The Sorry State of Affairs in Automobilia in the 1970s, 80s and 90s

[Stephane Dumas]

I love how the testers complaining was kept in as audio for the Stanza Wagon:

Makes you wonder though, how say was that Stanza in a side impact crash?   

Here in the Great White North, the Stanza wagon was sold as Nissan Multi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTzX4LzmLio

[Max Rockatansky]

Now here's something you almost never see:

Now those headlights are garishly awesome as all hell. 

[Max Rockatansky]

I'm fairly amused at the use liberal of the word "Oriental"  back in the 1980s by Motorweek:

Can't have a wagon in the 80s without fake wood trim and blue interior pieces....good god the body dives like crazy under heavy braking:

[GCrites]

I'm fairly amused at the use liberal of the word "Oriental"  back in the 1980s by Motorweek:

As long as I can still call myself "Occidental"

[Max Rockatansky]

I'm fairly amused at the use liberal of the word "Oriental"  back in the 1980s by Motorweek:

As long as I can still call myself "Occidental"

True....regardless I recall a lot of mid-western folk who worked in the car industry or were in Japan or Korea using it as ethnic slang along with a couple other choice words.  My Grand Father was brutal in that regard, it didn't help that he worked for General Motors for 30 plus years after WWII.

[Max Rockatansky]

I forgot how long rear drum brakes were a thing on the F-body:

They need to find a better launch RPM, way too much wheel spin. 

[GCrites]

If you didn't spec the G80 performance rear axle option I don't think you could get anything but drums. There was a lot of sticker shock in 1987 when in order to get the 350 you had to get all other performance options. That changed for 1988 to make 350s more affordable... including the option of rear drums returning.

[Max Rockatansky]

If you didn't spec the G80 performance rear axle option I don't think you could get anything but drums. There was a lot of sticker shock in 1987 when in order to get the 350 you had to get all other performance options. That changed for 1988 to make 350s more affordable... including the option of rear drums returning.

It's just weird to think out of almost all the performance variables that have improved since the 1980s that almost nobody thinks of brake technology.  In those Motorweek videos you keep hearing about non-standard ABS, drum brakes, and 150 foot plus distances to emergency stop.  Even the cars that carry drums today on smaller compact and sub-compact cars still usually panic stop in the neighborhood of 120 feet, that was unheard of except for big time performance cars back then.

[GCrites]

To give you the "inside stuff", GM put almost all of the brake bias in the front on the 3rd gen F-bodies so it doesn't really matter if you have discs or drums stock. The rear brakes seriously barely do anything. I have an adjustable proportioning valve that I haven't installed yet due to having trouble tracking down the proper metric (car) and SAE (prop valve) adapters. I want to dial in a lot more more rear brake.

[Max Rockatansky]

That will sure get you a lot better results with a more balanced bias.  I'm assuming that you have a 3rd gen from the sounds of it?

[GCrites]

Yes, an 87 IROC-Z.

[Max Rockatansky]

Yes, an 87 IROC-Z.

305 or 350?  Wasn't that the first year for the L98 in the F-Body?

[GCrites]

Original 350 and yes.

[J N Winkler]

I have had rear discs for over 20 years, on three different models--1986 Nissan Maxima, 1994 Saturn SL2, and 2005 Toyota Camry.  I much prefer them for smooth stops, but on the Nissan and the Saturn (the only two of the three with enough mileage to have needed brake work), the pads and rotors have worn much faster on the rear than on the front.  ABS does not seem to make any difference (the Saturn has it, the Nissan didn't), and none of these cars has been through a true salt-belt winter.  I wonder if my tendency to glide to stops (to minimize dive) puts more wear on the rear brakes than is assumed in their design.

I haven't lubed my brake hardware, largely because I have never seen any evidence of sticking calipers in MPG numbers, but now I wonder if I should start.

[Max Rockatansky]

Its certainly possible, although not likely probably for most drivers.  Hell I had a Ford Focus that I put 143,000 miles on 2.3 years during work travel that bought new off the lot.  I still had 5mm of front brake pad on that thing before I sold it, I was my third set of tires on that thing.  Probably helped I hardly ever stopped in that car, it averaged 52 MPH over it's life before I sold it.  Suffice to say that's not exactly what would be considered "normal" vehicle operation though.

[slorydn1]

Funny y'all mention the rear brakes. I'm not sure about the other makes of muscle cars, in particular, but the Mustangs seem to be suffering to one weird side effect to how the traction control does it's job-the rear brakes are wearing out faster than the front ones. Those of us that like to get on the loud pedal a little harder than normal coming off of a stop light, for example, are triggering the TC and the rear brakes are being engaged to control the wheel spin. Discs and calipers are usually smaller on the rear than on the front. My wife's 2012 has 53K miles and she already needs rear brakes (I'm gettin' all 4 done anyway for her because she deserves the best for putting up with me). Just interesting I guess, that's all-back to the regularly scheduled sorry cars of the late 20th Century.

[J N Winkler]

Newer cars also have electronic proportioning, which is designed to involve the rear brakes more in stopping and results in more rear brake wear.  And, yes, disc brakes are usually not as beefy on the rear.  In older cars with fixed proportioning, designers have to make assumptions about how heavily the rear brakes will be involved in stopping the car, and for some driving styles I think that can result in them wearing relatively much faster than the front even with no corrosion or lubricant loss in the brake hardware.

I have looked at a rear disc brake pad replacement DIY for the Camry and I suspect lubing the caliper pins just to eliminate the possibility of accelerated pad wear may be more trouble than it is worth, since getting at the pins takes you two-thirds of the way to full pad replacement.

[Max Rockatansky]

Funny y'all mention the rear brakes. I'm not sure about the other makes of muscle cars, in particular, but the Mustangs seem to be suffering to one weird side effect to how the traction control does it's job-the rear brakes are wearing out faster than the front ones. Those of us that like to get on the loud pedal a little harder than normal coming off of a stop light, for example, are triggering the TC and the rear brakes are being engaged to control the wheel spin. Discs and calipers are usually smaller on the rear than on the front. My wife's 2012 has 53K miles and she already needs rear brakes (I'm gettin' all 4 done anyway for her because she deserves the best for putting up with me). Just interesting I guess, that's all-back to the regularly scheduled sorry cars of the late 20th Century.

What are the rotor sizes?  I never had an issue in my 5th Generation Camaro but that was pretty close in rotor size front and rear.  The Challenger is too new to calculate even wear patterns even on the tires.

[slorydn1]

Funny y'all mention the rear brakes. I'm not sure about the other makes of muscle cars, in particular, but the Mustangs seem to be suffering to one weird side effect to how the traction control does it's job-the rear brakes are wearing out faster than the front ones. Those of us that like to get on the loud pedal a little harder than normal coming off of a stop light, for example, are triggering the TC and the rear brakes are being engaged to control the wheel spin. Discs and calipers are usually smaller on the rear than on the front. My wife's 2012 has 53K miles and she already needs rear brakes (I'm gettin' all 4 done anyway for her because she deserves the best for putting up with me). Just interesting I guess, that's all-back to the regularly scheduled sorry cars of the late 20th Century.

What are the rotor sizes?  I never had an issue in my 5th Generation Camaro but that was pretty close in rotor size front and rear.  The Challenger is too new to calculate even wear patterns even on the tires.

On regular 2011-2014 Mustang GT's (non Track Pack) the fronts are 336 x 36 (mm) with dual piston 43 mm calipers, 330 x 19 on the rear with single piston calipers (also 43 mm, so that puts paid to my assertion of smaller calipers in the rear-I guess I got to close to the evidence locker when I made my last post).

My wife is not a corner carver. Her driving style is actually pretty easy on the brakes. Her big vice is that she loves to launch it off every stop light like she's at the Summernationals. But she jumps out of it right or just above the speed limit and she coasts down to the next light, she's not diving it in there like a NASCAR driver coming in for a pit stop.

I usually leave the light a little more like an old grand pa but I like to play a little on curvy mountain roads when we road trip to western NC, yet on the downhills I rarely even have to give the brakes a courtesy tap (the beauty of a manual transmission car).

Her rear pads are pretty much gone, and her rotors are scored. I'm mulling turning vs replacement of the rear rotors but since it's her DD I think I'd feel better just replacing them outright.

[J N Winkler]

On regular 2011-2014 Mustang GT's (non Track Pack) the fronts are 336 x 36 (mm) with dual piston 43 mm calipers, 330 x 19 on the rear with single piston calipers (also 43 mm, so that puts paid to my assertion of smaller calipers in the rear-I guess I got to close to the evidence locker when I made my last post).

My wife is not a corner carver. Her driving style is actually pretty easy on the brakes. Her big vice is that she loves to launch it off every stop light like she's at the Summernationals. But she jumps out of it right or just above the speed limit and she coasts down to the next light, she's not diving it in there like a NASCAR driver coming in for a pit stop.

It looks like this generation of Mustang has EBD:

http://iihs.net/fsm/?dir=786&viewfile=Anti-Lock%20Control.pdf

I have seen reports of rear disc pad life as low as 30,000 miles in cars equipped with EBD.

For comparison, my 1994 Saturn, which is my DD and has seen primarily city service for all but 20,000 miles of its life, still has the factory original front rotors but needed new pads on all four wheels at 9 years/73,000 miles, new pads on the rear wheels at 10 years/80,000 miles, and new pads on all four wheels and new rear rotors at 18 years/125,000 miles.  (I think the pads installed at 73,000 and 80,000 miles were semi-metallic rather than ceramic, and so failed to match factory specification.  The new rear pads at 80,000 miles were almost certainly the consequence of a bad lube job at the 73,000-mile service.  The current pads are ceramic and seem to be holding up quite well in terms of NVH as well as wear when casually inspected by glancing through openings in each wheel.)

[GeauxLSU]

Really about the Lada that I remember that was worth about anything was the Niva 4x4s.

It's funny for the longest time the domestic automakers would sell some of their best stuff outside the U.S. market.  Aside from the Chevette some more recent examples were the European Focus and the all the rear-drive Holden platform cars that would never seem to make it over this way.  It's something that has only really changed since GM and Chrysler have gone bankrupt.

It was a lot of things that led to the domestic automakers losing so much of their market share.  The biggest one was a failure to adapt to market changes post OPEC Embargo which led to all those Japanese and Korean companies to exploit the void with quality smaller cars.  There was a ton of things like corporate arrogance in assuming people would continue to buy American despite build qualities and designs falling far behind the competition.  Although platform sharing was a thing before OPEC it got way out of control in the 70s and 80s which led to cars like the Pontiac 1000 in addition to Cadillac Cimmaron.  It's not like any of the bigger or sportier cars were better, I remember my Dad's 82 Corvette was a told dog on the 15 year old C3 platform which had ballooned in weight over it's life span.

The "downsized" 1977 full-size GM cars, was beginned to be studied as early as 1972 with some earlier clay models popping up in 1973.
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/vintage-review-1977-chevrolet-caprice-downsized-by-design/
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/vintage-ads-and-brochures/vintage-ad-general-motors-announces-its-1977-full-size-cars/

The "plucked chicken" 1962 Dodge and Plymouth ironically was around the same size as the 1977 GM. Bit their controversal design got a cold reception, they was originally planned to be bigger but William Newberg who was Chrysler president had heard of rumors then Ford and GM plan smaller cars who was in reality, the mid-size intermediate Fairlane and the Chevy II http://ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/chrysler-downsizing-disaster-1962/  There some photos of clay models of how they should had originally look. http://www.allpar.com/history/plymouth/1962.html  There was also some plans for a 1962 DeSoto http://bangshift.com/general-news/car-features/check-rare-photos-1962-desoto-mockup/  A bit extreme compared to that clay model and design made by Don Kopka http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1960s-chrysler-concept-cars1.htm  If the first oil crisis happened in 1962 instead of 1973, Chrysler would had been more lucky.

The US wasn't the only one who got a "malaise era", the UK had faced the same music as well as Jeremy Clarkson noted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9tUlve9jc

The "plucked chicken" was the finless 1962 Chrysler, not the Dodge or Plymouth.

[Max Rockatansky]

My map light switch says "MAP LIGHT!"

[Max Rockatansky]

Holy crap on the mileage of the Sentra:

[Max Rockatansky]

Wonder if they'll still send you a transcript if you mail $3 dollars?

[Max Rockatansky]

I completely forgot that this was even a thing: