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Rusty, the 1971 145S

142 guy said:
If I had been able to get an intact replacement piece for $80 all in I probably would have picked that option.
Click to expand...

:cheers: yeah $80 to not piece together that old thing and still have to look at the seams, I'm in. Glad you see it how I do

Good info on cte of ABS
I didn't know that (I should, I'm an ME :oops:)
 
IansPlatinum said:
Good info on cte of ABS
I didn't know that (I should, I'm an ME :oops:)
Click to expand...

The only reason I remember this is because on the final exam of a 3rd year materials engineering course there was a question which required you to derive the coefficients for the Arrhenius rate formula and use them to predict cure times for epoxy used to bond two different materials in an oven - happened to be aluminum and a ceramic (big difference in expansion rates). You had to predict the cure times at different temperatures.

The final part of the question noted that at the lower cure temperatures the cure succeeded; but, at the higher temperatures the bond always failed after completion of the cure. The question asked why. I formulated a number of options involving plastic constraint and other BS. The question bugged me so much that I later went back to the Prof expecting a complicated answer. He said 'simple one sentence answer - drastically different coefficients of expansion'. He congratulated me on my complex BS answer and to pour a little salt on the wound noted that if I had seen the obvious simple answer I would have aced the final with 100%.
 
142 guy said:
The only reason I remember this is because on the final exam of a 3rd year materials engineering course there was a question which required you to derive the coefficients for the Arrhenius rate formula and use them to predict cure times for epoxy used to bond two different materials in an oven - happened to be aluminum and a ceramic (big difference in expansion rates). You had to predict the cure times at different temperatures.

The final part of the question noted that at the lower cure temperatures the cure succeeded; but, at the higher temperatures the bond always failed after completion of the cure. The question asked why. I formulated a number of options involving plastic constraint and other BS. The question bugged me so much that I later went back to the Prof expecting a complicated answer. He said 'simple one sentence answer - drastically different coefficients of expansion'. He congratulated me on my complex BS answer and to pour a little salt on the wound noted that if I had seen the obvious simple answer I would have aced the final with 100%.
Click to expand...

Great story... yeah that's the stuff that'll stay with you. I know I have similar experiences, but they are more on the dynamics side of life.

Materials was a fun class, I just never really thought twice about cte in this application. I had used globs of 2 part epoxy and metal washers to rebuild my s70 glove box and dashboard after an aerosol can exploded inside of it on a 110* F day in July. It lasted until I sold the car... and then I happened to come across the car in a junkyard years later, mostly all picked over. The only identifying feature left was the epoxy & washers that I had applied years before. But they were still there! The washers were probably zinc coated steel though.
 
142 guy said:
Interesting. I would have thought that Texas temperatures would present a particular challenge in terms of heat cycling.
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epoxy is known for its flexibility though

a big reason why epoxy primers tend to do better at rust-proofing steel than a hardening urethane like POR-15. The urethane can crack, allowing moisture to corrode the metal, whereas the epoxy has a bit of flex to it
 
Slowly gathering everything I need to fix up the interior...

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svinkle said:
It's funny how almost every lower dash panel I've seen has a hole drilled in some random place.
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Yeah, what's that for? The good condition one I bought has evidence of a nut on the back side...


Trunk popper? Aftermarket alarm? Forbidden ashtray? :e-shrug:
 
IansPlatinum said:
The good condition one I bought has evidence of a nut on the back side...
Click to expand...

Did the "good condition" one come from me? I had one with a hole in the same place but don't remember who it got sold to.
On mine, the PO had a dial for a speaker fader installed there.
 
Was cleaning out the garage and found an old insurance card that came out of rusty. Looks like the car was driven up to as late as 2012!
Googled the address out of curiosity, set the date back to 2007, and there he is!
7ygBiFRh.jpg

Kinda cool to "travel back in time" like that.

After Boat is finished, I'll be upholstering some seats now that I have an original 71 140 seat pattern to use.
Other miscellaneous shenanigans include stripping the paint on the hood and rattlecanning it for now, should look slightly better and protect the steel until I can get the body ready for paint in a year or two.
 
Boat is taking priority (trans swap, de-rusting a battery acid spill from PO, U joints, carrier bearing, engine harness, alternator relocation, etc) but there are about 3-4 main efforts going on in the background with rusty, all of which are scheduled to be complete in a couple weeks:

1. Steering wheel refurbish- using Matt B's process.
2. Dash repaint (finally got all the chemicals in the mail after waiting a month for amazon :roll:)
3. Center console repaint, same delay as dash
4. Hood repaint, using VP color match spray. Hood is about 70% paint stripped. Apparently in 2018 or so, the main ingredient in many popular paint strippers was banned, and it seems the formulation now is less toxic but also less effective. I say this because it is taking hours of applying stripper, laying down plastic sheeting, waiting, scraping, repeating. It's probably gonna take 2 full cans of this new stripper... I'm already 1 1/2 cans in.

And next month will probably see some new front seats upholstered. I received a very nice condition OE 1971 brown/orange front seat cover (thanks Andrew Green!), it's a shame to cut it up to make a pattern, but it was either that or cutting up NOS!

But everything's still good, took it for a drive around the block without the hood just to get everything moving again. Drives really smooth. Can't wait to be done with the hood so I can start driving it more!
 
IansPlatinum said:
Boat is taking priority (trans swap, de-rusting a battery acid spill from PO, U joints, carrier bearing, engine harness, alternator relocation, etc) but there are about 3-4 main efforts going on in the background with rusty, all of which are scheduled to be complete in a couple weeks:

1. Steering wheel refurbish- using Matt B's process.
2. Dash repaint (finally got all the chemicals in the mail after waiting a month for amazon :roll:)
3. Center console repaint, same delay as dash
4. Hood repaint, using VP color match spray. Hood is about 70% paint stripped. Apparently in 2018 or so, the main ingredient in many popular paint strippers was banned, and it seems the formulation now is less toxic but also less effective. I say this because it is taking hours of applying stripper, laying down plastic sheeting, waiting, scraping, repeating. It's probably gonna take 2 full cans of this new stripper... I'm already 1 1/2 cans in.

And next month will probably see some new front seats upholstered. I received a very nice condition OE 1971 brown/orange front seat cover (thanks Andrew Green!), it's a shame to cut it up to make a pattern, but it was either that or cutting up NOS!

But everything's still good, took it for a drive around the block without the hood just to get everything moving again. Drives really smooth. Can't wait to be done with the hood so I can start driving it more!
Click to expand...


Good news :) Looking forward to your updates. Maybe I?ll be inspired enough to get my 145 out of the garage before winter :omg:
 
^They were all family/small business fleet used/abused.

Very few survive.

Drove a '71 145S w/D-jet from a 71-142E added & power-steering from a '74 145 (couldn't find a good manual steering box in the drippy PNW rainforest/toothpaste oil (climate isn't friendly to rear axles/steering boxes that never get warm/skinny cobbled Portland streets/short trips/no highway use to get rid of condensation) forever, & I hate manual steering (it's not used in any kind of motorsport except ice-racing (obviously)), especially with modern 195-65-15 tires on 684001 wheels that stop safely if the douche in the bimmer/ricerboi in the honda in front of you slams on their brakes.

Never added A/C/don't need it here & dual foot vents, vent windows & pop out rear windows make for tons of airflow in summers anyway.

"Upgraded" to a 1-owner '84.5 245Ti. The extra power of the 240-Turbo is nice, but the snub-nose/tighter turning of the 140 with perfect sight lines, body proportions, nicer dash/more legroom/shift lever right next to the steering wheel (or column shift automatic), less interior plastic, no finnicky cheezoid ralph-nader 240 door handles (anything you see or touch leaves a big impression on you for driving experience), close ratio gear box/4.10s or 4.30 gears, & pre-emissions D-cam EFI B20E of the early 145s is very much missed. Ported head you could hold it at the D-jet rev-limiter continuously in the flat with the 4.10s in the high desert driving to Montana to visit friends/relatives to try to get brown eastern WA over with ASAP...if your ears could take it (no speed limit in the day...they take away all the fun stuff).

As is the rear trailing arms bushings that don't wear out/no struts up front (all 4 tires go bald evenly nice and slow if everything's tight on the 140/no inboard rear wheels/poked out 20mm-offset incorrect-stack-up front hub strike-line /edge worn front tires/floppy flexy in the chassis front end to make the car drive/crash safely like a 240). Rack & pinion steering like the Saabs of the day or 240 is nice though.

Forgotten series / plain-jane utility / "boxy, but good."

140s became like the ugly 7/9s of their day (less bad though); motor donors for Amazon / 1800 with the larger displacement/less worn out big valve EFI B20s.

The 140 really was a special thing in the day (way ahead of its time for its purchase price for the average civilian for safety, utility, longevity & economy);
Dual circuit power disc brakes, tons of interior volume, 30+mpg on the D-jet EFI, bumper shocks with the skinny commandos/side impact bars in the existing design doors, crash proof latches, power steering if you wanted it, OD trans if you wanted it, comfortable.

OE quality parts on the shelf for 20+ years, lots of interchange with earlier models. (tho lots of 1-year only parts/struggling to comply with safety & lighting).

1968 is almost as significant year as 1974 for federal mandates for the USA market:
dual circuit brakes
charcoal cans
no more road-draft tubes
*some* tailpipe emissions standards (under 5% CO or something crazy by todays standards...not bad for crabs/usually requires a manifold heater/pre-heat manifold (hence the double butterfly manifold '69+ for power, economy & emissions when new) & many hemi-head cars & 2-stroke SAABs didn't have a prayer of passing it.
etc etc

140 met/exceeded all of the 1968 regs as a new "clean-slate" design, but they band-aided the rest on to an existing chassis (which was mostly compatible/already complied) as time crept toward 1974 and big changes were needed for all automakers struggling to comply (something had to be done, look at the Hell.A smog-skyline pictures of 1966-1967, injuries in minor wrecks with horrible american traffic and violent crime stats with leaded gas burned in the air).

It wasn't *that* much more money than a plymouth valiant and 1/3 again more $, but 5x the car of a POS VW bug when you think back to how horrible american cars were for use of space/economy/new model year/parts interchange or some dreadful little nazi-staff car like a VW crash-safety death-trap with a gas chamber heater that wouldn't defrost the windows in a cold drippy climate to the occupant's life(ves), only kill brain cells/put them into a ketamine(esque)-hole before the wreck if they were lucky.

It was proposed at the Volvo plant by the labor unions that they build the cars with longer lifetimes/no planned obsolescence (like stainless panels/no paint) etc etc in a big manifesto in 1972. Didn't quite work out that way :lol:.
Management rightly pointed out they wouldn't keep selling more cars :lol:.

All that remain are a few really roached down/under-appreciated examples dragging prices on survivors down/allowing dirt-bag lowlifes to own them.
Wagons were also a big jump in price for the same options.
They sold 3-5X sedans/coupes as wagons (year depending), and wagons got used 2-3x as heavily.

Tough sell when gas was under a buck to fill up your VW bug before OPEC, you could buy an international Travelall, Suburban, Country Squire, Plymouth Fury or the like with 4WD &/or a lot more power/amenities.

A few counter-culture weirdos were ahead of the curve and lived in multi-generational houses in SF close to public transit and had skinny little garages that could only fit a 145 at the largest comfortably to park it inside/off the street instead of buying giant american cars & moving to the suburbs in the late 60s/early 70s in the USA.
The idea of the 220 & 145 as the anti-car was accepted in the forward-thinking mind.
 
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Great post^^^

I, too, had some adjusting to do when moving from a 140 to a 240, and that extra-long hood had a lot to do with it.

Kjets On a Plane said:
the snub-nose/tighter turning of the 140 with perfect sight lines, body proportions, nicer dash/more legroom/shift lever right next to the steering wheel...


...As is the rear trailing arms bushings that don't wear out/no struts up front (all 4 tires go bald evenly nice and slow if everything's tight on the 140/no inboard rear wheels/poked out 20mm-offset incorrect-stack-up front hub strike-line /edge worn front tires/floppy flexy in the chassis front end to make the car drive/crash safely like a 240).
Click to expand...
 
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