re: #204 Barefoot Grin

In the early ’80s my granddad bought a literal “driven by an old lady” for super cheap 1971 Plymouth Valiant for my brother. By the time my brother sold it to me for $1 in 1986 it had been set on fire in his Philadelphia neighborhood. The entire control panel didn’t work: no speedometer, heat, A/C, radio; it stalled whenever I made a left turn so that I had to throw it into N to restart midturn, and I had to pump the brakes a couple of times to get them to engage. Oh, and in a separate incident the passenger—side door could only be opened from the inside (which was the first embarrassment on at least one date).

And yet I managed to sell it for $120 to a guy I met at Earlham College when I was training for a few weeks to go to Japan to teach English.

Those slant-six Valiant/Darts were amazing cars. The body would rust and rattle and disintegrate to dust. But that engine and drive train would run forever.

I’m still amazed at how many of us survived our first car. Mine was a 1970 Dodge Demon. It had originally been owned by a scuba diver. She got sand inext to the gasket for the trunk lid. Water eventually rusted through that and pooled into the trunk onto the dimple at the bottom. It eventually rusted through that and pooled onto the top of the gas tank. When it rusted through that, she sold it to me for $200.

I told friends not to smoke in the back seat. They thought I was joking. Until they got in. (There is back pressure in the gas tank. Which led to terrible gas mileage.)

Eventually, I had a friend at a shop replace the gas tank and fix the holes in the floorboard. Then drove it to a friend’s farm and we replaced the entire exhaust system from the engine block on back.

After all that, I started to drive home and ended up having to have the car towed home…

Why? Well the float in the carburetor’s reservoir got gaslogged? waterlogged on gas? And kept flooding the engine. I replaced the carburetor and it ran for years afterwards.

Also had a friend who stopped his jeep at a light. Only to watch one of the wheels roll into the intersection.