Test
J.B. Wood
--
John Wood (Code 5550) e-mail: wo...@itd.nrl.navy.mil
Naval Research Laboratory
4555 Overlook Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20375-5337
cuh...@webtv.net
year, 2010.
cuhulin
fred
news:29128-4B2...@storefull-3172.bay.webtv.net:
> Motor Trend has picked 2010 Dodge Heavy Duty Trucks for Truck of the
> year, 2010.
> cuhulin
>
Careful! you could lose your bellybutton with that post <g>.
Steve Austin
Since then, I haven't given much credibility to their awards.
Ashton Crusher
I bought a new 1980 Chevy X-whatever they called it. Their first
front wheel drive. It was MT car of the year. It was unable to keep
up with a pickup truck on a winding road it's handling was so bad. MT
said it had great "rigidity". Turned out it felt like an overcooked
noodle. The CV boots fell apart shortly after the warranty ran out as
did the transmission. The brake booster refused to boost if you made
two light brake applications in quick succession. Mine was totaled by
a stop sign runner after I'd had it about 3 years. I replaced it with
a 78 Caprice ex-highway patrol car with 110K miles that was better in
every way except gas mileage.
cuh...@webtv.net
Consumers Reports.
The only reason I snail mail to Motor Trend magazine is because a few
months ago Motor Trend offered a one year snail mail subscription for
ten or eleven dollars.
cuhulin, ''Cheap Charlie''
Tegger
news:7ne7i51vkv0b57slr...@4ax.com:
> On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:45:36 -0500, Steve Austin
> <sau...@northnet.org> wrote:
>
>>cuh...@webtv.net wrote:
>>> Motor Trend has picked 2010 Dodge Heavy Duty Trucks for Truck of the
>>> year, 2010.
>>> cuhulin
>>>
>>I had a 1983 Renault Alliance. It was a Motor Trend car of the year.
>>Since then, I haven't given much credibility to their awards.
>
> I bought a new 1980 Chevy X-whatever they called it. Their first
> front wheel drive. It was MT car of the year.
Hey, I remember that one. The Chevy Citation (X-body). I even remember the
TV ads in 1979, with the jingle,
"The first...Chevy of the '80s, Chevy Cit-AAAY-shun!".
For fun, we used to replace the word "first" with "worst".
--
Tegger
Vic Smith
wrote:
I remember walking around a lot full of new ones, tapping metal with
my knuckles. Didn't really want to get close to them, but a friend
dragged me along. Depressing. I thought, "This is how GM
is going to fight the Civic and Corolla?"
A bit after that my wife's crazy aunt bought a new T-1000 - think
that's the Pontiac equivalent.
I was tasked to go pick it up, because she didn't even drive.
Terrible experience driving it from the south side to the north side
of Chicago.
I was happy when that ride was over. Stayed off the x-way and took
Cicero Ave. the entire route. The car just felt like junk to me, even
brand new.
Of course I was still a V-8 guy, and didn't even like the junk V-6's
GM was putting out.
That new T-1000 sat in the aunt's garage unused for maybe 6 years,
then got all scorched up when the garage burned.
Her brother actually replaced the windshield and somehow got it
running and used it for a short while, flat scorched finish and all.
Then I sold him my rusted out '74 Dart Swinger and he threw the T-1000
away.
Never understood why people would buy crap like the Citation, Vega,
etc. And the low-end '70's Camaros seemed like junk too. My brother
had a couple, and was always having trouble with them.
I never drove a "small" GM car that wasn't junk until my '85 Cavalier.
And that barely passed the test. But I bought it used for my wife for
$900. hehe.
I had a '67 4-door Skylark that was a really sweet "little" car.
Bought a '71 Nova with a 307 after the Skylark got totaled.
Junk. Burned the valves because it was geared low and I was prone to
running 90-95 on my long commute, and I didn't like its tinniness
anyway. So after I pulled the intake, I thought "Do I really want to
do theses heads?" or call the boneyard.
I called the boneyard to pick it up.
My '90 Corsica 2.2 is actually a decent car for what it is.
I'd venture that's the first "decent" small car GM made.
But I got it for $2500 in '98. I'm about to give it away or junk it
due to rust, but it still runs fine. Think it's got about 120K miles,
all city.
Malibu is supposed to be decent - the 2004 I drove as a rental for
about 3k miles was sweet, but that's not really a "small" car compared
the past "small" cars.
Anyway, I always know the track record of the used cars I buy, and
would be leery of buying a new GM car. Unless they re-issue the '88
Celebrity 2.8. Wouldn't hesitate there.
--Vic
cuh...@webtv.net
the DIY channel.Chris Grundy was talking about EVAPO-RUST.Sold at some
auto parts stores and hardware stores.I am going to buy some of that
stuff and try it out.
cuhulin
Vic Smith
Never heard of it. Rust is a real killer, especially here where they
salt the roads.
Remember Ziebart? Don't know if they're still around.
Rusty Jones comes to mind too.
Don't know if that was ever worth the money, but many got the
treatment.
Biggest change in rust prevention is how they prep the metal, and
maybe what they're using in the alloys.
Maybe eliminating spots where water can collect.
I remember reading that keeping you car in a heated garage can really
accelerate rust where streets are salted. Allows the chemical
processes to eat your car as it sits in that warm garage, whereas
keeping it in the cold slows down the reactions.
Used Por-15 once on my Celebrity rocker panels.
It works, but the rust will just work around it to other locations.
--Vic
Tim Wescott
> Has Motor Trend turned into another ''Consumers Reports''? I never read
> Consumers Reports.
Consumer Reports at least attempts to be honest. Most trade mags write
what their advertisers tell them to. CR is anti-business and tries to be
up-front about everything they do. This makes their bias easy to filter
out. They can be monumentally stupid, but they don't fail you by selling
out.
(I read CR for the reliability data, which seems to be, well, reliable.
But their idea of 'good handling' is a hoot).
Tim Wescott
Nah, evaporate all the rust and you'll find out you don't have a car
anymore. Take all the paint and rust off, and you may find yourself with
a nice lace doily made of steel -- it's amazing how well old paint can
hold rust to the shape it used to have when it was young.
When I was still knee-high I'd go with my dad to the metal strippers to
pick up street rod projects, so I have a pretty good idea of just how
little can be left of a car when you subtract paint and rust from steel.
So it was interesting the first time I took parts in to be stripped as a
'civilian', having to sit through the 15-minute lecture on just how
little metal I may get back.
cuh...@webtv.net
enough for the Army, I reckon I will at least try it out.DIY on the
internet might have something about EVAPO-RUST.
Rust Never Sleeps.
cuhulin
hls
<cuh...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:8192-4B24...@storefull-3171.bay.webtv.net...
I dont know about that particular brand, but I have seen and worked with
others
that work very well indeed, and these better ones do not attack the base
metal.
One of them is water clear, but as it starts to dissolve the rust, you can
see purple
streams coming off the face of the rusted metal.
These dont protect the metal from rusting, they just clean the rust off.
hls
"hls" <h...@nospam.nix> wrote in message news:d-
> I dont know about that particular brand, but I have seen and worked with
> others
> that work very well indeed, and these better ones do not attack the base
> metal.
>
> One of them is water clear, but as it starts to dissolve the rust, you can
> see purple
> streams coming off the face of the rusted metal.
>
> These dont protect the metal from rusting, they just clean the rust off.
By the way, the claim that this product can be used for rust protection
could
easily be true. When they use things like phosphates in the solution, they
can
dry on the surface to form a rust inhibitive layer.
Some have phosphates, some dont.
aemeijers
IIRC, t-1000 was the Pontiac version of the Chevette. Same car,
different grille. GM's first attempt at a 'world car', had input from
Opel. Isuzu (which GM was in bed with at the time) even sold a version.
but I'm not sure if it actually had any interchangable parts. Never
intended to be anything but a city/narrow road econobox, and it did okay
for that. Not real durable, and they vanished from the street as quickly
as Pinto did, once production stopped. Wiki claims Mexico and south
America had versions in production several years after north America did.
Vega was a nice concept, badly executed. Shitty steel for the body, and
that damn weird engine Cole insisted on. They copied some Fiat model for
the style and layout. (Much like they copied VW/Porsche for the Corvair,
20 years earlier.) But when they were new, Vegas drove out okay, at
least by the standards of the time. Much of the engineering lived on in the
Now as to the Citation, and the badge-engineered twins from the other
divisions (Pontiac version of the Citation was called Phoenix)- Gotta
remember the context of the time- this was the first US attempt at a
mass-market non-niche entry-level FWD. A few years later, they had
debugged many of the flaws, and renamed it 'Citation II', but it was too
late.
--
aem sends...
Tegger
news:AcSdnd9sWJ44nLjW...@giganews.com:
Stuff like Naval Jelly uses phosphoric acid as its active ingredient. It
works amazingly well, BUT. The resulting Fe3O4 layer is not nearly thick
enough or impermeable enough to prevent oxygen from getting at the
underlying steel, so you will still end up with more rust under the
Fe3O4 unless you seal the treated surface from oxygen with paint or
grease.
--
Tegger
hls
"Tegger" <inv...@invalid.inv> wrote in message
news:Xns9CE06B0F...@208.90.168.18...
You have to dilute the Naval Jelly and dip or paint the piece in it. Then
let
it dry thoroughly. It forms an iron phosphate coating on the outside,
"phosphatized"
it is called. When dry, you should paint over it to improve the protection.
cuh...@webtv.net
cuhulin
hls
<cuh...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:8192-4B25...@storefull-3171.bay.webtv.net...
There are a bunch of these products on the market. Some are much more
high tech than others.
The best one I ever saw was developed to be used in nuclear powerplants
(for submarines) for removing oxide deposits.
I prefer the ones that are not acidic. Sometimes the acidic based materials
can cause cracking in hardened metals.
E. Meyer
On 12/13/09 9:13 AM, in article
v-Kdndr3OOAdmbjW...@giganews.com, "aemeijers"
<aeme...@att.net> wrote:
Pontiac version was the 6000 (later Bonneville), Oldsmobile version was
Cutlass Cierra, Buick version was Century. Jeez it wasn't that long ago...
I had the Oldsmobile version. Got the V6 diesel because it had more
horsepower and faster acceleration than the pathetic gas engines they
offered. The engine worked fine, but the dashboard literally crumbled and
fell off.
The 80's was the decade when the first generation pollution control was
fully in place, functionality went out and GM blazed new trails in
cheapening out the content of their cars.
> --
> aem sends...
aemeijers
they came later. Wikipedia has nice articles on all of them, with years
and production numbers and pictures.
Oh, and I see I dropped a sentence in my previous post- Vega engineering
lived on for a couple more years in monza and the corporate twins of it.
--
aem sends....
Vic Smith
wrote:
>>
>Y'all may wanna look up the timelines for those various models again-
>they came later. Wikipedia has nice articles on all of them, with years
>and production numbers and pictures.
>
Won't bother looking, as I don't want to be a GM historian, but I
don't think the mates Pontiac 6000, Olds Ciera, Buick Century and
Chevy Celebrity had anything to do with stuff like the
Citation/Chevette.
I had an '88 Celebrity, and it was a fine car.
World of difference there. The 2.8 was the first V-6 I liked enough
to buy, and mine was still running strong at 191k miles when rust did
the car in. And I really beat on that car.
By that I mean starting cold at -20F and doing 80 mph a minute later
on the x-way, which was a block away. Did that often.
Goosing it regularly, rocking it hard out of snow, etc, etc.
It was the only time in my life where I abused a car, and that one
took it.
Aside from a few injectors and an ECU, nothing was done to the engine,
and the trans was shifting fine when I junked it.
I did do fairly regular fluid changes.
But that car sure wasn't babied like I do most of my cars.
The only real defect it had was the sticking rack, but that came late
for me. Bought a new one for I think 90 bucks not long before I
junked it, but never put it on.
Gave the rack to my mech.
--Vic
cuh...@webtv.net
Buick Skylark a few miles from me.Last time I saw it, last month, the
rear of the car was sitting up on concrete blocks.
I also know where there is a 1953 (I think it is a 1953 model) red and
white Rambler/American car for sale.Less than a year ago, I stopped and
asked about that car, the guy in the store said his boss is asking
$3,500.00 for the car.I didn't look under the hood, but the body and
interior looks OK.Of course it might be patched up with Bondo or
whatever, I don't know.An old ''Trick'' is to use a magnet when looking
for Bondo.
cuhulin
Tegger
news:j_6dnfyiaJh3irjW...@giganews.com:
>
> "Tegger" <inv...@invalid.inv> wrote in message
> news:Xns9CE06B0F...@208.90.168.18...
>>
>>
>> Stuff like Naval Jelly uses phosphoric acid as its active ingredient.
>> It works amazingly well, BUT. The resulting Fe3O4 layer is not nearly
>> thick enough or impermeable enough to prevent oxygen from getting at
>> the underlying steel, so you will still end up with more rust under
>> the Fe3O4 unless you seal the treated surface from oxygen with paint
>> or grease.
>>
>>
>>
>
> You have to dilute the Naval Jelly and dip or paint the piece in it.
> Then let it dry thoroughly.
Difficult to do when the rust is on an installed fender and the affected
surface is vertical.
I buy the gel-type phosphoric compound so it will stay on the surface long
enough to do some good.
> It forms an iron phosphate coating on the
> outside, "phosphatized" it is called. When dry, you should paint over
> it to improve the protection.
>
You MUST paint over it. The "phosphatized" coating is not, by itself,
good enough to prevent further corrosion, for the reasons I pointed out
earlier.
--
Tegger
hls
"Tegger" <inv...@invalid.inv> wrote in message
>
> surface is vertical.
>
> I buy the gel-type phosphoric compound so it will stay on the surface long
> enough to do some good.
Yes, it is difficult, and probably not the best treatment anyway. The
phosphatizing
coating has to dry on the steel, and when it does it will become white.
Dont wash
this off, for if you do you will lose the benefit of the phosphate.
You can gel ordinary phosphoric acid (which is basically what Naval Jelly
is) with
some of the methyl cellulose compounds. If you were going to do something
like this on a large scale, you couldnt affort Naval Jelly.
I made some of this stuff for the Nigerian National Railroad, and it worked
fine.
They used it to derust the wheels and other parts and clean them for
painting.
E. Meyer
On 12/13/09 3:31 PM, in article l9mai5l9t0sp1kge6...@4ax.com,
"Vic Smith" <thismaila...@comcast.net> wrote:
My bad. I was reading Citation but thinking Celebrity. My Oldsmobile was
an '82. By '88 they did get most of the bugs out, but they dropped the line
because nobody was buying (probably due to the well deserved reputations of
the earlier ones.)