I have more than one Dodge Challenger from the early 1970's. Chrysler products are my favorite because so many parts interchange, and Chrysler led the field in innovations that benefited their customers. Those include the first "AC generator", and they copyrighted the term "alternator", (1960). First electronic voltage regulator, (1970), first fully electronic ignition, (1972 on Dodges; 1973 on Plymouth's and Chrysler's), first lock-up torque converter, (1977), first uni-body, (1960), first keyed ignition switch, first Engine Computer, aka "Lean Burn", (1977), first computer-controlled automatic transmission, (1989). I'm told they also had the first spin-on oil filter, but I don't know the year. Chrysler also had the only NASCAR engine, (426 hemi), that had to be detuned, then installed in production cars to remain race legal. GM and Ford took existing production engines and beefed them up for use in racing. There is no secret why NASCAR officials dropped the maximum engine size to 355 c.I. GM had the 350 and Ford had the 352. Both could be easily bored out to 355 c.I. Chrysler had the 340 and 360 c.I. Chrysler small block engines are 100 pounds lighter than GM's and Ford's, but they can only be bored.040" over-size. That's not enough to turn the 340 into a 355, and the 360 is already too big. The 340 needed to have a special crankshaft with a longer throw, and that was expensive compared to the cheap modifications for GM and Ford engines. NASCAR has to keep coming up with rules changes to keep Chrysler at a disadvantage, otherwise, as was seen at their last reintroduction, no one could keep up to them at Daytona.
GM has always been first with innovations that benefit GM. Their first AC generator showed up in 1964. Their second version, in my opinion, the world's second-best design, showed up around 1972. Their first electronic ignition system showed up in 1975, the High-Energy Ignition, (HEI) system. That was also a nice system, but in both cases, you could not buy replacement parts for their generators or distributors. The charging system was completely built into the one assembly. Same for the ignition system. They wanted to sell you the complete generator or distributor. They were designed that way for their mechanics who didn't understand how those simple systems worked or how to repair them. It took the aftermarket industry to come up with the repair parts and special tools, and those repairs were not very difficult.
In 1975, GM begged NHTSA for permission to use rectangular head lights for the first time. They said that would allow them to design a lower hood line for better visibility. First thing they did once they got the go-ahead was to stack them one over the other, so now the hood line was higher than before. Up until then, we had two sizes of head lights that covered every car model. Today we have hundreds, and very few of them interchange.
If you owned a Ford or Chrysler product from 1960 to about the late 1980's, one oil filter part number was all you needed. If you bought a case of oil filters for your Camaro, then traded it for a Firebird with the same size engine, you had to buy a new case of oil filters. If one was better, why not use it on both cars?
While doing tune-ups in the 1980's, Chrysler had one PCV valve for their rear-wheel-drive cars, and one for their front-wheel-drive cars. GM had over 50 PCV valves that covered a few years, and none of them interchanged. We never had the right one in stock. There were just as many oil filter part numbers, and they were often different for the same engines from two adjacent model years.
These are just a sample of the things GM does that does not help anyone. According to some very high-level national instructors, when it comes to "customer-friendly" business practices, at the top of the list is Hyundai, Toyota, and Chrysler, in that order. At the bottom of the list is GM along with VW, Audi, and BMW.
We are all aware of the horror stories of all the unnecessary computers on today's cars, and the trouble they cause. What very few people are aware of is GM designed in a "lock" feature in their dealer's scanners that allow a disgruntled mechanic to electronically lock every computer on the vehicle to the Body Computer / radio. The Body Computer is the master computer and the only one you turn on with the ignition switch. It tells all the other computers to turn on. You will never know that "lock" feature was activated until the radio fails and has to be replaced. At that time, all those other computers will not respond to the new Body Computer. They all have to be replaced and have their software installed. That can takes days, but a simple radio failure can leave the vehicle with a repair bill much higher than the car is worth. What possible reason would the engineers have for designing that into their cars? And once that button is pressed, it can't be undone. I have nothing against their fit and finish, or their ride quality. It's these kinds of tricks that make me steer clear of dealing with that type of company. Oh, and because I stole a half dozen of their radio repairs each year, they will no longer allow us to buy radio repair manuals since the 1994 model year. They want you to go to one of their two authorized, very expensive, repair centers, and that requires going through the dealership. The typical repair in the early 2000's for a mid 1990's AM / FM / cassette player was over $250.00. My typical bill for dealers in WI was $35.00, so those dealers loved me.
If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm biased toward Chrysler products, but they have had their problems too. One in particular was extremely poor fit and finish in the 1970's. That is one of the things that almost put them out of business, until Lee Iaccoca fixed it. Another problem can be finding parts. Things like suspension and steering parts will always be available from the aftermarket suppliers, and most of those, like Moog, were the original suppliers to Chrysler when those cars were built. Rock Auto is a great place to find parts and to see what's available.
My two biggest grumps with Ford are they do a very poor job of making repair parts available after as little as three years, and like RCA with their TV's, they do everything differently than every other manufacturer. GM builds about 80 percent of their parts, and they buy the other 20 percent. Chrysler buys about 80 percent of their parts from other suppliers, and one of them is GM. MAP sensors are a perfect example. GM had an extremely high failure rate in the late 1980's, and they sold them to Chrysler. Once GM redesigned them, failures were extremely rare. Whatever one manufacturer dreams up, the others copy it a few years later. That's why all the cars today look the same, and they're all ugly. Ford, however, seems to sequester their engineers in the basement and they don't let them peek at what the other manufacturers are doing. If you can diagnose a GM product today, you will find Chrysler's very similar, but easier. If you are comfortable working on a GM or Chrysler product today, you'll have to start your training all over if you want to work on Fords.
Be aware too that nice AC generator design GM used ended after the 1986 model year. They switched to very trouble-prone design that continues to this day. Four to six replacement generators in the life of the vehicle is common. Chrysler switched to little Nippendenso alternators around the late 1980's. The most common failure is worn brushes. The assembly costs $11.00, and I've done this repair twice on two of my Grand Caravans, without having to remove the alternators from the engines.
A real good place to start is by attending old car show swap meets. I live 55 miles from the Iola Old Car Show in Iola, WI. This used to be advertised as the nation's second-largest old car show, after Carlilse, PA, but it is on a downward slide now for the last few years. It was bought out by a promotion company that cares more about dollars than helping the local civic organizations. I'm there every year selling and repairing radios. Most of my repairs are for Chrysler radios because once repaired, they are usually repaired for life. GM had a 100 percent failure rate of their CD laser assemblies all through the 1990's, and we could not buy replacements. We could only get the complete CD mechanism, just like the trick they pulled with their AC generators and distributors. Most people at that time just bought high-quality aftermarket radios. To combat that, GM's engineers started building the Body Computer into their radios on some 2002 trucks. You could not remove those radios as you would lose the turn signal "click", and many other functions. The aftermarket industry came up with "radio relocation" kits that let you mount the original radio under the passenger seat, then cut the speaker wires and run them to the new radio. The engineers are always looking for ways to prevent independent shops from working on their products. Today there are a lot of things you have to go back to the dealership for.
A big advantage to owning a GM classic car is the availability of new parts. At the Iola Old Car Show there are vendors that sell only new sheet metal for GM cars and trucks. Same can be said for Ford parts vendors, including going back to the Model A and Model T days. More and more Chrysler restoration parts are showing up at companies like Year One and Legendary. The Iola Car Show is always the first weekend after July 4th, but it was cancelled for this year. Another really good show is in Jefferson, WI. Iola gets a lot of people throwing rusty scrap on a trailer and dragging it to the swap meet. Jefferson has a lot more new-parts vendors. That show is held the last week in April and again in September.
The Iola show has a lot of classes you can attend for free. I never get to go because I don't have anyone to watch my spot. Missed out on seeing "Fonzie" and Daisy Duke last year. There are plenty of people to answer questions and they're happy to share information. Attendance one year was over 256,000, but that has dropped off because the admission prices got jacked up so high a few years ago.
My cousin's retired minister and his son are into restoring "orphans", the one-of-a-kind oddballs that no one else has any interest in. They have all kinds of stories to share about how to find parts. Now imagine hundreds of people in one place with similar stories to share.
For every person like me who prefers older Chrysler products, you'll find 20 who prefer GM's, but GM also built about 20 times more cars. I guess you could say that means there's 20 times more GM's in the junkyards! To be fair, as I told my students every year, "you are welcome to prefer any brand or model of car you want to, just don't try to tell me yours is better than mine, unless you can tell me why". I prefer customer-friendly business practices and the mentality of the designers who saw fit to design in good parts interchangeability. I also worked at a very nice family-owned Chrysler dealership for ten years as their suspension and alignment specialist. I got to see first-hand the "corporate culture" and the customer-focused attitudes of the company leaders. Contrast that to the extremely high-pressure salespeople at GM dealerships. You produce there or you won't see their picture next week in the newspaper ads.
One last observation about Fords. That is the company that gave us the "type 2" front suspension on their Mustangs, Pintos with exploding gas tanks that could have been fixed for ten dollars, cars that no longer had grease fittings, (mid 1970's), (that saved them four nickels per car for four grease fittings, and resulted in a whole pile of replacement ball joint and tie rod end sales), the Fairmont and Granada with movable upper strut mounts to adjust "camber", (you have to understand "steering axis inclination", SAI, and its importance to proper handling). By far the worst design was their Escort and Tempo "killer" cars with the wildest alignment numbers of any car except for some race cars, and those messed-up settings were not adjustable. On a good day, a set of tires lasted 15,000 miles, but the salespeople never told us that. When a tie rod end separated, as they all did on those cars, it sailed into the ditch or into oncoming traffic. At the Sears Auto Center I worked at in the 1980's, every Wednesday we got in about six Chrysler steering and suspension parts to replenish our inventory every week. We got about a dozen parts for GM cars, and about a half dozen for all of the import brands. We got 44 outer tie rod ends for Escorts and Tempos, and those were sold out and we had to buy more from the local auto parts stores by Saturday morning. About a quarter of those cars came in on a tow truck after those tie rod ends separated while driving.
Ford is also the only manufacturer that uses "rubber-bonded-socket" outer tie rod ends. Anyone can tell at a glance those are going to fail. To add to the insult, when I asked a friend who worked at a Ford dealership how he solved alignment pulls to one side, since no adjustments were built in, (more or less an industry first), he said if the car pulled to the right, he disconnected the outer tie rod ends, turned the steering system to the left, then reattached the tie rod ends. Once turned straight, that put those rubber-bonded sockets in a permanent twist, but by trying to straighten out, it offset the car's tendency to pull the other way. That's like fixing a pull by adding a rubber strap between the body and the steering linkage. The bottom line was the customer was happy for now since the car went straight, but the mechanic knew that would shorten the life of that tie rod end even more. Almost every one failed by 15,000 miles, coincidentally exactly how long a set of tires lasted on those models. Moog came up with aftermarket replacements built exactly the same way all other tie rod ends had been built since forever, and they included grease fittings. Those Tempos and early Ford-built Escorts have to be the most dangerous cars ever designed. Given all their other design failures, this is another company I don't want to be involved with. It would take too much energy to argue why my car is better than yours.
I'm sure others will add their opinions as to why I'm right or wrong, but this is how I see the domestic manufacturers. If you come up with specific questions related to steering and suspension, brakes, electrical, and some engine stuff, I can help. I can also help with one of the toughest automatic transmissions from that era, the 727 Torqueflight. For other stuff, we have other very knowledgeable experts who will add their comments of value.
Sunday, July 5th, 2020 AT 8:28 PM
