It was just after the middle of the 1980s. As I recall, the Dodge B200 Sportsman van had found a home some time ago and the cars hanging around were the newly-5-year-leased Volvo, the 1963 Plymouth station wagon, the 1965 Barracuda, and the 1965 Valiant 4 door for mother to drive. We had only two drivers, and one of them rarely needed to drive. Something had to be done.
I was ‘stuck’ with the Volvo until October 1990.
I wasn’t going to sell the Barracuda, but the ’65 Valiant, that was a possibility. And unfortunately, as much as I had of myself in the ’63 Belvedere wagon, it drew the short straw first. She had served so well all these years since I bought her in September of ’70; I hated to sell her. But first she got to contribute some parts to my son Erik’s ’63 Belvedere, as well as her 360 engine, which went into my ’79 Dodge D150 truck. To make room for the 360 in the truck, I had occasion to sell the engine right out from under its hood to someone who needed a cheap engine replacement for his Dodge B-van. My truck’s own 360 had a ton of miles on it, and was just one step up from a junkyard engine. But it was a good way to provide a new place for my custom-built 360 workhorse.
Anyone ever try to pull (well, drop) an engine out the bottom of a full-size van, all by yourself? That is quite a trick, as well as a balancing act. This was in 1988 or ’89, when I was in my own shop, Hemi’s Independent Chrysler Repair, having left Harbor Chrysler for the last time in April of 1988 (about which, more below).
I had also met up with Eva, back in ’85 at the VASA lodge in Ventura. She was and remains a true Swede to this day, and became my wife № 4 in 2000. When I met her, she was driving a 1969 Chevy Nova with that everlasting Blue Flame 6 and Powerglide:
Curb feelers used to be a thing.
Here’s the Nova behind her cottage—which was swept away by a flood; hence, she ended up living with mother and me, eventually.
Kitty, front and center!
A closer zoom on the Nova:
This is what now stands where Eva’s cottage was. Even closer to the creek, and a lot larger!
By ’87, that car had clocked well over 200,000 miles and was running on borrowed time. While I was still working at Harbor Chrysler-Plymouth, it was time to do something about the Nova’s motor.
Since I had lived in Santa Paula, I had frequented the Chevrolet dealer on the next block east from my home, often for parts. At the customer entrance to the parts department sat a complete Chevy 6-cylinder long engine on display. I walked past it many times between 1979 and the mid-’80s. It was soiled with dust and cigarette ash, and I often wondered if it was for sale. I inquired one day and found that indeed it was available. I never knew what year or model of vehicle it was meant for, but as far as I was concerned, it was going to be for a 1969 Nova. I bought it at a very reasonable price; they were glad to get rid of this obstacle to pedestrian travel, and Eva was happy to have it implanted into her car—which I did right there in the Chrysler dealership.
Speaking of working at the dealership: when some customer’s car wouldn’t start after a repair, it was pushed to my stall. I would make it run, whatever it took. That theme carried over to driveability, as well. You must remember the hesitation and surging in those days after the start of emissions control but before fuel injection. It got pretty bad, balancing retarded timing, EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) and lean carburetion against the hopes and desires of the customer for a smooth-running car under all driving conditions.
Holley 6280 feedback carburetor
There was a fix I developed for the 1985+ M-body cars with the 318 engine. These were the Chrysler Fifth Avenue, Dodge Diplomat and Plymouth Gran Fury cars, and had changed from the Carter BBD to a Holley 6280 carburetor for 1985. Both were feedback carburetors, but the cars with the Holley carburetor had a real surge at steady throttle. Accelerate to your cruising speed—30 or 35 or 45 in town, 55 or 60 or 65 on the freeway—fine, but then the car would shudder and surge very noticeably. That was the engine compartment configuration with which they were approved as meeting the emissions standards, so that was how they ran.
My fix arose from the purchase of a new ’85 Fifth Avenue by the county sheriff. The morning after the purchase, the vehicle appeared outside the gates securing the repair shop with a note under the windshield wiper: “IF YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS CAR RUN ANY SMOOTHER THAN THIS, YOU CAN KEEP THE CAR!” (the words may have been a little stronger, but you get the point).
I was called to the dealership owner’s office and instructed to “FIX IT!” I asked for a repair order, and was told, “JUST FIX IT!” This was not the first time I had heard those words. I road-tested the car, and felt the surging, jerky feeling in the car as I crested a slight rise then fall of the pavement of the highway at 55 MPH. To explain this better, in order to maintain the speed limit, as the road crested I had to back off the throttle just a little so the speed would not increase. This is when the car shuddered due to the engine intermittently producing forward thrust, then nothing, then power again until I would apply more throttle to get the engine once again putting out more power to propel the car along. (I’ve never tried explaining this in print, so I hope you can understand what I mean.)
California is pretty strict about emissions tampering, and so are the feds. So I had to find a way to correct the symptoms without altering the exhaust emissions from this vehicle (and without a work order). Similarly as I came up with a fix that wasn’t in the service manual for the On-Line Cryptic Teletype communications while on a Marine MEU in Vieques, Puerto Rico in 1962, so I had to do the same here without leaving any trace. I am not going to explain the details; it gets a little deep, but it did work. The sheriff was happy, the dealership owner was happy, and when I contacted the Chrysler zone office and told them how I had corrected the problem, they told me it was a clever fix, but not something they could recommend or easily repair on all the vehicles that experienced this situation. But if they had occasion to have others with this problem, they would refer them to our dealership for repair. FAT CHANCE!
The final straw between myself and Harbor Chrysler in 1988 while I was working as the fix-whatever-the-other-guys-in-the-shop-broke guy. At that time I was on a fixed salary, more generous than those working on flat rate. Generally I was the tune-up guy and drivability diagnoser as well as the occasional RWD transmission rebuilder. I also repaired air conditioning problems, and there is where the last straw entered the picture.
For “Protection” (…of what, we don’t “know”)
When a technician received a repair order for checking the air conditioner of a car for “no cold air”, the first thing to do was check to see if the refrigerant charge was low. If it is, you go to the parts window and wait in line behind a number of other mechanics, all waiting for their turn to get parts. Finally you can check out a few cans of the R-12 we used back in the day. You then go and partially charge the system and check for leaks. You determine the problem, and if it is something repairable without having to wait for a special-order part, you get the part to fix it and the parts department automatically charges out three cans of R-12 as well. Sometimes that is more than you need. The parts department doesn’t want it back; that would mess up their inventory, so the mechanic is stuck with the excess cans. You could just blow it off into space (back then; not now), but you can’t just throw it away. So, I would store it in a locked cabinet in the shop and use some to test the systems of the next AC repair job I got before even going to the parts department the first time around. That is how I ended up with a small stockpile of cans of R-12 in the cabinet.
This turned out to be a bad decision, as one day the entire management including the owner descended on me in my work area. A particular individual whom I had bad relations with in management, the Assistant Service Manager, had gone to the owner and accused me of stealing Freon and storing it in my locked cabinet. I tried to explain: if I was stealing it, why was it still in the locked cabinet when I had free use of the shop on weekends and could have taken it out any time I wanted to? My explanation didn’t fly, and my salaried job vanished that moment; I was back to working flat rate again. Needless to say, I was no longer “Mr. Fix-It” any more, either—their loss.
A mechanic named Lee, at the Cadillac dealership was looking to open his own business and asked if I wanted to go in with him on the rental of a shop and purchase of whatever equipment we would need. I agreed, and though it took a few months to set up, we moved into our own repair shop which we named ABC Auto Care; on the business card it stood for “A Better Choice”. We got the shop up and running and had more work than we could handle—Lee doing Cadillacs and other GM cars, and me with my Chrysler products.
I was also hosting a monthly 10:00 AM Saturday car Q&A show on KVEN Radio in Ventura, from 1988 until the station became KVTA sometime in the mid-’90s.
“Your ’87 Diplomat surges and the dealer won’t fix it?”
“…Very funny. NEXT CALLER!”
It wasn’t long before Lee became overwhelmed with work and had to hire someone to work for him. One Monday when I arrived at the shop, I found my lift, in my end of the shop, supporting an old ’50s Cadillac with the entire front suspension removed, waiting for parts. I asked Lee to get the Caddy off my rack, which he could not quickly do. I realized that this arrangement was not going to work, and fortunately I found that there was another vacant shop in the same building. I promptly rented it and had my lift moved from Lee’s shop to my new place, Hemi’s Independent Chrysler Repair.
And now this chapter has come more or less full circle, so we’ll close it here. Stay tuned for more!
Previous chapters:
- First Transport – Coming to ‘Amerika’
- Being American and Picking a Car Company
- Motoring Into the Working World
- The 1960s – Serving, Saluting, and Swapping
- The 1970s, Part I – Backing and Forthing
- The 1970s, Part II – Barking and Forthing
- The 1980s, Part I – The Barracuda Goes Into Dry Dock and the Wagon’s a Tractor
” I’ve never tried explaining this in print, so I hope you can understand what I mean… ”
This description was not only readable, I felt it too. Traveling a lot in the 1980s, mainly from JFK to LAX, my California rental cars were sometimes nice running, and sometimes like you described. Fortunately, as a New York city apartment dweller back then, there was no need to own a personal car. AVIS was just a few blocks north of my home.
Looking forward to the story regarding the resolution of the fictitious business name statement. Was it caused by the use of the name “HEMI” or “Chrysler”?
You were the West coast version of Boston’s Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. That is very cool.
And finally, you even appeared in Daniel Stern’s COAL (https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1965-valiant-part-iv-self-own-service-and-naming-names/).
There are great stories; you just cannot make this stuff up.
The way I read it, that newspaper clip is just an announcement of a business name registration—a DBA, doing-business-as. Not a conflict or a violation or a gotchya.
Hemi appears in my COAL where you link, and also in a later chapter; I wonder if we will be reading some of those stories from his perspective, too.
Thank you Daniel; you are right.
According to Jason Beahm (on June 24, 2010) “The term “Fictitious Business” gets thrown around quite frequently. While some might mistake it for a shady business that is “made up,” it actually is a legal term for a form of registration required of businesses in certain situations”.
This quote (above) is from the following website: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/small-business/what-is-a-fictitious-business-name/ .
I’m filing this under my “learn-something-new-every-day” to-do list. This means I can relax for the rest of the day.
Excellent writeup! I left it with an appreciation for all of the jostlings and politics in life and work that can shake up one’s comfortable routine and keep one on the move. This probably seemed really stressful and frustrating at the time, but it’s great that it allowed you to form your own business.
In the middle to late 80s, my grandparents were living a little down the road, in Van Nuys, and they were faithful Cadillac customers. They leased a series of shrunken-head Caddies at the time, kept them for short enough lengths of time that they never had any mechanical trouble that I can recall. By the late 90s, they soured on Cadillac’s service and switched to Lexus until they passed away. I wonder how much of the Chrysler crowd did the same.
Can I just say that you’ve packed more experiences into these COALs than I could ever imagine doing in 4 lifetimes!? Fantastic!
I want to hear more about the radio show. Somehow I imagine Click and Clack rolled into one.
I guess I’ll have to manage without knowing the details of your surge fix. Sounds intriguing.
Interesting insider’s look at what went on in service departments. I was a car jockey for the Towson Ford service department in the summer of 1971, and it was fascinating too see the politics of the place. What a pecking order!
There was a much brighter than average youngish guy who drove old Volvos who was their “fix it guy”; he could diagnose engine issues and fix them unlike the others. I used to hang around him when it was slow to watch him at work. Cool, calm, methodical, effective.
There was a close to retirement age guy who did nothing but front end work. He was so good at it that he could always beat the flat rate book, and make considerably more money. That was of course the whole game: specialize in certain jobs so you could be fast and efficient and come in well below the flat rate allowance. He drove a very nice new car, and kept very clean.
The pecking order went down from these two. And in the small annex, there were a couple of “hillbillies” who were dirty and grimy and had to wrestle with exhaust systems and such.
I was glad for the experience, but knew I did not want to end up a mechanic, unless I could be the top “fix it guy”.
Count me as another who is intrigued by the inner workings of a dealer service department. California must have been a difficult place to do what you did – in places like mine, where there have never been any emissions checks once the car leaves the delivery truck, you could have had so much more freedom to fix janky-running cars that were so common in those days.
I was sorry to see the valiant (sorry) 63 Plymouth wagon go away. That car really did its duty and then some.
Also, the story about the dusty Chevrolet engine at the dealer is interesting. It fascinates me how unsold parts will sit on a shelf because doing anything else with them either costs too much or is too much bother. I once worked in an old, small wholesale auto parts business. There were some real relics on those shelves, like the spools of cloth braided Packard-brand (a GM trademark, I believe) automotive electrical wiring.
As an employee, I could have bought anything at cost plus 10%, and I probably should have bought a bunch of that stuff and resold it through places like Hemmings or Cars & Parts. The place eventually closed and most of it probably got thrown away.
Ah yes, the mighty Packard Electric Division wire.
Part of GM since 1932, lost in the Delphi spin-off in 1999, and now part of the Irish-American Aptiv PLC, which primarily makes connectors at the Vienna, Ohio location. I grew up about 12 miles from the factory.
Some times, without knowing what the future holds, we make moves, like in chess, where we back ourselves into a corner. It was that way with the 63 Wagon. I moved my parents to a small house with a 1 car garage, brought their car there, then bought a backup, the 65 Valiant 4 door, while their’s was being ‘restored’, LEASED another for a 5 year commitment and had no place to put all this hardware. There were times I had cars on the front lawn as well as 2 on the street and that’s just not my style. Then there was my son’s 63 sedan, it needed parts and my wagon had them, eventually I had to wave goodbye to the wagon body, which got a new life, somewhere, I hope. I still have the same problem and now have a 4 car garage and RV parking on the side of the house. It NEVER ends.
Your story about keeping the excess Freon for future use (so as to skip waiting in line at the parts counter) reminds me of the axiom, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Being that they put “Protection” in quotation marks, I think the marketeers were reaching… a bit… for… something. Having been without aircon in southern Arizona, I might suggest that the R12 could protect your seat fabric in a roundabout sorta way? One can sweat a lot when it’s 110 outside and the sun is blazing.
I haven’t worked on many Mopars, but I’ve had oddly decent luck with a few early emissions era GM products. All have been a V8 with a Quadrajet and HEI, which seem to work pretty okay… or maybe it’s just what I’m familiar and comfortable with. Didn’t a number of the 1980’s M-bodies come with a Q-jet? I vaguely remember the Electronic Lean-Burn system retarding the timing quite considerably in low speed driving, then slowly and reluctantly bringing it back after you’d been cruising on the highway for awhile?
The owner’s manual for my mid 1980’s Chevy truck tells you up front that you may experience some detonation during part throttle cruising, and that it’s desirable and indicative of you achieving maximum fuel economy, so they were careful not to set the bar too high. And lastly, the air conditioning section in the 1986 GM truck shop manual instructs technicians to just loosen a fitting and vent the refrigerant to atmosphere, being careful not to shoot it in your eyes or inhale it, before performing major work on the system. I’m guessing ’86 was the last year for that? My first time working on automotive A/C was 1998, and I remember my Uncle recovering every bit of R12 he could find to avoid having to buy it… I’ve actually stumbled into and purchased 12 in recent years for less than he was paying at the time; the stuff people hoarded is still around after most of the cars that use it are dead. Amazing how things change.
Yeah, GM did a full-court marketing press trying to rebrand ping as “the sound of economy”. Oy.
How many Microsofties does it take to change a lightbulb?
You don’t change the bulb, you define dark as the standard.
Yes T.A., the M bodies used the Q-jet on the Plymouth and Dodge pursuit cars until their end in ’89.
More great stories of what transpires behind the curtain .
My dealership time(s) were fairly brief because I flat refused to play politics .
Always a good read as you’re clear and concise .
-Nate
Thank you all for your kind and timely comments. I have told Daniel that we should have made this a book rather than a COAL, but this is more fun, I get to read the comments and replies and then I wonder to myself, “Did I really go through all of this?” I must have, I have photos and memories…. and there is much more coming!
Enjoy ‘the Rest of the Story.’ There are still some 25 more years to cover.
Anderson ;
(? Mr. Anderson ?) .
In addition to the interesting cars you also have good stories and even include the back story when you can .
Kudos
-Nate
.
Thanks Nate, and the last name is Andersen, remember the beginning COAL, I came from Denmark where Hans Christian Andersen lived, he wrote about “The Ugly Duckling”, I write about MOPARs, maybe we are related?
“maybe we are related?”
Works for me Sir =8-) .
We’re MotorHeads, that’s the main thing .
It’s hot, humid and misting off and o here so of course I’m out side doing a clutch job and some more “Might As Wells”, the car’s running and driving again, I LOVE diaphragm clutch covers ! =8-) .
-Nate