Daily Driving a 40-Year-Old Car? - EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk (2024)

Many people are understandably leery about buying a new or even recently made vehicle, on the one hand because of the stuff they don’t want that’s now standard in every new vehicle – including creepy driver monitoring/data mining “technology” – and on the other because of the cost of a new or even recently made vehicle.

Their thoughts turn to vehicles made a long time ago – when cars were entirely under the driver’s control and didn’t collect or transmit “data” about the driver.

But is it practical to think about buying a 40-year-old vehicle?

That’s about how old you have to go to be entirely free of electronics that go beyond the ignition system and some hot wires to power accessories such as headlights/brake lights. A car that old will have a carburetor – a purely mechanical fuel delivery device that requires no electronics to service/adjust it. That will have accessories that are controlled by simple switches with hot and ground wires, not body control modules and computers. If the car has AC, mechanical slides will control the temperature. The brakes will be just brakes. No ABS. So no wheel speed sensors or ABS pumps, either.

Such a car is entirely under your physical control. It cannot be “updated” – unless you decide to open the hood and turn a wrench. It does not narc you out to the insurance mafia. It does not try to parent your driving.

It sounds very appealing, doesn’t it?

But how practical is it?

More than you may think, actually.

And in some significant ways, more so.

Let’s begin with what you might call fixability. Those who remember what cars were like before they became what they are now remember that it was common to have to fiddle with them – with their engines – pretty regularly. Minor things such as cleaning/adjusting the carburetor, which needed to be done once a year or so.

Tune-ups in the spring and then again in the fall were a regular thing.

But the thing was, almost anyone could make these adjustments – and perform a tuneup – themselves and even if not, the cost to pay to have it done by someone who could was trivial relative to what it costs today when a late-model vehicle requires fixing.

In part because very few people who aren’t professional “technicians” have the ability (or the tools) needed to do the work themselves and also because the work, itself, is often very involved and so expensive as such – as are the electronic parts that generally must be replaced when they fail (as opposed to mechanical parts that are often fixable and so much less expensive to bring back to good working order.

Of course, 40 years ago, people were happy when the state of things began to improve such that they no longer had to fiddle as much with their vehicles; as new cars became – and have become – largely maintenance-free, insofar as the “little things” people used to have to deal with regularly.

But we are now arrived at a point of fearful complexity – and daunting cost. The new stuff generally works seamlessly – for awhile. But when they day comes that something doesn’t work, it usually means a trip (even a tow) to the dealership and – routinely – hundreds if not thousands of dollars in repair costs. Almost everyone is also entirely dependent upon a dealer – and his technicians – to deal with whatever’s wrong. Because almost no one who isn’t a dealer technician is capable of figuring out what’s wrong, let alone fixing it.

The owner of something much older isn’t – and while it may be a little hassle to deal with the various “little things” that come with older vehicles, the take-home point is you can deal with them. Or can afford to pay to have them dealt with, for much less than it costs to pay a dealer technician. Someone you know – a friend or neighbor – probably knows how to figure out what’s wrong with (and fix) an older vehicle with a carburetor and without a computer.

Speaking of that.

There is nothing inherently evil about computer-controlled fuel injection. There is a lot that is very good about having a fuel-delivery system that can precisely meter the fuel and mix the fuel and air just right, for optimum performance, gas mileage and (yes) low emissions. The problem arose when computers began to control everything – including things like the power windows, even. And also the throttle. A cable works better – and is much more amenable to being adjusted and far less costly to replace, should it ever become necessary. It’s nothing more than a cable, connecting point A (the accelerator pedal) to point B (the throttle arm) and most computer controlled fuel injection systems used cables right through the early-mid 2000s, believe it or not.

Until they were replaced by drive-by-wire throttles.

The point is that it’s easy and not very expensive to convert an older vehicle’s engine to electronic fuel injection, controlled by a simple computer that only controls the air-fuel ratio and related aspects of fuel delivery. There are “bolt-on” system available that almost anyone can install, or have installed, for far less money than it costs to buy a new vehicle with computers – plural – that control everything. Once installed, a 40-year-old vehicle’s engine will start as immediately and run without stumbling or stalling, just like a brand-new vehicle’s engine.

Without the myriad computers controlling everything.

My almost-50-year-old vehicle still has a carburetor – because I like fiddling with carbs – but I did replace the original transmission, which lacked overdrive gearing. It was easy to bolt-in a modern transmission with overdrive gearing and now my almost-50-year-old car’s engine lopes along at a fast idle at 70 MPH, just like a modern car’s engine. All the advantages – without any of the disadvantages.

Hence the italics above. With the old stuff, you can bolt-on modern stuff – such as an aftermarket Throttle Body Injection (TBI) system, or a modern transmission with overdrive gearing. You can replace the original disc/drum (or even all drum) brakes with modern four wheel disc brakes in a weekend, with just wrenches and other basic hand tools. Or have someone else make these upgrades, which will cost you a fraction of what six years of $600 per month new car payments will cost you.

Because there are no computers controlling everything.

And once these upgrades are done, you will have a modern car that can be driven every day – without all the modern-car problems.

. . .

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