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One of the best running cars we ever had was an old Duster, with a slant 6 engine....it looked like hell, with a smashed in trunk held together with a bungee cord....but that car was reliable all the time, almost never needed repairs, and took us everywhere..up to Mt. Rainier, up to Mt. St. Helens(before they put the good new road in),...back and forth to California all the time...it just never quit...

Then one day, after I dropped BigDom off at school, I needed the car, and was driving home...about 1/2 mile from home, the engine literally just shut off...luckily I was coming down a small incline, and there was no traffic infront of or behind me, and no oncoming traffic...

I just let the car coast down the hill, turned the steering wheel into our drive and coasted clear down the hill to our house....pulled in front of the garage, and stopped finally...there was billowing smoke coming out from under the hood....I just let it rest for an few hours, and went back out, and she sharted right away....

But we decided that it was time to say goodbye...I was going to call a junkyard to come and get it....just then there was a knock on my door, and there stood a young man, wanting to know if I wanted to sell that Duster, as he wanted the transmission out of it...I told him what had happened, and he was still willing to buy it....

And so the next day he came back with his truck and did buy the car...we went to the licensing burea to do the transaction and paper work, and then came back to our house....he got the Duster up on a sort of towing ramp, secured the car, and off they went...

As he pulled up the hill, just as that point, the bungee cord holding the trunk down, finally snapped...and off that truck went towing that beat up Duster, with the trunk flapping up and down...BigDom and I laughed that the flapping trunk door, was really the Duster waving good bye to us....

Hope you enjoyed that story of our Duster bidding us 'Adieu'

My previous car was an 89 Golf.
Volkswagen routes the throttle cable past the transmission in a roundabout way.
The transmission then knows what it's doing as well.

Well, I had gotten this car second hand, and even though the transmission was full of lube...
..the differential was not.
Seems it had a hole the size of a quarter in it, and it had no lube whatsoever.
I drove it 30,000 miles that way.
The only clue that something was wrong was that the throttle stuck on me once.
On a hill with a speed limit of 45MPH, a 15MPH left turn at the bottom.
Somehow I made the turn at 50 and accelerating. (God did it, I think.)
I found a pull off and set the car down.

I popped the hood and jiggled the throttle slightly, and then it never stuck again.

Odd.

Super reading you've given us today - especially the old Duster waving you good-bye. Those Chrysler slant sixes were dang near bullet-proof - even when they were sick, they were generally good enough to go.

Our family's first new car was a '63 Dodge with the 318 and push button auto tranny. My brother and I did our best to destroy that car - but to no avail. It was traded in, in great shape for, the '66 model. Those were some of Chrysler's finest years. imo

Cheers, and watch out for those auctions tonight. ;-)