The Car Thread

[mgb327]

Yes Elliot, it did breath well, but I put a mild cam in...forget the degrees now. I would get it rolling and drop it in third. Throttle open, and quit when I got scared. I didn't do air dams at first and got a "little light" around 130, freaked me out a bit. Big, tight solid front dam made it sticky over 100. One 4th of July night I was out on a road I know well, no driveways, straight, not "deer season", all was good. 2AM...I was nearing 132 and something passed me, right out of the blue, fair and square. Never saw it coming....a Toyota pickup. WTF?! Never could figure that one out. Musta had a V-8!

[Captain Goddammit]

Wow that's awesome, I love "sleepers"!

[Elliot]

People with enough money can put any amount of HP in any vehicle. I've seen a few "nuclear" sleepers in my auto journalist job. So don't feel bad about having been passed by a "truck"!

[Captain Goddammit]

I took the car test, it was fun. Got a 96%. (I missed two hood ornament questions)

[Elliot]

81%. Pathetic, I know.

[atomicray]

I am not surprised...I am not a car guy, I am not that particularly old, and I clearly am not up on my antique vehicles...

38%

Only time a 38 is good is if the other guy gets a 37 lol

[ygmir]

agree on the Carter AFB's.......I'd change my old v8's to them as soon as any Holley or Quadraflush went bad.....pretty simple and totally rebuildable. I kept a "strip kit" of jets for fine tuning.
My only real complaints way back was with carbs on Jeeps, you could climb steep enough to either flood or starve the engine, it was always a challenge.

[Elliot]

I took the car test, it was fun. Got a 96%. (I missed two hood ornament questions)

Oh mon Kapitan! The very visage of Conquistador Senor Hernando de Soto is on the DeSoto ornament. Dodge still uses the rams horns to this day. You OWN that Chevy ornament - or the year next to it.

Hey, I just feel good today and want to razz somebody.

What I really fouled up were the Kaiser and Willys and Henry J. By the way, Kaiser and Henry J were the same man -- Henry Kaiser, the ship builder. He also founded the Kaiser Medical network. For an industrial tycoon, he was very much a Good Guy.
Lots of fun stuff to learn from automotive history!

[Captain Goddammit]

Oh I didn't screw up on the '56 Chevy hood ornament!!
It was I think Lincoln and Desoto I mixed up, not sure now. Oh well.
Old American cars just happens to be my best subject. I'd flunk anything else.

I yanked the transmission out of my '55 Bel Air early this summer to replace the flywheel and starter; it's always sounded HORRIBLE no matter how I shim it. If you watch my YouTube I posted of a little throttle stomp around the neighborhood in it, you'll hear it. I decided to cut off the ancient, hang-too-low headers and put on block huggers and redo the battery wiring, maybe even move it back out of the trunk, so once and for all the goddamm thing will start like it should.
But it's sitting in the garage on 4 jack stands... I got side tracked by the quite extensive Land Yacht rebuild, much more involved than I figured. I never drive the thing anyway.
That car test thing has me thinking about getting it all bolted back together.
It's rainy season in the Pacific Northwest and I can't take it outside until spring, but I'd just like to go fire it up!

By the way, it has an early Corvette dual-quad intake on it and I swapped the old WCFBs for a set of AFBs. I also swapped the Q-jet on the Chevy dually I drive to BRC with an AFB and brought a rebuild kit just in case. I love the quadrajet, I think it's the best carb ever, but fuck if I can ever make one work right again after they wear out! Anyone who pays attention at all can fix an AFB.

[Box Burner]

My score was 52% (25 right out of 48). Pretty good for someone who never really liked cars. I was much more interested in rockets, planes and tanks.

I did get all of the hood ornaments right. The dodge was too obvious in light of the publicity of their trucks. Hernando de Soto was a conquistador so that one was easy too.

There was only a few that I actually knew. The Chevys were easy. The lead guitar player in my band Liked them. The fist working car he had was a 57 chevy. It did not run when he got it and after he fixed it, it ran, but only went backwards. He drove it around like that all summer. It was pretty amazing he never got arrested.

[name redacted]

96% here. Im not much of a mopar guy, so those were the ones I missed.

Building a 53 Buick Roadmaster convertible at the moment. Been a 14 month build, and its not done yet. But in my defense, it started as a 2 door hardtop. So the conversion took a lotta time. The donor convertible was a rust bucket; it was easier to graft the parts needed to the hardtop than the other way around.

I took a 56 nailhead v8 and a 56 dynaflow, and used those for the mechanicals. The 56 dynaflow is 3/4" longer than its predesessor, and since it incorporates a torque tube, the only option was to move the engine forward. Other than minor motormount fabrication, so far it hasnt created any real issues.

I frenched the headlights, and used a 52 trunk lid. The door handles were removed, and 49 Lincoln door poppers were grafted in. At a glance, it looks pretty stock, but those in the know will see the mods.

[^Rhino!]

There can be only one.

Appearing ONE time only on the playa......

[media]

There is none faster. This is the ultimate badass heavy metal car. From deep playa to center camp in less than 30 seconds, and BLM never wrote these guys a ticket for over 5 mph.

[Elliot]

.
Somebody here on ePlaya was present, working fire safety; I forget who.
Last I read, Noble and Green will try for 1,000 mph next, but at a different venue.

When they broke the sound barrier on the Black Rock Desert, they had competition from Craig Breedlove of California. Breedlove got close, but lost control and damaged his car. His off-course excursion at 675 mph on more-or-less two wheels became known at the world's fastest U turn. Famed automotive artist Stan Mott illustrated it for Road & Track Magazine:

[^Rhino!]

.
Somebody here on ePlaya was present, working fire safety; I forget who.
Last I read, Noble and Green will try for 1,000 mph next, but at a different venue.

When they broke the sound barrier on the Black Rock Desert, they had competition from Craig Breedlove of California. Breedlove got close, but lost control and damaged his car. His off-course excursion at 675 mph on more-or-less two wheels became known at the world's fastest U turn. Famed automotive artist Stan Mott illustrated it for Road & Track Magazine:

Noble and Green's latest car is 'Bloodhound"

I gift you with This fun video of what's going to happen;

[media]

The venue will be either Africa or Australia. The Black Rock Playa simply isn't long enough.

Elliot, I remember Craig Breedlove and his record setting 'Spirit of America' series of cars. Craig even tried to get NHRA recognition, but hillbillies, swamp rats, and jets are not a miscible combination.

[ygmir]

.
Somebody here on ePlaya was present, working fire safety; I forget who.
*clipped*

I think it was MDMF007

[MikeGyver]

Ya know... When you walk into the parts store and the guy says "Not you again" its probably a bad sign. Uncommon cars are nice to drive, but hell to get parts for. TR7 needs a new fuel sending unit just because you cant buy a replacement filter sock. Had to order the damn thing from Britain. Hopefully this is the last of the 3 year string of "one more things" I swear problems that weren't there show up once I fix something. Damn Gremlins.

[ranger magnum]

Im sure you are familiar with Moss Motors up here in Santa Barbara. They have a pretty good catalogue of British parts.

[MikeGyver]

Im sure you are familiar with Moss Motors up here in Santa Barbara. They have a pretty good catalogue of British parts.

Yeah, but they are usually over priced.

[ranger magnum]

As is everything in this town...

But they do have quality stuff. At least the stuff I bought

[Elliot]

A possible source for anything related to instrumentation is a commercial speedometer shop. Their customers are mostly big trucks, but the shop near me -- Commercial Speedometer in West Sacramento, CA -- has an impressive inventory of things instrumentation-related.

[MikeGyver]

Well fuck. Tried driving my jeep home (I store it at my uncles, the next town over) and almost exactly half way it lost drive. Not sure how exactly yet, but all gears do nothing.

[ygmir]

Well fuck. Tried driving my jeep home (I store it at my uncles, the next town over) and almost exactly half way it lost drive. Not sure how exactly yet, but all gears do nothing.

automatic trans?

[MikeGyver]

Well fuck. Tried driving my jeep home (I store it at my uncles, the next town over) and almost exactly half way it lost drive. Not sure how exactly yet, but all gears do nothing.

automatic trans?

Manual T5 transmission. I asked on another forum and they said it could be as simple as the bushing at the bottom of the shifter slipping out of its hole. Gonna go up tomorrow and hope its that simple.

[Captain Goddammit]

I'll bet on the shifter out of place too if it lost everything but other possibilities that come to mind:
It's not something as simple as the transfer case slipping into neutral is it? That's fooled me for a few minutes a couple times.
It's possible you snapped an axle shaft, which wouldn't be too difficult to fix. I've done that too.
It doesn't seem likely it's the clutch since you didn't say it was slippy already and they don't usually go completely out without warning.

[ygmir]

if the shifters out of place, I'd think there'd be no "feel" of going in and out of gears?
Can you feel it shifting gears in there?
but yeah, transfer in neutral can happen for sure, and if the linkage came off or broke, it could be in N and you don't know, only maybe by feel of that shifter, too.
A busted drive line should have made a big noise and or jerk/clunk or something. Did you try to put it in 4x4 with hubs engaged and move?

I'm reading it lost power as you were driving? unless it was mid shift, seems it'd not be the shifter.

well, good luck, and let us know what it was.

[FIGJAM]

Yup.

If the shifter is completely sloppy and nothing engages, it sounds like something came loose in the shift linkage.

Like a pin slipped out of place.

Should still be able to crawl under and put it in third manually to drive it home.

[Captain Goddammit]

Well no he said it was a T5. Those are a "top loader" type with no external linkage like a Muncie or Saginaw.
I once had a rear axle shaft snap on a Ford F150 (31 spline 9") as I was gently pulling away from a stop sign. There was only the slightest "click" as it broke. Obviously it was already barely hanging on, I had a built 428 in the truck and frequently enjoyed the "loud" pedal.
But it just suddenly had nuthin', with almost no clangage or grindage.

Now there was one other incident but this is less likely if you were driving as it happened...
I went to leave work in a little Mazda truck I had. 5 speed stick. I put it in gear and it felt solid and like things were happening, but it wouldn't go anywhere. I tried 2nd gear, nothing. No gears worked yet seemed as though they were engaging.
I got out and looked unde the truck and that's when I saw that the rear axle was propped up on wood blocks, with the tires about 1/4" off the ground. Co-workers.... they'd picked up the back with a forklift and set the thing up.

[MikeGyver]

I did that to a friend in Highschool Capt.

I didnt check the t-case, but if it was that it would require the clutch to shift, right now it doesnt. Im not certain it goes into gear, it could just be going through the shift guide and only the shifter moving. There is no "click" into gears when you shift, the shifter just goes into position where the gear should be. Ill drive up in an hour or so and have a look.

Thanks for all the ideas.

[Thecatman]

On that car quiz, I got 75%, 36 out of 48 right. The pictures identifying the Nash cars was rather easy.
Beautiful cars.
My first vehicle was a 1957 Ford 1/2 ton (F100 back then). Steel door panals and steel dash. In 1978 I pulled the original 272ci and had it bored to 292. Put a 4 barrel carb. Had a three-on-the-tree with O/D. My dad got the intake manifold from, if I'm not mistaking, a Ford Torino. It came from a car that had a totally different engine but the bolt pattern was the same.
I was always burning the clutch. Ruined the transmission one time when I went through a phase of down shifting to first (non-synchronized) without the clutch.
God I miss that truck.

[Captain Goddammit]

The carburetor could have come from a Torino but there's no way the intake from anything other than another Y-block Ford engine fit… and even then there are different port configurations.
But hell yeah, the '57 Fords were such cool trucks! I actually prefer them over the '56 that everyone else considers "The" one to have. Then in '58 they messed them up with the 4 headlight front end… I really, really don't need another vehicle around here but several times I've almost brought a '57 F100 home to put back together!