A Valiant thought
I’ve been prepping my Valiant for a long cruise. Scott S. and I (well, mainly Scott) took the dash apart and fixed the wiper linkages, and then I took the seats out and took out the carpet.
(By the way, the key to removing filth and cigarette smell is to hose off the carpet, scrub it with dishwasher soap and a GI brush, and then hose it off thoroughly again. This, of course, means completely losing the backing, which you could try taking off carefully before getting anything wet. At least, that’s what the guy across the street told me, and he seemed to be right.)
The main thing that occurred to me, yet again, is that the guys who designed the Valiant’s interior appeared to have absolutely no relationship to the guys who designed the engine. Much of the interior seems to have been designed thoughtlessly, and to have been assembled somewhat thoughtlessly as well. The sound insulation comes off of the interior of the firewall rather quickly, and in some places it’s very hard to get back up.
Some of the panels really, really don’t fit together well. People now figure if they can see a gap, there’s a problem. Take a look at a 1974 Valiant interior – a good, close look – and you’ll see problems that make any new car look like the very best in comparison. The sill plates have quarter inch gaps, as do some of the plastic trim pieces. Screws and screw holes don’t match up. (Let’s not even get into the number of different types of fasteners.)
I know there are reasons for much of this. It was hard to belt out 200,000 cars per year back then without some issues and shortcuts. Materials science was not nearly as advanced as it is now. Some solutions simply hadn’t been developed yet, and by 1974 I’d imagine some of the machinery was more than a little worn. Chrysler had not been able to keep their plants up to date, either, after being far too ambitious for too many years with regard to product coverage, and having spent a good deal on niche vehicles like many of the muscle cars, commercial trucks, and such – vehicles loved now, but most likely terrific losses at the time.
Still, taking apart and putting together my Valiant reminded me of why I was so impressed the first time I worked on my 1993 Sundance. We’ve come a long way in terms of gaps and fit… and dashboards that come apart.
But we’ve also lost ground in some ways. Taking apart a car now is far, far harder – not because the pieces don’t come apart as easily (some don’t). It’s partly because they hide all the screws and fasteners (in an futile attempt to gain Consumer Reports‘ respect?), partly because cars are more complex inside, and partly because there are fewer gaps. Mainly, though, just like the guys who designed the Valiant’s steel dashboard, the guys today don’t design cars to be taken apart – certainly not without special tools. So, while swapping out the wiper linkage on a Valiant may be a serious day’s work, so is swapping out the evaporator on just about any modern car.
There’s something wrong with that. We can do better.
But at least the holes line up. At least, they do before I take things apart.
You are most certainly correct about the level…or lack…of quality assembly 30+ years ago, but believe it or not most people accepted this level of assembly quality and thought little of it. My ‘71 Roadrunner came with every single headliner trim screw loose on the right side of the vehicle. My mother’s ‘68 Bel Air was missing the mastic material that sealed the floor pans in the rear, and I saw tens of Chevrolets in the early 70s that only had two bolts holding the carburetor to the manifold.
I am amazed sometimes how some people complain about the supposed poor quality and reliability of contemporary Chrysler products with a problem index of 148 (corporate average) per 100 vehicles. As I recall the industry average in the lates sixties was well over 400!
General Motors, one of my former employers, had a philosophy to not cut corners where it would be visible to the customer (although in the years after my departure this seemed to be void).
The ‘different types of fasteners’ bit is pretty funny too. I remember when the Neon came out one of the things they talked about was reducing the numbers and types of fasteners. Indeed, the dash pieces seemed to be Lego-like; they just popped off. Replacing the radio took 10 minutes if you worked really slow. I never removed the carpet, but I did remove the front seats to give it a good cleaning.
The differences in problems per 100 vehicles across makes is becoming statistically irrelevant; certainly a far cry from the days where a car would come out with one fender reading Aspen and one Volare. Some of these things can only be explained by a ‘just pump them out’ mentality. Sad that cars would be delivered to customers in that condition though. Sure it should’ve been addressed at the factory but tightening trim screws wouldn’t take too long at the dealership.
I loved that in the Neon.
Dick Dauch deserves a lot of the “credit” for the appalling Chrysler defect rates in the 1970s, or so I’m told. Certainly Iacocca deserves much credit for saying, “That is UNACCEPTABLE!!!”
The K-cars would never have taken off if they had the launch problems the company endured in the years prior. As you say, different fenders on the same car with different mirrors and logos…
My parents’ 1976 Valiant had different mirrors; the dealer’s solution was not to order the correct mirror, as you’d expect, but to remove the passenger side mirror and do bodywork to cover the holes. That’s the kind of service one got… ‘course that dealer’s long gone, converted to a tire store.
What really amazes me is the design standards. You know that sort of nonsense would NEVER be tolerated under the hood. Still, they kept things like the 1950s-style electrical system…
PS> I also recall Consumer Reports claiming that cutting the variety of fasteners was a bad thing… though really, do you need five different types of screw with the same threading?
I bought a 79 Horizon new – it had a chrome strip on the driver’s side rocker panel but not on the passenger’s side! Outside of that the car was fine.
Dave, your comments about the Valiant hit home. I’m very familiar with those A-bodies. I learned to drive on my Mom’s ‘73 Dart Custom…and even more archaic, our ‘70 D200 Camper Special. Talk about simplicity. One thing I will say, I’d rather being looking at screw heads and have the ease of working on those vehicles than what we’re faced with today. Remember when changing dash lights was about a 15 minute job and a 50 cent bulb? Not anymore. Some of the LEDs that backlight my 3 zone auto climate controls on my Grand Caravan are out. The dealer tells me you can’t replace them, just the whole control panel…..at a cost of about $600 for the part….labor extra. He said I might be able to get a used panel from the junkyard for about $380. I paid less than that for my ‘67 Coronet 500. The controls themselves work fine, just no lights at night, so I can’t justify spending that kind of money…just live with it. Which is hard for me because I like everything working 100%. I’m a little anal about that.
My father always warned me to stay away from vehicles with those complicated fancy options like AC and stick with putting down the windows (non-powered of course) to get some fresh air. I’m not sure there are many vehicles that can be had that way anymore. Maybe a base Ram ST or Wrangler.
Of all the cars I’ve had, the best interior was probably my 1979 Rabbit (Pittsburgh factory). Everything fit together perfectly but the screws were all exposed! And there were more screws than clips. Unfortunately Volkswagen went away from that and my father’s 1988 Golf sounded (by 1995) as though it was made of loose bolts in a big metal drum, and there weren’t any exposed screws at all!
But yes, the new “replace the whole thing” philosophy, while it makes building the car cheaper, sure hurts down the road a bit.
I have a bulb out in the instrument cluster of my wife’s PT. Replacing it requires removing half of the dash.
On my Neon, I would’ve had to pop the dash top off (held on by clps), unscrew the instrument cluster, and replace the bulb. Let’s say…a 20 minute job working slowly.
It won’t be long before this completely spreads to the engine bay, and cars will come with engine covers marked with ‘no user serviceable parts inside’ labels.
I have no problem with “no user serviceable parts inside” as long as those parts last FOREVER. Not like the ball joints with no grease fittings on my 2002 Dakota. Manufacturers don’t care how difficult or expensive repairs are as long as the vehicle makes it through the warranty period. After that, they’re happy to take your money. I wonder if there is any publication(s) that calculate the true cost of ownership including how expensive a car is to maintain well after the warranty has expired. I can remember that Popular Mechanics used to list the cost of a handful of common replacement parts in every car review, but I don’t remember them including labor. Perhaps somebody could develop an index to guide consumers on which cars were cheap to own and easy to work on.
A friend was telling me his neighbor just has a headlight bulb replaced on his Prius at a cost of $180 because the plastic bumper cover had to be removed to get at it. That I find hard to believe. But if it’s true, it makes you wonder what the engineers were thinking. A headlight is a pretty common item to have to replace.
My former boss bought a new 87 Voyager SE,and it had bodyside moulding on one side and not the other.The dealer said he would order it and schedule an appointment.9 years and 170,000 miles later the dealer never called,and the van was sold off to the salvage yard.
When I was selling Dodges in my college days I remember us having a new Aspen arrive with one Volare taillight and the other an Aspen taillight. Makes you wonder how something so obvious ever left the factory that way. We also got in a Ramcharger that said Plymouth on the hood intstead of Dodge. Funny we never saw those kinds of mistakes on the Mitsubishi imports we were selling at the time.
I had a few A-bodies while growing up and had some in my family. I had a 66 Dodge Dart toquoise that was my first car. I am the only teenager that ever had the kind of car down to the color that his grandmother drove for a first car! After that I Had a 75 Dart. My 75 Dart had the same problem with the wipers and I had to get new linkages and wiper motors put in. My dad also had a 65 Dodge Dart that he bought a month after I was born. Chrysler products of the 1960s and 1970s were not always necessarily put together well but they were for the most part easy to fix. If you look under the hood Chrysler designed the basic engines to be easy to get to stuff when replacing it. Slant sixes especially. Parts were easy to replace such as lights and I remember how easy it was to change the speedometer cluster on my dad’s 79 Horizon onc i get it in college, Some of these cars got churned out fast at the factories. Cars today do seem overly complicated and changing stuff on them is a pain. I looked at what it would once take to replace the heater core in an old S-10 I had and the whole dash would need to be taken apart. Chrysler still made easy to service engine with the 2.2 liter 4. Once thing about cars that doesn’t get rated anymore in reviews is serviceability. i think this is important. I’ll also stick with the simple cars with roll down windows and standard transmissions. They get you around but are harder to find. if you look t the complexities of the modern cars then maybe the old Darts and Valiants weren’t bad at all!!!
Ahh, those A-bodies. Has anyone ever owned one and not had it leak water onto the floor through the wiper pivots? or not replaced the heater core? On the other hand, some things were simple. My 69 had half the instruments out; I just got a used 37 [or so] -pin plug out of a wrecking yard; that fixed everything. And a front fender got dented; replaced that in 2 hours, including taking the replacement off a car in the wrecking yard.
I guess I’m kind of odd – had five different A-body cars and not one of them a slant six.
No, make that six different A-bodies.
1 – 65 Barracuda, black on gold, 273 2-barrel 4-speed, bought new.
2 – 67 Barracuda fastback, 383 4-speed, bought in 1969.
3 – 65 Dart 270 2-door, 273 2-barrel automatic
4 – 69 Valiant Signet 2-door, 318 4-speed
5 – 65 Valiant Signet hardtop, Formula S 4-speed. This had everything on it that a Formula S car did, even to the emblems, also ps, pb, and a vinyl top; all factory ordered.
6 – 76 Dart 4-door, 360 police package
When you talk about the A-bodies you need a point of reference by comparing them to the competition. I was turning wrenches back in the late sixties and in my opinion A-bodies were far less often in need of repair than the Maverick, Falcon, or Nova, and repairs were generally less expensive. Transmission failures were common on Chevies, along with a plethera of engine related problems, chessy window regulators and body hardware, and front sub-frame bushings, leaky power steering gear boxes. Falcon and Mavericks almost always had some kind of front end issue. I swear the tie-rods on my Ariens are almost as large as the compact Fords. Squeaks in the upper control arms, punky radiators, water pumps, and lots of upper end engine problems, usually caused by poor oiling.
Yes, the wiper pivot seals would leak and the heat riser valves would stick, ballast resistor failures, noisy torsion bars sometimes (bad water seal), starter bushings would wear out, and high mileage A-bodies would eventually need control arm bushings. But I do not recall ever having to open up a Slant Six or a V8 Mopar, nor did I see but one or two A904 failures. Other than replacing that little tiny bypass hose btween the water pump and the head on a Slant Six, I don’t think I ever had to replace a water pump, either.
Oh, no question, relative to their times, they did very well. The Japanese imports were limited in those years by their severe rust problems and low power, too. Fiats were absurdly poor, as were MGs and the French imports, and Volkswagen really wasn’t in any way suitable for most people until 1976 with the Rabbit. Mercedes was very good in those days, by comparison, but not mainstream — too expensive.
After working on these cars and the GM and Ford equivelents in the wrecking yard as a teenager and a few times since, there’s actually quite a few things Ma Mopar did to make things a bunch easier than some of the competetion. Try the wiper linkage job on a Maverick, or replacing heater controls on a Nova, and suddenly the A bodies look a bunch better. They did cut corners in some areas, the firewall sound deadener is a prime example does tend to fall apart real easily, I didn’t bother to put it back as mine was in such rough shape. The defroster hoses are another example, GM used a plastic duct that doesn’t disentegrate after the first decade. They weren’t the only ones cutting corners though, my uncles’ Mavericks didn’t even have glove boxes, just a tray under the dash.
A few vendors at Carlisle were selling replacement firewall sound deadener at $25. I’m more concerned about heat transfer than noise transfer. That said, thanks for pointing out the comparisons, I didn’t know what the others were like… though my Camaro was usually a service nightmare.
On most Mopar engines of the period, you could replace a valve lifter WITHOUT removing the intake manifold. Chrysler’s had so much room around the pushrod that a special tool could be inserted that grabbed the lifter around a machined cut at the top of the lifter and allowed its withdrawal. Oddly, I think I changed a thousand lifters in various engines, only had to do it once or twice on a Mopar.
Cars that are slated for repair that run off the end of the line, still, today, get to the dealer with some really gross and obvious defects.
When i worked for Ford, I remember a Freestyle that was shipped to a dealer, missing the entire front fascia. So no grill, no bumper, no foglamps….and it was “missed”.
Plenty of MKS’s and Tauri have somehow made it out of Chicago with wrong color reverse sensors, (like red on a white car), missing emblems, and countless other items. It still happens today, as long as the employees are not held responsible what do they care? It’s only a reality check when there is no longer a job.