Thinking back on what we dealt with as far as maintenance requirements and acceptable reliability in the cars of the '50's and 60's, I think today's generation just does not realize how far we have come. Sure we used to be able to perform any and all work with a simple tool kit, but you went to that tool kit often.

Electric window lifts (all makes) would last about 20,000 miles before dust and vibration did them in, so most cars did not have them, trucks and station wagons would overheat pulling heavy loads uphill in the summer (now a good truck barely breaths hard at full capacity, and gets at least 50% better mpg).

Points and plugs? How about every 12,000 miles if you were a stickler for maintenance.

I could go on, but we really do have a much higher standard today of what we find acceptable, and I guess you could apply that to a lot of everyday technology.

 

Yup

 

Remember valve adjustments? We had more maintenance to do, but the gas mileage was better for small cars 30 years ago than it is now. Go figure.

I had a 1976 VW Scirocco during the 2nd American gas crunch and got better gas mileage than our hi-tech HHRs today. I have to wonder if we sacrificed gas mileage for reliability, because the cars of older days required much more attention in regard to maintenance intervals. No such thing as synthetic lubricants either.

Note the EPA mileage figures at the bottom of the 3rd link on the brochure pages below. The EPA mileage figures were not as accurate as they are today, but they were not too far off of this figure either. As I remember, I was averaging about 32. Great for leaving enough money for food in the college "broke" days. It was a blast to drive, but nowhere near the g's that my HHR SS provides.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/...o/scan0001.jpg

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/...o/scan0007.jpg

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/...o/scan0008.jpg

 

In most cases the "old small cars" that got good MPG were much lighter than today's small cars, due almost entirely to safety standards.

 

Excellent point.

I think that the only real attention to safety back in those days that I am referring to is a collapsable steering column and a padded dashboard. The Scirocco only had 1 windshield wiper! So much for redundancy.

 

Ever stick stick an allen wrench in the distributer cap to adust the points with the engine running and miss the screw?

Anyone wanna buy an anolog dwell meter?

 

Very good points made here. My memories as a child of the '60s:

1. My father's '60 Falcon, his daily driver. Our family joke was that he had to work on it every Sunday to get to work the following Monday. The car was only about 6 years old at the time.

2. My brother, a very talented mechanic, under the hood of our '63 Impala regularly every 4 months doing a tune up and associated "tinkering." The car ran like a "scared rabbit" according to my mom.

3. Replacing the mufflers on the '63 every 18-24 months as they started to open up and get loud.

4. Timing lights. Dwell meters. Need I say more?

5. Gapping plugs and replacing plug wires on a regular basis.

All the things we no longer have to do ...

 

And how could we forget laying on the ground under the car trying to find all those little grease zirks (points)? Then trying to attach the grease gun and pump the clean grease through until the dirty stuff came out. Then wiping it down and moving on to the next. Oh, yeah ... isn't there on in the rear end? Maybe on the u-joint at the rear of the drive shaft? I could never remember which vehicle had this.

 

Speaking of lubricants - us oldtimers remember early 50's Chevys with "dipper" connecting rods and factory optional oil filters. If your engine made it to 100,000 miles without a rebuild it was a miracle.

 

I first started syn oil Mobil 1 in 1975. I think it was 5$ qt back then, but my bug started in the cold north.

I love today's better machined engines = reliability, and ability to hot-rod thru software.