Someone commented on points, plugs, and condenser in an earlier post. It took me down memory lane. When I started driving, that was considered a basic tune-up and I learned it at my grandfathers knee.
Every six or seven thousand miles, we would find a convenient shady spot, crack open the distributor and make sure that the points were okay. In my grab-and-go tool bag, I kept a small screwdriver and a point file. You could pick them up anywhere and in a pinch, your lady's emery board would suffice. File the points, set the gap, clean the rotor and inspect the contacts in the cap.
The first electronic ignition I ever owned was on q 1975 Ford that I bought new to go on active duty. That car was never right, Ford simply had not figured out how to do electronic ignition. That car had a pre-ignition ping that simply could not be tuned out. From that car and others I have known since, I became convinced that most of the cars from that era were simply pieces of shit. The cars from the 60s were pretty nic and the cars from the 80s were starting to get better, but the cars from the 70s suffered from a number of ailments fueled by rapidly changing technology that was launched too early.
Nowadays even my Briggs lawnmower has good ignition.
Show of hands: how many still have a timing light and a dwell meter? I do. In storage. Somewhere.
ReplyDeleteMade me curious so I went into the garage and dug around a bit. Holy cow, there was a timing light in a cardboard box under the workbench. Box was covered in dust and wood shavings. No dwell meter, but a still fairly shiny timing light and the leads were even still intact but insulation cracked. Also found a few old wood handled screwdrivers and a Crescent wrench.
DeleteAnd I was I who made the comment. I wish the software didn't default to "Anonymous."
Or I have a key ring with one of those gapping disks on it.
ReplyDeleteAnd that is why I drove a Honda during the 70s because it was so reliable and used regular gas not unleaded.
I still have feeler gauge, timing light, and a dwell meter! And a matchbook cover would be 'good enough' for points (13 thousandths), and a dime would work for spark plugs! BTDT, more than once.
ReplyDeleteEarly '70's were OK vehicles. It was the '73 oil crisis that prompted them to start making the cars smaller and more economical in the mid '70's. Plus that was the same era that began phasing out leaded gas, and adding emissions controls.
ReplyDeleteMy first car was a '73 Dodge Charger SE. I loved that car but it wasn't practical for a family so I sold it when I got married. Later I had a '70 Mustang fastback that I bought in 1989 for $2k. Finally sold it in, IIRC, 2011. I didn't have a good place to work on it and it needed some TLC.
BTW: as nostalgic as those old muscle cars are, current engine technology is vastly superior. 60's and 70's cars were doing something if they made it to 100k miles.
My current vehicles are both over 15 years old, one has 147k and the other over 200k. Neither burns a drop of oil.
My Mustang was a bone stock 302 2v. Yes, I could have built it up...put a cam in it, had the heads ported and blueprinted, put a better intake, bigger carb and better flowing headers and gotten more power out of it...but from the factory, it made 210 hp.
One of my current cars is a Ford Taurus SEL. It has a 3.5l V6 that's rated at 263 hp from the factory.
Current family sedans have more power and acceleration than the iconic muscle cars of the day. Granted, they don't look nearly as cool and the old muscle cars were easy (if not cheap) to build up to 500hp monsters, but from the factory...
Plus modern suspensions, steering and brakes are vastly superior to what we had back then.
But I digress....
I just did a tune up on a 1997 that still uses a rotor. Has a carburetor also.
ReplyDeleteJonathan