H O R I Z O N

>Plymouth
Hmm. Never heard of that brand before.

that reminds me, I need to figure out what my vanity plate will be

It's a dead American badge. It used to be the middle-ground between Dodge and Chrysler.
The Horizon was developed by Chrysler and also rebadged by Simca and Talbot.

It's an old brand Chrysler kept around until the late 90s or so. Eventually (like a lot of GM and Chrysler brands) it became really pointless because all the cars were identical (more identical than GMs brands actually).

How should I prevent the paint from chipping further? Around the chip point it peels off pretty easily. I’d like to stop it from getting worse....

You should definitely wax the car at some point, but the chipping does complicate things a bit.

do you get a lot of looks while driving?
do you get bitches in it?
how many people ask you about it?
how fast can it go?
sorry for the dumb questions but its a nice car user good job

FUCK YEAH I HAD AN EARLIER ITERATION OF ONE OF THOSE BY A DIFFERENT NAME. TOP-TIER SHITBOX.

How much engine did it come with?

CL user did it. Good job, lad.

Don't do that, just let the car speak for itself.

Nice. My grandpa drove one of those from brand new to 250k miles. Sold it still running, was the most reliable car he ever had.

I've only had it for ~23 hours. Put about 20 miles on it so far. No weird looks yet, even when I was yanking on the starter motor belt in a gas station when it wouldn't start.

It can probably go 85. I got it up to 75 on a sorta flat highway when it was below freezing; and I'm up at 5000' too.

2.2L. Gets pretty low MPG, unfortunately. And $20 of fuel fills it to 80%!

aw, ok. But I already promised the /vr/doom people I would get it to say iddqd or something. That might be a bit much though, you have a point.

That seems to be the running theme. I've talked to three people who's parents/grandparents had one. Either it's the best car they've ever owned or a piece of crap that blows up after 30,000 miles

I didn't see the thread everyone else seems to be referring to

but judging by the snow peppered on the ground and the 5000' comment I'll assume you're in Colorado
I think I actually saw it on craigslist a couple of days ago

Good luck with the car I guess, I really don't understand why someone would drive such a miserable piece of shit deathtrap, I can't think of a single redeeming quality

pic related is the oldest shittiest car I've owned, if it wasn't 4WD and cool as shit I would have never bought it, under 100hp gets tiring after a while commuting 2 hrs a day through Denver

I was postan about it in a CL thread.
I'm a full time student so commuting isn't an issue.

As for redeeming qualities... You can adjust the side mirror from inside! And it has the original scissor jack. Plus the honk it makes is cute.

>honk
Does it have the tinny little meep meep :3

you won't think it's so cute when you cling on to life for a few seconds as the blood gushes from your cracked-open skull after Stacy hits you in her Toyota Sequoia at 25mph

but you do you bro

As long as I get rear-ended it's fine. The seats are really squishy :^)

what a pimp

at least most of the carb garbage got worked out by 87. Nice catch, user

I used to have an old Beetle and the horn was wearing out so it made more of a "shhhmeep" sound, plus the hood was kinda crinkled up from an old accident.
My friends used to joke that my car had a hair lip.

Re-checked your photo and saw that it only has one side mirror. I would have thought fed regulation required 2

not in 87 apparently. Fuel door doesn't lock either

Seatbelts for all passengers though!

Back in the day one was enough. I don't know how long that lasted for, but I do remember my first car with two felt baller, like I was in the big boy luxury club.

It was fairly common for cheap shitboxes to only have one side mirror into the 1990s. State regs usually say that a passenger car must have a driver's mirror and an unobstructed rearview mirror, or that your car must have all the mirrors it had from factory condition.
Feds don't really say shit about it.

Looks like a sweet little crapbox, nice catch user.

Keep her safe.

I will. Priorities are a new battery, new windshield, working door handles, and a complete brake job + new tires. Everything else can wait I suppose.

Holy shit it's gorgeous. I never thought I'd fall for 80's shitboxes but holy shit love em

I've been looking for an Omni/Horizon on CL at least once a week for 7 years and never gotten a single hit. The closest I ever got was doing a general search and under Auto Parts somebody was parting out a wrecked GLH.
Meanwhile my grandparents have had one sitting dead in their driveway for close to 20 years and refuse to sell it to me.

>gorgeous
the paint is pretty incredible yes, minus the small bits of flaking and rust. I uh, haven't shown any pictures of the left side for a reason - it's a bit smashed up. Nothing a new left passenger door won't fix. Also, the cassette headhunt is sort of falling apart and the leather seats need a good deep clean (any suggestions about how to do this?)

It does have its charm. Might take some better pics later

Get yourself a good looking headunit.
As far as cleaning leather goes, what do you mean by "needing a deep clean"?

there's a retired old dude near me with three broken Horizons in his backyard. I'm allowed to use them as parts cars, luckily.

Good luck finding one, they're pretty neat. Not many still on the road in 2018

they just have that sort of crusty, worn-leather feel to them, plus a bit of smoke-smell and a thin layer of grime. I suppose I should be glad they aren't worse, but I'm a slight clean-freak so it just seems unacceptabru to not give them some attention

There's special cleaning solutions out there for leather, the only thing to worry about is that loose stitch between the seats. Try to mend that quickly. Otherwise wow that's pretty fuckin clean for a mid 80s Chrysler.

wow, wiki says almost a million of these were made
wonder how many got clunkered by obammy

Lexol sells a cleaner/conditioner 2 pack for $15ish.

Most of them were scrapped long before that.

>
>Most of them were scrapped long before that.

This. Every L and K platform car I've seen has been a dilapidated, derelict shitheap on wheels.
The cleanest one I have ever been near was the Aries my Mom bought and flipped in a month back when I was 10 years old.

I might just replace the whole seat with one from a different Horizon. Wouldn't without it being the same exact style of seat though; I want to keep as much originality as possible. I'll have to check the parts cars.

You should find a donor seat and bring it to a couch store to be reupholstered for shits and giggles. Keep the original mothballed in shrinkrap.

The issue there is it's hard to find a REALLY clean seat in a scrapyard or something like that, and then to get one the same color/material

Actually now that I think about it, you could use a curved mattress needle to do some magic on that tear.

as I mentioned above, there are three of these things in the backyard of an old fart near me. He'll let me use em as parts cars. One is the same color; I might use it to replace the left passenger door with a non smashed one. The same goes for the seat, depending on how good condition the three junker Horizons are.

>tear
I believe that's just how the seat fabric is layered; not a tear. I'll go double check though.

It does need new liner in the back and on the ceiling. Redoing the celling could be annoying - the backing material is literal cardboard tacked onto the metal roof.

Yeah you'd probably have to strip the roof down to redo it properly. I remember seeing a few cars of that era where they just sort of tacked some new fabric or covering over the old and the results were not always that great. Certainly not as clean as what you've got going on.

Well you will be fine as long as you have parts cars. I kinda wish I had bought something with lots of character like your car, but my car is slowly endearing itself to me. The horn sounds like a fucking train horn though, I scared the shit out of a few people with it.

behold: the "asbestos" as my friend calls it. It's cardboard. I hope.

forgot pic

Yo. Word of advice: if you've never had to take an interior apart get read for fun times and take it slow even though you just wish it could be over already. Sometimes you have to take everything apart just to get some stupid thing off, and then you just hate it and wish you could slap it back together with elmer's glue or something.

I'm so glad my old Civic just has a padded vinyl headliner. I don't understand why every car ever doesn't do the same, it never falls apart.

>not wanting 15 year old dust to fall out of your nice fabric liner if you touch it
>not finally understanding why it smells like 15 year old ancient foam rubber that gives grandma emphazema

Ungodly clean, take good care of it user.

Also don't forget to email Doug DeMuro and ask him to film a video with it.

Doug is biased towards cleaner, more presentable shitboxes.

Asbestos was banned in the US market in the late 70s. That's probably some variety of "rockwool" which is a spun or drawn ceramic fiber.
If it's completely crumbling there's lots of aftermarket insulation options.

My last car, a 2001 Monte Carlo (truly dreadful) had a rotting cloth on foam headliner.

Even if I can "stabilize' the interior I'd be happy. These things really don't last forever, and I think that you'd all agree that a running Horizon is a pretty unique car to have. Would hate to have to scrap it if the engine blows up, after putting in a lot of aesthetic work.

wish I had better pics, it looks totally different in person.

In college my buddy had a Ford LTD with a headliner that was held up by Staples.
Every time it started to sag somewhere new we put another staple in it.

>and then the staples start to sag
>gotta get a bigger stapler

Pretty much.
We called it the Juggernaut, it was a fucking heap but it just kept going.
This was an actual verbal exchange he had with a lube tech once.
>Your car is leaking.
>Leaking what?
>Pretty much everything.
I spit up my waiting room coffee a little bit.

I want to say off the top of my head that I can think of a product that would harden the cardboard or whatever it is against sagging. Something easy. Like maybe you could spray a few coats on at most.

But I'm thinking you'd have to step it all the way up to brushing some epoxy on like the kind you'd use for vinyl glass work. Urethane or something I'm thinking would get too heavy by the time it had enough rigidity. Maybe an interesting question for the interior / restoration crowd.

My father had one as a teen. Purple, and it went through 5 teenage drivers and over a decade of Ohio winters before the youngest totaled it

* fiberglass
oops

Or even maybe some dilute wood glue? PCA into a paper fiber would hold up, amirite? It's pliant but rigid.

* PVA
derp too late at night

it does have a small power steering leak which I should get to, thanks for reminding me.

one benefit is that all of the weatherstripping is THICK as hell. It's like super-heavy-duty gauge rubber. None of it is even remotely peeling off.

oh man, purple would be nice

Speaking of super-heavy-duty rubber, if you ever need to just glue almost anything back on or seal it or whatever, I cannot recommend GE Silicone II caulk highly enough. It's pretty helpless against polyethylene (PE) like almost anything else is, but otherwise super solid and lasts fiveever.

Goodnight Veeky Forums, thanks for all of the positive words. This is my first car, but I promise I won’t thrash it around. I’ll try to keep it putting along as long as I can.

Godspeed, Horizonman

fucking debbie downer

Does anyone know what alternative tire sizes would work on it? I can’t find many 165 r13 sets online.

Finally new shitbox pics on Veeky Forums
all are saved

hey look a fellow swift poster

ah, I found some. Will call a shop tomorrow; the current set is basically bald.

will hopefully take better pics tomorrow when it's not freezing outside.

>not a GLH

Go find a decent, cheap GLH. then talk to him.

I for one WELCOME the Chronicles of Horizon™.

>scrap it if the engine blows up
hell no
keep swapping in new engines for so long as the chassis has not disappeared from rust
too many car body's go to waste because of shitty engines or poor owners
parking it under a tree or any kind of vague shelter is better than taking it to the scrap yard

I think I'm with this. Even if that car isn't some perfect god machine, I'd keep it as a project if something happened to the powertrain. Surpass the GLH!

well the first step is replacing the windshield. I just really hope the Haynes manual I ordered tells me how to in detail, because I have literally no clue. I'll try to stick the cracked glass back into the donor car to keep the insides dry incase I ever need more parts from it at least.

>if something happened to the powertrain.
fuck make it horse drawn if you have to
even as a rolling shells are a good place to hang out and use as a green house
>tfw waiting on more engine parts
>fixing leaks
>un denting bumpers and panels
>FUCKING RARE TAIL LAMP
strange enough all the electrics work flawlessly

na but all the smaller tire sizes used in old cars are a pita to replace or find alternate tires for
esp if you want to keep the speedo within about 3% accurate
(circumference on the right)

eg
145/80-13 1765
155/75-13 1765
165/70-13 1765
185/35-17 1765
205/50-14 1765

185/55-14 1758
255/40-14 1758

185/60-13 1733
245/40-14 1733

155/70-13 1721
175/55-14 1721

175/65-13 1752
225/45-14 1752

175/50-13 1589
175/60-13 1696
165/65-13 1708
195/55-13 1708
185/45-15 1718
185/60-13 1733
165/60-14 1740
255/35-15 1755
165/55-15 1768
195/60-13 1771
165/65-14 1790
215/50-14 1796
185/60-14 1815
175/65-14 1834
185/55-15 1837

205/55-14 1827
225/50-14 1827

Sounds like a plan man. Remember to hop into threads like /CCG/ if you need advice. Folks are always willing to help around here.

Shit box thread?

>bought from some fat teenager for 200 Canadian
>"just needs a engine rebuild bro"
>rough body, completely beaten on, no major dents though.
>ended up needing a new everything
>tires, brakes, tie rods, clutch, shocks,
>engine was burning a quart of oil per day, low compression
>shit a valve on the highway
>completely rebuilt engine, had to bore out block, new pistons bearings, head, oil pump, timing belt etc
>caliper failed on the highway tonight, ripping apart right now
>hasn't cost me more than $2000 total cost due to turbo cheap parts from rockauto

Its been a bad purchase but I love this turd. Tons of personality and almost as fun to drive as my 2017 WRX.

Forgot pic

There may be more tires that accommodate a larger rim size. I know it's popular for Civic owners to switch to 15 inch wheels.

ok, about the windshield business. I can't find any replacement seals online. How risky is it to use generic windshield gaskets?

3 cyl or 4 cyl?

Before going for generic moulding, check windshield gaskets for 87 Dodge Omni, literally the exact same part

no dice. I already did searches for both

only found some door weatherstripping. Nothing for the windshield

prolly 3

Check Rock Auto?

I can't remember which one it was, but ferrari sold one if their cars in the states with only one mirror in the 80s.

unless I'm looking incorrectly, I still can't find any. It's a pretty thick piece of rubber.

Yeah I just looked as well and I didn't find it, you're probably gonna have to go with moulding, pretty sure a glass shop would have to as well unless a Dodge dealership parts department could get it, problem is you're gonna pay dealer price

Almost bought one of these as my first car a few years ago. Ended up getting a shittier ford tempo instead. Wish I would've just gone with the horizon, at least I would've gotten decent gas mileage. Hopefully that thing isn't nearly as miserable to drive as my tempo was

well it's quite slow, and it gets 20mpg, maybe. But it feels fast, whenever you're not going uphill, and the steering is really light

suspension is nonexistent for the most part