Worst design feature??

[yirgaman]

My vote for the worst design feature has to include every car I've owned that the oil filter is screwed on either sideways or upside down (Jeep Cherokee). But the overall worst was our '81 Buick Special, You had to remove the right front wheel in order to get to the oil filter for removal - which was another sideways filter. I wonder how many people were crushed to death changing their oil with one of these cars?

[Guest DeSoto Frank]

Dave:

Re: Falcons...

My first non-truck vehicle was a 1962 Falcon Deluxe fordoor, which I purchased from a merit badge counselor when I was a senior in High School (c.1984).

I acquired the car for the princely sum of $100 (he dropped the price $50 when I said he could keep the "sheepskin" front seat cover!). The old "bird" had 189,000 miles on it, and burned a quart of oil every 100 miles, but had the "larger" 170 cid six and a 3-speed stick, so its performance was "perky" for an "economy compact".

Like most people's "first car", it is still one of my favorites- sadly, its working days were cut short after a brief (but intense) encounter with a '77 Buick Regal, which nailed my car in the left front fender, twisted the front frame section and did some other nasty stuff.

That trgedy occurred during my first year at college, and when I came home for spring break, Mom told me she'd seen another '62 Falcon in the papers, so we went to look at it- a one-owner 2-dr, white w/ red & white interior ( <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />); so we bought from the original owner (who's family had convinced (?) him that at age 92, it was time to stop driving... <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> ) and did a little body work in the rear quarters and put it into service....

Which quickly made us realize the limitations of the 144 cid engine, especially when coupled to the lovely air-cooled two-speed Ford-O-Matic (NOT the trusty 3-speed auto of the same name from the '50s!).

That poor little car might do 60 mph downhill in a tail wind ! <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

Interstate highway driving was frightening, to say the least.

I had kept the wreck of fordoor thinking that someday I might swap the larger engine and manual tranny into the 2-dr., and I might yet someday (20 years later!)

Interesting thing about that two-speed automatic- it failed on the road as I was coming home from spring term ,all loaded with the contents of my dorm room, on a very hot May day- the high-speed clutches gave out - when I finally got home and took the tranny out to rebuild it, I discovered that the tranny & torque converter were air-cooled only, and there was a U-tube on the outside of the bell housing which went from the front pump back to the sump, instead of running to a tranny cooler (as it did on Dad's '62 Galaxie which had a 223 six & two-speed auto.); but it was definitely a factory set-up, and the original radiator had not tranny cooler.

Along the rebuilding process, I concluded that lack of a tranny cooler had hastened the demise of the tranny. When the other Falcon got hit, the radiator was pushed back into the fan and in beating the dents out enough to get home, I had got a new replacement radiator from Modine, and all replacement Falcon rads came with tranny coolers; so in went the new rad, out came the U-tube, and i ran lines to the cooler in the radiator.

Mom ran that car for another 100,000 miles with no tranny problems....in fact it's been her favorite car since her '61 Rambler American Convertible (one that got away... <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />).

Air-cooled automatic? NOT one of Ford's "Better Ideas"....

The 144 cid "economy engine"- just a poor little gutless wonder.

Frank McMullen

[Guest]

If all it takes to get on this list is pulling an engine to change the clutch, then all MG's , Triumphs, Austin Healeys and Jaguars would go on it too.

I thought that was part of there charm, that and the combination (in the strangest places) of Whitworth bolts and nuts.

.

What are Whitworth bolts and nuts? Does this refer to the tight thread pattern? I've noticed on my '63 Sunbeam Alpine that it seems to take an excessive amount of turns to tighten a nut, due to the tight thread pattern.

[Bill Stoneberg]

In the 19th Century every British factory which needed to bolt something to something else devised their own fasteners to do it. Clearly, this caused all sorts of compatibility problems. So, along came Mr. Whitworth (I forget his first name right now) who invented a standardized system of coarse threads (with 55 degree thread angle and rounded roots and crests).

This standardization was a Good Thing. Along with his threads came heads for the bolts that were based on the length *along* the side of one flat, rather than across the flats. Hence, there is no simple fractional number for the length across the flats, which is why your American wrenches don't fit. The fractional number on your English wrenches refers to the diameter of the bolt (which is 1/4", 3/8" etc. just like in the U.S.); not to the distance across the flats (which ends up being various weird dimensions). Some years later the Brits decided they needed a finer pitch for some applications, so another thread series was introduced (same 55 degrees). They also decided that the heads were too big for the bolts, so for most applications they switched to using the next size smaller heads. Because of this, and to add one more bit of confusion to life, one manufacturer will mark a particular wrench (spanner) "3/8BS," while a different manufacturer will mark the same sized wrench "7/16W." They fit the same diameter bolt.

British Standard Whitworth (BSW)

These are the original, 19th Century, coarse-threaded industrial bolts designed to hold locomotives together. Because of their coarse pitch, they are more prone to vibrating loose, so are little used on motorcycles. _Except_ for threading into Aluminum (e.g. crankcase studs), where a coarse thread is less prone to stripping than a fine one. It turns out that, except for 1/2" (where the Brits use 12 tpi, and the Americans 13 tpi) the thread pitches are the same as for American Unified Coarse (UNC). However, the thread *form* is different; Whitworth = 55 degrees; UNC = 60 degrees. In spite of this, mismatched nuts and bolts mate nicely, so you're likely to find UNC bolts or studs where BSW should have been.

British Standard Fine (BSF)

A finer pitch series, analogous to the American Unified Fine (UNF), although--unlike the case of BSW/UNC--with none of the pitches in common with UNF. Many motorcycle manufacturers commonly used a lot of BSF threads.

Hope this helps, it is probably more then you ever wanted to know about British nuts and bolts. But it might help why you cant ever find a wrench that fits particular nuts <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

[Dave@Moon]

Frank,

I had my '60 in grad school in Iowa. It had the 144 with the air cooled 2-speed Frodomatic (too low & too high). I used my '60 mainly to commute home for holidays and such.

I once drove home from Iowa and returned returned 36 hours later. Both trips were made with a 25 mph sustained wind out of the west accross IL (plus higher gusts, very weird conditions especially for such a long period). Going to Pittsburgh, 32 mpg. Coming back, 23 mpg.

And I had the the high performance, early '60 only open element air cleaner!