One year later

February 22, 2011, 11:49:58 AM

I started the old 86 Bird yesterday after sitting for a year. It started straight away but boy did it smoke. After about 10 minutes most of the smoke stopped but the gas is quite old. I was totally taken by surprise that it started so quickly though.

One year later

Reply #1 – February 22, 2011, 03:27:22 PM

Solid reliability right there. Out of most of the problems I've ever had with these cars, I always knew when I went in there to turn that key it would start right up. That's awesome dude.

One year later

Reply #2 – February 22, 2011, 03:53:05 PM

my tc gave me nothing but problems

One year later

Reply #3 – February 22, 2011, 08:41:39 PM

Quote from: pegasus;353617

my tc gave me nothing but problems

My TC had a couple of problems. The idle was flakey, had to rebuild the A4LD, it had a small dent/chip in the hood, the gauges were intermittent, but the body was perfect, there was no rust, and it was a hell of a lot faster than my stock 5.0l car. I dunno, it'd trade my car for it back in a heartbeat, even though with 114xxx it was probably on borrowed time. But I'm constantly working on mine, and at least the TC was completely rust free and had a lot of recent work before I got it. I dunno, I can't say it was my dream car, but it wasn't too bad. I drove it for a summer and got rid of it when I bought my 1972 Oldsmobile. The Oldsmobile is a nice car, needs little little things, probably comparable to what the TC needed, but the TC was a couple grand, the Olds, well substantially more. So now it sits in the garage collecting dust, because I thought classics were "an investment" you could enjoy while they appreciated in value. Then the economy collapsed and now the car isn't worth what I thought it was. I got a good buy, and could sell it for slightly more than I paid, but not what I planned it was worth. So I don't want to put money into it the come out behind, but then again I don't really want to sell it because I can't replace it for what I would get for it. Yes, it was a very good buy, the women had to sell it, I had the cash. Any other car to +/- a couple grand of what I paid look like hell compared to mine. Most of them need body/paint work, or a complete interior, etc. But I've been thinking about a new camaro because I'm tired of working on a 24 year old DD every night or almost every night, and the Olds would make a good down payment. I can’t justify spending a whole lot on my current car, as the body is just going to fall apart around whatever nice I do. So I limp it around, day in and day out, until hopefully I can figure out what I want, or what would make me happy. Sorry for the rant, I kinda just typed what I was thinking. As you can tell, I’m confused about what I want/should do.
Long story short, for the roughly 2000 I had into my car, I knew exactly what it was, and what it wasn’t and for what it was, I can’t complain too much.

One year later

Reply #4 – February 22, 2011, 09:00:34 PM

I've just had a lot of luck with these 5.0L cars I guess. Bought my Lincoln for 500 bucks, with 298,000 miles, and with 200 bucks worth of brake work (acspoogeulators aren't cheap lol) and new air compressor I wouldn't be scared to drive it to Mexico. It has it's issues, lopey idle when cold, burns/leaks a little oil,OD is a little sticky, I have a bunch of those little plastic EGR vac. line broke off that I just choose to ignore (prob. what causes the cold, lopey idle lol) etc. Always been reliable to me. I think if they weren't I wouldn't love 'em so much.

One year later

Reply #5 – February 22, 2011, 09:43:07 PM

I think the number of these still haulin' the mail is a testament to the reliability.

One year later

Reply #6 – February 23, 2011, 08:27:37 AM

I have to admit though that the car only has a little over 107,000 miles.