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I stand corrected on the seat belts Fleet, seems like it was later, but oh so many years ago. LOL though, the car we had for drivers ed was a '68 or '69 Fury,a local dealership supplied it and it was pretty well decked out. But the front seat was pretty cushy, I think it was a full size blue velvet sofa, man that car was big. I can't imagine the kids today learning parallel parking in a car about six feet wide by maybe twelve feet long.
Yes, the late-'60s Fury was quite big. About 212" long. My '66 was 209.8" and 78.7" wide.
Most new cars do have poor visibility, but the side view mirrors help. As does the rear camera if it has one.
According to the owners manual for my 74 Impala, you had to change the oil and filter every 6000 miles or 4 months, you had to grease 10 different fitting's also every 6000 miles or 4 months, and monthly you had to check the battery water level. Every 6 months you had to check dwell and timing and every 12,000 miles required new plugs. So yes, newer cars are a LOT less maintenance intensive. But when things do wear out, it is much more expensive to repair. And harder to get to a lot of it, which accounts somewhat for the high labor charges. Id rather keep my oldies and forgo the expense of purchase of newer vehicles, but to each their own. I like spending a lazy sunday afternoon adjusting things on mine. But of course most folks don't. It is interesting to note though that in 74, Ford only required chassis greasing every 3 years or 36 months. However everything else required just as much attention as the chevy. Oh yeah, back in the day, you had to change coolant every 24,000 miles or 2 years also.
They can be lower maintenance but the stuff that does need work tends to be harder to access due to overengineering... for example many vehicles require a person to remove the front bumper to get to the headlight assembly and change the bulb.. things like that are unacceptable in my mind. Most also no longer have tranny dipsticks so either you just never change the tranny fluid or you have to do a complex process of jacking up the vehicle exactly level, having the exact temperature, etc.
I don't really trust any mechanic to do it right, so in the future I'll probably never change the tranny fluid again... mine was still clean at 100K miles in my grand am.
I just love how they come out with new screw heads, when a phillips worked just fine.
This is not over-engineering, but rather a feeble attempt to discourage self-maintenance on such simple things as air filter covers. And for those under the illusion new is better, just had to replace control arms and linkage on a newer Chevy with only 60K miles. Back in the old days, these were the last parts one would have to replace.
Also worthy of note is the increased prevalence of 4 cylinder engines. A lot of work is way easier on 4 cyl engines than V engines. Spark plugs in particular.
Also worthy of note is the increased prevalence of 4 cylinder engines. A lot of work is way easier on 4 cyl engines than V engines. Spark plugs in particular.
Plugs are a 25 minute job on my 4cyl 2010 Fusion.
Yep.. to access the water pump on a V6 camry requires removing the engine because it's a large engine for the amount of space the engine bay in the camry provides.. seems silly but I might just go with the I4 for that reason.. with the 6 speed auto it's fast enough for what I'll use it for... combined with the $3k premium on the price when I prefer to spend around $15K max on my next car...
How often will a water pump fail in a modern camry though? They failed quite frequently in some of the past models such as the 2007.. but not that likely with the 2010+
As far as screw heads go I find torx heads far superior to philips and/or straight head so I have no problem with that. They should have started with screw heads that aren't so easy to strip out right from the start.
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They should have started with screw heads that aren't so easy to strip out right from the start.
