Cycling UK Forum

Si wrote:Only 70s car i ever had trouble starting was a vw - wouldnt start when hot.....which meant that i knew exactly how to fix it when our modern suzuki did the same thing!

Fuel vapourisation?

kwackers wrote:

Mick F wrote:!970s:
Mini Van 850cc
Triumph Herald 1250 with all the mod cons including disc brakes.
Humber Sceptre 1725cc with even more mod cons.
Hillman Hunter 1725cc went like hot snot, and stopped well too.
Hillman Imp ...... we had two. Excellent cars. The first hatchback too.

With the exception of the Sceptre - I've driven all of those. They were crap, sorry.
(Hunter went like snot? Really? You're easily impressed.)

As for easy starting - they all started easily for the person used to them (except when they didn't). How many times would you get in a car back then and the owner would vocally describe the starting procedure:
"Full choke, press the throttle to the floor then let go, quick turn on the key then quickly push the choke in and feather the throttle."
You'd hear stuff like that all the time.

The truth is, get in one now after being used to driving modern cars and they feel like a bag of crap. You may not agree but I suspect you're either over fondly remembering stuff or your current car is on it's last legs.

The last but one sentence, I agree with you.
But that's all I agree with.

The 1725 Hunter was a very fast car for its day. 100mph+ performance, light and quick.
The Sceptre wasn't as fast due to the fact that it was built like a tank. 100mph was as fast as it would go but you had to give it a while to get there.

Nope, never had a problem starting any of them. Even Mrs Mick F could do it.
Actually, we did have a fairly long-standing problem with the second Imp. It took a while to find out why ........... it was the coil. From then on. it was as perfect as it should be.

I think it's YOU that had crap cars in the 70's.
I didn't at all.

pete75 wrote:Never had any problems like that at all. All absent on reasonably well maintained vehicles .

And yet up and down the land folk looked on enviously as their neighbours with their 'Jap Crap' cars (and bikes) enjoyed hitherto unknown reliability...

Non Japanese cars were famous for their inability to start. Didn't like the cold, didn't like the damp, particularly hated the two together! Lucas electrics were appalling beyond belief!
Italian electrics weren't far behind, French cars were just weird and the old Audi's and BM's I've had were nothing to shout about - but they were better than most of the rest of the junk floating about.

kwackers wrote:

pete75 wrote:Never had any problems like that at all. All absent on reasonably well maintained vehicles .

And yet up and down the land folk looked on enviously as their neighbours with their 'Jap Crap' cars (and bikes) enjoyed hitherto unknown reliability...

Non Japanese cars were famous for their inability to start. Didn't like the cold, didn't like the damp, particularly hated the two together! Lucas electrics were appalling beyond belief!
Italian electrics weren't far behind, French cars were just weird and the old Audi's and BM's I've had were nothing to shout about - but they were better than most of the rest of the junk floating about.

Your views are obviously different to mine which are based on experience rather than rhetoric. The starting problems you've experienced are more than likely down to poor maintenance.
As for French cars, my father in law a corn merchant who did about 25,000 work miles a year visiting farmers so driving on a lot of ill maintained back road and farm tracks found a Renault 16 the best car for the job. Somebody ran into his new Rover 2000 in about 1966 and the local Renault garage lent him one of the then new R16s to try. Before they went out of production I think he had five.

In the 70s Datsun dealers had to have a certain number of "courtesy cars" in different colours. I was told that the reliability was not all that it was advertised.

I think Kwackers had some issues in the 1970s with his cars.

The cars I had were fine and reliable, except that they had problems MOT with rusty chassis members and rusty exhausts.
Engines and starting were always fine. The Humber Sceptre went on to 120,000 miles when we sold it.
It was like this, in this colour.
Sceptre MK2
FHH 819D

A lot of modern cars have very poor rides. The thin radial section of tyres is part of the problem, great for cornering but like riding on a skateboard. I really like the ride on the Stag, it floats along with road bumps well absorbed but corners really well, it's a real pleasure to do a road trip especially if you avoid Motorways and Trunk roads. And, you don't feel the potholes even here in South Potholeshire! Because it is open top the noise level is up. I believe part of the problem with modern motor cars vs cyclists is that drivers are cocooned in a well soundproofed box almost oblivious to their speed and the intimidation of cyclists caused by close passes.

Al

Mick F wrote:I think Kwackers had some issues in the 1970s with his cars.

The cars I had were fine and reliable, except that they had problems MOT with rusty chassis members and rusty exhausts.
Engines and starting were always fine. The Humber Sceptre went on to 120,000 miles when we sold it.
It was like this, in this colour.
Sceptre MK2
FHH 819D800px-Humber-Sceptre-4dr-Sed.jpg

Humber - that takes me back a bit. When I was at school one of my mate's dads had a Humber Super Snipe like this. Old even then but still a fine car.

pete75 wrote:

Mick F wrote:I think Kwackers had some issues in the 1970s with his cars.

The cars I had were fine and reliable, except that they had problems MOT with rusty chassis members and rusty exhausts.
Engines and starting were always fine. The Humber Sceptre went on to 120,000 miles when we sold it.
It was like this, in this colour.
Sceptre MK2
FHH 819D800px-Humber-Sceptre-4dr-Sed.jpg

Humber - that takes me back a bit. When I was at school one of my mate's dads had a Humber Super Snipe like this. Old even then but still a fine car.

That’s gorgeous

I'd hate to go back to 1970s cars. Remember the rust! And having to get to grips with the art of starting a car on a cold winter morning. I suppose we were used to the imprecise gear shifts, but for someone who has only ever driven modern cars that would be difficult.

pete75 wrote:Your views are obviously different to mine which are based on experience rather than rhetoric. The starting problems you've experienced are more than likely down to poor maintenance.

That's right, I magically skipped the 70's so what I think of as "my" experience is obviously just rhetoric...

Poor maintenance, possibly. But it would have had to effect new cars too - so poor right from the factory.
But lets not forgive them the shocking designs of a lot of 70's cars. Who else but the Brits would design a car with the high voltage electrics right behind the grill exposed to the weather...
Why do you think back then car shops had tins and tins of things named such as "Eazi Start", stuff for damp proofing your electrics etc.
You just don't see that any more and maintenance isn't any better these days - in fact it's worse by a long way. You can run a modern car almost forever with nothing more than the occasional oil top up.

FWIW, in the 70's not only did I strip cars, weld them and even machine replacement parts for them, most of my friends were mechanics. I think between us we had a pretty good handle on what was "good".
Quite a few of them are now unsurprisingly "classic car enthusiasts" so I get to drive a lot of the "classic cars" (and bikes) from various era's and they're all very much things of their time.
Some of the cars are beautiful - but that doesn't stop them being poorly engineered.

I'm checking my memories of cars in the 1970's. I seem to remember a system whereby the buyer of a new car was entrusted with the final quality check although it was called "running in." Drive a new car around for 500 miles then bring it back so we can replace anything that's dropped off and tighten up everything that's still hanging on. Manufacturers' warranties? Twelve months and like getting blood out of a stone if anything went wrong. Ziebart. Why on Earth would anybody be selling expensive post-production undersealing if corrosion wasn't a problem? Mild steel exhausts? Reliability? I had the distributor cap on a new car fail within weeks of buying it. Oil leaks? Even brand new cars in the showroom had a tray under the sump to catch the drips. Perhaps I'm just having nightmares, memory confused by old age.

OTOH, Many modern cars have a smart little cubby for a pair of specs behind the interior mirror. You don't need to wear a rose-tinted pair nowadays.

I remember the trick of cutting the tips off a rubber glove and threading through the HT leads on my Mini.

Rose tinted spectacles make old cars better.

In addition to the lack of power steering, add un-servoed brakes, worm steering racks, lever dampers, appalling camber changes in suspension with travel, live rear axles...

Hillman Hunter went like hot snot? 93bhp even for the Holbay-engined ones. 12 seconds to 60...something bettered today by most dreary cars. That was in the day when a Cooper S was considered amazingly fast; the stock S was over 10 seconds to 60 and the Mini's typewriter aerodynamics menat they struggled to get over 100 regardless of power.

The first thing my parents did when they bought a Ford Escort in the early 70s was to take it to a place that sealed the underneath of the body with some black bitumen like stuff to make up for the fact that car manufacturers did not spend much time rust proofing. Junk.

Main difference I can think of was in brakes, drums vs discs. If I tried a car with drum brakes these days I'd probably hit a wall.

Our 1968 Dyane was admittedly a bit weird: just two dampers set fore & aft either side, and when they got old the car developed the galloping hiccups, a bit like Jesse's bouncy system in Breaking Bad. But it had a semi-automatic clutch that was great in traffic, and once enabled us to drive home when the pedal linkage went west.

Our 1976(?) Passat was great: automatic choke, started every time, etc. Only trouble was a faulty gasket that let oil seep across into the water circuit, so that Mr. Holt earned a lot of money from us. Still, he helped us sell it too so who's complaining? That didn't have any effects on driving, though, at least not the kind they do in TV cop operas. We had another 79-ish Passat, too. That one took us all over France - great car.