I haven't seen any people talking about their Dodge Aspens or Plymouth Volares? My first wagon EVER was a '78 Aspen and I LOVED it. Drove it all through high school. Fit all of my band's gear in it, plus the musicians. Pulled my pop-up camper. It was awesome. I just don't see a lot of them on this forum. Would like to hear/see some people that have restored/modded theirs.
They're a nice wagon for a project. Good middle size. Lots of parts available, and easy to upgrade, even using the larger disc brakes from the 'big' Chrysler Co. vehicles (was reading a blog yesterday from a guy with one....) I believe there's a slant 6 / 4-speed wagon (Aspen) for sale somewhere. Saw the ad recently. ............................. Up on E-bay right now - 3 days left: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/dodge-1978-dodge-aspen-station-wagon-super-six-4-speed?cmd=ViewItem&item=230731575348&sspagename=RSS%3AB%3ASRCH%3AUS%3A101 It's in Colorado...
I had a 1976 Volare Only car I ever bought brand new. Was OK for about 3 years, then went downhill real fast...
I had a couple of them back in the 80's when my kids were growing up. Good size car for the Mrs. to drive the kids around and get groceries etc.
Thought you car nuts might like a good old car story. Not mine for once. My Uncle had a 76 Volare wagon new, and was in the military and actually took that car to Germany in the late 70's. Long but interesting read. Enjoy! From my Uncle Lloyd: Hey Mike, I learned a lot about car repair with the 1976 Volare Station Wagon that we drove over there in Germany. That was in the middle of Chrysler's cheap shot at meeting emission requirements and their previously good running engines were suddenly low power and poor running. The worst, and down right dangerous characteristic, was when you pulled out into traffic from a stop sign. The car would surge away from the stop sign for about a half of a second, just enough to get you directly into oncoming traffic, then stall. After hesitating for 1 to 2 seconds, it would again rev up and be on it's way. Making the problem worse, the more you tried to accelerate, i.e.. the farther you initially pushed down on the accelerator, the worse and longer it would stall. I had a set of tune-up tools, left over from my Corvette racing in California, including timing light, dwell meter and vacuum gauge, and went to work on the Volare (bought it in Poplar Bluff, MO and shipped it to Germany with less than 1000 miles on it). Normally, you have vacuum distributor advance on a carburetor engine, which advances the timing as soon as the carb is off idle. The vacuum port hooked to the distributor has no vacuum at idle, but immediately has several inches of vacuum when the carb starts to open. This immediate advance in timing gives the engine an immediate power boost before the increase flow of air and gas through the carb can reach the cylinders. When I started watching the timing on the Volarie, I noticed that the timing actually retarded when you first opened the carb. I could not believe this at first so I hooked my vacuum gauge to the port on the carb where the distributor hose was attached and sure enough, there was actually vacuum at idle, which would immediately go to zero when the carb opened, but would then slowly recover over a 1-2 second period. So the factory configuration was to time the engine with vacuum present, which would then retard when you opened the throttle, which would not burn the fuel completely when the throttle first opened, but that reduced the initial surge of Nitrous Oxide gases on acceleration. And as a byproduct, the car would stall. Amazing and dangerous!! My solution was to try other, blocked off, ports on the carb and sure enough, I found one with no vacuum at idle, but immediately had a jump in vacuum when the carb butterflies were opened, and continued to increase in vacuum as the engine revved up. I'm sure this was the port used in the past before the pressures of emissions controls. So I rerouted my vacuum hose to the distributor and retimed the engine and all of a sudden I had a 318 that ran like a charm, with no hesitation. I made this same change for several other people who were afflicted with mid 70's Chrysler cars as this configuration was common on both their 6 and 8 cylinder engines. While I'm on a roll concerning the Volare, while in Germany, found that the car would not hold front end alignment in camber and caster. Turns out the upper A arms did not have the grooved surfaces that were common on front ends so no matter how tight you tightened the bolts on the camber/caster adjustment, after a few hundred miles, the front wheels would have negative camber and who knows where the caster would be. I could actually get factory warranty service on that car in Germany, but at the time there was no factory fix for this so the German mechanics, who laughed about the poorly built American cars, aligned the front end then tack welded it in place. It stayed this way until I returned to the states and the factory finally put out a recall. If you remember one of my other emails, this is the same car that would overheat when I got back to the US and started to pull my 20' boat, even after installation of an oil cooler and transmission cooler. About 2 years after we moved to GA, I was washing this car one evening and felt a lump behind the right front wheel down low on the fender. I thought it must be gum or something but got a flash light to look and found it was a big bubble under the paint. My Volare was rusting from the inside out!! This also turned out to be a recall item. The front fenders had pockets where dirt and moisture would collect but did not drain. So Chrysler put two new front fenders on the car. A few months later, I found similar bubbles under the paint behind the rear wheels. That's when I went down and ordered the deep blue Olds 98 Regency Sedan "mafia car". I think it was a 1982 but it looked like the one in your other email. Now THAT was a great car! That Volare was a real jewel. I believe there were 7 major recalls on that car while I owned it, and it was the last Chrysler product for my lifetime. Forgive the long message. LT
While I'm on a Aspen-Volare'-bashing roll here, thought I'd share one more personal story. When I was in high school I lived in northern New Jersey, and worked at a full-service gas station. I had an older customer that always got his cars serviced with us, and he bought a new Camry. This was in the late 80's, early 90's. I was a diehard American car fan (still am), and asked why he loved Toyota's so much. He replied in his usual "Well Sonny, let me tell you why". He said he'd bought a new Dodge Aspen in 1977 while living in Albany New York. He only owned the car three years, and it was his last American car. He said the car was in the shop more than it was on the road. He said the final straw was when he had a flat in 1980 in a snowstorm, and after jacking the car up, learned that the wheel had rusted solid to the hub. This on a 3yr old car. No amount of kicking, swearing, or force could get it off. He had to have the car towed a long distance and had a huge tow bill, and it took heating the wheel with a torch and beating with hammers to break it loose. He traded it the next week for a new Toyota, and never looked back. -Mike
Well on a positive note.. most of the things that were wrong with this car could easily be fixed. Overall still a great car, of course the slant six and 318 are great little motors. I would not hesitate to buy one and make the fixes right off the bat. Just go over the car knowing the quality wasn't the best back then. A lot of the aftermarket stuff is available now which would make for a fun project.
I had an '80 Volare sedan in '98-99. Slant six/auto ran well, and it was a good size with reasonable handling and easy to service. The suspension issue mentioned above was thankfully not present on mine, but I have had five M-Bodied Chrysler products since (Dodge Diplomat/Plymouth Gran Fury) and a few of them could not hold an alignment either as they had the same transverse torsion bar suspension in the front. I had to give mine up as the quarters, trunk floor and rockers were getting soft. I do miss that car.
Yes, quality was lacking on American cars in the mid to late 70's. And yes, they got some pretty lousy gas mileage (due in part to new emissions requirements), and yes there were engineering issues that were the direct result of rushing into production with new emission control equipment to meet federal requirements. But what I never thought was fair, was that the import manufacturers had a few extra years before they had to meet the same requirements. I do remember my Dad's new 77 Country Squire with the 400 V8, had no power at all, barely got 10 miles per gallon on the highway, and spent most of the first three months of ownership in the shop.
My nieghbors have a 77 Aspen. It is primer grey with lite patina, a slant 6, and has been in the family for over 15 years. They refuse to part with it. It gets almost daily use. I don't know what the miles on it are but I can only imagine that they are not low.
The car may fall apart and rust away but the "leaning tower of power" Slant 6 will keep on going. :2_thumbs_up_-_anima
They had a good list and a bad list. The good is made up mostly of the good parts carried over from the Dart/Valient platform but with better visibility and a wagon option. I loved the way the one I drove handled and even choked out the 225 did okay on gas. The bad one the one I drove was the brakes and alignment. Some electrical issues in the winter too. Come to think of it, those were issues on the '68 Dart my wife drove too... It was in and out of the shop quite a bit too until it switched drivers (not me, rather, the service techs that drove it.) The first guy beat the living crap out of everything he drove, ended up relegated to a '76 LTD country squire with over 1/4 million miles on it. (Didn't burn oil but all the wear and tear stuff, including the bench, were worn and torn, twice) The Volaré was a good car apart from those issues but there was one other, in winter, it wasn't as up to the task of carrying around the 500lb mechanical cash registers and register tape as those full size wagons were. Lift gate and low, unobstructed load floor, however, made that task a bit easier and, to my eye, they were one of the better looking cars on the market at the time.
