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  #21  
Old 10-10-2021, 04:46 PM
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Tom Vaught Tom Vaught is offline
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I posted this back in 2009 about my winter beater:

"I bought a 1960 Chevy Impala back in the 60s to drive so that I did not have to drive my 64 GTO in the winter time. Bought the car from a mail delivery guy. Engine/ trans had well over 100K when I bought it. Trunk floor was rotted out, 2x4s across the frame to hold a spare tire from falling though the trunk. Gas tank was good as was the basic mechanicals as the guy took care of that stuff. Engine was a 283 cid V8.

Played basketball a lot in the winters at the Catholic School Gym with my buddies, who were Catholic, and who could get me in the place. I knew being a Babtist and playing ball in Catholic territory would come back to haunt me someday.

Finished playing ball one night and came outside. The ground was frozen over big time. The old Chebby was in some mud ruts in the grass. Fired it up and put it in reverse. Car would not move out of the ruts. Frozen solid. Rev it up a bit more, still doesn't move. Get pis$ed and rev it uo to 5000 on the old Sun tach in the car and do a drop into reverse from neutral. POS Chebby engine was still stuck but now the trans is wounded big time and making a lot of noise. Shut it off and hitch a ride home with some buddies.

Car sits on Church property throughout the winter, The FATHER is NOT HAPPY AT ALL. My buddies see me in the High School where we all go to school and say: "You got to get that car off Church property, the 'Founding Fathers of the Community' are give Father a lot of lip about it, say it looks like HeL*"

One day I get a friend with a Ford Pick-Up 5 bucks to "rope tow" me in the car out to my Grandfather's farm. It sits on blocks for the next winter as I try and fix the POS transmission. No Luck.

It is now Summer time, the GTO is on the road, and my pals come by to visit and Bench Race. One guy asks "You ever going to do anything with that old chevy?" I say, "Yep, I am going to blow it up today."

My pals and I drain the oil, drain the coolant, put a brick on the gas pedal, fire it up, and she goes to 4700 on the tach. We watch a few minutes and the sucker is still running. Grab some lawn chairs and some sandwiches and pop and it is still running. EVENTUALLY the engine gets so hot it locks up from the heat. KILLED THAT SUCKER!!

Car sits for a few more months and the mail delivery guy says "You still got my old car, I need another engine, I froze the block in the car last winter and need another "winter car".

I said, The car is "out at the house but I don't know if the engine is any good"

We drive back out there in the GTO and he looks over the car. Says he will bring some "aired up" tires, and have it towed back to a garage. Told him the trans was toast. He said he only needed the engine anyway.

Hear from him in the fall and he says "we got that engine installed in the car and boy it runs great." Asked him how much it was to rebuild it. He said we did not rebuid it, we stuck it right it the car and used the other transmission. Car ran I gues another two winters until he hit a telephone pole and totaled the car while driving drunk one night. YOU CAN'T KILL ONE OF THOSE 283 CID CHEBBY ENGINES!

Tom Vaught

ps My pals think the bearings were fine, after the oil change by the garage. They think the engine stopped running because it over-heated. ""

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  #22  
Old 10-10-2021, 05:42 PM
jerry455 jerry455 is offline
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My best beater car, which was $350, was a 1987 Fiero 4 cyl. 5 speed. It needed a clutch and a few other things but I bought it in 2002 and drove it until 2008. I bought it with a 129,000 miles on it and I put on another 100,000 miles. It still ran great when I sold it. I bought it so I didn't have to drive my 1986 Grand Prix with a ZZ3 crate motor and a bunch of other mods, when I was transferred to the GM Milford Proving Grounds. It was a 100 mile round trip. With Blizzak snow tires on it, it would go through almost any snow. I could take off in 2nd gear and not spin the snow tires. It was great in the snow. If the A/C would have worked it would have been perfect. I didn't want to spend the money to fix it. It was a fairly easy car to work on and parts were easy to get. I sure miss that car. I got 40 mpg on the freeway quite regularly.

  #23  
Old 10-10-2021, 08:16 PM
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Well, mine isn’t as cool or as cheap as most of yours and it wasn’t only a winter beater, but a work beater but back in 08 I was 22yo traveling about 25 miles one way to my job at the time. I had a 98 ram with a 360 that was a gas hog so I started looking for something a little better to drive back and forth to work. I eventually picked up a 92 Cherokee with a straight 6 and 5 speed/4x4. It had 260k miles on it but it ran wonderfully. And actually averaged 20 mpg with the 5 speed. Floors were surprisingly solid and the interior was really clean but the rockers were mostly gone, one back door had a hole in the outer skin big enough to get your hand in and the other doors all had a good amount of rust on them. Still, that thing was unbelievably reliable for the mileage. The A/C even worked for a season after a recharge. I must have had a leak though and never bothered to fix it and recharge again. I planned on keeping it a year or two but ended up having it for over 5 years and it had over 320,000 miles on it. I paid a grand out the door at a small dealer nearby and sold it for $900. It was, of course great in the snow we get in NW Ohio but believe it or not in 2wd it was absolutely awful in any kind of icy/snow.

I sold it to buy a wrangler again (had one as my first car and had a new better paying job) and already had my Trans Am and a pickup so I couldn’t keep all 4 but I wish I could’ve. That car was a beast. I only ever did a set of breaks, a radiator, water pump and an ECU. I definitely got my moneys worth.
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  #24  
Old 10-10-2021, 10:44 PM
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I was thinking about other winter rides I had through the years and almost forgot about the 67 Jeep Wagoneer that I bought. It had the Packard/AMC derivative V8 327 Cu. In. engine, but the body was really rotten, as most Wagoneers were that spent much time in the rust belt. After owning it a couple weeks I spun a rod bearing in it.

I'm not going to try to find another 327 AMC engine to replace it, soooooooo Knowing that the Jeep used a T 400 transmission, and they had an adapter ring on the bell that adapted the transmission to a BOP bolt pattern ( Jeep used the Buick 350 in the Wagoneer from 1968 through 1971) I started the hunt for one of those Buick adapter rings. I also had a 1965 389 Bonneville engine that was pulled out of another winter ride. All I have to do is fab motor mounts in the Jeep and I'll have a JeepTO.

Needless to say, I completed the motor swap, and had about the fastest Jeep Wagoneer in Erie PA. The Wagoneer had 3.31 gears in it and I blew the differential and spyder gears out of the front end. But I had another Wagoneer for parts that originally had the Tornado OHC 6 in it with a 3 speed stick. I can't just swap the front axle because it has 4.10 gears, so I swap both axles and now my Pontiac powered Jeep has pretty steep gears with a healthy V8 in it.......................

I had installed a shift kit in the T 400, and now when it slammed into second, the rear springs wrapped up enough that the rear driveshaft hit the floor tunnel. Well a little welding and I fabbed a 3rd link for the rear axle that stopped that nagging driveshaft problem..............

One morning when taking my wife to work there was a guy driving his 340 Duster in the winter (1977), and the roads were dry, and clear, that got surprised at how fast a rusty old red Jeep Wagoneer could be, he got his butt handed to him........

After driving it for 2 years it got replaced with the 1973 Jeep J4000 pickup truck I've posted pics of here many times. It had a 360 AMC engine that also expired after the first year of ownership. Since I had already done the Pontiac swap I knew just what it required. I first swapped a 350 Pontiac into it, but being I was using it as a wrecker, it soon got a 455 transplanted into it. Little JeepTO II.



When I got tossed out of the Pennzoil service station i leased in 1982, I had already started work on Little JeepTO III. It was going to be a super wrecker. I had acquired a military Jeep truck M715 without running gear that I had already transplanted a 455 and a T 400 into, I also swapped the axles out of a 1965 Jeep dually I had bought for parts. Unfortunately I lost the lease on the service station, and the Jeep TO III super wrecker was never completed .............

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  #25  
Old 10-10-2021, 11:45 PM
salem1912 salem1912 is offline
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Best winter beater would be my '70 Challenger slant 6, didn't have power to spin the wheels but was very good in the snow.






'Hear from him in the fall and he says "we got that engine installed in the car and boy it runs great." Asked him how much it was to rebuild it. He said we did not rebuid it, we stuck it right it the car and used the other transmission. Car ran I gues another two winters until he hit a telephone pole and totaled the car while driving drunk one night. YOU CAN'T KILL ONE OF THOSE 283 CID CHEBBY ENGINES! '

Tom Vaught

Tom we did something similar back in the early '70's Working at the gas station a customer give us a old chevy, the body and other things were shot. It was late and we were to empty all the oil drains for the nite. Decided to fill the 283 up with as much drain oil that we could while it was running. It just smoked but kept running. We sent it to the junkyard they pulled the motor and sold it to someone.

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  #26  
Old 10-10-2021, 11:47 PM
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I had a variety of cheap winter beaters, but maybe the most interesting was a 1967 Opel Kadette station wagon. It had a 1.1 liter engine that was about the size of a sewing machine, and it was probably the rustiest car I ever owned - for example, the driver's side A pillar was completely rusted out where the door hinges were attached, so that door would actually fall off the car if I opened it. As a result I had to crawl in from the passenger side. A previous owner had 'fixed' the rusty quarter panels by screwing in pieces of those flexible blue plastic mini-toboggans, then they smeared Bondo over them and painted over it all with spray bombs.

However, it started every day no matter how cold it was outside, and it was remarkably good in the snow. That tiny little engine got pretty good mileage, too.

  #27  
Old 10-11-2021, 04:59 AM
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!970 Plymouth Sport Fury 4H. 383, 727 automatic, great heat, a set of snows on the rear, probably had about $300 in that car, Ended up using it in a demo derby in the spring.

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  #28  
Old 10-11-2021, 09:44 AM
mgarblik mgarblik is offline
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Seems I have owned almost an endless supply of "rolling garbage", so here is another one. About the time we were starting to build the Boss Bird, I needed a beater that got good mileage and this one fell into my lap. An English professor at my college came into the auto lab and wanted to know if we could scrap his minivan for him and just keep the little money we got for our "coffee fund". It was "stuck" at his house where it had sat for a couple years. I took the school truck and trailer to his house and found a Dodge Minivan, 2.5L 4-cylinder engine and a 5-speed manual transmission. 1994 model. He gave me the key, I unlocked the steering column and just for fun turned the key. I was stunned when it cranked at a normal speed for 3-4 seconds and started right up. Amazed, I put it in gear and eased the clutch out and it stalled. No matter what I did, it wouldn't budge. Scrap value was $60.00, so I offered to buy it for $75.00 cash and he was happy. Winched it on the trailer, dragging the rear wheels. It was FWD. Was never able to get the rear brake drums apart or anything else apart in the back. Just rusted solid. Bought a complete drum to drum rear axle from a wrecking yard and installed it. Changed all the fluids and checked it over and drove it 4 years piling up over 125K miles on it. Had a nice interior, good AC, Great heat, good clutch and transaxle. Just a tick over 30 MPG on the highway and 23-24 city. Made at least 100 trips from Dayton OH to Flint MI, over 2 years while the Boss Bird chassis was being built. This was every 2-3 weeks, I75 to Rt 23, a miserable rough road to Fenton Rd, home of the Zombies. I took all the rear seats out, put a cooler and sleeping bag in the back and "lived in it" over the weekends working on that car. After 4 years, still running just fine, I was just tired of it. With the stick shift, no one would buy it, not even for $ 2-300.00. Finally donated it to a homeless shelter as a shuttle van. May still be going.

  #29  
Old 10-11-2021, 10:33 AM
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mIne was a dark green 1973 AMC Matador. Like used in the first Dukes of Hazzard for cop cars. Learned how to do the 180 degree Rockford reverse to forward turn... in my parents back yard. Then sold it the following spring for a good amount of cash plus a blown up VW bug with the side torched off a piston. Bought another engine out of a burnt bug. Took all the engine parts, set them on a picnic table, and put together the best parts from both engines, which meant mismatched bearing halves, random piston rings, and one piston with higher compression than the others, so I paired it with the worst combustion chamber, offering a sacrifice to the God of Averages. It was one of the best running engines Ive ever seen. Started instantly, ran perfectly any time of year. Its was a mechanical wonder. It had no reason to run as well as it did.

Sold it for a goodly amount to a dope dealer in nearby who drive it everywhere, and zinged its damn guts out. That was 1987, word has it the engine is now in a sandrail and still going strong. It shouldnt.

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  #30  
Old 10-11-2021, 10:56 AM
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Most memorable beater I had was a 68 Firebird coupe that looked like it had been laid on its side and used for batting practice. Product of one of the better Texas hail storms. Maybe one option and not sure about that. Non-sprint OHC-6 with a monojet and a Saginaw three speed. No power nowhere nohow. Once I replaced the bearings to cure a knock it was very reliable.

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  #31  
Old 10-11-2021, 11:12 AM
DANTIP DANTIP is offline
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Default WInter Beater

My oldest son totaled our kid car (Subaru coupe), so I thought I better find a vehicle the kids are likely to survive in, especially in winter.

Found a 1-owner 1996 Land Cruiser with 175,000 miles. Those things are TANKS!! My kids drove it for 8 years and put 120+ thousand miles on it and I sold it for what I bought it for.

Advantages: Safe, All-Wheel Drive, Safe, 7-passengers, Safe, low cost insurance, Safe.

Disadvantages: Expensive to operate (crappy mileage).

Best Winter beater in my book!!!

  #32  
Old 10-11-2021, 04:02 PM
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When I lived in the pacific northwest snow country.. '72 Catalina 4 door hardtop with 78,000 original miles... paid $375. 1980 Cutlass with no rear brakes.. paid $200. '74 Pinto with big rust holes in the floors... paid $150.. 1966 Bonneville 4 door nice low mile car.. paid $500.

Drove my '77 Trans Am in the snow a couple times... Never seen a car that got around so bad in the cnow. take your foot off the brake pedal.. it'd go sideways.

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  #33  
Old 10-12-2021, 09:50 AM
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1985 Ford Escort with a manual trans. I bought it in late 2000 or early 2001 for $325. A mechanic friend of Dad's had done some work on it and the owner failed to pay. So, I got the car for the bill. Pale blue, surprisingly solid except the rear shock towers. Thing leaked/burned some oil, but ran like a champ and got great mileage. Dad and I drove it to Omaha to get some parts for my '72 Cutlass. Drove back with, among other things, a rear bumper for the Cutlass completely inside the car and averaged 32mpg with no interstate. I loved this car because it was so dependable and when it did break it was stuff that you could easily do a Red Green repair. Once, as I was driving back to work after supper, the dowel that the fuel pump arm pivoted on vibrated part way out. Grabbed a pair of pliers and tapped it back in and off we went.

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  #34  
Old 10-12-2021, 11:35 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 71GP76TA View Post
Drove my '77 Trans Am in the snow a couple times... Never seen a car that got around so bad in the snow. take your foot off the brake pedal.. it'd go sideways.
All F bodies handled badly in the snow, the redneck solution was to fill the trunk with sandbags, or cement blocks, and run the most aggressive snow tire available. It made the car more tolerable in the snow, but never good.

All the cars that went good in the snow (I'm talking living in Erie PA for 47 years) had a lot of rear overhang behind the rear wheels. F bodies had almost nothing behind the rear wheels. That's the reason most every B body car would be good in the snow, the rear overhang loading the rear axle with more weight bias.

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100% Pontiacs in my driveway!!! What's in your driveway?

If you don't take some of the RACETRACK home with you, Ya got cheated

  #35  
Old 10-12-2021, 11:42 AM
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My '72 A-body wagon was great in the snow. G70s on the front and H-78s snows on the rear. 400 4bbl and posi. Great tow car. Pulled A Lot of people out of the ice bowl parking lot at school in Flint.

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  #36  
Old 10-13-2021, 11:00 AM
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Bought a Suzuki Samari From my son for $60. Ran good & painted it yellow & black with some old paint my dad had left over from 20 years ago. Hard to strain the gunk out of the yellow. Put Super Bee stickers on the doors. Called it the Bumblebee. Sure got a lot of laughs but fun to drive. Son told me after the grand daughters were born, no way was I driving them around in that thing!! 60mph down hill with a tail wind.

  #37  
Old 10-13-2021, 11:08 AM
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Mine was a 1977 Buck Century Wagon, low option car I traded a gallon of Captain Morgans for it when it was 20 years old with just under 80,000. It would not start and the PO parked it. I put in a spare Distributor I had laying around, a new battery and drove it for almost 210,000 more miles. Best and ugliest car I ever owned. My wife hated it. The front and rear 1/4's were rusted out when I got it, but the oil Leaking Buick 350 rust proofed the floorboards!
It sometimes acted up bit, but it always was able to limp back to my house the few times in 15 years it actually had an issue.
Other than a 1/4 of oil at every fill up, and normal maint and wear and tear items. The only 2 repairs worth noting were rear axle seals & bearings, and a rear transmission seal. It was a great car.

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  #38  
Old 10-14-2021, 04:50 PM
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When I lived in Ohio my winter beaters were Vegas and Monzas. Did a V8 swap in every one of them and drove them till they rusted apart. When it was time for another, I'd venture out West and buy a rust free example, perform the V8 transformation, and drive it till it rusted. I did this for years just to keep myself in some sort of old car during the winter months while the nice stuff stayed garaged.
Had a couple of old blazers or jeeps mixed in with that so my wife would have a 4x4 when needed.

The last 15 years we've spent in Arizona so no more need for winter beaters. Now we just drive the old stuff year round.

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