a scince guestion

[68shorty]

HEY I have question what do you think of fords its for my scince fare. My topic is what is more reliable chevy or ford of course it will be chevy. But my scince teacher wonts me to provit to him so i am gowing to take the ifrmashon you gis give me and my other imformashon and put them to gever and prov it to him.

thanck you Ben

[Blue68]

What grade are you in? What is the scientific premise you are working towards? Just looking for data to substantiate a hypothesis?

I'd think about taking a poll. Granted this is not the most reliable bunch to be asking the question of.

[Gordo]

Wrenching my way from the 60's on up I've seemed to find it always takes me a little longer to repair F**ds than it does a GM product. It seems to me there were always more brackets, bolts, switches. solenoids and crap in the way even doing a simple water pump job. For a while Ford hung every possible accessory off of the water pump bolts. Another example, aligning a torque converter to the flex plate when doing an engine or trans install always took a little longer with F**ds than GM. That's my $.02.

[jostrans68]

Ben is Wes's son a very bright young man who will soon have a truck of his own going. Ben check the web and see if you can find any stats on how many old chevys still around as compared to Fords. have fun and good Luck Jack

[Jesse 67 c-10]

Hehehe, sounds like an interesting project, could be hard though, or you might get lucky and have a science teacher like I had in high school, he Hated fords! when teaching us about corrosion, the actual name of the topic was "why fords rust" it was great!
I'd say run a poll on here, it'll be biased but it looks good in a report! official stats show you did reaserch, Good luck!
Jesse

[Eddie H.]

That sounds like an interesting project, Ben.

I've been a Ford Dealership mechanic for the past 15 years or so.
Personally, I think they're junk. I've determined that you can't actually fix one of em, the best that you can do is try and prolong the interval between failures. Since I own 3 GMC's, a Chrysler and a Nissan, people ask me why I work at a Ford dealership. My standard reply is that a succesful doctor needs to be where the sickest patients are.

One way to prove your theory is to research the number of recalls on Fords compared to other makes. After all, we all know that Ford stands for FACTORY ORDERED RECALLS DAILY

[Crank]

Eddie. You've got a very well pointed out point about the doctor! I never really looked at it like that before. But still working on furds has gotta be the pits day in day out! Good thing you got something from the general. And Shorty: I'd be glad to help you with that little project with the teacher.
Brandon

[DanoDMano]

Too funny Eddie!!!

I work in an environment full of powerstrokers, and your post will be really good AMMO!!!!!!

[TERRYP]

Think you better spend some more time in spelling and grammar class before you tackle 'scince'.

[Woody]

TRy looking up old Consumer Report Magazines for the reliability data on used cars. They have rated used cars for several years now so if you can find a source of old mags. or the data online somewhere that would be a good place to start. Also look at the the Repair labor books, these tell how much time is needed to do a repair (such as a waterpump) and compare time needed. Also you might note how easy you can swap parts on a chevy vs ford. Such as Engines, trannies, rear ends, ect. I know that with Fords most of the bellhousing bolt patterns were different between engine sizes. Makes for a nightmare trying to swap things around.
Good Luck !!

[68shorty]

woody we tried that but you have to sine up for it.

Ben

[XXL]

Originally posted by 68shorty
HEY I have question what do you think of fords its for my scince fare. My topic is what is more reliable chevy or ford of course it will be chevy. But my scince teacher wonts me to provit to him so i am gowing to take the ifrmashon you gis give me and my other imformashon and put them to gever and prov it to him.

thanck you Ben

JD Power has done all the work for you. Now all you need is some loot to buy the reports.

BTW, you probably want to frame your premise with a little less bias. You'll need to define reliability (is it total cost of ownership, down-time, raw number of repairs, mean time between repairs, and so on). Then, state your expected results. If your results don't come out like you thought/wanted, too bad. Don't try to skew the data or change your hypothesis. It's about proving OR disproving the hypothesis... not whether you guessed right in the first place. I judge a number of science fairs and can tell you from experience that there is NO value in having guessed correctly beforehand. The value is in collecting your data, analyzing it, and presenting your findings.

Good luck,

Kenneth

[crazy longhorn]

I have driven & repaired both Fords & Chevys....but dont tell any of these guys that i owned a Ford! The Chevys will alway be my favorite, but I have seen both be very dependable. Now when it come to repairs, I feel that the Chevys are far easier to work on , & parts will interchange from many different yrs. The Fords, as a couple guys have allready mentioned, have several different eng families & even swapping trannies can get pretty hairy if you dont know what fit what. Even the pulleys & brackets on the front of the eng changed from yr to yr on the fords, where the Chevys rans several yrs on the same stuff(easy swap). High perf parts for the fords were alway more costly, because of all the different eng families.....take a intake manifold for instance, the same aftermarket part that bolted to a 283 would fit a 400smallblock Chevy. You cant say that for the Fords.......more tooling, & you have higher costs. all in all, IMHO , I cant really say that one is more reliable than the other , But the cost of repairs, hp parts, time on repairs, ect. is for sure higher on the Fords......maybe thats why my 89 Ford ranger is runnin a sb Chev! Good luck man.....crazyL