Your First CAR !!??

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I was counting the days till my birthday, to get the drivers licence and a car.

[Doom-the-Squirrel]

Good times!

I got my Saturn used. I think I was either the 3rd or 4th owner.

[Mapmaker]

First car? A 1968 VW Type 1 (Beetle). Got me back and forth to college in the late 70's, in some pretty rough northern Ohio winters. Like all Type 1's it had 'issues'; the worst being the pervasive rust that destroyed generations of cars on the salt crusted roads of the American 'rust belt'. But the car was mechanically reliable, easy to work on, cheap to operate and taught me a lot about automobile mechanics.

I'm no dewy-eyed nostalgia fool - cars today are far better built and far more reliable, safer and better performing. But there are times I think that a nicely restored Type 1 in the driveway would be just the thing...

[IanJ]

In 1983 I got my first car, a 1978 MkII Escort 1300L....photo below.
Reg = XSO289S
So it started with a 1300cc engine, but I soon built a 1600cc engine of my own c/w Kent fast road cam.

I always had Escorts as a youngster.......my favourite being a white MkII RS2000. I had this car in the mid-late 80's......and sold it 1989ish. Then, a couple years ago came across it at a car show......couldn't believe it was still alive, photo below (note the T-shirt!).

Ian.

[nali]

First car a 1977 Vauxhall Chevette. As a 17yr old I thought it was the Mutts Nuts owning such a new car until I wrote it off after about a year.

Second car was a 1969 Lotus Europa which definitely WAS cool  Trouble is I couldn't afford to run it so had to sell it a couple of years later 

[james_s]

Funny that they sold it under the Vauxhaull brand but retained the Chevette name. I remember seeing those around here still in the 80s where they were the Chevrolet Chevette. Crappy little cars, but they came from the era of trying to get the best fuel economy possible using the technology available at the time during the oil crisis.

[ZeTeX]

I still don't have my own car. I am almost 19 year old. I use my dad car which is a mitubishi outlander with a manual transmission 2.0l.

[Doom-the-Squirrel]

It's good you've learned to use a manual. Gives you an edge.

[basinstreetdesign]

I bought my first CAR, a 1982 Toyota Tercel, brand new with 4 on the floor.  It was great.  I drove it for about 4 years, enough to pay it off when the company I was working for gave me a "company car" to use  .  It was a rusting boat that had weird problems.  The idle was adjusted so high that if you took your foot off the brake it would eventually get itself into 2nd gear rolling forward.  It was a distaster, electrically.  The radio would abruptly and randomly change stations, when signaling a turn the dome light on the roof would flash  .  The battery was so weak you couldn't start the car twice in succession without driving enough to recharge the battery.  But enough about it.  I parked my Tercel with a sticker on it that declared "THIS CAR IS NOT ABANDONED!"  In the meantime I met my wife and began driving her car, a Ford.  After about 6 mo the Tercel just disappeared.  I never found out what happened to it.

[GlennSprigg]

I bought my first CAR, a 1982 Toyota Tercel, brand new with 4 on the floor.  It was great.  I drove it for about 4 years, enough to pay it off when the company I was working for gave me a "company car" to use  .  It was a rusting boat that had weird problems.  The idle was adjusted so high that if you took your foot off the brake it would eventually get itself into 2nd gear rolling forward.  It was a distaster, electrically.  The radio would abruptly and randomly change stations, when signaling a turn the dome light on the roof would flash  .  The battery was so weak you couldn't start the car twice in succession without driving enough to recharge the battery.  But enough about it.  I parked my Tercel with a sticker on it that declared "THIS CAR IS NOT ABANDONED!"  In the meantime I met my wife and began driving her car, a Ford.  After about 6 mo the Tercel just disappeared.  I never found out what happened to it.

The vast majority of times, such weird electrical symptoms in cars are due to Earthing problems!!
Resulting in many strange faults, as the current back-feeds elsewhere to earth...   

[jonovid]

1969 Hk Holden Kingswood  like this one.  straight-six (2,639 cc) 161 red motor manual stick shift, 3 on the tree!
later did a swop for a re-built 186 (3,049 cc) & stick shift mod to a center floor shift adapter- swop the bench seat for bucket seats.

[james_s]

I bought my first CAR, a 1982 Toyota Tercel, brand new with 4 on the floor.  It was great.  I drove it for about 4 years, enough to pay it off when the company I was working for gave me a "company car" to use  .  It was a rusting boat that had weird problems.  The idle was adjusted so high that if you took your foot off the brake it would eventually get itself into 2nd gear rolling forward.  It was a distaster, electrically.  The radio would abruptly and randomly change stations, when signaling a turn the dome light on the roof would flash  .  The battery was so weak you couldn't start the car twice in succession without driving enough to recharge the battery.  But enough about it.  I parked my Tercel with a sticker on it that declared "THIS CAR IS NOT ABANDONED!"  In the meantime I met my wife and began driving her car, a Ford.  After about 6 mo the Tercel just disappeared.  I never found out what happened to it.

The vast majority of times, such weird electrical symptoms in cars are due to Earthing problems!!
Resulting in many strange faults, as the current back-feeds elsewhere to earth...   

That's surprising too because Japanese cars of the era tended to have impeccable electrical systems. If it was rusting to pieces though that suggests one of those awful places where they salt the roads, uhg. All bets are off when it comes to rust.

[vk6zgo]

I bought my first CAR, a 1982 Toyota Tercel, brand new with 4 on the floor.  It was great.  I drove it for about 4 years, enough to pay it off when the company I was working for gave me a "company car" to use  .  It was a rusting boat that had weird problems.  The idle was adjusted so high that if you took your foot off the brake it would eventually get itself into 2nd gear rolling forward.  It was a distaster, electrically.  The radio would abruptly and randomly change stations, when signaling a turn the dome light on the roof would flash  .  The battery was so weak you couldn't start the car twice in succession without driving enough to recharge the battery.  But enough about it.  I parked my Tercel with a sticker on it that declared "THIS CAR IS NOT ABANDONED!"  In the meantime I met my wife and began driving her car, a Ford.  After about 6 mo the Tercel just disappeared.  I never found out what happened to it.

The vast majority of times, such weird electrical symptoms in cars are due to Earthing problems!!
Resulting in many strange faults, as the current back-feeds elsewhere to earth...   

That's surprising too because Japanese cars of the era tended to have impeccable electrical systems. If it was rusting to pieces though that suggests one of those awful places where they salt the roads, uhg. All bets are off when it comes to rust.

I'm surprised, too, as my sister had a "Turtle" for years, without a hitch.
I borrowed it for while once, & discovered a strange fault----- it was 4WD, & sometimes the rear end could "wind up" (silly term, but that's how it was described to me), on the front drive, locking the transmission.
There was an easy way to "reboot" everything, which wasn't included in the Owner's Manual, so I added a note to my sister's manual.

The salt thing reminds me of living in Southampton UK & seeing cars which would have pretty much been in their "adolescent" years in Australia, pretty much rusted out.
They were believers in salting the roads, as well as adding "chippings"(small pieces of hard rock, similar to those used in roadbase).
A better recipe for underbody rust couldn't be found!

It's not as if the weather was that savage----it only snowed twice in the 10 months or so I was there.

[nctnico]

If you live in an area where they salt the roads during the winter then it can be beneficial to have the underside of the car coated with a rust protector. It helps pretty good. However nowadays cars which are sold in these kind of areas have a zinc layer on them to prevent rusting.

BTW: I did have a weird electric problem in my Toyota. If I switched off the rear window wiper at a specific point it would blow the fuse. I ended up with installing a big fat PTC fuse in series with the rear wiper motor to fix that.

[GlennSprigg]

BTW: I did have a weird electric problem in my Toyota. If I switched off the rear window wiper at a specific point it would blow the fuse. I ended up with installing a big fat PTC fuse in series with the rear wiper motor to fix that.

Do you mean the fuse blew 'when' you turned it off, or when turning on again?? Of course the wiper
should return to the bottom first, even when turned off. If not, then the power off micro switch would
have been faulty... Strange...

P.S.   Someone here talked about converting their Auto to Manual....  An interesting problem that I have
seen twice, is the failure to be able to start the car for the 1st time afterwards !!   
An 'Automatic' requires a circuit through a switch, to ensure it is in 'Park' before being able to start....
Both times, they had forgotten to trace/bridge-out that part of the circuit, after changing to manual   

[nctnico]

BTW: I did have a weird electric problem in my Toyota. If I switched off the rear window wiper at a specific point it would blow the fuse. I ended up with installing a big fat PTC fuse in series with the rear wiper motor to fix that.

Do you mean the fuse blew 'when' you turned it off, or when turning on again?? Of course the wiper
should return to the bottom first, even when turned off. If not, then the power off micro switch would
have been faulty... Strange...

The fuse blew when I turned it off. But only if I turned it off right before it reached the 'home' position. I guess it was more like a fault in the circuit.

[SparkyFX]

However nowadays cars which are sold in these kind of areas have a zinc layer on them to prevent rusting.

Still underbody Teroson-like coat and wax in enclosed spaces for those i know.

BTW: I did have a weird electric problem in my Toyota. If I switched off the rear window wiper at a specific point it would blow the fuse. I ended up with installing a big fat PTC fuse in series with the rear wiper motor to fix that.

Most rear wipers have a hardwired end position switch within their enclosure to open the circuit once triggered, maybe the other side of a changeover contact that is supposed to be open has contact to chassis or the override to start the wiper is affected (active ground?). Most likely the wiring harness between roof and tailgate broke and has a short circuit... Often these harnesses can be obtained as inplace fix (cut out old, crimp in new).

[G7PSK]

My first car was a 1962 Ford Anglia 105E, absolute rust heap that had been botched up with newspaper and bondo/filler when I bought in the early 70's for £15-00 Sold it a year later for £50-00 having fixed the sills with concrete and wire mesh.

[The Soulman]

 

My first car was a 1962 Ford Anglia 105E, absolute rust heap that had been botched up with newspaper and bondo/filler when I bought in the early 70's for £15-00 Sold it a year later for £50-00 having fixed the sills with concrete and wire mesh.

[james_s]

The salt thing reminds me of living in Southampton UK & seeing cars which would have pretty much been in their "adolescent" years in Australia, pretty much rusted out.
They were believers in salting the roads, as well as adding "chippings"(small pieces of hard rock, similar to those used in roadbase).
A better recipe for underbody rust couldn't be found!

It's not as if the weather was that savage----it only snowed twice in the 10 months or so I was there.

I went to Chicago for work last year and it was really noticeable how there are NO cars older than about 10 years old on the roads there and many that are only about 8 years old already have rusted out areas in the fenders. Several years ago I worked on a car for a friend of a friend who had moved here from Michigan and while it looked ok on the surface, the subframe had rusted out so badly that the entire steering rack broke free and turning the wheel caused the rack to slide back and forth instead of aiming the front wheels. It was miraculous that it held together until she turned into a parking lot that happened to be near my house instead of breaking somewhere during the ~1800 mile drive. I've heard people say that modern cars don't rust but they absolutely do, not as bad as they did up through the 70s but it still happens. It's just not as visible because there's so much plastic and paint has improved but they rot out underneath and from the inside out.

Salt is horrible, nasty stuff. It absolutely destroys cars and it rusts out infrastructure like bridges and light poles. That was another thing I saw in Chicago, light poles with nasty rusted out bases, some of which had been patched up with welded in repairs. Even out here on the rare occasions it snows I hear people moaning that they need to salt the roads and I don't get it, they must have NO idea how destructive it is. Driving in snow with appropriate tires is no big deal, salt makes everything a slushy mess with patches of ice and causes untold billions of dollars in damage. Salt has no business being put on roads anywhere.

[james_s]

P.S.   Someone here talked about converting their Auto to Manual....  An interesting problem that I have
seen twice, is the failure to be able to start the car for the 1st time afterwards !!   
An 'Automatic' requires a circuit through a switch, to ensure it is in 'Park' before being able to start....
Both times, they had forgotten to trace/bridge-out that part of the circuit, after changing to manual   

I've converted three different cars from auto to manual gearbox. I don't know what other makes did but Volvo used a shorting plug with a wire loop that plugs into the harness where the wire from the park/neutral safety switch in the gear selector unit would plug in. It's easy enough to grab that plug from the donor car or just snip the one off the slushbox gear selector and join the wires in a loop. I've had a lot of people sound amazed that such a conversion could be done but it was fairly straightforward. Both versions of the car are made on the same assembly lines and share as much in common as possible. Converting is just a matter of removing all of the auto-specific components and installing the manual parts. All of the required mounting holes are there.

[nctnico]

BTW: I did have a weird electric problem in my Toyota. If I switched off the rear window wiper at a specific point it would blow the fuse. I ended up with installing a big fat PTC fuse in series with the rear wiper motor to fix that.

Most rear wipers have a hardwired end position switch within their enclosure to open the circuit once triggered, maybe the other side of a changeover contact that is supposed to be open has contact to chassis or the override to start the wiper is affected (active ground?). Most likely the wiring harness between roof and tailgate broke and has a short circuit... Often these harnesses can be obtained as inplace fix (cut out old, crimp in new).

That is a possibility but I never investigated further. Later on I found out that the car was hit at the rear somewhere in the past. The paint & filler job on the rear door started to crumble because the rigidity was compromised and the door flexed a little bit. I fixed that by filling the inner part of the rear door with PUR foam (and redo the filler & paint job on the outside).

[G7PSK]

The salt thing reminds me of living in Southampton UK & seeing cars which would have pretty much been in their "adolescent" years in Australia, pretty much rusted out.
They were believers in salting the roads, as well as adding "chippings"(small pieces of hard rock, similar to those used in roadbase).
A better recipe for underbody rust couldn't be found!

It's not as if the weather was that savage----it only snowed twice in the 10 months or so I was there.

I went to Chicago for work last year and it was really noticeable how there are NO cars older than about 10 years old on the roads there and many that are only about 8 years old already have rusted out areas in the fenders. Several years ago I worked on a car for a friend of a friend who had moved here from Michigan and while it looked ok on the surface, the subframe had rusted out so badly that the entire steering rack broke free and turning the wheel caused the rack to slide back and forth instead of aiming the front wheels. It was miraculous that it held together until she turned into a parking lot that happened to be near my house instead of breaking somewhere during the ~1800 mile drive. I've heard people say that modern cars don't rust but they absolutely do, not as bad as they did up through the 70s but it still happens. It's just not as visible because there's so much plastic and paint has improved but they rot out underneath and from the inside out.

Salt is horrible, nasty stuff. It absolutely destroys cars and it rusts out infrastructure like bridges and light poles. That was another thing I saw in Chicago, light poles with nasty rusted out bases, some of which had been patched up with welded in repairs. Even out here on the rare occasions it snows I hear people moaning that they need to salt the roads and I don't get it, they must have NO idea how destructive it is. Driving in snow with appropriate tires is no big deal, salt makes everything a slushy mess with patches of ice and causes untold billions of dollars in damage. Salt has no business being put on roads anywhere.

Salt on the roads was something Harold Wilso introduced when he was prime minister in the 60's here in the UK he got together with the car manufacturers and came up with that, at one time cars were made with "production steel" which was made by rolling sheet steel with sheets of lead like pastry, the reason was it makes for better deep drawing that gave nice rounded shapes in one piece to make matters worse it was often stored outside where it absorbed water so the cars rotted from the inside out. In the 70's I went to quite a few car factories where I saw stocks of rusty sheet waiting to be pressed into panels.

[GlennSprigg]

My first car was a 1962 Ford Anglia 105E, absolute rust heap that had been botched up with newspaper and bondo/filler when I bought in the early 70's for £15-00 Sold it a year later for £50-00 having fixed the sills with concrete and wire mesh.

That's funny!! You do what you had to do back then !! 
Your car reminded me of the 'Police' car, used in the "Heartbeat" TV series, set in the 60's in the Yorkshire
region in the UK. Imagine that car in the USA today, trying to get someone to pull over !! 

[james_s]

That's funny!! You do what you had to do back then !! 
Your car reminded me of the 'Police' car, used in the "Heartbeat" TV series, set in the 60's in the Yorkshire
region in the UK. Imagine that car in the USA today, trying to get someone to pull over !! 

I'd bet that most people would pull over, I mean police on motorcycles pull people over all the time. Even if you can lose the car you can't outrun the radio.