Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Why do you Hate Ford/Chevy...

First truck... 86 ford 300 stick, 308 axle. Bought new sold @ 213k. I don't think I had a problem with it. Maybe a front end part?

second truck 96 ford 300 stick, 273 axle. 26k - 234k. 2 clutches, 1 front end part 1 axle seal.
3rd truck 05 GMC deisel, 24k- present (192k). wire harnes, 600 bucks, bearing 330, transfer case 1550. The GMC has the most cost but nicer ride, most likely will last 3- 400 k. I'm happy with all three. Next truck??? Ford ecoboost so far.

"The Old Man" was a Ford man. I think he had type F tranny fluid in his veins.

Older Brother had a '70 Road Runner, and I loved that car. Add in the "Rapid Transit System" adds in the car mags I read... Lets just say the Mopar Pentastar was my shining light.

I never hated Fords or "Shivies" , but you were supposed to rag on the guys who drove different iron. All part of the fun.

My 1st Baby was a '72 Monte Carlo with a big block, TH400, & a 12 bolt. I loved it to death, but couldn't tell them Ford or "Shivy" guys that. "It'll do for now, but it wishes it was a Mopar."

I always hated Jap cars, but Penny's got a 2010 Forester that runs great, and will go just about anyplace.

The only cars I have a dislike for is VWs. I never had one, it's just most people I know who have one are grade A, USDA approved jerks.
7mm

That Big 300 Ford straight six was a helluva truck engine.

Gunner

At a stockholder's meeting in the late '70's, the chairman of GM, during a discussion of the increased sales of imports, made the comment that GM was not concerned about improving the quality of their vehicles just because of the American perception that the imports were of higher quality. HE said that as long as the vehicles were impressive looking it didn't matter because Americans were not smart enough to care about QUALITY. that they only cared about looks! That was the head of GM at the time! I haven't bought one of their pieces of [bleep] since from GM! I'm not smart enough!

Yep. Put 192k on my 92 F150, with that engine, and sold it to an employee of mine. He left the company a few years later, with about 250k on it. The transmission had been rebuilt by then, but the engine was still good. 2wd, conventional cab F150.

Of course, the 04 I have now with the 5.4 engine gets about the same gas mileage, and is a much bigger & heavier 4x4 truck. a new Ecoboost has still more power, and gets maybe 2-3 mpg better.

Real curious about the long-term durability of the Ecoboosts.

My first pick up was an 84 GMC I bought in 89. Nice truck but I blew the transmission around 80k and the engine not long after. Nothing but Fords since.

I drive an 06 PSD that's been a beast and an 07 Expedition for hauling the chirruns. Wifey has an Excusrion with the v10. Love that boat.

I quit Fords years ago when I found out old man Ford had business dealings with Hitler during the war. That being said, I hate all vehicles. Necessary evil to me. Seems to be easier and cheaper to live in a Chevy world though. Cheap and plentiful parts. I'm talking pre-1990. Wouldn't own anything newer than that of any make.

Never had any real problems with a couple of 70's Jeep CJ's, a Cherokee, Ford and Chevy trucks, a couple of Suburbans, a Honda, a Mazda and a Nissan. That said I am eyeballing a Toyota for my next truck.

That is cool

In the late '70's I worked at a GM plant for a while. I was a journeyman tool and die maker. That's a position where you get to see just how well an outfit does or doesn't do things. Their perception of precision and QC was a joke. If too many parts were being produced out of tolerance, the typical response was to loosen up the tolerances rather than improve the tooling or processes.
We cast aluminum parts of all kinds for all the big three US auto makers. I learned that they all make parts for each other.
They all draw from the same pool of unionized labor, the same pool of (largely in-house educated) engineering "talent", and all subscribe to the same smoke-and-mirrors-over-substance philosophy of marketing.
Favoring one of the "Big Three" over another has about the same rational basis as favoring one of the big pro sports teams over another...it's all marketing.

It did not happen on purpose but seeing this thread I noticed that we are fairly diversified here,'91 Ford Ranger, '10 Dodge half ton 4x4, '02 GMC 3500 Duramax/Allison, and a gas sipping '01 Camry. All of these models work very well! We even have both John Deere and New Holland stuff down at the barn. The only thing we own multiples of is John Deere...

My BIL, is an employee of one of GM's subsidiaries. He told me that their biggest engineering challenge (and expense) was making sure that the vehicles lasted long enough to make it past warranty but not TOO long, as they need to sell more. I suspect they all do it, as knowbody makes a really durable vehicle that is easy to repair any more. You know...like a Snapper mower.

LOL... I have felt the same way about Honda owners.. My experiences with 'em for 5 years at a Honda dealership showed me that, at least in the Twin Cities area, the buyers were mostly flaming liberals and gays..

Up here in the high country, all of the flaming liberals and gays have Fords.

I find this super interesting and pretty much tells the whole story.

I like both Ford and Chevrolet.

I have owned Corvettes and driven a Caprice 200,000 miles.

My favorite car all time was the new 1969 Ford XL convertible I ordered new. It had the famous 429, air, and room and power.

A real king of the road.

looks gay

+1, looks like something Liberace would drive.

From my years of off and on again work in auto factories.
I've worked in Ford, Gm, Chrysler, VW, Honda, Jeep, Toyota and Nissan factories in both the US and Canada.

I spent yesterday and Monday at Toyota/San Antonio.

There is no comparison, the Japanese just simply do it better.
A lot of things I have been trained to see, the average person will never notice.

As a "low life contractor" the full time workers in said plants go about their regular routines. They pay us no mind at all.

If you saw what goes on you would never buy from the US big three.

I bought my first ever Dodge truck last October. It drives great, it rides great, it gets ok mileage. The build quality is a joke.

The paint and clear coat have over 150 large, visible inclusions.
The bed had 12 visible holes in the floor welds, you can see the ground.

The dash has several spots were the mold is defective and a half arsed attempt was made to repair to fix the mold.

The body parts are as mis-aligned as they were in the 70's/80's.

We own around 20 Gm trucks. From 1/2 ton to 1 ton, gas engines to Duramaxes.

The Allison/ Isuzu combo works ok. ALL, I MEAN ALL! Are royal pains for everything else. Every 1 has issues with windows instrument clusters, dash boards crack in two, they blow light bulbs constantly, door gaskets leak................

Talk about waste! When I was working third shift I had to go in Sunday night (double time) and hang around eight hours, just to be able to change the weekly date stamps on the brake drum dies (the only ones that got changed weekly.) This was a twenty minute job that consisted of taking a center punch and a ball peen hammer and going down the line of die casting machines that were making brake drums and center punching a little mark in that month. Anyone could have done it, but it had to be done by a die maker because it was die work. For some reason they couldn't ask one of the day shift guys to come in a half-hour early and do it.

One night I was recutting a die cavity on a rotary head milling machine. A roll pin that acted as part of the linkage for the table feed broke. I went over to my tool box, got the right size punch and a hammer and a new roll pin and started driving out the broken roll pin. Somebody saw me, and the next thing you know, the shop steward is right there. "What are you doing?" "Replacing this roll pin." "No you're not, that's a machine repairman's job." Long story short, the job was assigned to the machine repairman who was assigned to the tool room. He was working on something else, twenty feet away. He wasn't allowed to stop what he was doing to come over and do my job until he was done with the one he was working on. I wasn't allowed to do anything else. I spent three and a half hours just waiting. Honestly, the union types delighted in how much they were screwing the company (and ultimately the customer) all the time.

We made aluminum intake and exhaust manifolds in that plant. This was a time of big interest in emission control and mileage (gotta STAY AHEAD of the Japanese, was the official company song!) Instead of doing what the Japanese did, which was design engines from the ground up to meet the requirements, they were always trying to rework what they had (remember the Oldsmobile diesel and the Cadillac 8-6-4 engines?) When they started getting complaints from the field out to the shop floor would come the "engineers" with their modeling clay and chalkboard chalk. They'd squat around a sectioned manifold, build it up here, thin it out there, to change the flow through it, and sometimes decide to put in a port of some kind for a hoses or some sort of valving. When they were happy they'd leave their marked up manifold pieces for us and we'd begin changing all the molds that made that particular manifold until they were all done. There was no stopping production. The old ones (that were causing problems) and the new ones, all went right out to the assembly plants together, with the hope that the complaints would stop.

Did I mention the girl they hired as a tool designer because 1. they needed to boost the number of women on the payroll and 2. she had a degree in commercial art, so she should be able to draw?

I could go on and on. I couldn't take it. The money kept me there until I got laid off (with the ebb and flow of the auto industry) but once I got back to a real tool room I never looked back.