Aspen/Volare woes...rust never sleeps

[XfbodyX]

Oh I know. I grew up just outside of Detroit and the only reason I bought an F body was there was not a single street driven duster that had quarters or a good drivers floor pan. My sisters new F did ok rust wise but it ran hand in hand with most rust belt cars.

Even here in the dust bowl today the folks who live on the wet dirt roads have 2-3 year old trucks with holes in the back bumpers but yet you can find some things like early square Dakotas that never saw a dirt road that are perfect sheet metal wise but are sandblasted by nature.

My parts car here in the pics was a life long dust bowl car in a semi arid desert and we get about 16 inches of precep a year and in my opinion its the perfect balance for longevity when it comes to rust and not hot and dry enough to cause the desert type deterioration we see on the full on desert cars. People just cant grasp that I have dry crankshafts/blocks sitting in a corner for over 10 years and they have zero rust on them.

Ive noticed many good fmj cars on CL in the Southern California area priced well enough to where one could grab 2-3 and ship all in one shot.

 

[Mikes5thAve]

Around here a lot of the early ones had frame rot in the front and the fender issues.

In general Dodges don't rust any worse then other makes. I have one Ram the lower half of the body is done the frame and floor are fine.

 

[MARCH374]

What was the cause of the rust happening so quickly with the F bodies as opposed to the othe Chrysler Products ?

 

[XfbodyX]

Some pretty basic things. Lack of proper seam sealer in areas around where the hood hinge bolts of addressed in a TSB. That left a ledge and seam at the top rear of the fender where many in the rust belt started in short order. The felt/tar paper like like L shaped splash shields in the inner fender right behind the headlight were sized wrong also addressed in an early TSB.

In 78 they started with the front fenders having the provisions for the plastic inner fender liner like we see on the M and J body cars. The recall fenders also had that provision (small metal tabs) that the liner attached to.

In 78 the f-s got more of the felt like flaps and protectors behind the front bumper area to to block road spray as well... again used on the M J cars.

This was new in 76 and all F-s got it but yet ive never seen an F without some sort of spray on rust preventive.

If one looks past all the internet hype and conjecture and repeated BS and look at the actual literature and issues learned and the fixes mopar prescribed it all adds up to the lesser problems of F-s like the 80s and all that was applied to the M-J cars.

 

[XfbodyX]

An early seldom heard about corrected manual trans issue in the F-s.

 

[XfbodyX]

A big problem addressed early that might of slipped past into some M/J cars but dam what a hack job to fix especially if one had to got the third stage of the TSB fix.

Again there is a reasonable answer to most everything on out FMJ cars vs BS talk and one liners we see all over the web.

 

[XfbodyX]

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[XfbodyX]

Early Lean Burn fix.... Just use more tape!

 

[XfbodyX]

Why mopar was so proud to introduce the F body cars. Here were some of there talking points. There is also a Chrysler vid that this was based off of. Here again... much carries over to the M-J cars more or less.

 

[XfbodyX]

Blah blah blah....

 

[Oldiron440]

I don’t know how many assembly plants they had for the Fbody but I’ve wondered if that would have any impact on whether some cars blew up with rust or not.

On my 76 it was basically just the front fenders that disintegrated but the shell was solid at eleven years old. Only having minor rust in the quarters In the body line around the wheel openings. The car only having 73k for miles probably helped also.

I was able to purchase both quarters for less than $300 , Chrysler had them on clearance at that time they had less than ten for each side. A ordered a new grill also, I think that was like fifty bucks, I wish I had bought all they had. But I used the quarters to modify the outer wheel house for more tire clearance then installed the new quarters over them.

Back in 1987 I felt lucky to have found My two door after looking for only a six months or so.