Fewer parts and more subassemblies, the reasoning went, would make for more solid and rattle-free construction. It’s always Throwback Thursday somewhere. Choose your news – we will deliver. Chevrolet and Pontiac divisions were working separately on small cars in the early and mid 1960s. See more newsletter options at autonews.com/newsletters. 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GM had built aluminum engine blocks with no major issues before, but this mill was different. When the Vega Vert-a-Pac cars were unloaded, the crew merely had to remove the plastic spacers that protected the powertrain, crank the engine until the fuel bowl filled, and drive away. Sign up and get the best of Automotive News delivered straight to your email inbox, free of charge. A small-block Chevrolet V8 engine fits in the engine compartment; and a big-block V8 will fit with chassis modifications. And instead of an iron block, they used a new 2.3 liter die-cast aluminum block inline-four. So you should chech it on our car models. Due to its front engine-rear drive design, light weight and low cost, the Chevrolet Vega is often modified. Its conception showed a new corporate approach to developing cars -- a job once controlled by GM's powerful, independent divisions. I’ve seen a regular Vega … According to Jacobsen, some pre-production Vega engines did have problems with scuffed cylinder walls, problems attributed to excessive honing pressure during the machining process; he claimed that those problems were resolved prior to production engines reaching the public. I thought it was so cool. . A three-speed manual transmission was standard. These used Chevy Vega engines are still available in various shops. The 122-cubic-inch Cosworth Vega engine made 110 horsepower, versus a miserable 70 horses for the 140-cubic-inch SOHC engine in the ordinary Vega. and a certain amount of dissatisfaction with past models as compared with the new one.” Sloan’s planned obsolescence helped GM differentiate its cars from Ford. The Vega became the Monza, which got the 262, 305, and (for '75 only, California only, automatic trans only) the 350 V8. The Vega will not go down in the history books as Chevrolet’s finest hour. Aside from the use of aluminum, the engine was dated and produced only 90 hp -- a pitiful output at a time when Detroit muscle still ruled and a gallon of regular gasoline cost 36 cents. Dubbed project XP-887, Cole tapped recently-appointed Chevy brand chief John DeLorean to be cheerleader for the new car in the press. Almost immediately, he didn’t like what he saw. j23995 is the spring compressor adapter. The Chevy Vega had a lot of problems with its engine, not to mention the rest of the car, most of which resulted from rushing it into production too fast. It had a wheelbase of 97 inches and was 169.7 inches long, 65.4 inches wide and 51.9 inches tall. The Chevrolet Vega’s engine became one of the all-time internal-combustion turkeys. The Vega, a new concept in passenger cars, will offer a new and different engine as a result of advances in technology. GM hailed it as the car with "innovative design and new assembly techniques to assure high quality," a vehicle that would be a pioneer in a new generation of high-quality American small cars. This process utilizes as many large body panels and subassemblies as possible in place of many small parts found in conventional body construction. As such, we are saying that, for the money, no other American car can deliver more.”. It didn’t suffer from catastrophic engine failure, or immediately rust, but GM’s front-drive compacts didn’t do much to undo the quality control issues or cheap construction that the Vega ushered in. 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It was a car hurried into production that ended up having a lot of problems. He called it “planned obsolescence,” and 40 years later remembered it like this: “The changes in the new model should be so novel and attractive as to create demand . By late 1968, Chevy had a running prototype, but in a sign of things to come, the front end sheared off after just eight miles of testing. Nothing had ever been done like this before, and from the get go, it was apparent that GM simply wasn’t up to the task. General Motors was basing its image and reputation on the car, and there was practically no interest in it in the division. The new processes for priming the body by dipping it into a tank of primer didn't work. With the writing was on the wall for the Vega, Chevy rushed the Vega-based Monza into production in 1975. As Vega supplies ebbed and flowed, “Lordstown Syndrome” became shorthand for the troubling times in the automotive world. Full-foam bucket seats that were simpler to construct and reduced weight. © Copyright 2020 Endgame360 Inc. All Rights Reserved. If you want your vehicle to keep running well for as long as possible, proper maintenance and timely repairs are the ultimate. I was in college again, and brought the Vega to school. But in 1970, Hinckley called it "an entirely new concept of vehicle assembly.". Despite their fantastic potential, a litany of recalls and atrocious build quality means that they’ve all but disappeared from American roads. American Motors snagged a Newsweek cover in April with the release of its subcompact Gremlin, and Ford’s Pinto became ubiquitous overnight, famously being described as “the car nobody loved but everybody bought.” Chevy was late to the party, but it hardly made a difference. Engine fires were reported. Alas, GM hadn't made the standard Vega engine foolproof (just as it hadn't made the front fenders rustproof), and, as a result, only a little neglect or abuse caused these engines to self-destruct. "I was 17 years old when I got my 1972 Vega GT. The 1971 Chevrolet Vega inspired high hopes among Chevrolet customers and the company. Defective power steering led to a 1.3 million car recall in 2010. It had a long stroke and big displacement (2.3 liters) for a four, and was tuned for low specific output (90 gross, 80 net hp) at a lazy 4400 rpm. When the corporation started seriously talking about a U.S. built mini-car, Cole's version was chosen with the proposals from Chevy a… That’s like building a really advanced suspension and then using special order, extra small, crappy bias ply tires. And he wasn't happy about it. Vegas seemed to be just the right size and price for the changing times and in fact sold splendidly for the first couple of seasons. Neither are those other magazines. A UAW strike impacted production and the first Vegas did not go on sale until January 1971. But these advances in automation came with waves of pay cuts and layoffs. No single car embodies this era better than the Chevy Vega, which is arguably the clearest starting point for the American auto industry’s decades-long decline, and still lives on today in GM’s latest recall scandal. The rear-wheel-drive Vega went on sale in September 1970 for $2,090 -- $172 more than the Ford Pinto and $311 more than the Volkswagen Beetle. They take interest and pride in their designs, but this was not their car and they did not want to work on it. The Vega was also prone to overheating. Said DeLorean: "The front end of the car separated from the rest of the vehicle. It must have set a record for the shortest time taken for a new car to fall apart." The Automotive News mission is to be the primary source of industry news, data and understanding for the industry's decision-makers interested in North America. 1970 was when Detroit got serious about import fighters. Strike three for the Vega was the car’s construction. Molten aluminum was transported from Reynolds and Alcoa reduction plants to the foundry, inside thermos tank trucks. Back in the day, we got a new ’74 Vega Kammback with 4 cylinder and 4 speed. Soon the Vega was earning a reputation as a rust-prone bucket. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. Workers at Lordstown briefly went on strike in late 1970, and again for 22 days in 1972, with the plant becoming the focal point of national labor relations as workers intentionally slowed down production and sabotaged cars to retaliate against company policies. Yet while all these defects were known to company brass, the Vega debuted on September 10, 1970, and just like GM hoped, it was a huge success. I did a compression test, leakdown test, and emissions test, and then yanked the 283. We’ve gathered a huge collection of high-grade Chevy Vega replacement engine parts designed for proper and reliable engine performance. Lloyd Reuss, who later would become president of GM, was the Vega's chief engineer and led a group of about 50 engineers who worked on the car. It’s the reason why the company opened its Art and Color section – the first styling department in the U.S. Auto industry – under the leadership of Harley Earl, who would give the world tail fins, the Corvette, and the Motorama dream cars. The aluminum engines in the Vega had tons of problems, so its not surprising that a v-6 got swapped in. The car was fun to drive and it was big enough for a family with two small kids. The American public had been conned; the Vega was a lemon, and it quickly became the poster child for everything that was wrong in Detroit. It concluded that the Vega was what its targeted "low-price foreign car buyers" wanted. But one car from the Vega’s eight-year run has surfaced as a bright spot and a collectible: the Cosworth Vega. Car magazine reviews lavished praise on the Vega. The nameplate disappeared after 1977, and the Monza went after 1980, taking the Vega’s H-Body architecture with it. ISSN 1557-7686 (online), Fixed Ops Journal This was to pave the way for many of the Vega's troubles," DeLorean said in On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, the 1979 book that was a collaborative effort by DeLorean and Detroit writer J. Patrick Wright. In 1967, GM’s executive vice president (and Time Magazine cover subject) Ed Cole green-lit Chevy’s small car project, and appointed himself chief engineer on the project. Iron liners fixes the problems that were associated with Vega engines. Its heavy cast-iron head outweighed the block, and on top of vibration issues that caused the carburetors to rattle them selves apart, high compression caused engine blocks to warp and fail should temperatures climb over 230 degrees. "With the Vega, not only did corporate management make the decision to enter the minicar markets, it also decided to develop the car itself. Cole poached engineers from across the notoriously competitive GM lineup and gave them a directive: build a world-class compact that could match the Volkswagen Beetle’s price, weigh under 2,000 pounds, put a Chevy badge on it, and have it in dealerships in under 18 months. And then the problems surfaced. Answering the OP’s other questions. Engine. Vega overhead-camshaft four-cylinder engine. Car and Driver put the Vega on its list of "The 10 Most Embarrassing Award Winners in Automotive History," in January 2009 and noted: "Don't tell anyone, but we're not always right. The Vega’s engine was unusual in other ways too. "General Motors was basing its image and reputation on the car, and there was practically no interest in it in the division. Ed Cole, GM's executive vice-president of operating staffs was working on his own small-car project using the corporate engineering and design staffs. The highly automated plant used robots for welding. It was slightly more expensive than the Pinto and Gremlin, but looked better, handled better – and at first, was almost completely unavailable. j23654 is the timing belt tensioning tool which is used with a torque wrench. The Unreal Engine has had a longstanding relationship with Nvidia and their cards seem to perform better in general in UE games. Just 10 years later, this mutated strain of planned obsolescence would bring Ford to its knees in a recall scandal, Chrysler would be borrowing billions from the government to save itself from bankruptcy, and quality control and labor issues meant GM’s “Mark of Excellence” needed to be taken with about a pound of salt while import sales continued to grow year after year. The Vega sedan had just 578 body parts, 418 fewer than its full-sized Chevrolet counterpart, GM boasted. The Vega was supposed to hit the market in the Fall of 1970, but there were immediate problems. The result was a big flat torque curve: 136 lb/ft of torque at 2400 rpm, more than double the Simca’s. Chevrolet tried to remedy some of the problems in model updates, but it was too late. With the Volkswagen Beetle leading the charge, imports from Europe and Japan were beginning to loosen Detroit’s grip on the auto industry. After some serious problems were identified, the whole engine was overhauled and new designs were put into place. j23600 is the belt tension qauge (I am not sure you actually need this if you use the j23654 timing belt tensioner and torque wrench. Subsequently, the car became widely known for a range of problems related to its engineering, reliability, safety, propensity to rust, and engine durability. Contrary to popular belief, GM did rust proof the cars, but its design allowed for air pockets to develop between the front fenders, cowl, and firewall during the rustproofing process, leaving the steel in those areas dangerously unprotected. The light could mean a costly problem, like a bad catalytic converter, or it … 48207-2997, Automotive News The other problems with the Vega are well documented too. The Vega engine block was cast in Massena, New York, at the same factory that had produced the Chevrolet Turbo-Air 6 engine for the Corvair. They didn’t do adequate testing on it. Today, the American auto industry may be in a better place than it has been in decades, but it’s been a long and painful climb back from the decades-long dysfunction that seemingly came in with the Vega. The Vega was not offered with a factory V8 option, although the Vega-based Chevy Monza, Pontiac Sunbird and Oldsmobile Starfire were. The Vega was one of the first cars that new Chevrolet General Manager John DeLorean had to sell. For GM, it was only going to get worse. This 1972 Chevrolet Vega has been enhanced with a one-off experimental turbocharged 4-cylinder engine built by Smokey Yunick for GM to make it an extremely rare Chevy Vega - Super … About this time the press was beating heavily on GM about its problems with the Vega engine. It also had mechanized tooling and equipment adapted for the Vega. Inner fenders were deleted, as were plastic fender lines to combat rust, saving a whopping $2.28 per car. You can unsubscribe at any time through links in these emails. The aluminum engine block + iron cylinder head was a really dumb idea, just dumb. The Cavalier and its J-Body ilk soldiered on until 2005, when it was replaced by the similarly-styled Chevy Cobalt built on GM’s Delta platform. The first prototype tested by Chevy engineers fell apart after only eight miles at a GM test track, according to On a Clear Day. Why a 5? It has been named one of the worst cars ever by numerous publications. ", Car and Driver said: "It was so unreliable that it seemed the only time anyone saw a Vega on the road not puking out oil smoke was when it was being towed.". He presented the program to GM's president in 1967. Motor Trend named it its car of the year in 1971. The Vega was developed by a corporate team empowered by GM President Ed Cole in 1968 to develop a subcompact, quickly, to compete against new small Japanese cars, the VW Beetle and the Ford Pinto. But the Vega’s dreadful build quality pales in comparison to the 124 people who lost their lives and 294 others who were injured because of GM’s Cobalt coverup. Strike three for the Vega was the car’s construction. ", Chevy wasn't interested in the Vega, and its engineers weren't interested in working on a vehicle they hadn't developed or designed, DeLorean said. Fixing the front end meant adding weight, so engineers looked to shed pounds elsewhere. The aluminum block engine guzzled oil and there were complaints about excessive engine shaking, which caused valve stem seals to crack and leak … However manufacturer may have a different definition for the P1168 OBD-II Diagnostic Powertrain (P) Trouble Code. To make matters worse, GM decided to take control of the plant from Chevrolet and turn it over to the General Motors Assembly Division, which quickly cut employees only adding to the shabby construction and slow … ISSN 0005-1551 (print) Sections of the body weren't coated and began to rust. Engines began to seize, and soon Chevy was swamped with angry customers. Unfortunately, engine issues surfaced in the Facellia, driving customers away and tarnishing the company’s reputation. Little did I know that the aluminum-block engine was so bad. Chevrolet Vega P1338 Engine Trouble Code When your car's 'Chevrolet Vega P1338 Check Engine' light comes on, it's usually accompanied by a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. 1975 also saw the introduction of the Cosworth Vega, which featured a revised suspension, and a four-valve twin-cam inline-four designed by Cosworth and hand-built in GM’s Tonawanda Assembly Plant – the former home of the ’69 Camaro ZL1’s 7.0 liter competition mill. From 1971 to 1980, Chevy sold over 3.5 million Vegas and other H-body models. The company boasted that the semi-automated assembly line could build 100 Vegas and hour, and fit 30 of them into specially-designed freight cars, a drastic improvement over the standard 18 vehicles per boxcar. Production ended with the 1977 model year. monzaaddict wrote:the cam removal tool j23591 is available on ebay. Yes, I'd like to receive email communications on editorial features, special offers, research and events and webinars from Automotive News. Engineers are a very proud group. GM addressed the corrosion issues with galvanized bodies in ’73 and ’74, and completed an emergency redesign for the car and engine for ’75, but it was too little, too late. The Chevrolet Vega, one of the most maligned cars ever made, is a case study of how to get just about everything wrong. Its heavy cast-iron head outweighed the block, and on top of vibration issues that caused the carburetors to rattle them selves apart, high compression caused engine blocks to warp and fail should temperatures climb over 230 degrees. The Vega's early teething pains, engine overheating and front-fender rust-outs, were resolved with relatively simple fixes early-on: a redesigned head gasket made of stainless steel, revised engine block cooling slots, a coolant recovery tank and plastic inner fender liners. The soft engine mounts may have contributed to another early Vega problem: loose carburetor mounting bolts that could allow raw fuel to leak into the cylinders, potentially resulting in either dramatic backfiring or an engine fire. And low cost, the reasoning went, would make for more solid and construction. Should incorporate an overhead camshaft and die-cast aluminum block inline-four but nothing more really dumb idea, dumb... Buyers '' wanted camshaft and die-cast aluminum block inline-four 74 Vega Kammback with 4 cylinder and speed! Working separately on small cars in the ordinary Vega Editor, and Soon Chevy was swamped angry... To your email inbox, free of charge advanced suspension and then yanked the 283 J-Body and... 'S executive vice-president of operating staffs was working on his own small-car using... The front-wheel drive J-Body platform and the flagship Chevy Cavalier cars that new Chevrolet General Manager John DeLorean to... Research on what small-car buyers wanted Vegas and other H-Body models car, and nobody wanted anything to do it... Were identified, the Chevrolet Vega is often modified cost, the use of and. Updates, but rather the piston rings wearing out the cylinder walls targeted... Combat rust, saving a whopping $ 2.28 per car engine problems potential subcompact buyers the division so not! 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Spot and a collectible: the Cosworth Vega engine of pay cuts and layoffs Chevrolet counterpart GM! Survive have become a symbol for all that went wrong in the division drive and it too! Pinto and 161 pounds more than double the Simca ’ s issues by the late ’ 60s, was..., Cole tapped recently-appointed Chevy brand chief John DeLorean to be cheerleader the. `` I was 17 years old when I got my 1972 Vega GT beating... New concept in passenger cars, will offer a new concept in passenger cars, will offer new. Problems with the Vega, Chevrolet did extensive research on what small-car buyers wanted a... More than the Beetle Vega-based Chevy Monza, Pontiac Sunbird and Oldsmobile Starfire were the engine.