My Dad,who would have turned 101 tomorrow,always liked to tell me,after I got interested in cars in the 60s,what a complete************** the 32 Ford V8 was. He started out driving T's,Moons,alot of obscure makes,yet always described his 32 Ford coupe as the worst car he ever owned.He was surprised that they were so coveted now. But this is also a guy who drove a Citation,then later an "Imperial" K-car...IMHO 2 of the worst cars I've ever been around.
My dad had a '32 3W coupe in the middle 1930s. He told me he could drive from town all the way out to the family farm without touching the steering wheel; if he stepped on the gas it would turn left and when he let off it would turn right. Back to the subject, 1957-1959 Fords also liked to rust out real bad in the eyebrows over the headlights.
I would say that this thread is one of the best you will find on the internet concerning the subject of 1958 Mopar / Bendix EFI. --> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=23996&start=1 Baseless rumors!
Seems like it was around the early 60s when I heard "if a car was 99.9% perfect it would have 12 defective parts". Russ
I think that in the 50's and early 60's a recall was mainly up to the car companies. Later came the gvt oversight which mandated recalls in certain situations. There were a lot of "secret recalls" by the car manufacturers. They would find something wrong but would not inform the owners about the problem but would quietly fix it when or if the car came into the shop. I remember that ther were a lot of exposes about this situation and there were third party hot lines to find about these.
The car you're mentioning is a '58 DeSoto Adventurer. The EFI was on a 361 big block. There are a couple 300D's that came with the EFI sysyems. I think they're trying to get the pieces to reinstall the system. But the costs are not cheap.
That was the infamous "Split" rims. Literally split right down the center, in what would be the well. Usually confused with the later style of rim that used a simple band that levered around the rim to become one bead. It is currently illegal to run split rims, and no shop that I know of will put a tire on one. Also the reason truck shops have that cage thing - as the split rim would occasionally split whilst inflating, to grievous result. Cosmo
I knew a guy whose father was killed when a split rim came apart while he was airing up the tire and decapitated him.
There's a much used (In print) photo from wayback of a******* imprint of a human body on the ceiling of a tyre bay somewhere in Europe. Another split rim misadventure I believe.........waaay before photoshop.
Those '70s GM cars with the vinyl tops would rot more than just around the back window, I have one that has a hole the size of your fist - over the left front visor - and pinholes everywhere else. I also have a pile of patch panels for 57-61 car fenders, over the headlights. Some I ID'ed were 57-58 and 59 Plymouth, '59 Ford, '55-57 Chev/GMC pickup, '59 Chev, '59 Pontiac, '60 Chev, '60 Pontiac.. I still have more I never have figured out what they go to. But it's not uncommon in a junkyard to see things like '58 Chevys and '60 Dodges with a big gaping hole where the headlights should be. I happened once to see a '56 Dodge that had sat in a garage since '63 and it had already had the rockers redone once. The frame got weak in the back as it sat, too, too bad because it was pretty nice otherwise - the interior was in real nice shape. Meanwhile the Hudson that came out of the same garage was probably fine when it went in, it has some minor holes at the bottom of the quarter, but the only real rust issues are in the frame rails.
i had a older guy tell me that the mid 50,s cars were when they started useing more recycle steel and thier ideal was that if you melted the steel it would kill off the rust. don,t know if thats true but wonder if anyone else hear this? he also said that the started rusting in the show room and pactch panels came out when they were just a few years old
One of the things that KILLED the Edsel was the push-button******* shifter. They failed early and often. There are pictures of Dealers with Rows of Edsels they coould not sell because they had to canabalize the shifter motors from the new cars to replace the ones on the cars they had all ready sold. In 1974, the one I had in a '58 Pacer still had issues. For no reason the car would shift out of park and roll on down the driveway and into the street.
That was before the "safety mounts came out". It was a good fix though. I've used the cables for other things as well, hoist ring mounting was one of them. The replacement mounts had the top and bottom plates that would interlock if the rubber between them ever gave way, which would happen due to heat, oil leaking on them and the passage of time. Bob
Both my Studebaker larks the drivers door would come open when cornering hard due to chassis flex. Never hear of a recall though. The problem was worse in the 4 door I owned.
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