MISERY
(AKA RUST)

Ok, I have tons of rust ridden pictures of this car to show you. I started writing stupid little conversations about them after each picture (see what creative writing classes do to you in college). I thought they were funny but my fiancée thinks they are not and that I am, essentially, a sicko. So if the general concenous of web surfers like you is the same then I will consider taking them off. Just trying to have fun and not so politically correct like everything seems to be these days.

"Mommy is this a Corvette?"
"Why no schmookums, it is a Plymouth Barracuda. Why do you ask?"
"Well I remember from Kenny's dad (that this kid's mom is sleeping with) that Corvettes are plastic.
And look 1/2" thick plastic. Why is this mommy?"
"Well schmookums, this owner is stupid and bought a previously restored car with lots of plastic filler covering hordes of rust."
"Ok, Mommy so what does that mean for him....is this good?"
"No sweetie, he is taking it in the a$$ in both a monetary and time expense."
"Mommy so what should I learn from this?"
"That is easy son, don't be an idiot and buy a rusty, previously restored car, or at least one loaded with plastic filler."
"Ok, love you mommy, if plastic is bad then why is Kenny's dad coming over today to play with you today with his special vibrating plastic toy?"
"Not all plastic is bad, but don't tell daddy about that, its our secret. Oh, by the way remind me to pick me up some D batteries at the store on the way home."

"Mommy, what is this"
"Well smookums, it is a sloppy prime job over some deep body work"
"Why Mommy?"
"Well the previous owner put silicone sealer under the windshield gasket to fix a leak and clogged the drain holes in the cowl. While a sort lived repair, the water could not drain and would pool under the gasket attacking the metal and eventually seeped under the factory leaded body seam thus rusting the whole area away. Once this occurred further leaks were free to continue onward and thus ruin the carpet and floor boards too."
"So sealant is a bad thing?"
"No, not when it is applied correctly and in small amounts like on engine gaskets. Or when used on mommies lips during her professional S&M acts to keep mommy from screaming".
"Ummmm. Are you sick mommy?"
"No the psychotherapist says I'm just peachy keen"

@#$% another rust spot after a little digging.

Oh yeah, I love to see an inside rocker panel nice and thin from rust. Especially when it is a convertible where I need all the strength the unibody should provide. NOTE: This is another reason why subframes are good for your car as they stiffen up the unibody in case stuff like this is living under your cars pretty paint.

Well, off the panel goes. Drilling out the spot welds was a much fun as sitting in the doctors office with a social disease. Furthermore there are no patch panels available so you must buy only wavy full quarter replacements and cut them up or make your own panels.

"Mommy, what were these last four pictures"
"Well shmookums, those were pictures of rotted rocker panels and lower quarter panels"
"Why are they rotted?"
"Well first of all this is a convertible and water tends to accumulate with leaves in these inner quarter panels. It gets by where the top and body meet."
"Does this happen with hardtop cars?"
"Yes schmookums, water seeps past the window felt and trunk gasket and does the same thing."
"Mommy is it just a bad design?"
"Yes schmookums, unlike every other sane car manufacturer out there that did this seam correctly with a full rocker panel to the wheel well and then the quarter panel adjoined on on top of it, Mopar designed theirs so the quarter panel wrapped around the rocker where it traps water and rusts like crazy. You see this was the 60's and with war, society in flux, and Chrysler in financial trouble, the low paid body engineers were smoking too much pot and came up with this lousy, yet cheap to produce design. But they didn't care since cars weren't supposed to last thirty years and they figured that we would all be dead by then due to an probable nuclear war with Russia".
"Ummm ok, so what have we learned"
"Well schmookums, BS cheapo design work like this pisses off customers who flee to other brands. For example in the post gas crisis 70's / early 80's Chrysler's sales went to near zero so they eventually asked the federal government to bail them out with our hard earned tax dollars. Why were sales near zero, well they were still making a junk, gas sucking, product and assumed that the sucker American public would just buy it. Well, American's are not suckers schmookums and told Chrysler to go stuff  their 440ci Newport's up their a$$ and went out and bought a Honda. So this problem was a direct result of their own corporate blundering, but old man Lee Iacocca ran up to capital hill boo hooing about the Japanese and that a few hundred thousand workers willl be on welfare if Chrysler goes under and received a billion or two. He took that money, gave himself a fat raise, and started to build small fuel efficient K cars.
He then went on TV and promoted those crap K cars under the vail of it being the American thing to do. Lucky for Chrysler memories of those evil OPEC people and the resulting energy crunch forced our fine patriotic US citizens to go out and buy those substandard K cars as the only alternative was Ford's equally crap Bobcat and Chevy the Vega or then the smart thing to buy a Japanese car which Iaccoca made you feel guilty about doing. Once Chrysler made some $$$$ off selling these junk products (except for Carroll Shelbys GLH's) to an American public and got out the company out of bankruptcy they began to build those god awful minivans for the masses.
Lee Iacocca then runs out of creative ideas and gives himself a huge golden umbrella and off to retirement with many many millions of dollars and a fortune in stock options where he writes books claiming how great he is and how he can fix Americas problems, how he was the father if the Ford Mustang (which he wasn't, Ford guys I feel for you on this point), and raising cash to renovate the Statue of Liberty (because daddy was an immigrant). I read his book, he bends the truth a little (REMEMBER: There are 3 sides to every story. YOUR side, MY side and the TRUTH. The truth is usually somewhere in between).
There mother Mopar was cranking out boring minivans with simulated wood grain sides like my dad's Ford Country Squire until a great man named Robert Lutz revamped the whole company, got Chrysler back on track with some real nice cars (like the Viper) and then, all of the sudden, sold out to the Germans!"
"Ok mommy...I get it. Do you want some Prozac?"

"Mommy, what were these last three pictures"
"Well Smookums, remember when I told you of the pot smoking engineers and the inevitable war with Russia?"
"Yes mommy."
"Well here we see the rusted through lip of the fender and fender itself. A good part of it was a result of crappy design and the use of glue and putty at the assembly plant.""
"Please explain mommy."
"Well, moisture would seep into this seam and just rust away. I assume that the engineers knew this so they decided to throw some sealing glue between the two panels which only made things worse."
"Oh, so how can you fix it mommy?"
"With patch panels, money and time smookums."
"Ummmm does that mean that I won't have any money to go to college?"
"Yes dear, and with my rabid cocaine habit I had to make a deal to sell you into slavery so you don't need it anyway...you do understand don't you?"
"Ummm I guess so, but can I keep my Barney stuffed animal?"
"Yes as they don't have pillows in the deserts of Iran so it is my present to you."
"I love you mommy"
"I know, I love myself too schmookums."
"Huh?"

"Mommy, what were these two pictures"
"Well shmookums these are  pictures of the rear lower quarter panels."
"What is all of the brown stuff, poo?"
"Well schmookums is isn't poo but it's like it. It is rust, what metal poos out to the atmosphere when it oxidizes and is very bad."
"Why is it there?"
"Well remember again our pot smoking engineers."
"Yes mommy"
"Well they also had LSD during that time which is a much stronger drug pookie. The engineers were taking this when they designed these panels. You see they figured out that if you put two pieces of metal together in a V shape they are very strong and will hold water quite well especially if the trunk seal leaks."
"But didn't they realize that?"
"Why yes they did schmookums that is why they put a drain plug 1/2" above the bottom of the lower seam so some water can get out. They could of put it lower but then again who cares it if the bottom 1/2" rots out as the engineers figured we will all be dead by then have been vaporized in a nuclear cloud. Or at least the car would be paid off and we would be driving another land yacht Chrysler rather than some foreign Japanese subcompact.
"Mommy, can you get a replacement?"
"Yes schmookums but only the whole quarter panel. To compound the problem nobody makes the inner valance panel either. The Dart and Duster guys have them but those are ugly cars. You see the replacement panels are made in places like India and China who employ child & prison labor to use old worn out US tooling to punch out wavy copies that don't fit well so you have to cut them up and just use pieces. If our Mopar parts suppliers like Year One actually cared and got off their @ss to subcontract out production for some quality USA made lower quarter patch panels everybodies life would be a so much easier."
"Mommy...what is child labor."
"Go ask NIKE (the sneaker maker) or that phony Kathy Epstein (Oops Kathy Lee Gifford, Frank is still alive and kicking.).  Both of these entities got busted employing child labor in their foreign plants. NIKE still doesn't care, as the American public traded their morals for fashion years ago and still buy the product, and Kathy Lee sobbed all over TV like Tammy Fay Baker in handcuffs claiming that she was duped and had no idea that the factories who were producing her clothing line enslaved children. She also couldn't believe that things like child labor still occurred in the world. So in classic Kathy Lee manor she spearheaded some stupid program to help the children of the world and right those wrongs (that is before her career gets destroyed). "Sob sob boo hoo, love me America, love these poor, poor, children. They are victems like I am (READ: now that i got caught exploiting them) lets end this horrible practice". Blah blah blah.
Regis, her counter partner on their dreaded morning show and currently the star in the "Millionaire", is no better and pulled the same crap after Howard Stern found his crippled son from a previous marriage living in a slum and shoved that fact down his throat on NYC radio.
Regis thanked Howard for finding his long lost son he had been trying to find for so many years. His son in turn claimed that had tried to contact Regis for years with no reply and that Regis turned his back on him and his mother as he didnt want Hollywood to know he had been divorced and had a cripple for a son. Bad for his image. I am sure this slime can show you the way."
"I love you mommy..your so smart." 

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