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Originally Posted by A Fish Named Wallyum
Yeah, both of my friends drove six cylinder cars when we were just starting out. Rob had a 225 slant six Duster and Cone had a Nova with a 250 and a Cherry Bomb muffler.  They both got in the neighborhood of 20 mpg, which beat my '73 Plymouth Satellite Regent station wagon with a billy club. I got somewhere in the area of 12 mpg, and developed such gas saving strategies as coasting down long hills and lifting the hose after shutting it off to drain EVERY drop of gas in the line. The economy of those two cars impressed me so much that the car I bought after the Duster was a Horizon that got between 30 and 40 mpg. |
Wish they still made the Ford Festiva (ok, so it was a rebranded KIA)... 50 MPG all day long in a fat-boy friendly little car... That is the ONLY small car that I've found that is/was comfortable for a 6-1, 300+ lb country boy...
Only thing lacking was air conditioning (sure is nice in TEXAS!!!), cruise control (nice to have) and maybe an automatic transmission. (they came with an automatic as an option-- the 5 speed box was standard. Cruise was an option too as was A/C).
Dad had two, and put well over 200,000 miles on both. He used them for work cars when he was at the nuke plant and drove 104 miles a day round trip to work. They were peppy little cars too... and they could haul a lot of stuff-- we moved my sister from near Houston to Lubbock, which is 525 miles, to the Texas Tech University (GO RED RAIDERS!!! GUNS UP!!!) every year while she was in college and home again in the summer... she and mom drove one car, with the back seat and hatchback cargo area loaded to the roof, and I drove the other Festiva with the front passenger seat stacked to the ceiling and dashboard, the rear seat folded down, and packed from floor to ceiling all the way to the hatchback-- just enough room for me to get in the driver's seat and get to the gearshift...
Those little cars were just amazing... just wish Dad had spent an extra $1,000 bucks on them (they were only like $8,000 cash) and got the A/C and cruise control...
He griped that the A/C dropped the mileage by about 5 mpg, and the automatic did too, about another 5 mpg... so you get 40 instead of 50... big woop! Sure would be nice to have A/C on a 100 degree day!!! The automatic is a "nice to have" but the standard was ok too...
Those cars ran and ran and never missed a lick-- only thing they needed were regular oil changes and replacing the 12 inch tires once or twice a year... and the tires were only like $24 each at Walmart for Douglas brand...
Not like these stupid new cars... I was talking with a dealer at the 4H fair in Indiana a couple years back-- they had that new Ford not-quite-SUV-not-quite-minivan thing on display in one of the buildings-- the guy kept going on and on about the I-pod dock and its compatibility with all the electronic bells and whistles and gizmos like GPS and various phones and all this kind of crap... I kept asking about the mileage and the transmission and the engine and stuff like that... he seemed rather shocked when I wanted to look under the hood... and all he could intelligently (and I use the term loosely) answer about was the stupid electronic interfaces with the electronic toys and gizmos you wanted to install, not about the POWERTRAIN of the vehicle! I finally told him in exasperation, "I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THAT ELECTRONIC CRAP-- TELL ME ABOUT THE POWERTRAIN!" I guess they're just marketing to these empty-headed morons that come in with half a dozen electronic gizmos attached to their belts, pockets, and wires around the neck and bluetooths in their ear...
I couldn't care less about ANY of that crap... the only options I care about on a vehicle are 1) A/C, 2) cruise control, 3) automatic transmission. In that order... everything else is nonsensical fluff...
When my dad finally wore the Festiva's out (sold one and loaned the other to my BIL for his last year of college at Texas A&M) he bought a 2000 Ford Escort to drive to work-- UTTER CRAPMOBILE!!! He'd bought a used 1996 Escort 2 door sporty model a few years earlier but didn't like it, so he gave it to my brother... he's still driving it with 300,000 miles+ on it. When my Dad became disabled after a year or two of driving the car, he parked it because he couldn't get in or out of it. It was paid for so we put it in the garage since we'd lose money if we sold it. My brother kept it as a 'fallback' car if his Escort finally died... It sat in the barn for several years, driven periodically, until we decided to pull it out and let my wife drive it 38 miles each way to work each day to save high-priced gas... but the thing only gets about 28 mpg (my parent's Dodge minivans get that on the freeway and almost that the rest of the time, even with 5-6 people!) That stupid car has to be the CRAPPIEST piece of junk I've ever seen-- it's wired with the dinkiest wiring I've ever seen-- stuff isn't much bigger than that multistrand computer wiring they use in data cables... the headlights burned up the plugs that plug into the headlight bulbs, and I installed a new set and they've burned them up too... you have to smack the headlights to get them to come on, and every time you turn the headlights on either one side or the other (occassionally both) refuse to come on unless you smack them. Even then, after awhile they'll quit coming on until you unplug the plug from the light bulb and rattle it around, and plug it back in. The A/C quit and it was getting warm out, so I started troubleshooting it and traced it to a faulty CCRM module... When I researched it online, I found out the CCRM is a faulty peice of crap they install in the system to go out, FORCING you to go drop $450 for a new one at Ford (dealer item only) and they charge about $400 in labor to install it. Turns out they use a tiny little relay inside it that you can get at Radio Shack for $3; one guy on the ZX-2 forum cut the case on his CCRM open, cut the old relay out, soldered the new one to the snipped off legs sticking out of the breadboard, and put the cover back, and presto! $3 fix to a $450 money-robbing dunsel... After looking at the wiring diagram, I figured out an easier work around-- I cut the A/C low pressure switch output wire, installed a jumper wire with a wire nut and sealed the wires/nut up with electrical tape, and ran the jumper wire directly to the A/C compressor clutch field coil, splicing the jumper wire into the power feed wire from the CCRM controlling the clutch. This bypassed the redundant and stupid CCRM and high pressure cutout switch (which is unnecessary since the thing has a freon popoff valve if the system overheats/overpressurizes anyway) and is identical to how my 96 Ford pickup A/C is wired... low pressure cycling switch controlling the A/C compressor directly, being fed power to the low pressure cycling switch from the A/C control knob inside the cab... SIMPLE...
New cars are just MADE to break down, so they can clean your plow at the dealer shop... Later! OL JR
