public Appology to Station Wagon members

PaulR even if and when you sell your station wagon stick around and we'll see if we can get tough on you now and then. Hopefully our wagon love will rub off on you more and you will either keep dad's wagon or end up with another to play with.

 

You just have to know where to look

 

Keeping that wagon is pretty tempting. It was almost four weeks ago that I prepared the Estate Wagon for storage. I drove down to the gas station and after adding a can of Sea Foam, topped it off with some premium gas.
On the way back I figured to drive it around some to get a little of that Sea Foam additive through that four barrel carburator. What a blast! When I got it on the freeway it was like driving a rolling sofa! Almost no road feel whatsoever. With that overkill of power steering, a guy could keep the land barge straight down the road all day just by using his pinky finger. I have got to hand it to Detroit engineering of yesteryear. They sure knew how to make a good V8 and an automatic transmission to go with it. Not much for quality you have to admit, including fit and finish. They were prone to rust early; especially around the metal trim and mouldings. I heard that they used a lot of recycled metal to build them back in those years. The original paint is pretty pathetic. A lot of mottling in the metal flake and it looks like the color coats just barely cover the primer. Hidious looking leaded over body panel seams. The inside of the doors are ugly- the caulking job on the seams look like it was applied using a 10 foot pole. And the panels (doors, hood) really do not line up to each other all that well. The original carpet just barely comes up to the B pillar trim on the inside floor. I remember as a kid when I washed my Dad's wagon that I needed to be carefull and not cut my hand on the rough and sharp edges of the bumpers and trim. But I guess that they were cranking them out a pretty good rate back in 1972 and you got what you got in terms of quality back then. Besides, Detroit really had no foreign competition to speak of that day. In other words I kind of like that car. I may not be in such a hurry to have my Dad part with it.

 

Not quite!! There was a huge steel strike back then causing American steel supplies to almost dry up. The auto makers were forced to import steel from overseas, mostly from Japan at the time. We all remember how those early Japanese cars used to rot out within a couple of years.

Later, when things got rolling again, there were a plethora of lawsuits against the auto makers because many of those cars were rusting thru within a couple of years. As a result, those lawsuits caused the Feds to step in and pass laws requiring the body warranties we have today. It's either 5 or 10 years, I can't remember which. Anyway, today it's a moot point because the steel they do use is much higher quality and plastic has replaced many steel panels.

I bought a new 74 Blazer and within 2 years it had rusted completely thru both lower front fenders. Luckily, I fixed it and sold the vehicle to a young man who had fallen in love with it.....for more than what I had originally paid for it. Bought a 78 F250 with the heavy duty suspension and the Arctic package equipted with a Meyers snow plow. Kept it for 20 years, but repainted it twice and replaced both doors and fenders once.

 

PaulR: It was not just Detroit that had problems with rust in the early 70s. EVERYONE did! One of our neighbours splurged and bought a 72 Mercedes Benz, and it rusted out faster than our Dodge Dart! Another few people I knew had Volvos, and they were as bad as Pintos for rust. Toyotas and Datsuns would rust in front of your eyes back then, too. Rolls Royce and Bentley seem to be the only 2 cars that did not have major rust issues then, come to that. Your Buick it doing pretty well, I would say. After all, it is 40 years old and still in one piece, so it can't be all that bad! You're right, those big old V-8 engines are amazing for what they do. With good radial tires, an exhaust that breathes and a good over drive automatic instead of the 3 speed, and you will even get something approaching gas mileage out of her.

 

Thanks for setting me straight on the use of recycled steel in the production of American cars back then. I had gotten my information from a guy that I know. Come to think of it, that guy is kind of an idiot. Any automobile in that vintage was a rust bucket. I guess the new Chevrolet Vega began rusting on the dealers showroom floor. Steel is much better today, I remember when high strength steel was introduced in the mid 1980's.

 

I'd forgotten a lot about why cars rusted so badly back then. Just blamed it on all the salt and other ice melting products used on the roads.

 

Some other things that caused premature rust out of cars and trucks back then included the design. Many times cars did not have wheel well or "splash" liners on the inside of the fenders and quarter panels. The water, salt and road debris went directly up into the nooks and crannies of the cars underbody and stayed there. Of the top of my head I can think of the AMC cars of the late 1960's to the late 1970's that rusted straight through on the inside tops of the fenders. For some reason those cars did not have any liners. Many times the water drain holes were not big enough and quickly became plugged on the bottoms of the doors and fenders leading to a rust out. I know for a fact that the drain holes on the Chev/GMC pickup fenders were enlarged considerably on later years from what they were on the initial 1973 models. Corrosion protection of the steel bodies were a kind of a joke back in the day too. On my Corvair when it was manufactured, all it received on the bottom of the car was a zinc chromate primer spray,a red oxide primer spray, and any paint color coat that may have been over sprayed. Lastly the wheel housings were sprayed with undercoating (but it was really more of a sound deadener) seemingly applied at 20 paces. Later on, car manufacturer used body dips and other processes that actually got corrosion fighting substances into the seams of the underbody panels.

You could have gotten your car rustproofed too, whether at the dealer(Rusty Jones, Auto Armor systems), or at a new vehicle rust proofer (Zeibart, Tuff Cote Dinol franchises) but you were subject to the person skills or work ethic that was doing your particular car at that particular time. I was working at Zeibart and going to school in 1984. I saw some rusted out older vehicles with the Zeibart sticker on them. It was all on how the material was applied, and if the vehicles came back annually to be inspected. I remember doing brand new 1984 and 1985 Suburbans and being especially careful and complete in rust proofing those ones. The vehicles were known as rust buckets.

Well anyway, rust protection has come a long way since even 20 years ago. My Renault Encore I purchased new in 1985 came with a 7 year 70,000 mile no rust perforation warranty. Now it is common for new car manufacturers to warranty them for 10 years or 100,000 miles. Come to think of it, I do not see many cars going down the road nowadays with their front fenders flapping in the breeze. Not like in the 1970's and 1980's anyway.

 

Paul: Now it is the rocker panels that disappear before your very eyes, not the fenders. Ever notice the rockers on the earlier Ford Focus models? It seems like most of them I see are held together by air! Same with the G.M. minivans. Those rockers seem like tinfoil! And there is Ma's Arthur. He turns 24 in January, and still looks almost as good as the day he was built. It is not like Ma is overly careful, either. That car is out in any and every kind of weather you can imagine!

 

Yep. You are correct on rocker panels rusting out on late model cars and vans. I forgot the Chevy Venture, (and its clone the Saturn Relay? I think) of more than 10 years ago . The Chev even had a TV commercial back around 1998 that compared it to the Corvair Greenbrier made into a "hippie van" from back in the day. It wanted to show that a young counter-culture type freak from the 1960's, Country Joe and the Fish playing in the background, had became a family man with kids, and now was driving a brand new Chevy Venture. Talk about blending in. From one extreme to the other. The only thing wrong with that TV ad was the guy shown, now in his mid to late 30's, would of had to be about 10 years old to be driving that same "hippie van" back then. Pretty weak. What are the Fifth Avenue ad executives thinking? What did the ad want to emulate: that the Venture would rust out in four years just like the Corvair? By the way, I saw the Greenbrier used in that ad for sale on eBay just last year. "Flower Power", man.

 

I'm embarrassed to say this since I'm a manager at a Ford dealer, but my 2008 Taurus X has a terrible rust problem on the front of its hood. The Freestyles and Taurus X's are notorious for this; per my service manager, Ford is well aware of this manufacturing defect but refuses to do anything about it. You should see it, or maybe shouldn't see it, as it detracts from the whole car. It's not really rust, per se; I've been told it has something to do with their use of aluminum in the hood and perhaps less than a dust free environment when it was being painted. Either way, I'm surprised this hasn't been more publicized as if you start looking at those two models, you'll most likely see what I'm talking about.
It's a shame because I love the car otherwise.

 

Snooterbuckets: A lot of the problem with ALL of the new cars and their hoods is the design. Metal facing forward where it gets all sorts of stone and debris damage is just lousy design. The other thing is that the metal used is so thin that it takes very little for it to perforate. The really stupid thing is the weight of the new beasts! Your Taurus X is very nearly the same weight as your GOOD car, the wagon. There is no way to get fantastic mileage out of something that heavy with the lack of torque in the new engines. Ecoboost is a neat idea but it relies way too heavily on technology. I dread the repair bills that will come along inevitably. That's why I'm looking at an old beast.