Why they put the "Silent Shaft" counterbalancer in the Colts

[seattle smitty]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq6T5BojXc8

[89ARIES]

That was funny, thanks for sharing. What is your number, forgive me for not calling. I have been meaning too. Too busy. I'd like
to try to do something to save the Vista. Why did your leader just run off with the page and kill a good thing going?

[seattle smitty]

Well, all I can say is that Al meant well, in the same way you mean well about calling, and I mean well about lots of things without actually DOing something, y'know?

Do you think it's really worthwhile trying to do anything about the Vista? I was pretty bummed about all the work that I and another guy did on the site, almost certainly gone for good. And I don't think there were more than a dozen owners around the country who gave a damn and had the skills to do anything with the advice we gave them. The Vista is, with some work, a pretty nice, useful little car, but it will never be collectable, and if you wanted to sell one you'd never begin to recover the money it takes to fix it up right. In fact, I used to warn people of this on the website, telling them a Vista ONLY makes sense if it's a long-term keeper. Nobody would look twice at a Vista in a parking lot, much less a car show. Probably best we just forget about the site, Guy; I know I wouldn't write all those long technical essays a second time. If you ever have a question about building a Vista for yourself you certainly can PM me here, but frankly you probably have all the talent and ideas you need to build a good Vista. Personally, I'd never build another; I just detest front-wheel drive and sideways-engines in cars, and will absolutely never buy one again, nor any vehicle manufactured after about 1975. I'll keep my Vista because I have so much money and time invested in it, and it works well enough for my purposes, but if I had it to do over again, I'd skip the Vista and fix up some old compact station wagon from the early Sixties, like a Falcon or a Rambler American wagon.

[89ARIES]

Well Phil, it is a numbers game. Most of our members don't give a damn about this club, in fact only 190 people in the worldwide pool of 2,200 were willing to pay $20 dues. I may be inheriting my brothers
car soon. You need to track Al like a bulldog, and get that site. I think it would be worth it resurrecting the club. I can run a facebook page on the side with information from Al's page. I will try to call you tommorrow. In fact, you up late tommorrow night on west coast?

[89ARIES]

By the way, it makes me sad to hear you talk that way. I know no one gives a damn, but they will be sorry eventually. I am a little upset with one of our "members", merely a name
on our roster, who had the audacity to call me up two years later, asking for parts, when he mocked the club and never came to a show. I tried to sidestep a little and ask for a donation (really,
just your $20 membership dues), and gave him the lead anyway to the parts he needed. Of course he never paid his dues. My initial gut reaction was just blow him off and said if he wanted
my personal time in helping him get the windshield, pay the dues or just surf the site for free like the rest of our freeloaders do. He was a Mopar guy, and yet he like so many people your age
talked trash about the K-cars, put them down, and I told him a matter of fact how lucky he was there was one car in the yard for him, and how our cars are rarer than muscle cars. Unfortunately,
the Colt Vista is too rare........but, if you are willing to fight, I will maintain a new site, with historical info, and start lobbying the sales ads, like I do for K-cars. To save this club, and the K-car, I was forced
to post my own sales ads, and do a very strong internet campaign to keep these cars out of the crusher. I am not sure how successful I am, but at least we had 25 cars at the last show. Sorry you have been
left out in the colt by Vista haters.

[seattle smitty]

I was just editing a long answer, and the bleeping computer just vaporized the whole thing. Eff it, I'm not doing it again. I'll see if I can PM the last email address I had for Al, and you can take it from there if you want. You can call me at any reasonable hour (not before 8AM or after 10PM, Pacific).

[seattle smitty]

I'm guessing that all you California guys know about the annual Japanese Classic Car Show held near the Queen Mary in Long Beach? I did not, until a couple of years ago when I saw it covered in a performance car (rice rocket) magazine. A lot of the guys at that show appear to be doing top-notch work. THAT would be a great venue for showing off a cherried-out and somewhat hopped-up Colt or Colt Vista, whereas not even a super-nice Vista would get much attention at most car shows.

I don't know if having a Japanese-origin engine in it would qualify a K-car to be in that Long Beach show, probably not (especially since Daddy Iaccoca intended it to blow the Japs out of the water, saleswise). Do restored K-cars get much attention at the usual all-makes car shows, where they have to compete for attention with the wildly popular late-Sixties muscle cars and old hot rods? I can imagine guys at one of those shows walking up to a well-restored K-car and saying, "Oh yeah, K-car, saved Chrysler," and taking a quick walk-around before going on to the cool cars. That's one reason I don't understand why (as far as I can tell) most guys here are into restoring rather than rodding their K-cars. Do restorers think the rest of us need a history lesson, lest we forget?? I say ditch those skinny original tires, add some good looking rims and semi-wide rubber, lower the car a couple of inches, hop it up a little, add a hood scoop, shave all the emblems and chromed script, and give it some pin-striping, and THEN see how guys at the shows get interested and say, "Now that's out of the ordinary, that's a cool ride!!"

Here's an example of what I'm talking about, an old Rambler American, just a very plain, dull econobox when new, but I think this one is cooler than any Camaro because it is one of a kind, where you'll see twenty or thirty Camaros and Stangs at any car show. This is a contrarian hot rod; the same could be done with a K-car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl9MmnmupsA

If you Google "Chrysler K-car", of course you'll find the usual Google "Image" page of photos. I just looked down the whole page and could find NOT ONE early K-car that had been rodded in the manner of that Rambler, NOT ONE!!; they were all what racers call "showroom stock." The fake, repeat FAKE "woodies," like every company's fake "woodies," are especially lame. Fake wood made of vinyl wallpaper that looks phony whether close-up or at a distance, YUK!! I'm old, when I was a kid, our family car was a REAL woodie, a 1951 Ford Country Squire station wagon, maroon with real mahogany and ash. If you want a K-car woodie, learn how to steam-bend wood, and make a REAL woodie; THAT would be impressive.
You guys are missing a chance to do something unique. Just my opinion.

BTW, relative to something you said above, Guy, I never ever have encountered, in person or on-line, a "Vista-hater." In fact, the great majority of those who owned Vistas thought they were pretty nifty little cars. But they were nearly all non-mechanical individuals, and when their Vistas got old and needed work, those folks moved on. Many people think of themselves as car enthusiasts, but if they aren't mechanical, they can't walk the talk. And today there are just VERY few mechanically-able fellows for whom a Colt Vista would ever cross their minds. That doesn't make them Vista-haters; they just are turned on by other cars. That's how I am relative to a K-car, which never would have entered my mind except that you paid our site a visit, so I came here to see what you had going. I keep turning up here from time to time just because I know that your site could use a little more traffic until (we hope!) it perks up again. Maybe my anti-restorer rants will provoke some fellas to tell me I'm an ass, which is fine with me if it gets the site busy.

[K-CAR_WAGON]

Here are links to a few modified K-cars

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/the_reliant.html

http://jalopnik.com/5836788/for-6500-th ... -special-k