Calgary's got another Newport...

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Hello from a classic car Nub.

Under a strong urging from my infinitely better half (the plot is similar to one presented here) – alone I would unlikely pull this kind of trigger – we acquired a 1978 Newport hardtop.
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400 cid with Lean Burn computer delete; red on red cloth, good set of bells and whistles for the model, either 21,000 or 121,000 km on the odo. Not having enough experience with these I cannot be certain, but tend to pick the second number.

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It was a BC and Alberta car that appears to be rarely driven in winter, if ever – no rust except for some red coating on the front subframe, rear drums, rear axle and such. Even modern cars with all the recent developments in rust protection start looking like this after 2 winters in the Salt belt.

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To match the overall insanity of buying a car same as my age to use it as a summertime daily driver, we decided to drive it back home from Vancouver to Calgary under its own power, with our ‘04 Dodge Ram serving as a back-up loaded with a large set of tools, cans of gas, oil, ATF, power steering and brake fluids, antifreeze; and Class 5 tow hitch.

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Happy to report that (probably because of all that gear and preparation, like it never rains when you have an umbrella) the trip went uneventfully, with the average speed for the whole route being a tick over 60 mph and fuel appetite hovering around 15 mpg. The big block had no problem pulling up the mountain passes and keeping up steady 70-75 mph with occasional bursts to 80-85.

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Now due for the Out of Province inspection, I would like to ask the fellow Calgarians here if they know of a worthy place to go to for this, where mechanics are more sapient that your average grease monkey, will not dent, leave greasy stains all over the interior and will not bend anything underneath mounting it on the lift.

The "corks and features" as one popular blogger likes to say, are to follow in the next couple of posts. In the past it was a regular at the Reynolds museum history road, so if anybody knows any details about the car and its past, please share.
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Stay tuned and thank you for all comments, advices and hat tips. It is my first real classic and one from the BFI era (Before Fuel Injection), so any useful information will be greatly appreciated.
 
Nice car!

Looks like the lower mileage.

Does the ATC II and the wipers work?
 
Didn't know Calgary was a 'port city! :-D Beautiful car, seriously.
 
Welcome.

I would wager after looking at the photos the miles accrued are more likely the 21K. It is too clean in the interior and under the hood to be otherwise, IMO. I hope you enjoy the car.
 
Very nice car. I love the color and it is loaded for a Newport. I'm sure you will have fun with it.
 
Thank you all for chiming in, so the saga continues here.
Bring it on down to the Mopar show at Capitol Hill on August 17.
We will be back from our travels the preceding day - if everything goes well then sure we will try to make it.
 
Wow, a great looking car! I suspect you will really enjoy cruising about this summer.
 
Thank you all for your kind words. So the story continues.
First, the fender tag. Some of the codes - W7R4, RR7, V1R - I could not desipher.

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It is certain that the car had been a garage queen and while much effort went into keeping the appearance nice, good drivability, roadworthiness and technical condition was of a secondary priority. The seller, a small one-man dealership in Vancouver suburbs, acquired the Newport 1.5 years ago from a local GM outlet that got the car as a trade-in and did not know what to do with it. If we are to believe him, he wanted to keep it and even invested into a new AC compressor with R134a conversion and in fixing the oil leaks (cam covers’ and gearbox pan gaskets), replaced the spark plugs and air filter. An interesting note, he kept the car at home, not on the lot. And that’s where we picked it from.

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The paint appears to be original everywhere – we went through the whole car with a paint thickness gage. I wonder what the factory spec should be for it, because from the numbers we got - 50-80 microns (2-3 thou in Imperial money) all over - it would seem that overzealous polishing rubbed much of the clear coat off.

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In comparison, our ’03 BMW 330Ci with 28k miles and all-original paint has almost twice the paint/clear coat thickness. Also of note, the gage sees the rear corner pieces as non-ferrous.


The interior is in wonderful shape and we so much love having colored trim (instead of modern monochromatic misery). Today it seems very strange that Chrysler would offer 6 ways of powered adjustments for the driver seat and reclining passenger backrest, but would insist on a fixed backrest for the driver.
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That said, the seat refuses to go fore or aft (but does all other gymnastics up and down) and I still need to dig into that. I also cannot think why they designed the seat attachment the way they did it – with rather thin and long threads open to elements and corrosion.

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The whole headliner panel is sagging in the centre, but the actual cloth is still attached to it. The same issue we observed on another Newport from 1978 that we test-drove in Edmonton (it is still up for sale I believe). I wonder if it is possible to fix just the panel, keeping the material original.

The steering wheel has a couple small cracks on it – we plan to put a period-looking perforated wrapper on it so this is not an issue.

Another age-related issue is the weather stripping succumbing to rot and allowing a good deal of wind noise inside. However, the car stayed watertight during couple of rain showers we drove through up in the Rockies.
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Answering NYV 1978’s question, the ATCII worked like a charm all way to Calgary – in general I liked its choice of flow direction and how it maintained the cabin climate, but would prefer the Plan B feature of manual fan speed selection in case the system brain goes nuts or craps out. This realization came when just a few miles from home all of a sudden the AC decided to retire in +80F heat. Images of multi-digit $$$ numbers started to flash in my brain. But funnily enough, when I started the car several days later, the AC kicked right in blowing cold, as if nothing happened.
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Of note, the system has been converted to R134a, for better or for worse.
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Ditto the wipers. The rain allowed them to demonstrate their “state of affairs” – they work well enough, hide into parking when you Off them. But the rubber is probably old and was cheap from the start (see the garage queen paragraph above) and that caused the judder when swiping left. Right move accomplishes their purpose all right and keeps the glass clean.

Wiper delay feature has a moody mind of its own, randomly deciding on the duration of delays regardless of the lever position between OFF and LOW. I wonder if it can be rectified by taking it apart and just cleaning the contacts?..
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The gearbox has zero slip maintains wonderfully smooth shifts – they happen almost imperceptibly, but it somehow forgot how to downshift. Reading about it, I would suspect the downshifting rod adjustment or excessive free play on the gearbox end, but while all my literature is still in transit, I can only guess. The ATF has been replaced with the filter, if we are to believe the seller.

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Whether the Lean Burn was deleted well or cack-handedly is open to discussion. But some ignition wiring looks suspicious even to my untrained eye. The engine starts on a button, hot or cold. Idle is fine with AC off but it stumbles somewhat fully warmed up with AC on. It pulls well and the torque was sufficient to maintain the speed of choice on the steepest grades on mountain passes – even without kick-down.


When we just picked the car, it developed severe detonation even at moderate acceleration. The seller said that he loaned the car to a friend to drive his daughter with her friends around for the prom event at school. And that friend filled it with ethanol-blended regular gas. The seller said he always used 94 because locally it is the only grade that is ethanol-free. Does not sound as a cause to me, considering that ethanol actually resists pinging. But we followed his advice and on departure fed the Newport with some 15 gallons of Chevron 94. Never heard any pinging anymore. My guess is that due to lots of short trips and idling some carbon build-up happened on the valves and inside the cylinders and that caused pinging. Hopefully our trip cleared its lungs a bit.
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The car tracks straight and for something built before the aerodynamics started to really influence the car shapes shows surprising disregard to strong side winds.

Straight tracking came even more of a surprise considering the whitewall tires of a brand that even Google cannot recognize (Commander All Season 235/75-15 M+S), installed a long time ago. They did not take the trip and the speeds too well, developing slight bulging on their sides.
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So now they have been delegated to the junkyard of history and new ones have been installed. And no, they are not whitewall Hankooks that everybody seem to be getting around here. I will post on them separately, after we drive on them for a bit to get a better feeling of them. While the car was in the air with wheels off I crawled around to see what was going on with the body there and snapped a few pics - that I will post in a separate message.
 
Sounds like a pretty solid car in great shape. One thing I would do is pull the plugs and look to see if there is carbon deposits on them. These cars were famous for valve stem seals failing. This would result in fouling of the plugs and carbon build up in the cylinders, end result could be the pinging you heard. Another indication. Is a puff of blue smoke on a cold start.
If things look good get yourself a can of carb out and run it through a hot engine then take it out for a hard run on the highway. You will be amazed at the change in performance if the engine is severely carboned up.
About the stumble with when the A/C is on a step up solenoid can be installed to increase idle speed whenever the A/C is on. That should help solve the problem.
 
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