How was it in the 60s-80s?

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Thinking back, I remember a lot of issues in the rain - cracked distributor cap left me stranded in a downpour - learned to replace it occasionally, and carry a small can of WD-40 in the glove box. Also left an umbrella in the trunk after than cold/wet night.

You also were very careful going through standing water - lose the brakes, or get the ignition wet - both were bad. Riding the brakes to dry them out after every dip (So Cal didn't get enough rain to justify storm drains everywhere, so there were a LOT of dips that just filled up - and in a big rain, whole intersections would flood).

Points stranded me, so learned to throw an extra set of points and a feeler gauge in the glove box with the can of WD-40.

Alternators went out a lot, so learned to push-start my car.

Learned to put tires with good tread on the front (another rain story...)

AAA was a great thing (though you had to walk to a pay phone to call them).
Sears was great (free electrical system diagnosis).
Buddies were great (didn't have to wait for some 'brethren' to take pity on you and pull over to help you push your car out of the road - or to the gas station - and I rarely didn't pull over to help somebody else push their car, either).

For the most part, we just drove...and improvised when things didn't work.
 
Ben Drinkin said:
And 'back in the day', even if something did go wrong, folks would always stop and offer to help out. And you didn't feel the need to have your pistol ready.
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If that isn't the truth! I went to south texas recently to pick up a car, and for the first time I packed enough to deal with a small action. My seller said to pack, better to be judged by 12 people then one drug dealer with a gun.
 
I drive my truck everywhere. It's my daily and hardly gives me any problems. Most of the problems I have had have been due to lack of maintenance on the POs. I always carry a small toolset with me, a decent jack, a spare wheel, and some wiring supplies. I need to get a spare distributor cap and rotor along with a spare ECU.
 
I'm not 100% sure but in the 60's I was likely conceived in an automobile......and in the 80's I know my daughter was!! So I would have to say the cars were just as dependable throughout the decades. At least in certain cases. :D
 
75slant6 said:
I read the other day where a member said he doesn't like taking his car on long drives for fear of what's gonna break next. So that got me to thinkin, how was it back when these cars were used for everyday transportation or even for y'all who drive y'all's classics daily? Could/can you go on a long trip without worrying about what's gonna go out next? Can these cars be as dependable as any other car? I believe they can but what are y'all's thoughts?

And to the ones who dd your classics, what upgrades did y'all do to make your cars more dependable?
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I drive a '72 Valiant 4door daily..slant 6/auto. I did put a newer aluminum radiator in it and changed the intake manifold to a 2 barrel but in essence it is primarily stock.It still has points ignition...lol
Just like any other car preventive maintenance is key. Keeping fluids up and changed and inspecting and using good belts and hoses and tune up are important! This thing runs mid 17's in the 1/4 mile....no speed demon but it is a lot quicker than the stock one barrel 19 second 1/4 miles

I remember my Dad's '70 Duster. It had a 225 slant six and auto trans. He had it from new until about 1985. It was the family car. Took him to work daily and the family everywhere else. The only problem it had was getting hit because it was parked on the street but it was a tank and soldiered on! And then there was the time when a bunch of the neighborhood cars got a sweet tooth compliments of some stupid kids pouring sugar in the gas tanks. That was the only time that I can remember when it had to be towed to be fixed. I'm sure there might have been other time/s but I don't recall and it was rare. He hated when me and my brothers got out of the back seat and smacked the headrest against the dash pad!
Anyway...it was really dependable and the point is that it got used as intended!
 
I always felt my car was reliable and was never afraid to take it on long drives. My very first car was a 65 Dart with a slant 6 and then later I got the Barracuda. I do remember doing a lot more preventative maintenance than you have to on the newer cars. It seems like I was always having to replace an alternator or water pump. Typically flushed and changed antifreeze once a year. Also remember changing brake linings pretty often. Plugs, wires, points, condenser, and cap were changed about once a year. Had a dual point accel distributor that had such strong springs on its points that I had to constantly adjust the dwell. My ac-heater switch was always going bad so I spent a lot of time on my back reaching under the dash changing that out. Maybe I was just a teenage boy too obsessed with maintaining my car!
 
gdrill said:
I'm not 100% sure but in the 60's I was likely conceived in an automobile......and in the 80's I know my daughter was!! So I would have to say the cars were just as dependable throughout the decades. At least in certain cases. :D
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LOL!!! I read this off to my wife n she bout died laughing!!!
 
I drove my 70 Duster 340 4spd back and forth from home to college at least once a month back in the early eighties and didn't think a thing about it. It was 170 miles and the speed limit was 55 at the time. I just checked my oil and coolant while I was filling the tank and hit the road.

Now I won't drive to the gas station without making sure I have my cell phone. Must be getting old.
 
80s were a gas! Here in CA, 94 octane gas was ~.79 a gallon, chicks were hot, Sat night was cruise night somewhere, and min wage in 85 was 3.35/hr. Oh, about the cars? had a 65 340 powered Barracuda, thing was pretty mickey mouse, had a 3 sp truck shifter grafted onto the A/T sector shaft bellcrank, jacked up rear that hyper-extended when I went over a bump, 2 different size front tires (!) and still had 9" drum brakes but was fast as hell and it never broke down. Was a ***** to start when it was hot for some reason but it never left me high and dry. Lots of guys were into VW's and Nissan Sentras and mini trucks were huge too. We still had a "65 and older are smog exempt" smog law so no one got really crazy on motors, although the smog was just CO/NOx testing and visual preheater hose connections but you could pay off a dude cheap to pass you. Dang my car was only 20 years old at the time, like driving a 94 today, plenty of them around, right? Remember washing it every sat morning (no hangovers yet) and checking oil and water religiously even though it had no paint, only black primer. I think I added a quart every 2 months.
 
Go to "Moparts.com" & look up "streetracing in the 60s/70s" you'll get a REAL good idea of how it was---in a word-a "BLAST!"
 
75slant6 said:
I read the other day where a member said he doesn't like taking his car on long drives for fear of what's gonna break next. So that got me to thinkin, how was it back when these cars were used for everyday transportation or even for y'all who drive y'all's classics daily? Could/can you go on a long trip without worrying about what's gonna go out next? Can these cars be as dependable as any other car? I believe they can but what are y'all's thoughts?
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The cars were not technological wonders like they are today. The old cars were not very sophisticated and required routine maintenance to keep running reliably. If you kept up on your maintenance they would go all day. And IF something did go wrong and your car broke down: a) often you could fix it yourself if you were mechanically inclined and carried a tool box in the trunk or: b) service stations with a mechanic on duty were everywhere and they usually had the part you needed and could get you fixed and on the road again in a couple of hours or less. As the cars became more reliable the service station mechanics became a dying breed and are all but gone now. So, if you're out on the road in your old car now, you better have your tool box in the trunk, know how to fix your car yourself, carry some spares of the most common parts to fail, or have a good road side assistance membership like AAA or something.
 
Valleyant said:
I remember my Dad's '70 Duster. It had a 225 slant six and auto trans. He had it from new until about 1985. It was the family car. Took him to work daily and the family everywhere else. The only problem it had was getting hit because it was parked on the street but it was a tank and soldiered on!
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My Dad was a big fan of the "leaning tower of power" 225 slant six too. He had two Darts and two Dusters with the slant in it and rolled up close to 200K miles in each of them. Growing up in the northeast the biggest issue for Dad was the bodies - the road salt would eat them up in no time at all. When Dad's Dart/Duster became a "Flintstone-mobile" he would pull the slant to keep for a spare, junk the body, and go look for a new A-body ride with a slant in it.

Funny side story; sometime in the mid 80's or so, Dad's Duster "Flintstoned" and he decided that it was finally time to break down and buy a brand new car. He heads down to the Dodge dealer and decides he likes a certain model (I don't remember which model it was) and tells the salesman that he is interested. He informs the salesman that he wants the car but with the "six cylinder" in it. Salesman says "the V-6 is very popular in this model ..." Dad replies "no V-6, I want the old reliable slant six". Salesman laughs and tells Dad "where have you been? The slant six went out of production six-seven years ago!" Dad stomps out of dealership and later finds himself another old Duster with his beloved slant six in it.
 
Without the internet to use as an information source, most guys that were trying to 'hotrod' their cars were really shooting in the dark. If you were looking for the best information you could find you usually turned to Car Craft or HOTROD magazines. The true motor head gurus were few and very hard to access. Now a lot of them have their own websites. Today the articles online and in magazines often go more in-depth on car builds.

If I want to make an intelligent decision on which cam to choose today all I have to do is go online. I can get the contact information of several different manufacturers and professional builders that are willing to offer INTELLIGENT advice. This FABO forum is another example of a good source to go to.

Half of the decisions I made when I was trying to squeeze more power out of my Roadrunner back in the 70s were wrong. It was pretty discouraging to do a cam or carb swap and run a tenth slower. But I didn't know how to degree a cam in or how to tune a carb properly. It was all 'bolt on and go'.

But it was a blast nonetheless. Stop light to stop light racing wasn't uncommon. (not that everybody did it or that I'm condoning it today) If someone showed up in town with something fast, it didn't take long for the news to get around. The trash talk between owners of Fords, Chebbies and Mopars was always there. But it was almost always in good fun. If you got in trouble with law enforcement it usually meant a ticket, a fine, and a few points off your license. But the fines and court costs weren't as high as they are now. - Your insurance didn't bankrupt you either. - And society didn't view hotrodders as someone akin to a serial killer. The Prius-loving crowd that spend their weekends hugging trees were absent. As long as you didn't mess with anyone else, the world had a more lax attitude towards what you did.
 
Graduated high school and buddy and I jumped in a tired old Healey(bn7- for the healey fans) and drove the edge of the USA. The top was almost non existant and sewn together with a seam like a baseball. Had some help from locals for tires, run out of gas, dip in Hwy 1 that we bottomed out and took the whole exhaust off. 11 oclock at night,A guy was working on his chevy II in his driveway- we walked up dragging the exhaust and asked if he had a welder to weld up our exhaust. A few joints, a couple beers and we were fixed and on our way. Far out man! We love California.
A year later my buddy had moved to BC to be an RCMP. He flew home on a Thursday, we pulled an old 67 chev out from behind the shop, dropped a used 327/275hp motor in it and Friday night we headed for Hope BC with a dune buggy flat towed behind. Drove straight out. Lots of times we could see air under all four tires on the buggy. No sweat man. LOL- no weed either.

Took my dads 71 Monaco with a bumper mount hitch and car trailer and we ran down to Harrisburg PA and picked up a 39 Desoto. We drove straight thru the night and my dad was home for work the next morning.

Picked up a 1980 GTI from the showroom, loaded our stuff up and ran 25 hrs straight to Florida.Knew exactly how far it was because there were no miles on the odometer before we left.

Bought a 1991 Dodge 1/2 ton with air and pretty much used it for running south to pick up mileaged out rust free 'Dubs to bring home 2 at a time and marry to our low mileage rusted out hulks. Two guys, 2700-3200 miles in a weekend. Regular cab bench seat- no Recaros!!

I left out the street racing on purpose but I will tell one story.
Bought a 3 yr old T/A panther pink. Took my dad out for a ride and had to show him how the Six Pack kicked in. Went by a cop running radar in the bushes with my back tires loose in 3rd gear(f60 15 polyglas just had no grip). By the time I got home there was one cop blocking the road and the Radar cop trying to catch up to us. I thought my dad was going to ruin my white buckets. Ended up with a $40 speeding ticket and my mother taking pictures from the front porch. How would the cops handle that today?

Just like today- we did what we thought we could get away with and the car breaking down was never a worry.
 
1968-70. went to school in Athens ga, home was in s w ga like 200 mile one way, 68 ford f150, 289 stick. knew all the backroads, shortcuts around most of the small towns, kept it between 80 and 90 all the way. 2 hr 30 min. all 2 lane blacktop, many a time I was runnin that fast and a fr-----ga state trooper went around me like I was sittin still!! LOL
made the trip home with buddy in his 68 sport satellite, 383, 4 speed, we made the trip a little quicker then, open spots would open it up wide open for short bursts,just laugh and giggle, we figured we'd get drafted, sent to Nam and get killed anyway, and never thought about anything breakin!!!!!!
 
I absolutely love stories about when our cars were new!! Keep em comin guys!! Any make, any model, any story!! I love when dad gets the itch to tellin stories of when they were runnin around!!
 
Thought this thread died!?!?!?!:?::?:

Anyway, if none of you guys went to "Moparts.com", streetracing in the late60s/early 70s in NYC was amazing & kinda weird. The personalities were at least as big as the car's reputation & in an age where P/S was the epitome' of doorslammers you had guys imitating & experimenting with surprisingly stock stuff & getting it to go pretty fast.
Power-adders & forced-induction was still pretty rare so you had NA cars trying to go faster based on cubic inches. 500 cu. ins. was a HUGE motor back then and there really weren't as many big-block cars around as people imagine. Oh they were out there. But those guys were well known & were given space to race amongst themselves. Now depending on the caliber of your car, you'd go to the local cruise spot or road & you'd have no problem setting up a race usually from around $25 bucks to a couple of hundred. The high-dollar runs were pre-arranged & you'd often have to know someone associated with the cars to be let in on the betting or the race location. Occassionally you'd get a high-dollar race spontaneously but then its location would be somewhere other than where the bet took place. Often around the backside of JFK airport. There & many of the roads we used you wouldn't think of using now as the areas are waaaay too beat-up or crowded but back then, around 2,3,4, A.M. you could get away with it.
Where I usually hung out, the (World's Fair) Marina guys would meet there, go up (the roads were all overpasses) on the VanWyck Expressway, Cross Island Pkwy or Connecting Hwy & run. That way (in our minds) it would show if a car was really streetable & not some racecar with license plates thrown on it. Did that happen & were cars really towed in to race? Definitely! But these were more the high-dollar races than the average hotrodder. Joe Oldham's book is really accurate & HMM did a couple of good articles on NYC streetracing several years ago. Each Borough (county) had its own "heroes" & fast cars & shops & racing spots but IMO the fastest cars were usually from Brooklyn or Queens. It wasn't uncommon to see a "name" car being towed in or a "name racer running on the street. Of course you were foreever dodging the police but the smart guys would have scanners & blocking cars so as to insure the race would go off. Some maintain the cops got paid off & in some cases I wouldn't doubt it, but during those times the police had much bigger issues than streetracing so we didn't worry a whole lot about it....
 
on a down side but true. had buddy that had new 67 GTO back in the day. I got interested in these old cars back in mid 80's. I told him he should get him another goat.
sadly he said "no, I lost all m y friends back then runnin top end thru the Ga blacktops" fast cars wern't always fun and glory. speed can kill.
 
hemicop said:
Thought this thread died!?!?!?!:?::?:

Anyway, if none of you guys went to "Moparts.com", streetracing in the late60s/early 70s in NYC was amazing & kinda weird. The personalities were at least as big as the car's reputation & in an age where P/S was the epitome' of doorslammers you had guys imitating & experimenting with surprisingly stock stuff & getting it to go pretty fast.
Power-adders & forced-induction was still pretty rare so you had NA cars trying to go faster based on cubic inches. 500 cu. ins. was a HUGE motor back then and there really weren't as many big-block cars around as people imagine. Oh they were out there. But those guys were well known & were given space to race amongst themselves. Now depending on the caliber of your car, you'd go to the local cruise spot or road & you'd have no problem setting up a race usually from around $25 bucks to a couple of hundred. The high-dollar runs were pre-arranged & you'd often have to know someone associated with the cars to be let in on the betting or the race location. Occassionally you'd get a high-dollar race spontaneously but then its location would be somewhere other than where the bet took place. Often around the backside of JFK airport. There & many of the roads we used you wouldn't think of using now as the areas are waaaay too beat-up or crowded but back then, around 2,3,4, A.M. you could get away with it.
Where I usually hung out, the (World's Fair) Marina guys would meet there, go up (the roads were all overpasses) on the VanWyck Expressway, Cross Island Pkwy or Connecting Hwy & run. That way (in our minds) it would show if a car was really streetable & not some racecar with license plates thrown on it. Did that happen & were cars really towed in to race? Definitely! But these were more the high-dollar races than the average hotrodder. Joe Oldham's book is really accurate & HMM did a couple of good articles on NYC streetracing several years ago. Each Borough (county) had its own "heroes" & fast cars & shops & racing spots but IMO the fastest cars were usually from Brooklyn or Queens. It wasn't uncommon to see a "name" car being towed in or a "name racer running on the street. Of course you were foreever dodging the police but the smart guys would have scanners & blocking cars so as to insure the race would go off. Some maintain the cops got paid off & in some cases I wouldn't doubt it, but during those times the police had much bigger issues than streetracing so we didn't worry a whole lot about it....
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Read it,a good read.......
 
pishta said:
80s were a gas! Here in CA, 94 octane gas was ~.79 a gallon, chicks were hot, Sat night was cruise night somewhere, and min wage in 85 was 3.35/hr. Oh, about the cars? had a 65 340 powered Barracuda, thing was pretty mickey mouse, had a 3 sp truck shifter grafted onto the A/T sector shaft bellcrank, jacked up rear that hyper-extended when I went over a bump, 2 different size front tires (!) and still had 9" drum brakes but was fast as hell and it never broke down. Was a ***** to start when it was hot for some reason but it never left me high and dry. Lots of guys were into VW's and Nissan Sentras and mini trucks were huge too. We still had a "65 and older are smog exempt" smog law so no one got really crazy on motors, although the smog was just CO/NOx testing and visual preheater hose connections but you could pay off a dude cheap to pass you. Dang my car was only 20 years old at the time, like driving a 94 today, plenty of them around, right? Remember washing it every sat morning (no hangovers yet) and checking oil and water religiously even though it had no paint, only black primer. I think I added a quart every 2 months.
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This resembling Pismo Beach/Santa Maria ,same time era. Got busted street racing stock Detroit iron,did the mini truck thing,wrenched on buddies rides. Miss it,a simpler time.
 
I remember in the 80's. you could buy any old car for $500-$1000...Camaros, Firebirds, Darts, Chargers etc...
In 1988 I pickled up a 1969 Dart 318 2bbl for $500, perfect body, California car, everything worked on the car, I mean everything! The car was solid, and man to this day I kick myself everyday for selling that car, I really didn't know what I had. I drove that Car from Southern California, to northern California, about a 800 mile round trip, no issues ever, I took that car on that trip about 4 times in one year, pulled the grapevine(huge incline on the highway) just fine, never overheated.
The 2 issues I had with the car, is, a motor mount broke on me when I panic stopped from ALMOST hitting a kid who rode out on front of me on his bike, and it put the fan into the radiator, but not bad enough to make it leak, just bent up the fins.:wack:
The second issue was it needed brakes, new drums etc. I sold the car to a young High school girl for like $700,because I could not afford to fix it at the time, and opted to ride my bike to work lol, yup, I am a idiot. I saw her later on, and her BF had fixed the car at the auto shop at the High school, she said it cost less than $100 to fix, as all they had to do was buy the parts, and they got them cheap at a salvage yard:violent1:
I begged her to sell it back to me, but she said she loved that car, and was going to keep it as long as she could, and I always wonder, if she still has it. She would be about 44 years old now.

So overall, I have to say, I think if you maintain your car well, no matter how old or new, it will last you as long as you can afford to drive it.
 
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