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 Post subject: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 2, 2018, 11:07 am 
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Joined: May 29, 2018, 8:43 am
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Location: That point where the humidity and the temperature combine forces to destroy all that is good
I do. I miss being able to pop the hood on my Falcon and see all the way to the ground on either side of the engine. I miss being able to do an oil change or a tuneup in fifteen minutes or less. I miss it's bench seat. I even miss the couple of them that I owned that had "three-on-the-tree". I miss vent windows. I miss having five fuses on the fuseblock. I miss vacuum wipers, too. I miss having a relatively large trunk for such a small car. I miss a car that seldom failed to start, or stalled, or failed to deliver less than 25mpg. I miss the fact that it had no sensors to fail that would send it slowly to the roadside, to await a tow to the dealership for diagnosis and repairs that might destroy a week's pay today.... I miss points and condensers. I miss my Falcon.

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 2, 2018, 11:27 am 
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Joined: October 24, 2008, 2:13 pm
Posts: 5326
Location: Carlsbad, California, USA
I understand. There are so many sensors and systems on our newer vehicles that it's mind boggling. My Explorer has 3 processor units including one for the transmission. Our newer vehicle has much more than that, but I don't even know how many.

The funniest thing is that I use very few of the goodies modern vehicle provide. I use the radio and DVD/CD player from time to time, but mostly it's the keyless entry, A/C, power mirrors and power seats. I could pretty much do without all the rest. Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS navigation are things I can do without all together, but I got them anyway plus USB port, 40 MB hard disk for infotainment, etc., etc. Give me less - charge me less.

Cheers,

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 2, 2018, 2:00 pm 
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Joined: July 4, 2006, 5:40 pm
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Location: Novato, CA
I went to look at some new cars recently and got so discouraged by all the crap they came with, I gave up. The looks I got when I asked, "can I get it without that?" were scary.


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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 2, 2018, 3:08 pm 
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Location: West Chicago,IL
Raccoonman wrote:
I do. I miss being able to pop the hood on my Falcon and see all the way to the ground on either side of the engine. I miss being able to do an oil change or a tuneup in fifteen minutes or less. I miss it's bench seat. I even miss the couple of them that I owned that had "three-on-the-tree". I miss vent windows. I miss having five fuses on the fuseblock. I miss vacuum wipers, too. I miss having a relatively large trunk for such a small car. I miss a car that seldom failed to start, or stalled, or failed to deliver less than 25mpg. I miss the fact that it had no sensors to fail that would send it slowly to the roadside, to await a tow to the dealership for diagnosis and repairs that might destroy a week's pay today.... I miss points and condensers. I miss my Falcon.


I don't miss the 20 MPG (best) we got with our '64 Malibu straight six. or the 12-14 MPG that I got on my '64 Ford Galaxy. I don't miss having to replace exhaust systems every 18 months. I certainly don't miss 1,500 mile oil changes (plus grease jobs) or 12,000 mile point service, or adjusting drum brakes and valves every 12,000 miles. I don't miss stopping at the gas station every week to top off the oil and check the fuel level (yeah, I said that right. I don't miss diagnosing bad points on the side of the road. I don't miss diagnosing burned points, or rotors, or distributor caps on the side of the road. I don't miss having the foam carb float sink to the bottom of the bowl and no parts available for at least 6 weeks. Or the tire's tubes developing a leak at the spokes or worse, from the plastic tags inside the tire carcus. And I certainly don't miss the only 2 fuses that my MG had (one was dedicated to the horn). Many of those cars wiring harness failed catastrophically because some circuits were not fused. I don't miss pumping the gas pedal in the winter in order to try and start the engine. And cranking in zero degree weather, only to have the battery give up before that car started. And I don't miss replacing batteries every 3 years. The 80's vehicles (pre electronics) with 100 vacuum lines running all over the engine compt were absolutely horrible to troubleshoot poor performance. Newer cars since 1996 (OBDII) can actually tell you what circuit is acting up and tell you which cylinder had the misfire.

Sure simpler cars of the 50's and early 60's are somewhat quaint and have "character" (substitute: require an intimate relationship with that particular vehicle in order to get it started and keep it running", but for a daily driver today, cars and their materials are so much more dependable today, inspite of the complexity of the electronics and added safety systems. This is my opinion.

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 2, 2018, 3:18 pm 
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Joined: June 8, 2010, 8:02 pm
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Location: White Rock, BC, Canada
So go buy a Falcon already...... :mrgreen:

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“Every day the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time”


For daily driving, I'll take my 2009 daily driver that can be expected to last 600,000km+ with only very basic maintenance.

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 2, 2018, 3:53 pm 
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Joined: May 29, 2018, 8:43 am
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Location: That point where the humidity and the temperature combine forces to destroy all that is good
I'm going to start looking for another one. (I've owned over a dozen since 1982). Limiting myself to 1960-62 and two door sedans only. Last one I had was a '69; nice car but not really what I wanted; I love "roundbody" Falcons and "pre-T-bird roofline" models. ( I actually replace the points ignition with Duraspark II as a rule, as well as replacing the single reservoir master cylinder with a dual reservoir unit. Usually upgrade to an alternator instead of a generator, too., but I -will- drive them "stone stock" if everything checks out, at least for a while.) Replacing the 144-170 with the stronger 200 is a great way to get a 7 main block and crank.

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 2, 2018, 7:04 pm 
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Location: Fort Worth, Texas
I definitely don't miss all the constant fiddling that was required on the older cars to keep them running fairly smooth. I also don't miss the exhaust smell from carbs.

But most importantly I don't miss the fact that 50,000 miles was a lot of miles on most cars. Now we routinely put 200,000 on cars and don't think a thing about it.

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 3, 2018, 9:18 am 
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Posts: 1307
Location: Connersville, Indiana
If you miss vacuum wipers, I think that qualifies you as a sick man. Well, at least abnormal.

I worked with a guy who as a very young man, drove an MGA. He said the water pump had to be rebuilt about 10,000 miles, but no problem, he could do it alongside the highway. One day, while busy rebuilding the water pump, he thought "How neat it is to have a car that I can rebuild the water pump on the shoulder of the Interstate". That thought was immediately followed by "Why do I have a car that has to have its water pump rebuilt on the Interstate". The "A" was gone within a week.

Bill


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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 3, 2018, 9:45 am 
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Location: That point where the humidity and the temperature combine forces to destroy all that is good
Why, thank you. I like to be recognized as the "odd man out". As for the 50k/200k miles on a car before it's "worn out".... there is a Volvo P1800 running into the three MILLION mile mark if not beyond. Why is that? Proper care and maintenance. On one of the most notoriously rust-prone vehicles ever known outside a Fiat 126. People get bored with, and stop caring for, and about, their cars after a while and that leads to neglect and then "issues". "It's rusting out; it stalls, it always needs a jump,etc etc"... Sure, there are and were a lot of cars that had problems from day one until the end of production. Volkswagen kept it's type 1 in production until 2003. Fifty-odd years of producing virtually the same KdFwagen that Ferdinand Porsche showed Adolf in 1939....... well, not EXACTLY the same car, but the same formula. Why were people STILL willing to buy it? Devotion? Loyalty to the brand? It was only available in Mexico, and hard to import anywhere else.... but it still SOLD in good numbers. My opinion is that it sold because it was reliable, well known to any half-educated mechanic, robust, and SIMPLE.

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 3, 2018, 9:58 am 
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I will say I shared your thoughts a couple of years ago when I spent quite a few days trying to figure out just how many wires were needed to get the proper signals to the computer so the SR20 would start. Then once it started the days troubleshooting a failed air flow sensor, then the boost controller, then the cam position senor.
On the flip side I put an early 70's Toyota 4 banger in a prior build and had it running pretty well with very little fuss.

But, once that SR20 was singing, oh what a joy. Flip the power switch, push the button, and VROOOOOM first time, every time.

:cheers:

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 3, 2018, 11:20 am 
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Location: That point where the humidity and the temperature combine forces to destroy all that is good
Surprisingly, most EFI's and ECM's only need a few sensors and wires to operate. It's all the ancillary stuff that gets added on that creates wiring harnesses as thick as your wrist. My Patrick build is going to be simple as I can get it but it will still need the electric fuel pump, electric fans to make the engine front as small as possible, full street legal lighting, and the absolute minimum of gauges I can manage. I don't like modern cars because I spent ten years working for VW/Audi shoving pars across the counter for techs. There's simply too much that can and will fail and then the car will not function at all. I spent another ten years or so selling retail and THAT ruined my faith in humanity, my trust in rebuilders, and my desire for new car ownership.

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 3, 2018, 2:57 pm 
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To go along with the previous post most cars will run with just the engine harness. For instance on the S2000 there are 3 harnesses and you simply ignore the other 2.

On GMs if you don't hook up any of the BCM Body Control Module, then you don't get all the error codes and the engine runs fine.

As to a million mile SAAB, how many engines did the car have? If it's like the million mile Mercedes it had like 5-6 engines. For the most part the older cars had a much more limited life regardless of maintenance than do the modern cars.

I get stuck behind a carbed car at a light occassionally and I have to put the car's air on recirculate, to keep from being overwhelmed from the fumes.

Conceptually I like it to be as simple as I can get it. But if you've got a big empty space in your engine compartment then you've got too big of an engine compartment.

Look into the engines & standalon ecus and harnesses you can buy from Ford & GM that's about as simple as it comes. I want it to be as simple as needed to give me the freedom to just drive and not having to be constantly maintaining.

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I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 3, 2018, 5:50 pm 
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Don't let anybody talk you out of it. Only you know what you want.

Hey look! I found a plethora!
https://columbia.craigslist.org/cto/d/1 ... 08873.html
https://greenville.craigslist.org/cto/d ... 13240.html
https://charlotte.craigslist.org/cto/d/ ... 43106.html
https://charlotte.craigslist.org/cto/d/ ... 79289.html

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 4, 2018, 2:43 am 
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Location: No. Nevada
My favorite Falcoln was a 62 Ranchero, "sick six" and three on the tree.
Had it LONG ago in the Kali Bay Area.
It's most novel feature was the ventilated windshield, it came to me with three bullet holes about four inches from the top and three inches apart near the middle.
I put an "I love guns" bumper sticker above the bullet holes.
People would do a massive double take, "How can you love guns, someone tried to shoot you!"
My response, as dead pan as I could manage, "Why do you assume the bullets are from the OUTSIDE?"
I thought some of them were going to faint, most had no response at all, none invited me to their parties. :lol:
And I don't even have a single tattoo.

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 Post subject: Re: I miss simplicity
PostPosted: August 4, 2018, 6:58 am 
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Location: Connersville, Indiana
Raccoonman wrote:
Surprisingly, most EFI's and ECM's only need a few sensors and wires to operate. It's all the ancillary stuff that gets added on that creates wiring harnesses as thick as your wrist. My Patrick build is going to be simple as I can get it but it will still need the electric fuel pump, electric fans to make the engine front as small as possible, full street legal lighting, and the absolute minimum of gauges I can manage. I don't like modern cars because I spent ten years working for VW/Audi shoving pars across the counter for techs. There's simply too much that can and will fail and then the car will not function at all. I spent another ten years or so selling retail and THAT ruined my faith in humanity, my trust in rebuilders, and my desire for new car ownership.

Most of the wires on my 2010 Fusion engine were just passing through. Had absolutely nothing to do with the engine.

Bill


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