Thread: Vega smoke bomb

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Hey, you want conversation? I bought a '73 Vega wagon NEW for about $2600 and paid it off with money from a summer job. I paid about $125 extra to get the "Rally Pack" which turned out to be a decal stripe on the side and a decal on the speedometer which allowed the needle to read killometers/hour as well as miles/hour. The wagon was a beautiful light blue and we liked the space but the rear windows were fixed and you could only roll down the door windows. At 17,000 miles I took the car back to the agency for routine service and had the oil changed; about 1000 miles later the oil light came on! It smoked from then on and "changed it's own oil! Since I had research contacts with Reynolds Metals which had a lab in Richmond I eventually learned that the aluminum engine was developed by them in Richmond, but they blamed GM workers for not doing the process correctly. It seems that the idea was that they added 17% (SiO2)x (glass powder) to the aluminum alloy, poured the block, machined the block AND THEN poured nitric acid down the bores to etch away the aluminum and leave a porous matrix on the cylinder walls so that "the pistons ride on glass". The only problem was that the porous matrix held oil so that on the firing part of the cycle the flame would burn the oil off the walls! That was a hot potato that my friends at Reynolds Metals did not want to talk about. It is true that concentrated nitric acid will react with aluminum to form a hard oxide surface so wear properties were reasonable but apparently the problem of oil in the surface of the walls could not be wiped away by the rings even when new. Later I found out that GM "saved" $4 per hole by not installing steel sleeves as were in the little aluminum V8s. Actually that little four cylinder engine was pretty good and I knew at least one person who had steel sleeves installed and then the Vega was pretty good. It is amazing that the bean counters would "save" $16 by scrimping on the sleeves. Even then there is a long term corrosion problem with the galvanic effect of putting steel (Fe) into large surface contact with aluminum (Al), but that problem would not show up for a few years while the oil consumption set in very early in the life of the engine. That Reynolds lab has now closed and been absorbed by Alcoa but the lesson is to use steel sleeves in an aluminum block! If you still have a Vega that is running and smokes, the fix is to pull the engine and have the block sleeved and you can rebuild other things while you are there and end up with a nice little engine. In the good news/bad news department my wife was forced into a pole on a narrow street and my son hit the windshield when he was about 2 years old but the baby seat restrained him enough that he was OK. The car was totaled and we took an insurance settlement when the car was only about three years old.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

I had several Vegas, I also worked in a machine shop at the time. Yank the motors install 4 sleeve kits and they would run good, not use any oil and got 30 some miles to a gallon. Great little cars after they were sleeved.

Thanx for the info on the sleeving of the blocks,both of mine had steel sleeves didn't no how they got thier.I remember taking window tint in a spray can and tinting the back windows,then you scraped it off with a razor blade wala tinted windows.what about the rusting like to hear from some of you in the no snow states(IE)no road salt howed the bodys hold up.I always liked the coswerth vega looked fast and sporty.by the way who was coswerth is this like yenko,shelby etc.

I had always heard the Chevy replaced the engines with steel liner motors to all of the original buyers no matter what the miles were...Not sure if that's true because I didn't buy one new.. It was a good excuse to V8 them though.