Project Cars--You Get to Vote on "Hold 'em or Fold 'em"

qbrozen

SOOO... guess what I did this weekend?

last weekend, I put the alfa up on all fours and took a good look underneath. At first, I started moving things by hand and thought, "gee, this all seems really loose under here." Then I got a prybar and found out, YUP, everything was really loose. Both motor mounts rotted, tranny mount not looking too good, and at least one bad U-joint. While I was under there, I checked the tranny fluid ... level was OK, but just for kicks, I drained some and replaced it with that purple synthetic stuff. Ordered up every mount I could (both motor, tranny, both u-joints, flex joint (or what some incorrectly call a guibo), and hangar bearing.

My kind father volunteered his garage and help with the project (since he has WAY more tools than I do to counter any problems we may run into). I'm sure he regrets the offer.

Headed over first thing Saturday morning. I noticed the shifting was a bit better on the way over ... synthetic stuff must be working.

11 hours later, I was heading home. The car wore us down and beat us up pretty badly, but the job is done. And what a difference! My god, the car is almost, dare I say, FUN to drive again! Lots of noises have gone away. It shifts really good (for an alfa). Actually feels like it has more power. It definitely engages gears with more authority. On the way home, I drove the car in a manner it has not been driven for years. REally winding it up, quick gear changes, sliding around a couple of corners. Great stuff! I had really forgotten what fun this car could be.

The only downside is now the sloppy steering is more pronounced than before. So I suppose tie rods? may be on the soon-to-do list.

Oh, once we got to it, we discovered the tranny mount was virtually nonexistent. There really was no rubber in there any longer. It was just a steel cylinder floating in some greasy substance. Lovely.

lilengineerboy

Boxy but good, but maybe not that good

jlflemmons

"body recently restored"

Somehow I don't think this means the same thing in Michigan as it does in Texas. We only use salt on meat curing.

Mr_Shiftright

Describing a Volvo 240 as "sexy" just about cracked me up! And gee, it's only about triple the actual value. Well, he can buy this car a birthday cake once a year and sing to it in his garage.

ALFA -- yep new mounts are practically required maintenance on any old Alfa, and yes, the tie rods are no doubt worn--a typical wear item. You don't still have the dreaded "yellow" fan blade in that engine, do you? Get that outta there, too!

qbrozen

seller might as well start prepping it to be used as his coffin.

qbrozen

just got an email from Hagerty asking me to submit my vote for the worst car of all time. I'm curious what the folks here would say.

We want your nominations for the most unsafe, most poorly styled, most poorly engineered vehicles of all time (or any combination thereof)!

I've got to think about it a bit (and see other suggestions) because I of course have a few in mind, but I KNOW I'm forgetting some.

I'm sure "aztek" pops into alot of people's heads. But, other than being ugly, I can think of many many worse vehicles. I'm thinking Yugo. The original Hyundai Excel. Geo Storm. Cars that are ugly AND poorly built.

texases

Pinto/Chevette/Vega/Gremlin - borderline ugly, badly designed, poorly built, often unsafe, and they guaranteed Honda/Toyota/Nissan success - what more could you ask for?

lilengineerboy

I'm sure "aztek" pops into alot of people's heads. But, other than being ugly, I can think of many many worse vehicles. I'm thinking Yugo. The original Hyundai Excel. Geo Storm. Cars that are ugly AND poorly built.

I dunno about the Geo Storm and its stoner twin the Isuzu Impulse. These were very popular when I was in high school because they were inexpensive and gave good service. Are you thinking of the Geo Metro?

Mr_Shiftright

Well the "worst car of all time" is a pretty big order. That's more than ugly, that's more than incompetent, that's downright AWFUL in every respect.

My theory is that it took as much genius to make a car totally bad as it did to make one totally good. I mean, think of ALL the decisions that had to be made to make a car so awful and so wrong in just about every dimension. It not only has to have been a disastrous purchase, but it has to break down a lot, and have zero resale value. Whether it is ugly or not really isn't the issue, although if it is ugly AND bad, that's just icing on the cake.

Now HERE'S some real "bad" talent!

In other words, if you bought one of these, you were DOOMED!

Chevrolet Vega
Austin Marina
Maserati BiTurbo
Delorean
Olds/Cadillac Diesel
Cadillac 8-6-4-2-0 or whatever they called it
Yugo
VW 411/412
Audi 5000

I didn't include the Pinto because with some care they could actually run for a few months at a time and even for years in the right hands.

texases

You might get addional responses at the Top 10 Design Winners and Losers discussion.

qbrozen

I was going to say the Metro, which of course is horrible as well. But, no, I really meant the Storm. Maybe its my hatred of the advertising at the time, but I laughed at those cars when they were new.

Interestingly enough, and what prompted me to write that name (because, let's be honest, all original Geos belong in the list), I saw an actual running Storm on the road last weekend. I was in shock. I mean, I have not seen one in at least a decade.

So it looks like we have another vote for Yugo (from shifty).

And, I think appearance should factor in. After all, the question is, "what is the worst designed car." Granted, "design" takes on many meanings, but that's why, I believe, the answer should be a car that embraces as many of those meanings as possible.

Mr_Shiftright

To me, "worst" means HOPELESS...in other words, a car you are never ever going to 'get right' no matter what you do to it. (in stock form I mean).

I suppose a VEGA body bolted onto an entire other donor car might work. That might solve the problems.

A Maserati Bi-Turbo CAN'T BE FIXED---that's the "genius" of it---that engine is a demon seed and that's the end of it.

texases

To cover both sides (mechanical and styling) the Yugo is the (oft-cited) winner, it seems. Not much fun to be so un-original. One other option: Le Car?

toomanyfumes

A co-worker bought one of the original Vega's back in the day. Still talks about the car as if it was yesterday. Instant rust, oil leaks, rattles, bad brakes, blown motor, etc. Has driven Honda's or Toyota's since then.

lilengineerboy

Audi 5000

You mean the car Ford copied with the "revolutionary" 1986 Taurus that got everyone so excited? Or the one that influenced the design of the next 2 generations of Honda Accord?

If you are just picking on 80s era VW electronics, then there are a lot of vehicles on that list.

So looking at the Maserati BiTurbo, Cadillac Cimmeron, BMW 318i, and Merkur XR4Ti, what do you want in your driveway?

Mr_Shiftright

No I mean the Audi 5000 with the defective engine seals that destroy the engine and transmission at the same instant.

lilengineerboy

No I mean the Audi 5000 with the defective engine seals that destroy the engine and transmission at the same instant.

Were those the pre-84 ones? I know the 80-83 ones were based on the old Passat/Quantum or something like that, but I haven't heard of a post-84 catastrophic failure like that, they just fall apart electrically.

texases

Yep, hard to imagine worse mechanicals - only thing that keeps it from the pinnacle of pathetic - it looked good to me when it came out.

Mr_Shiftright

I think it was the 5000 Turbo that did that bad thing.

andre1969

I suppose a VEGA body bolted onto an entire other donor car might work. That might solve the problems.

Back when I was a kid, my neighbor used to race Vegas. He'd strip them out and rebuild them with 350's, and they were really more his own creation that happened to look like a Vega than a "real" Vega.

As for the Cadillac V-8-6-0, I've heard that all you have to do is disconnect the cylinder deactivation module, which I think is as complicated as cutting a wire or pulling a plug, and most of the problems go away. Of course, that's not keeping it "stock", I guess. But then that engine never went in anything that would probably ever be considered valuable. The '81 Seville, Eldorado, and RWD cars had it, and factory limos had it from 1982-84.

I guess with an Olds Diesel, if the rest of the car is okay, you could just find a donor car with a B-O-P engine of your liking, and bolt that in. But also here, that Diesel never went into any car that would ever be worth much in the collector circuit. So if you have a 1981 Electra that you absolutely love, except for its awful Diesel, you're probably just better off going out and finding one with a gas V-8.

andre1969

I know this doesn't bode well for Chrysler, but a friend of mine, who had a 1994 Chrysler Concorde with the 3.5, once owned a Vega, and he said the Vega was the BETTER car! I think he had the Vega for about 100,000 miles, and the only real problem was when he had to have one cylinder sleeved. I have no idea how he kept the rust off of it, and I'm not sure what year it was. It may have been a later model, which was probably more reliable. Or put more accurately, less troublesome and he just got ultra lucky to get one as good as he did! :P

He also had a Pinto that gave him no major problems, for about 100,000 miles. But the Concorde, which was only about 3 years old when I knew this guy, had already had a/c problems, water pump problems, and something else I forget now. Last time I saw this guy, he had bought a '70-71 Duster with a slant six that he was planning on using to replace the Concorde!

I used to think Vegas were nasty looking little cars back in the day, but I was also a little kid. Now, looking at them as an adult, I can see their charm. They have kind of a Camaro-esque look to them that I'm sure lured a lot of buyers in. In contrast, the Pinto was kind of a blah little thing, and the Gremlin was pretty vulgar itself.

texases

Yes, the '78-'83 ones had lots of mechanical issues. Ironically, they switched from the 100 to the 5000 name in the U.S. because of all the mechanical issues with the 100.

Mr_Shiftright

Well there are also people who fall off buildings and land on a passing mattress truck, but that's not the odds. Your friend was perhaps the only person in the known world to run a Vega for 100,000 miles. Statistically, he's one in a million, literally. Maybe the only one in the entire galaxy, who can say?

Vegas weren't bad looking at all. I doubt if a Concorde could be as bad mechanically. The Vega failure rate was nothing short of catastrophic. I'm sure rental fleets would have rebelled had the Concorde been that bad.

lilengineerboy

The Cosworth Vegas always looked fun, 140hp in a fuel injected twin-cam 16 valve motor in 1975...

My folks had a '71 that made it 5 years and 50k before shooting a piston, the paper boy bought it and put a V8 in it.

wevk

Talk about getting it wrong, Vega, Motor Trend's car of the year:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Vega

WVK

Mr_Shiftright

Yeah, you know, there are cars "on paper" and then there's the real world version.

Back in 1971, the VEGA was the car that was supposed to drive the Japanese off our shores. It was the car that could "beat the imports" and give America its first "great small car". Also the VEGA was supposed to be a showcase of modern production methods, innovative technology and a bold, new General Motors.

Reminds me of America's first humiliating response to the Russian Sputnik, when the Navy Vanguard missile blew up on the launch pad in front of the world.

Yuck. Those were depressing times.

Oddly enough, it took America a helluva long time to build a really decent good small car. Some might say the Reliant K car or the Omni, but I'd have to say the Saturn was the first truly credible one that didn't blow up in your face.

andre1969

I think in some ways, MotorTrend's Car of the Year winners are just destined for failure, simply because of what Motortend looks for. They look for stuff that's all-new, trend-setting, and innovative. But to get that, you have to have a car that is in its first model year, which is almost always when a design is the most unreliable. And "innovative" and "trend setting" usually equates to unproven technology that the maker has little experience with. And on the subject of trends...well what seems like a good idea at the time is often scoffed at once the trends change (Mustang II, for example).

Nowadays, they're not as bad with first-year designs as they used to be, so maybe that curse is beginning to lift.

As for small cars that didn't blow up in your face, while it was crude, nasty, and outdated, wasn't the Chevette actually pretty reliable? I guess you could argue though, that it wasn't a true domestic small car, as it was derived from the Isuzu I-mark, Opel/Vauxhall whatever, Daewoo Maepsy, and God-knows what else.

Didn't the Horizon/Omni have its roots in some European design too, like Simca/Rootes or someone like that? I think the early ones used an enlarged VW Rabbit engine, while the later ones used a Peugeot engine for the base, with a Mopar 2.2 optional, although eventually the 2.2 became standard.

xwesx

Good job, qbrozen! Sounds like you timed your maintenance well! You were able to resolve quite a few burgeoning problems on the car and get your father's help. Hahaha... one of those parental moments of weakness?! :P

My '69 C20 is in the same boat right about now. I really need to do quite a bit of work on it. The steering is getting terribly bad (need upper/lower control arm bushings, tie rod ends, new shocks....) and it could definitely use a gasket/seal overhaul on the engine. Sigh. Maybe next year.... or the year after... :sick:

qbrozen

good luck with all that. ;b

oh, so i got a new problem this afternoon. its on the bimmer. it seems the door locks have decided to stop working. So I can't get the doors open. Fun.

210delray

Yikes, Audi 5000!

That was my dream car (for actually buying, not like a Ferrari or something completely out of my price range) in the late 70s when I had a lowly VW Rabbit.

I actually test drove a two-year-old 5000 in 1982 when I decided to replace the Rabbit. I passed and bought a 1980 Volvo 240 that I kept for 21 years. Sexy? LOL! Reliable? Well, let's say this: in 2000, when it was time to shed a car, I sold my '90 Sable rather than the Volvo.

But how long do you think the 5000 (not a turbo) would have lasted, at about 16K miles per year back then?

210delray

As I recall, the Renault LeCar (originally R5), when compliance tested by the feds in the early 80s, failed so many safety standards that Renault was forced to withdraw it from the US market after the '83 model year.

(Just in time for another MT Car of the Year, the Renault Alliance!)

Mr_Shiftright

One problem with Audis back then was that few people knew how to work on them. I'm sure most owners had enormous problems with them.

steine13

I have mentioned this before... a good friend of mine has a manual transmission 1987 5000 quattro. Non-turbo. For a while, he also had an automatic FWD of the same year, and later added an 87 Dodge conversion van. THAT always ran....

Another buddy has, I think, four or five of the darned things and keeps parts and things like sandblasted, painted suspension setups -- entire quarters of the suspension -- in his garage.

They are very well built, so the bodies should last forever. They are "tricky" indeed. Also, the quattro is out of commission because a brake line developed a leak. Darned MI winters.

OTOH, my wife's 03 Sienna has a serious problem, too: Got a new license plate and can't unscrew the old ones due to corrosion. That car is 4 years old!!!

I hate salt.
-Mathias

210delray

At the time, I lived in the DC metro area, and I used to patronize an indy shop that specialized in German cars (because I had the Rabbit). I'd already learned at a tender age to stay away, far away from dealerships. This shop may have understood the Audi's "quirks."

Mr_Shiftright

That's even tricky. Just because they work on a Mercedes or a Porsche doesn't mean they know anything about an Audi. If they aren't trained on the cars, having other German cars around the shop shouldn't boost your confidence. It makes no more sense than saying "I worked on my Alfa, bring me your Ferrari".

lilengineerboy

That's even tricky. Just because they work on a Mercedes or a Porsche doesn't mean they know anything about an Audi. If they aren't trained on the cars, having other German cars around the shop shouldn't boost your confidence. It makes no more sense than saying "I worked on my Alfa, bring me your Ferrari".

Yes and no. I think the fuel injection system on a lot of the ferrin cars gets ragged on (K-jetronic or the one before it) and when its set up right, it seems to do okay. VW/Porsche/Audi and a few other Euro cars use that system. There is also model sharing like the Audi 5000/100/200/VW Quantum/Passat, the Audi 4000/80/90/VW Jetta.

One weird 80s Audi nuance is the pressure BOMB- they use a hydraulic pump to build pressure and this BOMB unit provides the pressure to the brakes and steering systems. I think the BMW E28 used a similar system though, because there is a BMW part number for repair parts, since Audi doesn't support anything over 5 years old.

texases

I took my GTI into the Porsche shop a friend used for his 911 to have a Techtonics exhaust and cam installed (dealer wouldn't touch it for EPA reasons) - get it back, exhaust is rattling - they used a zip tie as an exhaust hanger! This was Anchorage, didn't have many options, unfortunately.

Mr_Shiftright

I think those "similarities" get you into as much trouble as they might get you out of. These similar systems are all calibrated differently. Sure, a VW mechanic will see familiar things under the hood of an Audi, but he could just as easily screw everything up from the overconfidence bred by these similarities.

My personal experience has been that "multi-German" shops are among the worst and 1 or 2 make specialists the best.

Shoot, AUDI dealers don't even work on old Audis. They send them to my friend's Audi shop.

lilengineerboy

Shoot, AUDI dealers don't even work on old Audis. They send them to my friend's Audi shop.

2Bennet>?

british_rover

BMW part number for repair parts, since Audi doesn't support anything over 5 years old.

Which is why I will most likely never buy any Audi.

I might lease one if the program was right but that is it.

texases

And Audi wonders why they "don't get no respect" - to hear their maketing plans (100% increase in X years) is a good laugh. Now that they're priced equal to BMW and MB, I don't see it.

210delray

Good point. Looks like I was smart to bail on Audi and go Swedish with the Volvo 240 at the time.

steine13

Calling all cars...

The alternator on my '85 G20 Van is acting up. Getting it out is major surgery, but I've got it... except I have no idea how to get the last two cables off.

Pictures here...
http://www.msu.edu/~steine13/alt.html
if anybody knows, please let me know. Otherwise I'll have no choice but to cut the belt off and drive it to the shop on battery power.

This has been very little fun. The engine compartments in these vans weren't so much "designed" as they were "filled" with more and more accessories over the decades.

You can barely get one hand in there at the time and constantly have to worry about what to do for light.

-Mathias
EDIT: The alternator is a "Delco Remy", if that helps.

When I hear "Remy", I think of "Remy Martin", not Chevy van...

Mr_Shiftright

What a mess. Maybe I'd just cut 'em and worry about splicing or replacing later....can you trace the cables back to their source? Maybe you can disconnect on the other end and just pull it all up together.

steine13

I've considered it... I may actually have to cut them, but it'd be very hard to get close enough to resolder them. I could start by draining and removing the radiator.

Maybe I need to yank harder... looks like it "should" be a plug???
http://store.alternatorparts.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=68

The two cables trace back to a covered bundle, so there's not much hope there.

I work with a guy who used to be a GM engineer for many years. When I see him in the morning, I'll give him a swift kick.
Ugh.

Thanks,
-Mathias

texases

Is that a heater hose blocking things? If you have a drain pan you could disconnect it (or cut it and splice it with a flushing tee) to get it out of the way, IF that would help matters. Good luck!

PS-it has to have a plug (or poss. a stud and nut) unless someone did something wierd (I doubt it).

steine13

Good news: It WAS a plug, so I just yanked on it long enough and it came out. To use a German phrase: It's like milking a billy goat.

All that was left was to wrestle it out past the fan shroud, which had to be bent and squeezed in a serious way. I HATE this.

Bad news: That wasn't the problem. Even with the alternator removed, when I turn on the ignition, there is a little "pop" sound every 3 to 10 seconds, accompanied by a voltage drop from 12 V to 8.5 V or so, per my fluke meter. I still haven't found the source of it; it's not far from the carb... I'll try it in daylight.

I'd quite forgotten what a PITA these things are to work on. It is all coming back to me, though.

The good news is that the only part that costs more than about $50 on these old vans is a long block, and that costs $900...

Thanks for the moral support,
-Mathias

jlflemmons

That should be a plug. Look at the nylon connector closely in picture #2 and you can see the latch on the side of the connector. Press than in against the connector and pull straight out. It is plugged onto the internal voltage regulator.

Jim

stickguy

could it be the voltage regulator? I had one go on my wifes Horizon (RIP), and every so ofton the volt meter would dip way down, the lights would get dim, etc. A new one fixed it right up.

fintail

A flivver with some history