Disposable Cars - Uncle Tony Is Right!

[Bob Riebe]

  My brother sent me this and I agree with what he said for the most part!

                                                                        The gent referred to in the above post

                                               Throwaway Cars And The Transportation Crisis Nobody Is Talking About. Technology Run Amok                       

[Lloyd Smale]

dont know bob. i think its a small percentage that buy oem parts. most are always getting aftermarket from places like napa and on line and i dont personaly know anyone who had to park a modern car out o warantee because they couldnt get a part to fix it. as to throw away. if anything cars from the 60s-80s were the throw aways. used to see lots of them junked with perfectly goog or at least salvagable bodys because the motor was shot or both the motor and tranny were shot. rarely did you see a car in the dump with more than a 100k on it. go to a salvage yard today and unless it was wrecked you rarely see a car with less than a 100k. if a motor is shot at under a 100k people are furious! just look at the big fad of transplanting modern motors, mostly chev ls motors, guys dont think twice about going to a salvage yard and pulling an ls out of a wrecked car with a 150k on it, pressure wash it change the oil and drop it in and go. i wouldnt have wasted 10 minutes of my time dropping a 327 i picked up wit even 90k on it in my vehicle unless i did a total tear down a rebuild.

 think of it like this, drive the highways today and you will see tons of 10 year old or older cars still going. 10 year old cars still going were rare at least around here in the 70s and 80s. which brings me to another BIG factor in throw away cars, RUST. cars in the 60s and especially the 70s and 80s rusted like hell. i bought a new chev k10 in 79 that had to have a front fender replaced at 10 months because it had a rust HOLE in it! wasnt just chevs either, bodys rotted off fords and even toyotas in many cases in less than 5 years up here in salt country. frames rotted so badly that they werent salvagable. today you only see rust problems in vehicles older than 10 years. most undercoating and rust proofing businesses have gone under and there used to be one in about every town. really the only thing that makes keeping a vehicle for many is the fear of technology.

 contrary to what some tell you newer cars are not harder to fix and you dont need 10s of thousands of dollars in diagnostic equiptment. a service manual a code checker and a multi meter is all you need and you can buy it all for 400 bucks. with those diagnosing your problem is easier than the 60s-80s mechanics throwing parts at it fixes, code checker will tell you that its one of 3-5 problems a service manual to tell you where those parts are and a multi meter to narrow it down to the right sensor. 10 minutes and a trip to napa. they only wished it was that easy in the 60s and no points distributors, plugs that last today a 100k instead of 5k. oil change if your anal at 5k instead of every 3k. transmissions that will go 200k without service. i always talk about the old 06 silverado i sold my buddy at a 100k, he drove it another 125k than turned it into a plow truck because the body was shot; it now has 265k on it and the heads have never been off it and the transmission hasnt even ever had the filter changed. thats 40k just plowing!! and its a 1/2 ton truck!! show me a 60s-80s truck thats held up like that and ill eat crow!! nope

if anything weve emerged from the era of throw aways and are driving the most reliable longest lasting cars and trucks ever made. eaisest to work on too if you get over your fear, im about a computer idiot. dont even carry a cell phone but i sure can plug a code checker into a diagnostic port and look up a code in a service manual. something everyone should learn even if you bring your vehicle to a mechanic because another thing thats much esier to do today is mechanics ripping off customers relacing parts that dont need it or worse yet just saying they replaced some expensive part when iy was 5 minutes and a 10 dollar sensor. nope today with some cars even 300k isnt out of the question before you throw it away, you would have thrown 3 away in the 70s in that time MAYBE 2 if you were a master mechanic and could rebuild motors and transmissions on your own vehicle and were fortunate not to live anywhere near salt. try to tell me a 76 K chev, W dodge, F ford or even a toyota was a better truck than a 2025 in ANY WAY and ill tell you to set that crack pipe down and thats what that you tube genius in that article should do!! i think if they made a computer game about diagnosing car problems today every mechanic in the country would go under. maybe not. theyd still have to get off the couch and get their hands dirty! something most of us were forced to do back then or walk!

[Bob Riebe]

   
     The local garage, private, I have been using for 40 years, oddly, if it is too old, may not fix it ,as ,few to none of the new mechanics know how to fix cars that you cannot hook up to a computer - on the other hand - if it is beyond a certain level in the oughts (told to me personally) they will tell the person to take it to the dealer as it will cost them , the owner, over 100 dollars just to get to the problem to be fixed, and the same amount to put all the stuff back in the car.

     The days of - it only took me  one-half an hour to fix it, so just give me X amount are gone; if it take fifteen minutes you get charged for an hour which nowadays is X amount over 100 dollars.

      The garage was sold, fortunately, to a  mechanic who has been there a decade ( he is almost 40), who knows how to do work without a computer, but he said the new ones from school are totally lost when asked to do what used to be simple tasks and he can only do so much himself.

      Body parts - most insurance companies would rather total a car out ( most owners are too gullible to put up a fight) and IF OEM part are available the owner can insist that they be used but the Ins. Co. will give you China crap if you do not insist.
       At that -  when the other half smucked her car, a local body shop , who can and will use what you want, estimated damage at closer to 10 grand than 5, so she shopped around and went to a small private shop out in the boonies, and the dude fixed the car for less than 4 grand. ( A gent who had done a lot of work for us, including custom metal work, cheaply, had sadly retired).

       The part about headlights is true. It is stupid the cock-eyed crap they have turned simple head-lights into, and some simply no longer exist.
If you can find factory OEM, expect to pay twice the price of after-market and some after market stuff is crap.
        If one takes the effort to  call, not just E-mail, dealers, some times you can find new old stock stuff, (I found a tail light lens for my 1966 Plymouth from a small town dealer way back in the nineties) just as how I found an OEM rocker-panel for the other half's 2004 Grand Marquis approx. 10 years ago. before she stopped keeping looking good as possible.

       

[Lloyd Smale]

you can say the same thing about anything old. try finding a part for a fridge, oven. furnace, outboard ect ect that was made in the 60s. theres just not enough interest to keep them alive when newer better things are made. ill give you a little example. in 1968 my dad bought the first color tv in the neighborhood. it was a 23" and that was huge in those days. he paid 500 bucks for it. at that time he was making 4.50  an hour working a civil service job on the airforce base and ma had just got her first teaching job and was paid 3.50 an hour. now i will admit something i hate to. for the first time in a decade i stepped into walmart yesterday. my wife just had surgery and wanted something there and i couldnt say no. now the worse part. i actually bought something myself. theyd had an open box hiensse hd 55" tv for a 130 bucks!! that would have been about 12 bucks in dads day!! a 100 times better tv for 35 times less money. yup the good old days alright. a new 55 in tv for what the repair man would have charged in the 70s to swap out a tube!!

yup you could fix dads by changing tubes ect and i remember the repair man over a couple times. today? just like in cars theyre hands down more reliable and preforms light years better. i usually get around 10 years out of a tv, last one before this i paid 400 bucks for, its 8 years old and still works fine' so if i get even 10 out of it it cost me less than 4 bucks a month. for the most part they are throwaways. nobody fixes tvs anymore. theyre to cheap to replace and improve so much that even if its working at around 10 years ill give it away and buy a better one.  raise your hand if you still use a 15 year old cell phone or computer. most get tossed still working fine but the newer ones blow them away in performance so you upgrade. why should cars be any different? only difference is your old phone or computer is worthless. your older car or truck is still worth good money and your sure  dont "DISPOSE" it!!!

its the same with cars, i (my wife mostly) drives a new silverado. i have a standard cab short box 06 gmc thats in fantastic shape; it has a 111000 miles on it but if you didnt know oit and looked at it and drove it youd think it was more like 11000. drive it for a week then hop in the new one. its about like comparing a new fighter jet to a bi plane!! ride, power, fuel economy, quietness and that feeling it was carved out of a brick not pop riveted together. my wife calls my truck the fred flintstone truck. thats an 06 now step back to 76!! i owned a half dozen 70s chev trucks. so have short memorys. 350 and 4x4? 12mpg if you BABBIED IT. a wopping 175 hp!! ride? well weld up the shocks on your new one and youll get the same experience. towing and hauling? a new midsize truck would run circles around it!! motor and tranny? about a 100k if you take care of them before they need a major rebuild. than we can talk about the entertainment center that was an am radio and the only plug in a cigerrete lighter. hard uncomfortable seats. i can go on and on.

like i said some dreaming of the good old days have short memorys. just ask whens the last time you paid for a "tune up" whats really amazing is price. ive heard guys say i payed 5k for my new truck in 75 and will never pay 50k for one now!! well in 76 i made 7 bucks an hour at my power company job after the second year. when i retired in 08 i was making 42, same job today? just under 60 an hour. so bastically 10 times more just like the cost of the truck and the truck is a 100 times better in every way. back then i bought my first home. a 2 bed ranch for 18k it was a 187 bucks a mont on a 10 year loan!! same home up here today would sell for around a 120k and its no different then it was when it was built in the 60s! i dont here people saying theyd never pay a 120k for a house because in the 70s they bought there's for 18k. that argument is beyond silly.

 mostly comes from people who made poor decisions in life and are at the point that retired they have no money. im not sorry for them. they made their own choices. best truck i ever owned? hands down the new chev close second? the 2020 ram i traded on it. 800 dollar a month car payment!!! no thanks. ive paid cash for my last 5. figured out once trading every 3-4 years it costs me less than 3k a year or the equivalent of 300 dollars a month to own a better truck every time. just by saving up enough to buy the first one cash.  the way it is today you walk in a car repair shop and you arent walking out less than 300 dollars poorer and with my new one i can get up tomorrow, put gas in it and COMFORTABLY (as comfortably as any CAR made in the 70s) head all the way across the country knowing when i get there i can fill it again and head back with confidence it will be totally trouble free and it will cost me less in gas than any car from the 70s short of something like a pinto! Yup memories! I think some of the older here have a cloud going through theirs the golden age of cars and trucks is today not 40 years ago!! but that said youd best jump now because many are fighting to ruin it absolute truth of it is cars and trucks from that era were JUNK. only thing that made a 150k with out a trip to the dump was a toyota and thats if the body hadnt rotted of it first

   
     The local garage, private, I have been using for 40 years, oddly, if it is too old, may not fix it ,as ,few to none of the new mechanics know how to fix cars that you cannot hook up to a computer - on the other hand - if it is beyond a certain level in the oughts (told to me personally) they will tell the person to take it to the dealer as it will cost them , the owner, over 100 dollars just to get to the problem to be fixed, and the same amount to put all the stuff back in the car.

     The days of - it only took me  one-half an hour to fix it, so just give me X amount are gone; if it take fifteen minutes you get charged for an hour which nowadays is X amount over 100 dollars.

      The garage was sold, fortunately, to a  mechanic who has been there a decade ( he is almost 40), who knows how to do work without a computer, but he said the new ones from school are totally lost when asked to do what used to be simple tasks and he can only do so much himself.

      Body parts - most insurance companies would rather total a car out ( most owners are too gullible to put up a fight) and IF OEM part are available the owner can insist that they be used but the Ins. Co. will give you China crap if you do not insist.
       At that -  when the other half smucked her car, a local body shop , who can and will use what you want, estimated damage at closer to 10 grand than 5, so she shopped around and went to a small private shop out in the boonies, and the dude fixed the car for less than 4 grand. ( A gent who had done a lot of work for us, including custom metal work, cheaply, had sadly retired).

       The part about headlights is true. It is stupid the cock-eyed crap they have turned simple head-lights into, and some simply no longer exist.
If you can find factory OEM, expect to pay twice the price of after-market and some after market stuff is crap.
        If one takes the effort to  call, not just E-mail, dealers, some times you can find new old stock stuff, (I found a tail light lens for my 1966 Plymouth from a small town dealer way back in the nineties) just as how I found an OEM rocker-panel for the other half's 2004 Grand Marquis approx. 10 years ago. before she stopped keeping looking good as possible.

       

[ironglow]

  I agree that  the complexity of electronics in today's cars, is much of the problem. I recently bought a new car, probably my last one, so I so I picked one that has 50K/100K warranty, and as minimal electronics as possible.

  Like anything else..I figure, the more parts involved, the more things that can go wrong..

  It seems trhe luxury cars are getting hit hard by electronic problems, simply because purchasers want all the bells & whistles with which to impress others.

  I have heard reports for instance, of the upscale Land Rovers trhat are being sold for parts after only a couple years.

    AI Overview
Learn more
Yes, late model Land Rovers are indeed sold for parts in the USA. Several sources indicate that companies like CarBrain and Rover Parts offer to buy damaged or broken-down Land Rovers, often for cash. These companies specialize in sourcing parts from such vehicles, making it a viable option for owners of late model Land Rovers that are no longer in use or are too expensive to repair.
Here's why and how it works:
Hassle-free selling:
CarBrain, for example, simplifies the process of selling damaged or broken Land Rovers, offering cash for the vehicles, regardless of their condition.
Source of parts:
Companies like Rover Parts focus on providing a wide range of Land Rover parts, including those from late model vehicles.
Cost-effective for buyers:
Sourcing parts from salvage vehicles can be a more affordable option for Land Rover owners compared to purchasing new parts from dealerships or suppliers.
Variety of models:
Rovers North offers parts for a wide range of Land Rovers, including late model vehicles like the Defender L663, LR2, LR3, and LR4.
Specialized parts:
Some Land Rover models, particularly those with unique features, might see a higher demand for parts, making them more attractive to salvage companies.
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   I look at it by the old adage called...  KISS !   (keep it simple stupid)

[Lloyd Smale]

[quoteI look at it by the old adage called...  KISS !   (keep it simple stupid[/quote]

 you say that but do you heat your house with a wood stove. heck even my wood boiler has a computer! do you use a wringer washer and hang clothes to dry? how about a tv? got one with tubes or a dial to change channels? kitchen oven have a digital read and touch buttons?  microwave, air frier? Air conditioner? hell a powder dispenser has a computer. if you say no to all of that why a cell phone to go on facebook!!!! ive got a landline and my cell phone sits on the counter only used if im going for a ride in the woods or to camp' bottom line is that basic car has probably more than one computer being a cheap car chances are not as good as one they put in a toyota or Cadillac. you use electronics probably ever waking hour. why fear them in a car??  Please dont fly because theres probably 20 or more of them in a Jet.  bottom line electronic controls for engines is what makes them reliable, long lasting and able to run a 100k without even a tune up instead of ever 3k putting points condenser and plugs. distributor cap every other time. you say "oh i can do that myself" well the truth is 99 percent of the people back then couldnt. how many of your friends had a timing light? how many changed their own oil every 3k instead of my service manual saying every 6k. Why because computer controed ignition cut the deosits of carbon and other junk down to about nothing which is the main reason an engine can last 200k. now come back and tell me you want simplicity. wait you cant because you wouldnt be on the internet and even if you kept your phone youd be to busy cutting firewood for the winter and washing clothes with a ringer washer, eating less too because more of your money would go toward keeping that 60s car running and buying 2 or 3 times more gas. computers are in our lives like it or not and will be till the sun eats the earth. bashing them while you using one all day kind of makes you a hypocrite. excuse ne now im going to take the dog, which by the way has a tracking chip under his skin, for a ride on the side by side which by the way has 2 computers, maybe later ill take the harley out and exercise its computer

[Bob Riebe]

you can say the same thing about anything old. try finding a part for a fridge, oven. furnace,

I just had a new motor put in my wall furnace from 1963!

[Lloyd Smale]

thats amazing. i had a hell of a time finding a thermocouple for the wall furnace in the apartment and its only 5 years old. 

you can say the same thing about anything old. try finding a part for a fridge, oven. furnace,

I just had a new motor put in my wall furnace from 1963!