Kawi2strokes.com Forum

I just spotted this and remember what a piece of crap these things where. If you grew up where
there was snow these Vega's wouldn't last 2 years before rusting away to nothing. I had a friend
that had one and put in a big block chevy motor, was fast a light. You had to use frame connectors
or it would twist apart
http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/01/vert ... =webmail10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-w4g90EnTU

I still have mine, but it's not running at the moment. I lived in the DC area and did have some rust problems, but probably not much more than other cars of the day. I really enjoyed the car. It's a hatchback, and can carry a lot more than you'd think. I carried a whole drum set a couple times, and it can take 10' long pipe sections easily. It ran well for a stock engine. I put a Hooker header on it with a large muffler, and it has the Saginaw 4-speed. One time I raced a V-8 Monza that had four guys in it. I was alone in the Vega, and was only about one car length behind after 1/4 mile.

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If it surges, that's normal, upshift.

Yes they were cheaply built and the rust thru showed up with 2 years, my neighbor had one the fenders fell off at the 2 year mark.

American car makers in the 70's did nothing for their customers that had troubles Detroit left the door wide open for the imports, rmember the olden daze when darn near every car coming down the road was American made, well Detroit blew that with customer satisfaction

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1975 S3 project bike
1974 H1 project bike
1972 Yamaha R5
1974 Yamaha RD350

Yep, had one, fixed the rust and drove it. Oh yeah, put a motor in it too. I was told they had aluminum cylinder liners. Didn't last. You had to rebore and put steal cyliner sleeves in them? Buddy of mine had a cosworth vega. Pretty fast, for a POS 4 banger vega.

They had an aluminum block without liners, and a cast iron head. The aluminum was a high silicon content alloy, and the surface of the cylinders was finished to expose the silicon particles and polish them. It worked very well unless you overheated the engine and scored them. At that point it was simpler to install sleeves than bore and refinish, so that's what most people did. I got my Vega cheap when the girl who owned it had the thermostat stick closed, and the overheat sensor fail so the light didn't come on. At the time, there was a shop near Baltimore that would completely rebuild a Vega engine for $300, so I had him build me one. The famous Vega oil burning problem was caused by a combination of crummy valve stem seals and a head design that puddled oil around them. It could be cured with Perfect Circle brand Teflon seals.

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If it surges, that's normal, upshift.

You know way to much about Vega's Jim I just remember that they would rust so fast you
couldn't patch them fast enough. I don't think any of the american made cars held up very well
in the rust belt back in the 60's and 70's. I would buy my collector cars from the southern states
and couldn't get over how nice the body's held up when they weren't exposed to road salt.
At first sign of winter the nice car would get put away and I would buy a beater rust bucket for winter.

Drum kit?

I live with two drummers (wife & 2nd son). The missus has four kits (a modernish Pearl, 2 vintage Yamaha's & a vintage Canora). When they set up two kits & play together it sounds pretty good!

Trevor

Ha, maybe, but I did put a lot of miles on mine, and did all the maintenance myself. That stuff about the aluminum cylinders is actually explained in the shop manual. If I ever get the time, I'll get mine back on the road, but time ticks by...

Trevor, we never had enough drummers and drums around for two to play at once, but I bet it is fun for the drummers. It was hard enough getting a bass player and a drummer together. I always noticed that if I got a really good drummer and bass player together, I could play almost any noise on a guitar and it sounded good.

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If it surges, that's normal, upshift.

my first car!! well, not a Vega, but a '78 Monza wagon.. Same difference. Mine looked exactly like this one...


I always wanted to do something like this...





.....and I hauled drums in mine too!

The Monza was pretty similar alright, Cody. There were some significant differences though. If I remember right, when I replaced my Vega's rear axle/differential, I couldn't use the Monza version because it had some sort of torque tube deal to tie the differential to the transmission, probably to get rid of the wheel hop the Vega had if you got a rear wheel spinning.

One of the strangest things about the Vega was that it had an electric fuel pump that was connected to the oil pressure switch, so if you ran low on oil, the engine would stop shortly after that. I believe that feature was on the Vega from the start, which means GM knew about the oil burning problem before it even hit the market, but rather than fix it, they put a Band-Aid on it.

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If it surges, that's normal, upshift.