We know that cars aged more rapidly in the good old days, but that’s not to say folks didn’t keep them going. This entertaining but factual article covers the author’s experience after buying a 12 year old ’55 Chevy six for $125 to go to school, and his efforts to keep it going for as little money as possible.
I found it particularly relatable, as my older brother’s best friend had an identical ’55 Chevy six two-door in college; that would have been right about the same time (1967-1968). That one might not have had quite as many miles on it, as the engine was still pretty sound, and the rest of it was all quite solid too. No visible rust either, in Maryland. No wonder the tri-five Chevys became the used car of choice for so many, and for so long, even if they weren’t hot rodded.
“They don’t build ’em like they used to.” has both it’s good and bad points.
That illustration remind me of a picture who was posted on Hemmings blog showing a 1954 or 1953 Chevy behind a 1965 Dodge Polara (or Monaco) 2-door hardtop in Cleveland in 1965. https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2021/10/26/cleveland-1960s
“Replacement engine $60. Installation $20.”
$688.83 in today’s money ($516.47 for the engine and $172.16 for the installation), and good luck getting anywhere close.
Well you could definitely but an engine itself for that, less actually. I bought a Lincoln Aviator engine about 10 years ago for $350 and the yard employees even removed it from the car for me.
I think it’s doable. Ten years ago I paid $450 for a scrapyard engine for my 18-year old-Accord plus $35 to rent an engine hoist; call it $500. An inflation calculator shows that the $500 I spent in 2012 would cost $626 today.
I paid $400 for a 5.7L Chevy I bought out of a wrecked truck in a gentleman’s front yard. Bribed a few friends with pizza, and we had it out in a few hours. I stuck it in my ’98 Chevy my self over the course of a month, and have so far managed to get 40k miles out of it over the course of the last 6 years. Granted, the rest of the truck is falling apart, but such is life.
My point is, this is still very do-able with the right friends and vehicles.
From back when you could work on them yourself. Folks of meager financial means could own an older car, repair it in the evening and make it to work the next morning. Now days those same folks are slowly being cut out of the picture.
That reminds me of the “The Wonder Years” episode “The family car” where Jack Arnold tried to fix his old car (a 1967 Dodge Monaco wagon who replaced the 1963 Chevrolet Impala from the earlier episodes without fanfare) but Norma menaged to convince Jack it was time to get a new car.
Have to admit I’ve never heard of “remanufactured spark plugs,” probably for good reason.
Yeah Ive never struck reman sparkplugs I did have the bonnet/hood gutter of my Centura well stocked with cleaned plugs it did around 150kms to a plug on #2,4&5 and 4 litres of Woolworths oil per week, Hemi Valiant engines are nearly indestructable.
My college roomie and I got over-enthusiastic about a 71 Duster. (“There’s hardly any rust!
And it’s got the plaid upholstery!”) We were certain that the blue fog out back wasn’t that serious. It wasn’t, so long as there was a 5 gallon can of oil from Tractor Supply Co. nearby. I think it would go 2 or 300 miles on a quart, so don’t tell me automotive technology hasn’t advanced since 1955,
I love stories about genuine beaters like this car. It would have been hard to do better than one of these for a car in its condition and price range.
Cost wise not much has changed. 6.3¢ per mile back in 1967 inflates to 52¢ per mile today. A certified cheapskate, I keep a costs spreadsheet for my cars. My DD, 13 years old when I purchased it for $4500 five years ago, has cost me 37¢ per mile over 30,000 miles. And like that R&T author I do my own work on the car except for alignments and tire changes.
Having purcha$ed a 14 year old 1956 Chevrolet 150, 2 door sedan for the same school transportation reason; I CAN relate!! Now my ’56 had a mere 101,000+ miles on it…..barely broken in! Well, until the old 6 threw a rod @ 2 weeks after purchase…….and I was only the third owner!
The car carried me to Art Center College of Design and upon graduation became the tow vehicle for the largest U-Haul trailer packed with everything we then owned. During the height of the first gas crisis in 1974 we set out from L.A. to Madison, WI for my first job as a Industrial Designer. The ’56 got @ 8-10 mpg all the way which meant short range and constant lookout for available/open gas stations. My wife drove our ’73 VW Super Bug. $uch fun or something!!!
Given that I could not find a low octane 283 V8, a ’66 Premium burning 327 was purchased. Ultimately I put over 80,000 miles on my ’56 in 20 years with that 275 hp 327 before stupidly selling the car.
Given the current prices of decent ’56 Chevy’s….I couldn’t even afford to buy another now!! We had lots of fun with that old Tri-Five Chevy!!! My total cost of making her a “street rod” was a bit over $1800.00 back then plus the $140.00 I paid to buy the car, with lil ol me supplying most of the labor. Aah…if only I could repeat that! GOOD times. 🙁 DFO
Used engine oil from garages for free kept a few old bombs Ive owned chugging along its amazing how long old 6s and 4s will run when completely shot when you have no alternative and when the death rattle finally happens there would be a wreck nearby to harvest another engine from, now I have two anvil reliable cars that start right awayi ts kinda odd, but I like it, I can go to the storage yard and drive my Hillman out after merely checking the oil and coolant and not adding any of either, fantastic!
Been there with an oil burner, my sister’s Fiat 850. She’d cooked the engine and it’s appetite for oil was such that I filled it with used oil. Easily obtained, as I was an apprentice mechanic at the time.
My industrial employer kept three Worthington Monorotor air compressors running. they each took five gallons of straight 20 weight which came out pretty much as clean as when it went in. That oil was ALWAYS spoken for.
Oh yes the burning oil issue. Having accidently run my 89 Tercel low on oil I remember using around a quart every 500 miles. That was so nauseating. It was so bad my apartment manager left a note on my door one winter. It read something like this; COMPLAINT! Blue smoke from running car in parking garage. No more idling car in garage! $#%! What am I supposed to do when it’s 20 degrees below zero with a carbureted car I thought. However it provided decent mosquito control during the summer and very few drivers tailgated me. I am so looking forward to changing over to a BEV when it’s feasible. Not likely for at least five years. However I just purchased a new battery powered lawn mower and that’s been a revelation.
I spent a lot of my youth working first, on motorcycles then on cars. I was a real hands on guy, pulling heads for valve jobs, dropping transmissions, replacing starters, radiators, brakes, all kinds of stuff. It would take a terminal failure of a major mechanical component to kill the car off. During my teens and twenties I never had that happen. Every vehicle was always returned to running order, not perfect, but running. Things were a lot easier before the bi annual smog checks.
It seems odd that all my cars were what I then considered old, but they were generally 15-20 years old. I know that the last time I brought this up I was told that some kind of factoring had to be considered in my calculations. I figure that if I age chronologically, in my eyes so do my cars.
I had a close call with my 26 year old, 215,000 mile Mustang, it threw a CEL with a misfire code and initially it looked like it wasn’t due to an ignition problem, but an injector or compression issue. Luckily it turned out to be a bad set of four year old plug wires. I had pulled all the plugs and taken a compression check of all cylinders and they were in surprisingly good shape for such an old motor.
It just passed the smog check and I’m getting ready to sell it, but for a while I thought that it was over for that car. I wasn’t going to invest in any major engine work. Now there is a transmission issue with my 2007 Mustang. Well, it is 17 years old with 165,000 miles on it. I guess that was a good run for a transmission. Its going in for a complete rebuild. We gave this car to my youngest daughter a few years back. That and a couple more repairs will be equal to what it was worth, but she says that she would like to keep the car and she’s not in position to buy a new car right now.
The cost of repairs to old cars seems to be getting more expensive all the time. While I can DIY a lot of things, and I’ve replaced auto trannys as a unit, I’m not able to rebuild an auto trans myself. That’s something that I will farm out to a shop. A manual is much easier to nurse along into old age.
Man, the “counting to five” with the clutch thing is too real. I laughed out loud
I’m sure this story is relatable to most gray hairs here .
When I bought my 1969 Chevy C/10 pickup in Texas, it took be almost a half case of 30W motor oil to get it back to Los Angeles..
At least it always started right up and drove fine…
-Nate
A wry style from Mr Ted West, whoever he may have been. I liked especially the line that the brakes worked well, “arousing suspicions” that a mechanic may have worked on them at some point. Nice!
It works also because most of what he’s written is identifiably true, known by any soul who’s been destined by fortune (or lack thereof) to sag about in a car in this state.
About 15 years ago, I borrowed an ’88-ish Honda Integra for a few days. It was unkempt, nrear-valueless, and had something close to 400k (or 250K miles) on it, but the decrepidation was nothing like old ’60’s hulks I’d driven 15 years before that. It stunk, smoked and wandered, but everything fundamental still worked quite tolerably well.
I imagine today that a 12 y.o. whatsit from just about any maker would have to have 500K miles on it to be anything like as bad as this Chev. The good old days, huh?
If you liked this piece by Ted West you might want to run down a copy of Dick O’Kane’s “How to repair your foreign car” (Doubleday, 1968). O’Kane evidently wrote a good deal more in this vein, and both of these gentlemen may have been influences on the style of John Muir of VW repair fame.
I bought all the ‘Dick O’Kane’ books, most are very good indeed .
-Nate