Actually, my experience was the reverse, e.g. the simplicity of the AD engine
kept me from being stranded.
Here's the situation. It was several years ago in January. I was driving home from work at about 5 PM in my 53. It was getting dark, temperature was about 25, and it was starting to spit snow. I live 12 miles out in the country and there was no one around when I came to a stop sign. When I stopped, the engine died. Turned over, but would not start.
Well, I just hopped out of the truck and chanted the mantra that an old mechanic had taught me years earlier; "Fuel, fire, compression...fuel, fire, compression..."
Pulled the air cleaner and cranked the engine a bit and saw that we had fuel. I ignored the compression issue since I knew that compression was ok and even if one cylinder had blown, the old stovebolt 6 would have still started. To confirm that the problem was 'fire' I pulled a plug wire and using a tire iron, cranked the starter from under the hood. Sure enough, no spark. Tried a different plug and same thing. So, I just worked back from there and discovered a wire had broken off of one of the coil terminals. Took the wire, stripped it with my pocket knife, wrapped it around the terminal, and took a small piece of electrical tape off of one of the other bundles of wire to hold it in place. Ten minutes later, I was home.
Now, the kicker to this story was that two weeks later, I was driving home from work in our 91 Honda Accord. At almost the same place, the Honda died. Well, hopped out, chanted my mantra, took one look at the hoses, cables, computer modules, etc. under the hood and sat back and waited for AAA.
Bottom line, reliability is not the only factor to consider. Ease of diagnosis and ease of repair can sometimes be better than reliability when it comes to being stranded.
