nruj6VeHNy8C&lpg=PA3&hl=de&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q&f=false
You know, I wish those adiabatic (etc) engines of his had gained some commercial traction.
I’d like to think I could handle the border with aplomb.
Had the Catholic grade school angry nuns with wooden rulers. Then survived interrogations and Jedi mind puzzles with the Jesuits in high school.
BTW, Daniel, you should author a Chrysler starter ring tone for the faithful.
A ringtone. I bet I could make at least one; I’ll mull on that. Stay tuned.
What ever Mopar starter ring tone you make, make sure the engine is flooded!
I think I have sound clips of adequate quality to make several good tones. I’ll work on it.
I managed to get the one from Wikipedia into an old phone as a ring tone, when it rang people would shake their heads as if to say who would have a ring tone like that, I loved it, not sure how I did it now.
I thought it was quite good as the engine didn’t catch first time, so you got to hear it cranking for a while.
I bet I know exactly the Wikipedia file you downloaded to make that tone. I uploaded it years ago; that’s a past iteration of my friend Steve’s ’66 Dodge in Texas.
In the mid-70s I and a couple of buddies decided to take a trip up from Chicago to Ontario just because. No problems going up but on the way back US border agents searched my Westfalia and found a pot seed. After ripping apart the van and finding nothing else, they took us each in separate rooms and had us 18-year-olds disrobe; buck naked. The border agents seemed to get a great deal of pleasure from that.
Having had rather numerous vehicular based run ins (generally deserved) with authority
figures, I can only imagine the annoyance of border crossings, having never been faced
with that particular issue.
My one land based excursion from the US to Canada was nigh on 30 years ago in the
quest for legal underage drinking. This involved a two hour drive at night, in January,
riding with several other teens in the open bed of a pickup, huddled under a tarp. To
the best of my dim memory, there was no border stop in VT.
Regarding the truck, a functional old pickup is a thing of beauty, best when it is slightly
ragged with no pretense of any sort.
That described Torqueflite harsh engagement “clang” was terrible.
On a cold start transmission damage was common enough that it warranted precautions.
In short, the problem is that while in Park Torqueflite bleeds off most fluid flow, resulting in very low transmission oil pressure.
Then, when Reverse is selected, line pressure spikes to easily more than double normal pressure and BANG! The pressure spike can take out L/R band servo or clutch pistons. Nothing like major transmission failure on a bitter cold morning.
The good news is there is a workaround.
First thing, you have to do is take personal responsibility and acknowledge that what’s believed to be best for all motorists in all situations, may not necessarily be best for you and your bitter cold Torqueflite. Namely, recognizing that the P-R shift is murder to a cold Torqueflite and the driveline.
The workaround is to start the engine in Neutral. Then when it’s time to go stop the engine and prepare to restart it, still in Neutral. When all systems are go and you’re ready for liftoff, restart in Neutral and without delay or brake application immediately shift into gear and get into motion the instant the engine fires.
For advanced users the neutral-start switch’s function can be disabled by a simple jumper at the starter relay. That makes possible even more optimal in-gear cold starts. Shhhh. That’s what the lingering last one of my many Dodge trucks still runs.
Bypassing safety switch requires thinking for yourself, but it’s a lot less thinking than major Torqueflite repairs. Lol
Thanks for chiming* in.
This particular Torqueflite (like others I’ve owned) had full oil flow in Park enabled, which neither improved nor aggravated the problem. None of the numerous other Torqueflite-equipped vehicles I’ve owned and driven has exhibited anything even remotely like the harsh engagement behaviour I describe on this truck; it was particular to ’89s built with slightly miscalibrated valve bodies and separator plates—one or more holes were too big, one or two check valve springs improperly selected. I used to have the TSB describing the miscalibrations in detail, but no longer do.
I did have plenty of experience with the no-oil-flow-in-park characteristic of untinkered Torqueflites; when the transmission would get old enough for the torque converter to drain down with the vehicle parked more than a few hours, there would be delayed, slurred engagement on the first shift out of Park. Easy on the driveline, but not so friendly to other parts of the transmission. The workaround was what you say: shift to Neutral before starting the engine, then by the time the engine was running steadily and you’d buckled in and adjusted things and were ready to go, the torque converter had been filled and engagement would be immediate.
Never had reason to adopt a start/shutoff/start/immediate-shift dance, and never had a Torqueflite fail on first P-R of the day. I think probably just making sure the idle and band/linkage adjustments are correct and delaying that first shift until after kicking the fast-idle cam off its topmost step (or until the idle controller is being a little less shrill) is sufficient to stave off engagement-induced transmission failure. There’s a name for shifting from Park or Neutral to any gear with the engine racing at 2,200 RPM; it’s called a “neutral drop” and that does stand a good chance of bad damage.
Defeating the neutral safety switch strikes me (and/or random others who didn’t ask to help prolong someone’s transmission life) as foolhardy and reckless, with or without an implicit wink and nudge. Let’s let that conversation drop here and now, please and thank you.
*Your chiming in put me in mind of that CLENNG! bell-sound of a Turbo Hydramatic hung by the parking pawl on an incline, being shifted out of Park.
You have to realize that I’m from a different world order, where the operator was expected to do the thinking, not the machine. Shoot most stuff I cut teeth on didn’t have any neutral switch at all, OE or otherwise.
Some “vehicles” didn’t even have any accelerator pedal whatsoever. Instead the presumed desired (and default) operating mode was full fuel. As soon as the gear selector left Neutral the engine went to full fuel. If operator occasionally wanted something less he could step on a decelerator pedal. However, if foot lifted off pedal for any reason at all he was presumed to desire the usual full-fuel mode – and it was promptly delivered. lol
So yeah, in my narrow world view it’s no big deal to give up the false security of a neutral switch in exchange for a transmission not imploding some bitter cold morning. lol
I like your solution Daniel for modifying your rear lights on this Ram to have amber turn signals. Fortunately, all of my cars have had amber turn signals standard, with 2 exceptions, one a Chevy and the other a Mercury.
It was an imperfect solution on my truck, because the reversing lamps—like most of them— weren’t designed to produce an appropriate light distribution for the turn signal function. But it was quite a bit better on that front than many others, and positionally so as well. So I went for it. This setup is old history in Australia; it was mostly gone from new cars by 1990 or so, I think, and has been fully/certainly gone from any new vehicles for quite a few years now.
But it’s not too radical an idea. In North America we already have lights just like this, functionally, at the front of the car—turn signals that also serve as amber daytime running lights, so amber reversing lamps aren’t such a stretch. In both cases, the message is “I’m a car, I’m here, and you’re looking at the end of the car that is moving toward you, or about to do so”.
At the very least, it strikes me as a much less stupid thing to do than to combine the brake and turn signal functions on one red light.
I can’t believe I’m still having to grouse about this in 2021.
Confession time: It’s only been recently that I’ve begun to like the sound of the old Mopar gear reduction starter. As a kid, I remember being a little squicked out by that sound that came across as barely able to turn the engine, whining while it worked. I dunno if the folks in Kalispell always had weak batteries, as their starters sounded way less energetic that the one in the video clip posted… even the later revised ones sounded that way to my ears. My early memories were of the energetic sounding direct drive GM starters, which almost always led to a comforting “Vvrooom!”, or a “Pppppffftthhhhhhhhhhhtt!” if it was the neighbor’s 1973 Olds with a 455 and a 2″ single exhaust. But now, I’m chuckling and grinning when I hear the old Mopar. You’ve corrupted me!
I remember using the bed of my truck for viewing aurorae during a period of intense solar activity during the summer of 2004, and I’m sure there was some therapeutic value to that. Even though it was July or August, it still got a bit cool in that part of Montana at night, so we would have to hop in and drive a half mile or mile at WOT to warm up the converters and mufflers, which in turn kept the bed floor comfy enough for my then girlfriend. Had to repeat the process every 30 minutes or so, but it was well worth it.
Now the inevitable lighting queshuns- Where in the heck did you come up with yellow sealed beams in that form factor?? And I’ve always been curious as to why we rarely saw red lamps shining through a clear lens in the incandescent days, and why it was always was provided by a red filter rather than a red bulb. I have seen what looks like skookum European spec bulbs like PR21W and PR21/5W, but haven’t seen any actual applications for them. Are there, or are these bulbs junk too?
Those ’70s GM direct-drive starters had variants, too; a Chev V8 did not sound the same when cranking as an Olds V8. As I say, I’ll eventually do a deeper dive than anyone ever asked for on the many calls of the Highland Park Hummingbird—probably after my COAL series ends.
Your combination therapy/bed-warming technique sounds like a winner! The skies are (…were?) just spectacular out on the plains and prairies away from light pollution.
The yellow sealed beams started out as GE Night Hawk items, which were the last of the passably decent sealed beams when they were still made in America. I made them yellow myself with this stuff. The result was highly credible; they looked pretty much exactly like headlamps with cadmium yellow glass lenses. A clear hardcoat overtop the yellow would’ve been a good idea, but I intended them as an experiment.
Red incandescent tail/brake lights shining through a clear lens—that was a thing on a few cars, such as the ’62 Cadillac and early-production ’65 Chryslers. But in those cases the bulb was clear and there was a red filter (balloon over the bulb or suchlike) built into the taillight. We didn’t have red bulbs because until recently the only way to get the right colour was to use a gold oxide in the glass, and nobody was going to pay for that. Cadmium oxides were much less costly, so we had amber and yellow glass for bulbs. And red coatings were not sufficiently durable; they’d fade, burn, flake, and otherwise fail with prolonged bulb heat. Once that changed, then we saw the European PR21W, PR21/5W, WR21W, and other red bulbs, which are fine. They were present on some of the last Saabs, and probably some other models we didn’t get in North America.
Aha! I know just enough about stained glass to be aware of the cost differences for red glass, but didn’t make the connection on bulb glass until you brought up the gold oxide. Makes perfect sense now. I’m also reminded of the early RoHS era, cadmium free bulbs that blistered off their yellow coating in short order. I have a large enough supply of cadmium glass bulbs for my lifetime, so don’t have to worry about yellow flakiness, though it looks like that problem has mostly been ironed out in recent years.
I don’t think I would benefit from yellow headlamps in my current driving conditions, but I would like to try some on for size at some point. I may have to pick up a can of linked product to try out.
Most of the GM V8’s I remember were cranked by either a low or high torque Delco 10MT starter, but you are correct; they all didn’t sound quite the same. There was enough similarity in the audio track that you could usually tell when there was a GM car being cranked, though.
I had an ’89 D-250 with the Holley TBI 360 and a 727 Torqueflite. I never had much trouble with it, but the ’93 GMC C-2500 I had later was a much better truck. I think the TBI 454 and 4L80E overdrive transmission in that truck had a lot more power with comparable fuel economy. In addition to the Holley TBI issues mentioned earlier, another issue of those early fuel injected Rams was the ‘SMEC’ engine computer. The voltage regulator was integral with the computer and was failure prone.
Yes, the voltage regulator built into the SMEC (Single Module Engine Controller, later evolved to SBEC/Single Board Engine Controller) could fail in a couple of different ways, though I don’t know that I’d call it particularly failure prone. I had a related issue in my ’91 Spirit R/T. It wasn’t such a big deal; a standard standalone Chrysler voltage regulator could be installed under the hood somewhere and the car’s original two field wires bridged with a resistor to prevent a trouble code. Cheap, easy fix.
The fleet I worked for the time had a lot of Dodge trucks and we saw regulator failures often. You are correct about wiring in an old Chrysler 2 wire voltage regulator being an effective solution, but in CARB ‘enhanced’ areas with bi-annual smog testing (we were in one) this was not at option. The failed voltage regular would cause a ‘check engine’ light which meant failing the smog test (even though it had nothing to do with emissions). As far as bridging the original field wires that might work depending on the specific failure, but not always. Our fix was to replace the computer, rebuilds were available from the dealer and were not all that expensive at the time.
…if you skipped the last step in the repair, which was to bridge the vehicle’s original two field wires with a resistor to make the ECM think it was still looking at the rotor. No CEL, no code, no problem.
I’ve seen ’90s pickup brochures that still listed the overall length of the truck without bumper, with disclaimers like “add 4″ for optional step bumper”. But I’m not sure when, exactly, they became standard (required?) equipment across the board.
This is the perfect place to put this line from an article I read this morning as it seemingly applies.
Twice no less.
“Or do they ignore all your arguments and just restate the original rule—seemingly angered by what they understood as a challenge to their authority, and delighted to reassert it? That’s the blankface.”
This has been my favourite of your vehicles so far Daniel, what a beauty.
As a kid in 1960s Australia I thought the Chrysler starter motor sounded space age modern.
I think our slant sixes used a local “normal” starter so it was only the V8 cars with the reduction type until the local Hemi sixes which had a proper Chrysler starter.
Very much looking forward to your deep dive story on these starter motors.
Oh, things got really interesting with Chrysler cars filtered through Australia’s local-content laws. The ’62 S-model Valiant had an American Chrysler gear-reduction starter, as did the V8-equipped AP6-VC. The Slant-6s used Australian Bosch direct-drive starters from ’63 (AP5) to ’69 (VF). There was an Australian Bosch gear-reduction starter for the V8s starting around the ’67 VE or ’69 VF, and it was also used on some of the earlier Hemi-6s. Later Hemi-6s got another/different Australian Bosch direct-drive starter. So a real mix; I’ll be including some info (and sound clips) of these in the starter article, once this COAL series is done.
Now that I have read the whole story I have to say this one is the best as I was laughing away with each page. My wife, watching Filipino TV, asked me what I was laughing about. I said it was because of this fellow and his love/hate, mostly headaches with cars in his life. I wouldn’t trade with you for all the tea in China. So no worries. However, the poor guy who got stuck with the 5 custom agents would probably gladly switch.
Is that you on the left and Bill on the right, or vice versa? You’re so bundled up that if we ever meet, I won’t recognize you based on that photo. In February 1993 I was in Montreal for a couple of days. One morning the temperature was -5F, and the owner of the B&B said that was balmy Montreal in February.
I have a few border-crossing stories, none of them too hairy. In the summer of 1970 I entered Canada (for the first time) at Buffalo, NY-Fort Erie, ON. I was with a group of folks in a VW bus, and we looked like stereotypical hippies. One customs officer cheerfully asked, “How much dope do you have with you?” and we cheerfully cried, “None!” which was true. I had some Elavil, which I was taking for depression at the time. The lady customs officer asked if I could produce the prescription for it, and I couldn’t. One of my traveling companions got upset with me and said, “You’ll get us busted!” The customs officer said I’d have to abandon the meds to the Crown. I had a French-English dictionary in my pack in anticipation of going to Montreal, which I did, and she said, “You’re the scholar of the group.”
Next day in Toronto I went to cash a US$20 traveler’s check. The C$ (which wasn’t a loonie yet) was worth slightly more than the US$. The bank teller said apologetically, “This is ridiculous, but if you want C$20 I’ll need another cent.”
In 1973 I crossed into B.C. from Blaine, Washington. I still pretty much looked like a hippie. The customs officer filled out a form saying how long I could stay in Canada (I think it was 3 days) and said I should give it to US customs on the way back: “If we don’t get the form back, the Vancouver police will start looking for you.”
I’m on the right there. That pic is around…uhhh…15 years old or so, though; now my beard’s nearly Santa-white without any snow!
I hope The Crown enjoyed your meds.
There’s one English term I really like – “jobsworth.” It’s used as a noun for petty-minded gatekeepers of any sort, anything from security guards to immigration knobs: “No, can’t help you, it’s more than my job’s worth.” This always when they clearly can and it isn’t. Now, I’m all for sensible regulation, but too often it isn’t either of those things, and unfortunately, we are all slowly disappearing under alps upon alps of apparently self-generating jobsworths today.
Anyway, so I take it you’re no longer in the parts-running game?
Great post, sir.
Naw, I ain’t no auto-parts moonshiner no more. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped generating, ah, anecdotes involving auto parts requisition, transport, and delivery gone wrong, though. »Ping!« Another idea for a post-COAL article; thank you kindly.
Of all of the COALs that you have done, this one is my favorite of the bunch. Your driveabibilty problems mirror what I dealt with on a 1990 Dodge B150 (318 TBI/A999) assigned to me as a delivery vehicle in 1995. The van (nicknamed “The Possum-mobile,,,after Red Green’s Dodge Van) was an abused, ex-auto parts store delivery rig sent to the wholesale auto parts warehouse I worked for as a hand-me-down. Even though it was only 5 model years old at the time, in delivery-vehicle years, it had about the equivalent of 37-1/2 years of abuse heaped upon it. Still, it refused to die and was the most reliable vehicle in the fleet. It would never idle down unless the stars and moon lined up correctly. I had to take it in for emissions testing (at the time. Washington state used a tailpipe and dyno roller test). It did fine under load on the rollers, but wouldn’t idle down in park. I must’ve had a sympathetic tester-he told me to hold the brake and put it in drive. Idle speed down, readings good, I got my test results and went on my way. (he must’ve owned one of these, too). It wasn’t a powerhouse, but it kept going for several more years.
Interesting that you unearthed an Edelbrock SP2P manifold. I had thought those had disappeared off the face of the earth by the mid-Eighties. I worked for this wholesale auto parts distributor (sold both performance and replacement parts) for 23 years. After I worked my way into the phone room after a couple of years and started to take orders, I’d occasionally get someone still wanting an SP2P (along with another 70’s attempted gas mileage Band-Aid, the Holley Economaster carburetor)…..to which I replied in situations like this: “Good luck!”
Oh, probably, but eBay’s a thing. 🤓
That annular wagon-wheel venturi booster in those worked great; much better and more consistent fuel atomisation than the non-Economaster venturi configuration. A bigger main jet(s) made these carburetors run very well, and their original main jets were so ridiculously lean that there was plenty of room to do so while keeping some of the fuel economy benefit.
Another well written and fun to read article .
I like that series of Dodge trucks, I don’t think I’ve ever had / driven one with the F.I. though, the carbuated ones run fine once every thing is *just so* .
Interesting about the Canadian border guards, I’ve had a few jerkhoffs too .
As far as brand loyalty or vehicular foolishness, as long as it’s fun GO for it ! .
I always do although some times one find day I just say ‘screw this !’ and sell it on at a dead loss .
-Nate
Rust must be the killer. There are several of these 80s vintage Dodge pickups in my neighborhood plus a couple of Ramchargers and I see a 70s D600 still working around town. I’ve only ever driven the vans but definitely remember that column shifter.
Regarding Jason Shafer’s observation about wheezy Fords, the decision to go all in on multiport fuel injection with the 1987 facelift was wise. The driveability and performance were so much better. At the rental yard our old shop van was an E350 with a carburated 351 and it was hell to get moving in the winter. The fuel injected 89 replacement started up and idled immediately and was also better with a heavy trailer.
Yup; much though I dislike Fords in general, I’ll certainly give credit where it’s due, and there’s a great deal of it due for the multipoint fuel injection they put on their V8 cars starting in ’85 or so and trucks a couple years later.