Things Detroit Did That Did NOT Work.

[RockJustRock]

I'm not talking about things that didn't work WELL. I'm talking about things they thought they had all worked out but they had to STOP in a year or two.

I'm thinking about the Great 1974 Seatbelt Interlock Debacle. It could have worked IF they had the driver side so the car wouldn't do anything without the seatbelt buckled. That of course would have pissed off mechanics, not a good group to piss off. So many people bypassed the seat switches, hacked the retractor sensors or just sat on the buckled seatbelt I doubt ANY cars had functioning systems by 1976. The Feds and Detroit backed off until airbags and passive belts. America was safe to carry bags of groceries unbuckled in the passenger seat again.

http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2009/11/the-great-safety-belt-interlock-fiasco/

[RockJustRock]

Upon further research the bumper standards were drastically cut back by Reagan in 1983. I don't remember anything much being said about it then. I CERTAINLY don't remember cars getting cheaper or lighter.

[DanStokes]

I like the air suspension on (mostly) Pontiacs (and maybe a few other GM lines) in 1958. IIIRC they were fitted on some Bonnevilles as an option. Anyhow, to the best of my knowledge they were all recalled and replaced with the springs as used on the other Pontiacs.

Or the early Chrysler/Bendix fuel injection systems - must have been 1957 or '58? The Rochester systems were fussy but workable while the Bendix stuff was not.

Dan

[cobra]

on my 98 ford contour, the alternator was mounted low and behind the engine (transverse mounted front wheel drive). They had a great idea to access it via an access hatch inside the wheelwell. pull of the wheel and there it was, take off the hatch and there the alternator was. easy.......except they put the mount bolts in from the back side instead of the front side . had to remove the exhaust manifold and half the exhaust system to get to these bolts.

[nickleone]

Aluminum block Vegas.

Nick

[RockJustRock]

I think it was the alloy block and iron head that did them in. Something I'm foggy about that maybe somebody can clarify. At one point the ZL! was supposed to use the same silicon alloy, sleeveless design.

[DanStokes]

The Vega used an aluminum bore (no sleeve) that was silicone lapped. If we meet for a Diet Coke some day I'll tell you the whole story but suffice it to say that they KNEW it didn't work before they produced them. In the 1975ish timeframe there were aftermarket companies that would bore the blocks out to whatever dimension and install a cast iron sleeve bored for stock Vega pistons. I knew one or two cars that had this done and they worked fine. So basically the engine design was OK but the silicone lapped bore was the loser.

Dan

[Spaceman Spiff]

Bendix fuel injection on the ‘58 Mopars. Pontiac trying to get away with the timed egr solenoid on the ‘73 Super Duty engines.

[Loren]

I guess the Turbo-Glide or whatever they called it on late-fifties Chevys all got scrapped for Powerglides after a bit. The Olds Diesel. Caddy 8-6-4s.

Vega steel sleeves still didn't work well. If the bores were just taken out a bit so a thin sleeve could insert, after awhile the remaining aluminum would split away and not leave enough sealing surface for the head gasket. In '77 I paid for steel cylinders that were full-thickness and stepped on the bottom, the aluminum had to all be milled away and at the bottom the bores cut bigger for that portion of the new cylinder to press in, that was the big supposed real fix but the open water jacket with the cylinders standing alone still caused head gasket problems. I got to where I could change a head gasket in a couple hours, leaving the intake and exhaust on the head. Early motors also had cylinder heads guaranteed to crack within a couple years which didn't get the attention the cylinders did but killed many cars all the same. In my Vega motor after finding it literally impossible to find a good original head I used a brand-new head from GM in '78, IECO 9.5:1 pistons and a Holley 390/Offy deal and it made good power for the Mulholland scene where V8 cars were eaten alive in those tight corners by built four-cylinders and small V6's but every few months that head had to come off again. After a year I was done with it, the guy after me changed gaskets twice and I don't know what he did with it after that.

The engine design, even if the silicone cylinders had worked, had those open cooling passages in the block (so they could be die-cast) as a major flaw and the inevitable water seepage could not be tolerated by the cylinder/ring combo although steel cylinder walls did better at least in that respect (i.e. they didn't score if they got wet), plus the very heavy and tall cylinder head which besides the aforementioned cracking caused the engine c/g to be so high that the motor mounts in that large-for-a-four-cylinder had a tough job to do, there was a lot of sideways movement.. With all that I still preferred driving my next stock-but-oil-blowing Vega GT along the So. Cal. freeways over a VW Beetle I had free use of from work, but GM sure handed the small car market straight to the Japanese if not the Germans with the job they did on the Vega. Lots of people who were very proud of their brand-new Chevys would not buy another one for a long time, the deal was supposed to be you liked your Vega and bought a Camaro or Malibu next.

Any good things about Vega motors? The solid lifters that adjusted with an Allen key worked pretty good. The OHC rubber-belt never failed that I knew of, they made the valves not cross paths with the pistons so in case the belt let go there would't be damage but wasted their carefulness there as it never happened. 24 mpg hwy wasn't bad at the time for something with short gears and no overdrive.

I would like to hear more of the Vega story someday from an insider but NC is a long way from here.

[pdub]

The Pontiac Aztek. No particular part of it, just mostly from nose to tail. A total marketing bust. I could imagine somebody got fired over that.

[Shep48COE]

I really want to turn an Aztek into a 9 sec sleeper... how funny would that be.

[RockJustRock]

The Pontiac Aztek. No particular part of it, just mostly from nose to tail. A total marketing bust. I could imagine somebody got fired over that.

Walter White LOVED his!

[pdub]

I really want to turn an Aztek into a 9 sec sleeper... how funny would that be.

If you can find one, most of them are beer cans by now.

[Barry Donovan]

they have not failed at much have they?

I am thinking of the baby rochester that was on a 1976 chevette.
throttle the size of my thumb.

it was so bad, the car had to be hacked to get some use out of it.
I did take a photo of the baby, the middle one and the large all in one spot.
rochester monojet.

seems odd, the longest running rochecter in production ended up being the 43mm
that went away with the 292 in the early 1990s
the 1 barrel itself was roughly 100 years.

I really cannot think of any other truly bad things by detroit.
there is intervals unexpected (the rear hangers on my half ton truck for example)
but nothing real bad.

[RockJustRock]