Yesterday My beautiful wife Robin drove the 54 Savoy to work (she wanted to show it off to her friends). I really love when robin drives the car because she is a lot better looking in the car than I am. However when it came time to come home..... A call comes in "honey the car won't start" This is what I love about a Plymouth.
Two or three min. of troubleshooting and 5 gallions of gas ::) and that 54 fired right up.
I was not too mad because there are only a few things that it could be and "Out of gas" is an easy thing to fix.
Robin smiled and drove that cool old 54 to the gas station (full service) while I smiled as I watched a lot of people gaze at our pride and joy.
Its great to be a Plymouth Owner.
Cliff54
I wish I could get My wife to do this. She said they are to put put for her. Well we will see what she is going to do the next time her newer van takes a dump, and she has to take my car to work! ;D
So far we have had good luck with the wifes SUV. But we don't mind a few breakdowns with the Savoy or the Apache because we drive no more that 5 miles (in town only) at any given time. If we go to a show etc. we put those babies on a car hauler.
No they are not "Trailer Queens" not by a longshot, we just don't want to be stranded on the road with no cell phone towers. :o
Cliff54
Cliff, and Hydrive,
Actually, a '54 Plymouth should be significantly more reliable, if anything, than a 'modern' car which has literally 'mazes' of complicated systems, most of which are 'not user serviceable'.
There have been, of course, any number of 'on the road' malfunctions with these, but almost all of the possible malfunctions can be readily fore-stalled by simple, realistic, practical maintenence before the car is taken out on the road. That is to say, there are certain components and systems which are indeed subject to age/mileage related failure, to be sure, but its easy, simple and cheap to rebuild/replace those periodically before they have a chance to cause a breakdown on the road.
If the folks here have any interest in doing so, it would be a worthwhile project, in my opinion, to start a new 'thread' here, in which we summarise the various and sundry breakdowns and malfunctions we've seen, one time and another, along with their diagnosis and cure.
I would say that the generality of malfunctions and breakdowns will be shown to be caused by a combination of simple errors, primarily simple neglect of reasonable maintenence, (the 'if its not broke, don't fix it', or 'run it til it drops' attitude) , or gross abuse of the machinery (over-speeding an engine til the bearings fail, or breaking half-shafts, for example)
There are a relatively few parts which will fail without warning.....carrying a set of spare parts for the distributor, a coil, spare fuel pump, some wire, etc., in the boot, along with the works manual and a minimal kit of tools is always a good idea on a long trip. The chance of really needing any of them is quite remote, if the car has been brought to a sound state of maintenence before starting on the trip......
There are, of course, many owners who don't care to do their own work on their cars.......and herein lies a personal choice, as to whether they wish to become sufficiently knowledgeable about the details of their cars that they will be able to supervise a so-called 'mechanic' to see that repair and maintenence procedures are done correctly per the works manual, or 'otherwise'.
Those in the 'otherwise' category have been traditionally considered the 'lawful prey' of the motor trade.....maychance, having been in the motor trade for some years myself, I shouldn't say that.......but.......well.......there are a lot of stories which could be told, on that particular subject......... : )
cheers
Carla