New Car Thread

Mongrel wrote:It would be lots of fun to have the money to buy some cool old cars and have them resto-modded. However, none of those on your list would be on mine. The only Lincoln that would make mine would be the 1957 Continental Mark II purely for aesthetic reasons. Another would be a 1955 Chrysler 300 which was the first really cool car my father bought new. No Thunderbirds would be on my list since they were designed and marketed to women when they first came out. The Corvette was the American two-seater for the males but my favorite years are 1962 and 1967 and both of those could be on my list. As for old station wagons, nothing is as cool as a two-door Chevy Nomad. Make mine a '56. As for a 1986 Lincoln Town Car, that's something I would be something I'd expect to see doing daily driving somewhere where English is not regularly spoken and the currency is not a dollar of any sort and it would probably have a meter and be painted yellow or bright blue.

jt1135 wrote:

Mongrel wrote:It would be lots of fun to have the money to buy some cool old cars and have them resto-modded. However, none of those on your list would be on mine. The only Lincoln that would make mine would be the 1957 Continental Mark II purely for aesthetic reasons. Another would be a 1955 Chrysler 300 which was the first really cool car my father bought new. No Thunderbirds would be on my list since they were designed and marketed to women when they first came out. The Corvette was the American two-seater for the males but my favorite years are 1962 and 1967 and both of those could be on my list. As for old station wagons, nothing is as cool as a two-door Chevy Nomad. Make mine a '56. As for a 1986 Lincoln Town Car, that's something I would be something I'd expect to see doing daily driving somewhere where English is not regularly spoken and the currency is not a dollar of any sort and it would probably have a meter and be painted yellow or bright blue.

Had a 93 Tbird and now have a 94 cougar. Independent 4 wheel suspension, rear wheel drive and didn't look to bad. Mine were both 3.8's but they did make them both with 302's or the Super Coupe with a super charged 3.8. When the cougar takes a shit I will look for another 93 or 94 cougar or tbird. Bill Elliot set the taladega record with a late 80's tbird which don't mean much except it was a ford and not a piece of shit chevy. Plus the Tbird got a no bullshit 30 MPG on the open road.

jt1135 wrote:Been watching Fast N Loud on the Discovery Channel which put a thought in my head. If a person is going to buy a new car for say, 35 or 40 grand why not get an older one that has been updated with better suspension, brakes and steering like the Gas Monkey Garage does to cars? Still an everyday car but with more class and individuality.

Mongrel wrote:It would be lots of fun to have the money to buy some cool old cars and have them resto-modded. However, none of those on your list would be on mine. The only Lincoln that would make mine would be the 1957 Continental Mark II purely for aesthetic reasons.

Lorenzzo wrote:I did business with someone from Southern NH who in the '80-s built ocean going racers for drug smugglers.  Don't know if the two worlds connect.  Around 10 years ago I rode with him off Plum Island in one of his builds.  That thing sliced right through chop at crazy speed although I remember the gas bill for the trip being shocking. 

What kind of mpg did you get with the engines you built?  If an engine is truly special, no matter the use, it should get decent mileage. 





I don't know why, but I can't get my cursor out of the quote box.  I and not Lorenzzo with 2 zs  am saying this. 

Considering their completely unnecessary large displacement, the engines are fuel efficient.  High performance engines breathe exceptionally well and that's efficient.  However, the way performance engines are driven is usually not efficient.  Thus, reasonable mileage is not always to be expected.

High powered boat engines burn incredible amounts of fuel.  They don't have wheels seeking traction on hard surfasces. The have props or water jets trying to push them through heavy water. It's unbelievably hard work, so in normal circumstances, boats don't try to go too fast.  Going fast in a boat is a very expensive proposition.  

As for Cory, the bandleader of "Cory and the Pagans," our dads were cousins. Nobody copied the name, but we did happen upon it the same way.

jt1135 wrote:Mongrel, the ex mother in law is coming to Minnesota from the eastern shore to visit and since I get along great with her thinking about having her bring me a bushel of crabs.  What are they going for?  Thought about some eyesters but remembered no r in june so they are out of season, right?


I don't eat crabs anymore due to my dietary regimen but I understand that they are very expensive this season due to the abnormally cold and wet spring. Except maybe on the Shore where they catch the damn things and then mark them up horrendously for those Marylanders living west of the Chesapeake Bay who they have nicknamed "chicken neckers" after the yuppy practice of using chicken necks to catch their crabs.

trombettista_vecchio wrote:Cory, I'm very intrigued by the 1962 Corvette, presumably the maroon one used as your avatar, with the 409 engine.

The 327 engine made its debut in the 1962 Corvette, but thanks to the Beach Boys, it was not Chevrolet's glamour powerplant that year.  That title went to the 409 (6.7 liter) engine that went only into Impalas.  The cast iron 409 might have destroyed the 1962's Corvette's handling, just like the cast iron 396 destroyed the 1965's, but teenybopper Boomers like myself all dreamed of imaginary 409 Corvettes.

With an aluminum block version, you've made that dream come true.  And with modern efi, it can still be a fuelie, too.

By the way, did you get your user name from the blues band, Cory & the Pagans?  I know them.


My best friend's older brother bought a 1958 Corvette around 1963 that the previous owner had installed a duel quad 409 in. This car had a very close ration 4 speed and the rear was either a 4:56 or 4:89 and the top end came around 7,000 in 4th gear reading 110 mph. Now the previous owner also tightened up the suspension a good bit with big sway bars, heavy coils, and wider steel wheels and large tires which lowered the car several inches below stock ride height. The net effect was a veritable rocket ship that cornered better than the best sports cars of the day. This was the only car I've been in that I could not reach the dashboard as the owner's younger brother went through all four gears almost to readline really banging the gears. By the time we graduated in high school in 1965, his older brother sold the Vette to buy another go-fast. He got $1,600 for it as I recall.

corythepagan wrote:The dual quad 409 of the early sixties met the then magic number of one horsepower per cubic inch.  It was a very good motor, but being based on the old 348 truck engine, it was not as modern as the 396-427-454-502 that replaced it--the famous BBC rat motor.

Old timers might remember that Chevys of that era had no oil fill caps on the valve covers.  Oil fill tubes on all the old Chevrolet motors went right through the intake manifolds.  Modern multiport efi manifolds, even when developed for those specific engines, have NO oil fill tubes. NO nice valve covers for the W-head  have oil fill caps either.   If you want multiport efi on a W-head engine, you've got to drill oil fills on valve covers not designed to have them, and they look like crap.

I had to build carbureted race engines for most classes of competition except some alcohol ones, but in more recent years, I was loathe to ever build a carbureted street rod engine.  Multiport efi is just too good once the engine builder stops being too technophobic  to master it.  Five of my cars have multiport efi, and one of those five, the little Thunderbird, has eight stack multiport efi.    (Imagine trying to run Hilborn type injection on a street car before sequential fire electronics--you'd have to set idle at 3000 rpm!) 

The one without multiport efi is the 409, actually 509 in its build displacement.  It's the old oil fill dilemna. But it's still got throttle body (or wet manifold)  efi.
It's got dual quad throttle bodies, in fact,  that make it look like an original carbureted 409.  

After efi, the next biggest improvement in street performance pushrod engines is the hydraulic roller camshafts which make solid flat tappet cams of yesteryear seem like a nightmare.  There wasn't the valve spring metalurgy to make the high ramp lift cams of today, so performance required long open valve duration and the resulting intake/exhaust overlap. The famous Duntov 327 fuelie camshaft from back in the day made an engine on a very high end car sound like a cement mixer at idle.  Now a four hundred plus horsepower streed cruiser engine sounds very behaved at idle. 

With efi and hydraulic rollers, you have to go extreme with the grind to get chop, although some customers I had actually wanted that on purpose.  Dumb because it destroys the manifold vacuum required for accessories and the pcv valve which is good to have, even on a hot rod engine.

I worked with a race engine builder, I helped with cylinder head preparation, assembly, balancing, flow bench testing, etc. Hogan was primarily involved with the drag race community, and eventually did quite a lot of dirt track circle jerker stuff. Some hard hitting street rods occasionally. 

I went against the grain, and stuck with the smallblock mopar stuff, passed on many a big motor, something about the volumetric efficiency of a 3.31 stroke, and a 4.04-4.100 bore just made me hard thinking about it. The idle of 312 duration and .600 lift is music to my ears. I really have no problem with edgey cars, as I work on them routinely. Did a E85 car with a 434 the other day, had to setup the suspension, as its a 4 link car. that has the potential to run low 9s possibly high 8s. The owner was scared of it, and made a couple hairy passes, he swore something was wrong, I had to explain leave a little harder on the transbrake, and hang on, and whatever you do don't lift unless your upside down. He made a 10.20 pass finally lifting at a 1000 feet. 
Most of the people I've helped over the years have a ceiling around the 12 second range of power in a street car. They just can't handle much more.
The younger crowd seems more acclimated about EFI cars, I admit I'm not, call me a technophobe, I have made tremendous power with a carburetor. With msd ignitions they burn the excess fuel, I love the smell of race gas, and rubber.
I put a Challenger with a 440 sixpack together for my wife, I have the smallbock junk in a old dodge dart I've had for 20 years, that I use to run quick streetcar shootouts till low 10s wouldn't get it anymore. I put another bullit together with around 400 cubes, and some nasty heads, but I've put off dropping it in, as its to be painted again, the near 20 year old paint is looking pretty bad, and I don't want a 600 horse smallblock in it at the body shop, the 530 horse 340 is sufficient for moving the car around, and I painted the engine compartment, and jammed the car in, as I have 3 lifts, and it was easier for me to do the underneath. I just had the bodyman spray the clearcoat. If I do it, it looks like rhino lining. 
I actually just sold a 500" 4.150 stroke mopar with some heads blowing around 340, as the temptation was there to put it in my dart. I'd probably kill myself, as I've got a knack of getting everything out of a engine.
My dart would spin to 9,500 rpms on a good day, and that's a sweet sound with 3.5" Flowmasters.
I could talk cars all day.

12pierogi wrote:If its a Windsor you have reason to be nervous. Just kidding, sort of.
What's the de rigueur for a Windsor build these days? 



I'm retired, but it's been a lot of this in Windsor/Cleveland/Clevor World.



We think of Stu Hilborn at the dry lakes or salt flats, but he really made his nut injecting Offy champ cars.  Back then, that was the real big time.

As you know, the big difference between Hilborn and Inglese intakes is the starting point.  Hilborn began from the starting point of  constant flow mechanical and going sequential. Inglese began from the starting point of 8-stack Weber carburetion and going dry.  With FAST, either will make a Ford run like a Rolex.