The Car Thread

[Captain Goddammit]

There were two completely separate 318s, first the old "Polysphere" which wasn't same as either the more common small-block 318 or the wedge-head big-block 383. They are easy to identify by their scalloped-looking valve covers.
The 273, 318 and 360 were same engine family, the 383 was a big-block in same family as the 440.

[Thecatman]

Thank you for clearing that up for me!
I remember when I just got my license my folks had a 1971 Plymouth Fury III four door with a 383, 4 barrel carb and a three speed automatic. That car was a screamer. 0-60 in 8 seconds isn't NASCAR fast but it hauled ass.


This isn't it. It was more of a tan with a black vynle roof.
My sister totaled it in 1980. She swerved to avoid a car and turned right, up a curb and into fire hydrant on Telegraph Rd near LA.

[Tiahaar]

Wow great thread! Read the whole thing last night, love the pics and the 4x4 vs 2x4 banter (trumped by the 6x6) and even a mention from Elliot of my trusty old truck, which in fact is a twin of the Ramcharger, a Plymouth badged 1974 Trailduster full-time gas guzzling 4x4...will put up a photo of its beatup self soon. So far I've owned 2 autos, 2 motorcycles, and 2 busses (along with one small speedboat, and dozens of bicycles )

[Captain Goddammit]

Ha... right about that time in history, I was riding with my just-licensed older sister in an old VW camper bus (since this is The Car Thread I'll be specific and say it was a '68 Westfalia) and she made a lane change without looking - and ran a cop off the road!!!
Of course he recovered and pulled her over... it was her lucky day, the cop was nice, he saw that she was an inexperienced young girl who'd made a dumb mistake and let her go. I remember him saying "You're lucky it WAS me next to you, I was paying attention and was able to avoid the crash!"
He was probably right.

[ygmir]

one of my most unique pickups, was a 71 Chevy 3/4 ton (last year of the sloped hood, but had front disk breaks), it had an LT1 engine (350) a 4 speed manual, and a 3 speed Brownie behind (u,d,o), and was 4 wheel drive......it was pretty loud, too........so got funny looks since I could easily shift twice in reverse, and if I used hi/low, shift 3 times.

[name redacted]

gyre wrote:Nothing unusual.
Just good design.
1.3 litre Fiat tuned to hit peak efficiency at high rpm, fine tuned with the distributor advance, 9.5 compression down from normal due to smog years, and milder cam.
Better mileage if I had changed to a stock euro cam.
Typical mileage was 35-40 mpg on premium on the highway, days of real leaded premium, without the ethanol gas tax which loses about 35% for most cars.
20-25 mpg in town if I was hammering it.

I get 25 mpg with the 408ci, but so do many other people.
12.5 compression, mild cam, 3.25 rear end, extremely aero daytona body.
Mileage probably doesn't vary between 55 and 100 mph.

Check out the hypermiler forums for the really shocking claims.
I got 26 mpg with a full size van once in the mountains, four speed manual overdrive, 318.
That probably depends a lot on wind, but it always did well.

Mileage runs in the fifties used to routinely break 50 mpg using all the tricks.

I can't beat 25 mpg in my volvo or ranger.
My ranger should get 36, but with ethanol and age, may not be possible.
The volvo is compression limited in those years and high drag.


Nameredacted said:
Im curious about your statement about fuel consumption not varying between 55 and 100 mph. Can you support this? Higher speeds require more work. More work requires more energy. Without getting into the formulas, basically if you double your speed, you will need to more than double your horsepower. It is not a linear increase.

NR I have to disagree with "need to double your horsepower". Higher speeds do not require -much if any- more work. The work is in reaching that speed and in overcoming any additional friction losses. Additional friction could come from increased turbulence or possibly a hotter engine. You do not need to increase your horspower to maintain a speed. This is how the car companies can advertise gas mileage that no one else can get. Take it sllllloooowwwlllyyy to 55 on a smooth road with overinflated tires and drive at one speed for 10? hours and your average mileage will be great.

You have clearly never attempted to attain high speeds in a car.

Power to overcome air drag =FA x CD x 0.00256 x mph cubed/375


The cube of the top speed is related to the coefficient of drag (CD), and so altering your CD from a typical 0.45 to a more sporty 0.30 (a reduction of 30%) only results in a 12% increase in top speed. 100 mph to 112 mph.

This is a noticeable gain for sure. But to double your speed youre gonna eventually increase your power. Volkswagen, the makers of the 1100 hp Bugatti Veyron realized this to attain their 220 mph top speed.

A better example is a Mitsubishi 3000 gt vr4. This car has 320 horsepower, and can reach 160 mph in 5th gear at 6000 rpm, with 1000 rpms to go before redline, and a whole unused 6th gear. (this particular car is power deficient rather than drag deficient, so it is a great example for our formula)

If you apply the above formula, it would take around 625 horsepower to reach 200 mph.

[name redacted]

Hey Elliot...

Sure thats a 63 biscayne? Sure looks like a 64. ...

Well, I called it the Belchfire 500.
But you had to make me go thru a whole file cabinet drawer, didn't you. Yes, it was a 1964. And I paid $425 for it, not $300. Considering I bought it on 02 November 1987, I figured I remembered closely enough. I will now commit hara-kiri for my grievous errors.

No offense intended, Name Redacted. It just seemed too trivial to look up. But I've worked with serious car buffs as an auto journalist, so I ought to know it does matter to those who are into it.

Carry on!

Oh Elliot, I am sorry to have made you go through that effort. But your right, Im a car fanatic and the devil is in the details!

[Elliot]

Some years ago, I spent a week on the Bonneville Salt Flats with friends who were trying to break a record in the Gasoline Lakester class. They were shooting for something like 254 MPH. Red hot Chevy V8 around 410 CID, sewer-drain racing fuel injection, essentially a Sprint Car engine, something like 700 HP on gasoline.

They got up around 230 MPH, then seemed to run out of steam. They did know their way around an engine, and they kept increasing the power -- at the expense of reliability. Hardly any increase in speed. A brick wall.

Near the end of the week they finally said "Heck with it, we are going to make 254 or blow this engine to smithereens trying". So they switched from the Gasoline Lakester class to Fuel Lakester. That means they replaced the gasoline with methanol, and added something like 20% nitromethane. This constitutes a huge increase in power -- something like 800 or 850 HP now.

Brick wall. Maybe 240 MPH -- I don't remember all the numbers. They concluded they would need 1,000 to 1,100 HP to top 254 MPH. A lousy 15 MPH more.

[Elliot]

No worries, Name Redacted. I enjoyed the nostalgia trip.

[Tiahaar]

Here we go, the '74 Plymouth Trailduster with 360 and 4speed manual. The differential on these is Hi-lock=Hi=N=Lo=Lo-lock. I was very proud of myself for installing a new clutch and transfer case chain all alone last year. As in Ranger's example I've had to winch it out of a roadside pulloff where the two right-side tires got mired down (couldn't quite get the use-the-brake trick to work...and I'm a farm kid so used to do that a lot on the tractors) and also pulled coworkers out of mudholes that I had no problems with and where their pickups got buried. Its a good solid truck, lotsa miles and still does good work for me. Those hobie hulls on the roof are for a Kinetic Sculpture Race project...with the race in Ventura this Saturday Oct 19th! (Elliot will have some krazy creations there too )

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23693019@N ... otostream/

[Captain Goddammit]

One of my best friends had a really nice Plymouth Trailduster, a mid-80s model. His girlfriend somehow got into a one-car accident with it, rolled it and severely messed it all up. He got an earlier model Dodge Ramcharger and swapped everything into it. The dash, wiring harness, entire drivetrain, interior... it was a pretty big undertaking. It ended up being a nice rig.
He did something I thought was brilliant; he had the removable hardtop sprayed inside and out with truck bed liner stuff. It looked great and he didn't have to worry about scratching it anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I should do that with my Miata hardtop.

[MikeGyver]

One of my best friends had a really nice Plymouth Trailduster, a mid-80s model. His girlfriend somehow got into a one-car accident with it, rolled it and severely messed it all up. He got an earlier model Dodge Ramcharger and swapped everything into it. The dash, wiring harness, entire drivetrain, interior... it was a pretty big undertaking. It ended up being a nice rig.
He did something I thought was brilliant; he had the removable hardtop sprayed inside and out with truck bed liner stuff. It looked great and he didn't have to worry about scratching it anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I should do that with my Miata hardtop.

Comes in colors and without the grit now, so its kind of a no brainer for stuff like that. If I don't end out selling the jeep i'm thinking about painting most of it with that stuff.

On a great note, my Jeep ran yesterday for the first time in supposedly 6 years (ran last week but had to force feed fuel to the carb). But dark came too quickly and I didn't want to test drive it in the dark so its only went back and forth in the driveway to put it in a better position than gravity off the trailer allowed. No major smoke, nothing out the exhaust, no abnormal noises = Happy Mike. Lotsa burn off though, weeds and rat shit sitting on the exhaust manifold and block.

[Savannah]

Yow! Working Jeep.

If I bought a car tomorrow, that's what I'd get. Or some crazy old Land Rover.

[Thecatman]

a 4 speed manual, and a 3 speed Brownie behind

Bet that thing would pull the Queen Mary off a sand bar.
When I first got into truck driving around 1980, I drove a transfer dump in the LA area. It had an 8V71NT Detroit with a 5x4 brownie.
Not many of the younger generation truck drivers know what a twin stick transmission is, let alone how to drive one.

[Elliot]

Thecatman, these days the (so called) long haul drivers have automated transmissions. No clutch pedal, even.

[Bin Noddin]

Uhhhhh, OK
MY first car was a dark blue 1976 Datsun B210 hatchback, 4-speed manual transmission, 44 mpg on highway, but it HATED climbing hills. Could take it off the road like a Jeep. Rusted all to hell.
There!! nyaaah nyaaah nyaaah!

[Thecatman]

long haul drivers have automated transmissions. No clutch pedal, even.

Once again, I could be wrong but I belive, what I know as an autoshit transmission in OTR trucks, do have a clutch pedal. Maybe MyLarry or TomServo can chime in.
I shoudn't talk becauseI probably couldn't drive an autoshift.
A neighbor across the street from us, a recently retired owner-operator had a Volvo with that kind of tranny. He gave it up about four years ago for a Volvo with an 18speed.
The transfer dump I drove in 1980 was a 1973 International.

[Elliot]

There are many variations of automated trannies. Only some of them have automated clutch also.
An 18 speed is great if you are doing logging or otherwise actually need to split your Low Range gears. On the road I like 13 speeds.
But what I like most, is that I don't have to live on the road like a gypsy with his ass on fire, anymore. Medical disability has that one silver lining.

[MikeGyver]

Ive watched a twin stick be driven. But never driven a truck myself, even though I would like to learn.

[AntiM]

MyLarry is on the road somewhere between SC and PA, but I can ask him when he calls. I do know his heavy haul Volvo was a 13 speed. I don't recall a clutch, but that doesn't mean there wan't one. He is in a brand new Peterbuilt now, which I haven't seen yet, but I think it is an 18.

Yeah, he normally drives regionally and is home once or twice a week, but he had a student. Student drivers need more miles than what a regional driver does, plus the upgrade was in GA. So over the road he went. He should be working back this way now. Don't know how long that will last, the company needs more trainers, so he may pick someone up in IL. Larry is one of the non-smoking trainers, so that narrows who goes with him.

[Thecatman]

MyLarry is on the road somewhere between SC and PA,

Advise him to beware of low overpasses in the NE states.

[Captain Goddammit]

My crane truck has an 18-speed, and I like it. Most of the time you don't need to split the low range gears, but every now and then, on some steep incline it's handy. I've got a freshly built 430 horse Detroit Series 60 that has enough torque that I often skip the whole low range gears anyway - just because all those extra gears are there doesn't mean you have to use them, but it's nice to have that option. You're not giving anything up.

I had a few Peterbilts that had transmissions that only split the low range gears and not the high ones. That was just stupid.

[ygmir]

splitting is so nice with a diesel.
Frankencamper has an Allison 4 spd. auto......and it's surprisingly good, using the torque converter sort of like splitting, but still........3rd over over would be nice....

[MikeGyver]

I hate tire kickers. Guy came to look at the TR7 today, seemed interested then told me he had two other cars to look at then decide. When I asked what else he said they were both datsun Z's (forgot which number) Keepin fingers crossed, but its nice when they give at least an "ill call you"

I know any time I go look at a car I get there with money in hand and a trailer. But i'm not your average car buyer.

[Captain Goddammit]

It sucks at your your end but you really can't fault a guy for looking around.

[MikeGyver]

It sucks at your your end but you really can't fault a guy for looking around.

not at all. and Like I said, he seemed interested and liked that I had allt he stock stuff left, just never gave an indication of coming back or not. Gonna give him a few days to call again then repost the ad.

[tatonka]

[Captain Goddammit]

Lol that settles it!

[ygmir]

so that's the secret? dang...........

[tatonka]