Technical Just how reliable is your hot rod or custom?

My olds has been rolling along for almost 20 years now no real problems stupid stuff like brake lights turn signals and damn gas gauge but a great ride.

 

I'm not going to say cause once I do I'll jinx myself and shit will hit the fan!

 

My 40 is very reliable-no major issues in 10 years. Brake light switch went bad once and speedo cable broke that's it

 

My long gone grandfather had a off topic Ford product for 25 years , he sat down at his typewriter in the mid 90s and wrote Ford a glowing letter of how great his Ford had been. He even bragged how he had never changed the headlight bulbs. Mailed the letter off!
Then that Ford did nothing but break down - even the engine developed a knock and had to be changed. So I will not speak about how reliable my old cars are!

 

The $2 swap meet alternator I put on my truck failed the 1st year on the road, but I got home on 10 volts. Other than that, 10 years and 35,000 pretty trouble free miles.

Gary

 

In the last 20 years, I had the original master cylinder go south on my '64 Fairlane, and had an FE fuel pump quit. In over 40 years of driving, I have never had a set of points leave me stranded, vs 2 electronic failures, those being an HEI and a TFI module dying in the driveway overnight.

 

17 years-50k miles , water pump gasket 5 miles from home , alternator bearing 15 miles away , most driving is close by but we've done up to 600 mile round trips in my T -bucket....Mallory uniltes that was in 2 other engines , was new in '84 ...same module..

 

I live smack dab in the middle of the country and I've driven my old cars all over this fair land. Only problems I've had was a bad plug wire at Bonneville one year. I was driving my 41 Pontiac coupe. I went ahead and gave it a full tune up...had all the parts with me.
One year my straight 8, 48 Pontiac needed a U-joint in Springfield, Illinois on my way to Ohio.
And I hit a pot hole right here in town and ripped my upper shock mount off my 34 coupe.
I've been pretty lucky considering the miles I put on my cars. BTW, my 34 coupe has been to Joplin [over 300 miles one way] twice now...raced it on the MoKan strip..no problems.

 

Was pretty confident until you posted - maybe now I should get your cell #..............

 

I built it twenty years ago, 52 F1 frame, pinto front, 10 bolt rear, 327-350 changed rear last year to a 8.8 ford for better tire clearance, but the truck has never let me down, ever. I live in the country, everywhere is far, it has seen huge miles, still same engine and trans, gotta run 15/40 diesel oil in it these days to make her last a little longer. I love her, I'll die with her.

 

My flathead six has been 45000 miles over 15 years since engine rebuild. One broken fan belt, one split metal fuel filter, one throttle return spring.

 

I've put 5 or 6 thousand miles on my rusty 53' Chevy over the last 15 years. It was parked for 5 years while I was sorting out a broken driveline (was away from home for 2.5 of those years though). Driveline broke by switching into drive too fast after reversing out of a parking space at work. Ran out of gas once and got pulled home and determined the modern sending unit I had installed had kicked the bucket. Rebuilt the original sending unit and havn't had a problem since. Have occasional issues with the needle valve in the old Rochester carb, bad batteries, leaky water pumps or trany coolers, but have always been able to get it into a parking space on home turf (home or work) to make repairs. Had a starter die once which left me stuck in front of a convinence store, but got a ride home and back and swapped with my spair starter in 5 minutes. Had to park the car for a few months to address excessive wear in the front suspension. It kept driving, but I was wearing through tires too fast. There's wear on the ring gear and in the rear end, but that just makes the car interesting to start and drive.

All and all, I'd say the car is as "reliable" as I expect for a car with it's age and wear, and the few times it has given up could either be chalked up to needing an eventual full overhaul, or my own young stupidity.

This topic has actually been on my mind alot this week. My wifes 2013 Dodge Caravan broke 200,000 miles earlier this year and while it is paid off, we don't really have it in the cards to upgrade to something with less milage. So call me paranoid but I'm trying to think in what ways could we end up stranded and what can I do to prevent those things but milk all the milage we can out of that van until we can get a new one. I'm more stressed about being stuck with something I can't fix on the modern car, than the long list of issues I'm keeping up with on my old car.

Back on HAMB-topic though, It finally clicked to me. I'm always thinking about how many 10's of thousands of dollars I'll end up dropping in my cars and how much is it "practically" worth it? Well if I was buying a "new" car every 10 years instead of rebuilding engines and tuneing up other things on these antique wheels, I'd be spending WAY more on my transportation in the long run. Deep restorations can pay for themselves if you drive the car long enough.

 

15yrs without issue until recently when electrical gremlins intervened. I've replaced a few electrical components and it goes again, it's now time for a tune up.

 

I have about 12,000 miles on my '59 Ford build. I don't go too far with it, mostly stay on the Island due to bad city traffic over the bridges out of NY. I have had minor problems with it, bad crimp at the HL switch, NAPA solenoid that was bad, also their brake light switch. I buggered an axle seal putting it in, had to do 1 side over with a real seal driver. Had some burned spark plug wires, now that are better routed.

I'm plagued with a couple of oil leaks, waiting for cooler weather to get into it. Need to install the driver-side door seal, change the oil in the posi rear, new gas filter. Little things that add up. I drive it on almost any decent day, nights are even better since they are cooler. I will call the car very reliable. I spent a lot of $$ early on and did the whole harness over, new sockets and switches everywhere.

 

My old T was pretty reliable. Failed me twice. Both were right at home. Once blown ignition module. And once the rubber fuel line from the tank to the frame twisted, kinked and blocked fuel from flowing. That was in 13 years. Mileage was less than a "modern" car over that period, about 14,000 miles. I gues if my daily let me down 2 times in 14,000 miles I'd be pissed.

 

Bought and drove many sitting a long time beater quality cars across country, 1800 miles anyway, So-Cal to Illinois at that time, oil change and a tune up before departing. Never had an instance where the car failed to make it, had some problems but nothing that required towing or rescue. People worry more about the possibility of being left stranded or their pride and joy being unattended because of break down than anything else. I know I am in finished cars, makes a world of difference.

 

< -------- I have been driving this car for 31 years and have driven it thousands of miles and this past May I didn't make it home, once in 31 years is not too bad of a record. HRP

 

Never had a problem on the road with any hot rod I have built or owned since I was 16. 56 Years!

 

I think over all I had more trouble on my first road trip with the 48 to the street rod nationals in Tulsa in 1973 than all other car events combined. Most somewhat self inflicted Fuel filter and carb plugged with gold paint from not taping the filer neck before my friend painted the truck the week before. Coil failed because it was old and that was the first time the truck had been more tan 50 miles from the house although I had driven it daily for several months. Yoke welded it's self to the tail shaft of the trans because I moved the rear back to center it in the wheel well and didn't install the longer yoke I had because I was in a hurry. That was all on the way to Tulsa for the street rod nationals. The return trip was uneventful except for gas stops and the bottoms of my wife's feet getting sunburned because she was laying with her head on my leg and her feet out the window headed south for 430 miles.

If you use them things wear out such as wheel bearings, starters, generator/alternator and ignition parts
If you don't do maintenance some things like front wheel bearings fail. The key there is the things to do before rod trot season that are under the general maintenance section to make sure the ride is ready for a lot of miles.
If a guy/gal does proper maintenance, replaces suspect things like wiring, makes sure his charging and starting pieces are in good shape and gives the ride a good general look over before taking off on longer trips they shouldn't have too many problems.
A busted shock mount because you hit a pot hole in Utah isn't really a hot rod reliability issue unless the mount was suspect to begin with. Nor is a flat because some clown ripped the sheet rock out of a house and lost nails on the road on the road to the dump.

Over the years I put close to 400K on the 48 as it was my daily driver and my commute to work was usually over 15 miles. 47 Miles one way for a year and a half at one time. Most of the problems I had were either maintenance issues such as a U joint breaking because I hadn't been paying attention or stuff that was just flat worn out due to the miles I put on it. Probably the biggest issue in the early years was trying to get by with the old wiring rather than totally rewiring the truck. I got pretty good at patching together wires that had burned in two.
I can't remember how many miles I put on my 51 Merc when I had the 350 Olds in it but on road trips I only had two issues in the years I had it on the road. Lost an alternator on the way back from a Henry's Haulers run one year and was close enough to Roslyn wa that I hitched a ride to Paul Harpers house and he had one under his bench that I ended up using for years. On another road trip the plastic teeth on the timing gear failed and that was something I should have addressed beforehand. My dad rented a tow bar and borrowed my brother in law's dualie and drove to where I was and we towed it home.
I've had more issues with the daily driver late models over the years than with my fun rides. I've become an expert at replacing front wheel drive CV shafts over the years and even had to do one in the parking lot where my wife worked when one broke on her as she drove into the parking lot to work. That might come from driving cheap to buy cars with far too many miles on them though.

 

I've only had one problem with my 55 that I didn't somehow cause, and that was a stuck exhaust valve some years ago. Easy enough fix that could have been a lot worse, when I pulled the head there was a crescent shape pressed ever so slightly into the piston. Got lucky on that one. My favorite was scattering the original rear all over the highway on the 1-2 shift while spinning. I never found the head of the pinion gear.

 

@trollst What wipers are you running?

 

daily drive the bus
only issue is the old gas tank, will fix this when we swap the engine
going to swap the 350 for a 500 very soon, 350 runs great just need more torque in a 7k bus
almost 25k miles in less than 3 years

 

The reliability has been very good on my old rides. My 302 powered ‘53 Dodge panel and 318 equipped ‘51 Plymouth have been as solid as an anvil. Having said that the occasional ride on a rollback has happened, but considering the time and miles an occasional breakdown is acceptable. My ‘37 Chev had a master cylinder failure and a hei module fail, the ‘51 had a core plug let go, the clutch counter shaft in my ‘64 Comet failed. But do they start and run as well as get me there and back dependably? You bet!

 

I've been at this oil car stuff for a long time and the only mechanical problem I've ever encountered was a broken right door release cable on a 35 Chevrolet.

 

Roothawg, volkswagen bus, unknown year.

 

The 26 coupe has been very good to me over the last 22 yrs. Of coarse I have been good to it with preventive maintance and inspections. Oh yeah, I carry the Hagerty card in my wallet......

 

I would drive it to the moon, if I could get the traction......

 

Dead nuts reliable. Other than my own stupidity. Would drive it anywhere. Snowman

 

32,000 miles on my 63 in the last two years including the 9 week, 18,000 miles 48 Cars 48 States trip. I had the top bushing of the distributor give out, had to cobble together one from junk yard parts and auto parts store parts, about 8,000 miles into the trip I found out that the rocker shafts weren't assembled correctly and the top end wasn't oiling properly so there was an emergency rebuild in the Elmer's shop in SLC, and two weeks ago my thermostat housing warped and blew a hole in the gasket. Other than that, she's been a good traveling companion.

 

Well...my 56 has been pretty reliable overall. After I gave up on trying to run 3 Holley 94’s and swapped to a 57 intake and Edelbrock as well as solved my condenser failure problem, it has been a pretty trouble free 15,000 miles or so. My transmission was about finished off when I got the car, but I have continued to limp it along through those miles. However, it is time for a rebuild soon which makes me a little hesitant just jump in and take a 1500 mile trip anymore until I get that done.