<VV> Speaking of Sprints... and frequent failures

[NicolCS at aol.com]

I looked at a 62 Sprint / Monza wagon about three years ago - I  was pretty 
excited since it had all the goodies (gauges, 4-carb conversion,  emblems, and 
presumably the suspension stuff - I couldn't tell since it was sunk  to the 
chassis in a field)  The Gold/Red color combo was a bit of a grind  especially 
since neither was in good condition and repainting acres of red  interior 
panels didn't look like much fun but the real deal breaker was the  extensive rust 
in the fenders and rockers.  The guy had donor '61 wagons  that were available 
to solve the body issue, but then it wouldn't be a real '62  Monza and there 
was the small issue of two and a half mountain ranges of work to  get it all 
done. Much smarter to buy a nice one.  
 
My theory on why Corvairs take so much to get going?  Cheapest car  from the 
cheapest GM division purchased by cheap buyers - this formula does not  lend 
itself to the highest quality repairs and maintenance.  If every  mechanic did 
a 95% job (and that's unrealistically high), those little 5%  shortfalls add 
up over the years and soon we are left with unworkable  cars.  The other thing 
I include in my paradigm is the notion of each part  having a different amount 
of "life" in it.  When you buy a new car, every  part is new and "in-sync"   
As the car ages the shortest-lived part  fails and is replaced.  One by one 
each parts little built-in timer gets on  a different schedule and one thing or 
another is always "timing out" - this  leads to the "I'm always fixing 
something" syndrome.  The trick is to  clean-out all the little shortfalls from 
incomplete mechanical repairs and to  get all the pieces into early stages of their 
life-cycles; this will lead to a  "trouble-free" car, IMHO
C. Nicol