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Comparing Older Domestic Engines
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I helped a guy pull a Packard 8 cyl head off an engine one time and almost broke my back!
The way I've often heard it was that a Mopar would probably start giving you troubles sooner than a Ford or GM car, and would usually start rusting sooner, leaking sooner, leave you stranded over some minor electrical problem have minor things break off, etc, but then after a few years, the GM or Ford would start racking up major repairs and would eventually catch up.
But then, it's always interesting to go to these classic car events at Carlisle PA, and at the Ford show, everybody talks about how much better Fords are, at the GM show, everybody loves their GM, and then two weeks later at the Mopar show, it's like Mopar can do no wrong. I've learned, for the most part, to keep my mouth shut, and not mention to the Mopar crowd that I put a GM car in the show, and vice versa. I did get outed in 2009 though, when a guy in one of my Mopar clubs saw me and my Catalina at the GM show!
Now that I think about it, I've had three Mopar 318's, a '68 Dart, '79 Newport, and '89 Gran Fury, and the water pump went out on every single one. Well, the Dart might've been a 273....I never did find out the truth about that (originally a 273 car, but the seller told me it had a rebuilt 318). My two '79 New Yorkers, which have 360's, haven't had any issues...yet! I have heard that the 360 can have cooling problems though, because the water jackets between the cylinders are too narrow. Supposedly in copcars, they were often done by 80-90,000 miles. Hopefully the civvy models last longer! I'm currently at 95,000 miles on one, and around 65,000 on the other
In the prestige market, it was GM all the way up to the Dismal 80s and the Great Undoing. Neither Ford nor Mopar put up credible challenges in the luxury market IMO.
And looking back, I was wrong about my '68 Dart's water pump. It was actually the starter I was thinking of, as that was one thing in common that the Dart, Newport, and Gran Fury all needed replacing on. The Dart had a seam that kept blowing though, where the top of the radiator was soldered to the tank. A friend of mine tried to fix it twice, but it kept leaking. Had the repair shop fix it, but it came back again after a few months. Finally, I took it out, took it to a radiator specialist, they fixed it, and I never had another problem.
I was really disappointed in that Gran Fury, considering it was the youngest Mopar I'd ever had up to that point. I thought going from a 19 year old Newport with over 250,000 miles, to a 9 year old Gran Fury with only 73,000 miles, would give me a big boost in reliability, but in retrospect, I should've held onto that Newport!
Same thing with alternators and starters. We replaced these constantly and thought nothing of it.
Now, when something fails on a car with 120,000 miles it's a MAJOR problem and the people run to the "problems" boards and whine about how they have been wronged and how it must have been a "defective design"!
Epecially if it's a Honda.
Regards:
OldCEM
1948 Chevy Fleetmaster 2 Dr. Town Sedan
Regards:
OldCEM
Of course, back in the day, people were expected to overhaul their engines periodically, even at 40K to 60K miles.
Of course, engine technology wasn't too advanced back then, so the piston rings probably let a lot of compression leakage into the crankcase---that makes oil very contaminated quite quickly.
They didn't like high RPMS or to be hot rodded. At the slightest hint of a rod knock someone who knew what they were doing would need to pull the pan and adjust and shim the bearings.
Of course, all of the old guys who knew how to do this are long retired or dead by now.
I remember in the glove box there was a receipt from 1962 from the local chevy Dealer. " Adjust and shim engine bearings...30.00!
As a youngster, I accidently drove it straight into the Watts Riots not knowing what was happening. A cop yelled at me to get the hell out of there and I did!
I remember driving down the Harbor Freeway at 75 MPH which the Chevy did with ease and no ill effects afterwards.
San Pedro never looked so good!
The '53 was geared better for highway use & regretted selling it in Honolulu, however, the same car was worth $500 less in SF March '58. Those were the years, two married college grads with jobs and a couple of cars - no kids. How else can I piss you off?
Funny, the stick 235's had mechanical lifters and the Powerglides had hydraulic until 1956 when they all had hydraulic lifters.
Any more Chevy trivia I can bore you with?
Yes, I can.
Prior to 1955, Chevys didn't have an open driveshaft. They had a torque tube and replacing a clutch was a B***H!
I once helped a buddy do one on the ground, without a hoist.
And, inside that torque tube was a seal that prevented the transmission oil and the differential oil from combining.
If the seal went bad and the car was parked on a hill the oil from the transmission would flow through the tube into the differential and overfill it thus blowing the axle seals.
They made a "kit" that was referred to as an "Okie" kit where you would pound a bushing as I recall into the end of the tube to cure the problem.
The kit usually worked and it saved a lot of time and trouble.
I seem to recall that Buicks kept the torque tubes even longer than chevy did?
The 4-speed trucks didn't have this.
This issue of Classic Car also featured an article on the AMC V8, which was introduced in some '56 Hudson and Nash models. This engine displaced 250 c.i., compared with 265 in the '55 Chevy. Yet, for all the fame of the Chevy small block, the smaller AMC engine pumped out 190 horsepower, compared with 162 for the 2-barrel Chevy, and 180 for the 4-barrel, which also had duel exhausts.
An interesting side note was that AMC had a formal agreement with Studebaker-Packard to buy Packard engines for the large Nashes and Hudsons. In fact, AMC used Packard engines in the '54, '55 and '56 Nash Ambassador and Hudson Hornet. In return, AMC and Studebaker-Packard had a gentleman's agreement that called for S-P to buy certain body stampings from AMC. The understanding was that the dollar amount of the stampings was to approximately equal the value of the engines. This arrangement made sense for both companies, since S-P had excess engine capacity, while AMC had excess stamping capacity, and both companies stood to benefit from the unit cost savings this exchange would have yielded. What happened was that AMC lived up to its contract, but S-P ignored that gentleman's agreement. According to this article, S-P president, James Nance, thought that AMC wouldn't survive, and that S-P would be able to buy AMC cheap. This infuriated George Romney, AMC's CEO at the time, and he reacted by having AMC develop its own V8. Interesting, eh?
The Chevy small block's incredible success wasn't predicated strictly on HP, but rather lighter weight, ability to rev, lower deck height, and build-ability. These attributes are a great advantage for longevity of design. There were plenty of sturdy V8 engines in the 50s, but they were porkers. The Chevy 265 shoehorned very nicely into the 1955 Corvette and saved the model no doubt. No way you were going to get an AMC V8 into anything else unless it looked like a small house or didn't have a hood. Well of course I exaggerate but you know, a matter of inches, and weight, is important in car design.
Maybe Romney was PO'd at Nance for reneging on that parts deal.
Since neither AMC nor S-P survived, maybe a merger would have given the combined company a fighting chance at survival. Maybe not. Both companies were probably too weak by, say, 1956, to compete with the Big Three and, later, the Japanese. Then there was the issue of model overlap. That might have been resolvable with the right leadership, but it would have been difficult. Anyway, it's too bad that we no longer have the opportunity to buy Packards, Sudebakers, Nashes and Hudsons, or even Croselys, for that matter. For whatever reason I don't feel quite the same about Kaisers, but, as long as we're dreaming, heck, why not Kaisers and even Frazers too. The Kaiser Darrin was a neat car in its day.
Regarding the Chevy V-8's success - in addition to the factors you mentioned, I've read that Chevy cleverly made sure that plenty of after-market parts were available for those who wanted more performance from their smallblocks. Ford did the same thing with the 5.0 and 4.6 V-8s from the 1980s forward - hence, their popularity with performance buffs today.
I doubt that a merger between AMC and Studebaker-Packard would have saved either company in the long run. Studebaker dragged down Packard. It probably would have dragged down AMC, too.
It's also worth noting that the visions that Nance and Romney had for their respective companies were so different that I doubt the men could have worked together. Nance wanted Studebaker-Packard to compete directly with the Big Three. He was planning a full-line of revamped 1957 Studebakers, Clippers and Packards to do just that until the insurance companies pulled the rug out from under him by denying the necessary financing.
Even if Studebaker-Packard had gotten the financing, the company probably would not have succeeded in the long run. Chrysler had trouble keeping up with Ford and GM by the late 1950s. I doubt that Studebaker-Packard would have had better luck, especially given that the clays of the planned 1957 models I've seen really weren't anything special. Not many people were going to swap their Oldsmobiles and Buicks for Nance's planned 1957 and later Clippers.
Romney was ready to bet the farm on the compact Rambler by 1956, which was considered quite a gamble by conventional standards. With sales of the "regular" Nash and Hudson models dwindling away after 1954, he had no real choice, but most auto executives would have tried to save those models by coming out with all-new models, or at least heavily facelifted ones, for 1958.
Nance would never have supported placing all of the company's bets on the Rambler - which turned out to be the correct one, buying AMC several more years of life. Nor would he have supported bringing back the 1955 Rambler as the 1958 Rambler American, another unorthodox move that was surprisingly successful for AMC.
Ford engines were pretty much unimpressive in the 1950s. The "Blower Birds" had no more effect on the general public than the blown Studebakers.
Without aftermarket, without street racing, without professional competitive successes, there was no way to beat GM in the "image" game when it came to engines. Finally Chrysler managed it, in the late 60s, once they had all the other prerequisites in order. Chrysler had to build the support network that GM had.
Engines in the 50s and 60s were about raw power. There was no demand for, nor need for, "sophistication". The most successful engines were brutes. Iron blocks, pushrods, and pistons the size of your head.