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What was the last TV show you watched?

Toronado - thank you JamesP and 1Mach1 - and, yes, they were all horrible cars.

It is amazing how really bad those cars were and how bad the dealers were at servicing them. We had a '81 or '82 Buick LeSabre that was broken all the time. My Dad, who did not part with money easily, finally - even under warranty - took it to a mechanic he knew locally and paid out his own pocket to have him fix the carburetor just so that the car would not stall out all the time.

Whenever I see Danny on "Counting Cars" get excited about a late '70s / '80s GM product, I wonder if he ever actually owned one when they were new.

You certainly had to pick and choose your car correctly back then. :p
When my father bought a pile of junk Mercury back in the 70s, it leaked like a sieve. He took it back to the dealer tons of times but they couldn’t find anything. He had to take a day off of work to go there and watch what they were doing. They had mirrors everywhere trying to figure out where it was leaking from.

My father saw with just his eyes that it was leaking down the block from the heads---on both sides! The idiots at the factory had forgotten to torque down the heads and it was leaking directly from them! No one could tell that at the dealership?! :doh:
 
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Location
New York City
You certainly had to pick and choose your car correctly back then. :p
When my father bought a pile of junk Mercury back in the 70s, it leaked like a sieve. He took it back to the dealer tons of times but they couldn’t find anything. He had to take a day off of work to go there and watch what they were doing. They had mirrors everywhere trying to figure out where it was leaking from.

My father saw with just his eyes that it was leaking down the block from the heads---on both sides! The idiots at the factory had forgotten to torque down the heads and it was leaking directly from them! No one could tell that at the dealership?! :doh:

Your Mercury story is not that different from my Dad's LeSabre story - the car kept stalling when idling. Took it to the dealer time and again. My Dad finally stayed with it when he took it in (morning off from work - which never happened) and still they couldn't give him an answer. He finally took it to a mechanic friend, who quickly figure out it was a carburetor issue - and not a big one - my Dad paid him on the spot to fix it and "be done with it." He never bought another GM product.
 
Your Mercury story is not that different from my Dad's LeSabre story - the car kept stalling when idling. Took it to the dealer time and again. My Dad finally stayed with it when he took it in (morning off from work - which never happened) and still they couldn't give him an answer. He finally took it to a mechanic friend, who quickly figure out it was a carburetor issue - and not a big one - my Dad paid him on the spot to fix it and "be done with it." He never bought another GM product.

My father never learned. :p He went back and bought a 1982 Ford Granada Wagon. The variable venturi carb was always screwing up and would leave you stranded. That was fine while the warranty lasted but after that the damned carb cost $700 a pop! :doh: They had a fix for it by replacing the junk carb with a regular Holley carb for $1800. Gee, what a deal. :doh:
 
Messages
17,215
Location
New York City
My father never learned. :p He went back and bought a 1982 Ford Granada Wagon. The variable venturi carb was always screwing up and would leave you stranded. That was fine while the warranty lasted but after that the damned carb cost $700 a pop! :doh: They had a fix for it by replacing the junk carb with a regular Holley carb for $1800. Gee, what a deal. :doh:

To understand why my father stopped buying GM products, you have to appreciate that when he paid to have something fixed even when it was under warranty, I truly thought the earth was going to start spinning backwards. He would only let GM beat him that way once. He was seething with anger at the company. It was a personal affront to his loyalty and to his sense of value and fair play - once you did that to him, you lost him forever.

I was basically a good kid by nature, but I knew instinctively at a very young age and,then, consciously later on that his feeling of good will toward me was fully conditional on me not crossing certain lines. Get into a minor scrape or other small problem would be dealt with, but it wasn't paradigm shifting. But if I had ever done things that some kids did - take money from their parents behind their back, joy ride in his car, lie to his face (every) - I would have been dead to him.

Fair or not - he had a value system and when GM failed to fix a car in warranty - they were dead to him.
 
To understand why my father stopped buying GM products, you have to appreciate that when he paid to have something fixed even when it was under warranty, I truly thought the earth was going to start spinning backwards. He would only let GM beat him that way once. He was seething with anger at the company. It was a personal affront to his loyalty and to his sense of value and fair play - once you did that to him, you lost him forever.

I was basically a good kid by nature, but I knew instinctively at a very young age and,then, consciously later on that his feeling of good will toward me was fully conditional on me not crossing certain lines. Get into a minor scrape or other small problem would be dealt with, but it wasn't paradigm shifting. But if I had ever done things that some kids did - take money from their parents behind their back, joy ride in his car, lie to his face (every) - I would have been dead to him.

Fair or not - he had a value system and when GM failed to fix a car in warranty - they were dead to him.

Yeah, Ford was dead to me the second time the damned wagon died on my mother and I and we had to WALK back home. :mad:
 
Messages
15,259
Location
Arlington, Virginia
My father never learned. :p He went back and bought a 1982 Ford Granada Wagon. The variable venturi carb was always screwing up and would leave you stranded. That was fine while the warranty lasted but after that the damned carb cost $700 a pop! :doh: They had a fix for it by replacing the junk carb with a regular Holley carb for $1800. Gee, what a deal. :doh:

$1,800.00 for a Holley??!! :faint: And on a waste of sheet metal like the Granada? Crikey! :eeek:
 
Messages
15,259
Location
Arlington, Virginia
I didn't buy it. My father did. :doh: What a turd that thing was. :doh:

Those things sucked right out of the factory.

crusher.jpg

This should have happened the day your Dad bought that pile. :p
 
Those things sucked right out of the factory.

View attachment 26552

This should have happened the day your Dad bought that pile. :p

Yeah, it was a steaming pile. My wife had an 81 Ford Granada when we got married. That reinforced the steaming pile opinion. :p I replaced it with the 73 Mach 1. :p Yeah it is a Ford but at least it runs---most of the time before it dies on me. :doh:
 

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