Vehicle #1
1978 Dodge Colt sedan #00568, originally yellow-green, now black and rust. Date of Manufacture: June 1977. Acquired: February 1985 with 63,000 miles.
I should begin with a summary of my family's history with Colts. We had a total of four different Colts while I was growing up. First was a 1972 of which I have no recollection. Then came this '78 sedan, a little later a silver automatic '78 coupe, and finally a red '84 slushbox hatchback. I have no idea what happened to the '72. Presumably it is long-deceased and would be extremely rare if it were still around. The silver coupe got passed along to my sister, gave several more years of service, then met its end in Toledo, Ohio. My older brother usurped the '84 and milked it for a hope-beyond-hope lifespan of well over 200,000 miles. Its whereabouts are unknown.
Back to vehicle #1. This was bought new by my father from Stew Hansen's Dodge City in Des Moines, Iowa in October of 1977. He put 63,000 miles on it before back problems encouraged him to move on to a larger car. I learned how to drive a stick with this puppy and M/T's are still my preference. It officially became mine in February of 1985. By the spring of 1987 it was up to 117,000 miles. I had done a lot of commuting between Ames and Des Moines so the miles had really racked up. Plus I loved the heck out of the thing. One day in May on the way home I stopped at a stoplight and noticed a large cloud of smoke. I looked around to see whose pathetic piece of junk was emitting the choking cloud. Ouch! It was mine! Though the car had not been burning meaningful amounts of oil, something had deteriorated quickly. Closer examination at home revealed that massive amounts of oil were being expelled from the rocker cover PCV port into the air filter housing. This air filter was HEAVY with oil. Desparate and ignorant, I committed to rebuilding the engine without really knowing what was wrong with it.
This vehicle would not travel under its own power for THREE YEARS!.
I lugged it along through two moves while I worked up the money, tools, facilities, and experience to tackle this engine project. Looking back, I am amazed at what I accomplished under barbaric circumstances, working out of rental storage units, using minimal hand tools. And even though I screwed it up in numerous ways and redid several things several times, I've put another 100,000 miles on the damned thing with no fundamental problems. It went on to become the test bed for most of my automotive repair education and the seed for my obsession with the RWD Mitsu-Chryco cars. I made numerous modifications to this beast, including the installation of a 5-speed M/T from a sister vehicle, an aftermarket ignition system, better dashboard gauges, sound system with full-sized speakers in place of the rear seat, and many more things. At one time this car wore personalized plates MITSU1, but is now 78COLT.
I haven't driven this one for about 15 months. It developed a water pump leak, I got tired of topping off the radiator, and I just didn't get around to fixing it until a month ago. During the idle time the master cylinder deteriorated and was just replaced. Now I'm reworking some of my modified underdash wiring and it will soon see the road again.
The engine troubles of May 1987 led directly to my next Mitsu, Vehicle #2.