Author Topic: For Vette lovers (Read 1392 times)

lazs2 · « **Reply #75 on:** September 15, 2002, 10:25:04 AM »

grey.. Yep.. autos are king of bracket racing. They are more consistent and you don't have as much to do so you can "drive" the car. torque comes on softer with an auto too so you don't get that embarassing sidways thing in second.

You can break a muncie in heavy cars. my el camino weighs 3700 lbs. I took out the muncie and put in a richmond 6 speed... It is pretty much a super t10 with a better case and two extra gears... just like a doug nash 5 speed with one extra (overdrive) gear.. a lot of my friends with big block cars (455-502) still run 4 speeds with no problem.

My healey is 2100 lbsand the muncie is no problem. The healey has a very liong duration solid lifter cam and 11.5 to 1 pistons with the 26 degrees of initial advance and a victor single plane... lucky to get 11 inches of vacuumn... all stuff that kills bottom end and wouldn't work in a heavy car. I haven't run the car but I ran it recently against a friends 427 cobra replica that runs consistent 12.20's I can run with him pretty easy. I drive the car all the time. It sounds really radical but behaves on the street. my son took one of them cannon "elf" mpeg's of the car launching and it is on the modified healey website. I was testing traction bars and somebody with your experiance will not be fooled... I had to get out of it towards the end but I faked it pretty well. If you like the sound of a high strung small block you might enjoy it.

back in the day.... I ran a 41 willy's pickup with a 427 solid lifter motor and a muncie m21 with a locked dana. It would run mid/high tens at fremont (really showing my age here)and was a real adventure... I have no doubt that an auto would have made this car easier to drive and hence... faster at the strip.. Like I said tho.... the street is different. no big slippery spot right where you have to hit second. people who drag for the first time are allways amazed at how slippery a drag strip can be.

my thoughts on mopars... neat cars with realy tough drivelines but about the hardest cars to drive. even a 383 roadrunner will go up in smoke and the steering in the old mopars had no real connection to the road that I could tell. torque monsters... mopar knew it and built tough drivelines.

gawd i love this bench racein stuff... Sorry to bore some of you guys but I just don't care about cup holders and stereos. I am unrepentant. Oh wait.... I'm gonna put a vintage air system in my el camino (it is on backorder) and i have a "lady of guadalupe" magnetic statuette but that is as far as I go.
lazs

oops.... just re read this and it sounds like I said that "I" ran mid 10 second runs in the willy's... that is not true.. I ran 12's. A gasser driver ran the 10 sec. runs and didn't like the way the car handled at all... a very scary car.
lazs

Grayeagle · « **Reply #76 on:** September 15, 2002, 02:31:40 PM »

I don't mind bench racin at all :)

For sheer gut feelin ..there isn't much that can match slammin second so fast and smooth the car barely reacts, tach stays at 7k for a beat, then drifts slowly down as the tires hook and you get pressed *hard* back into the seat .. again.

-grin-

When I was stationed at George AFB, CA ..workin the Weasels there (105's then F-4G's) .. became friends with a guy who started a 'speed' shop in downtown Victorville.
I worked with him for the 6 years I was there at George.
Learned more than I ever wanted to know about chebbies, mopars, fords . ..built over a hundred small block chebbies.

I wanted to see how a 440 would stack up against all the chebbies runnin around.. ran across a deal I could not pass up,
..so I sold my '62 Nova stationwagon (that I had a big port 396 goin together for, along with a 4:88 12 bolt rear all cut down for)
..she would have been a *rocket* -g- .. was all 'glas back to the firewall, plexiglas windows, etc. -evil grin- I had welded the back doors and filled the rear glass with metal .. looked like a sedan delivery :)

In any case.. everyone and his brother had a chebbie.. so I did a Duster to see if I could stay with all the '396' Chevelles in town.

-evil grin- .. the 440 dont wind like a big port Rat for sure.
The key was hookin it hard on the launch .. she came out so hard and fast on 13" slicks I swear it bent my teeth back.

60 foot times were 1.06 *seconds* .. and I usually managed to cut a .04 light off the line.
Demoralized the heck outta some of the street racers I ran into .. Duster was so far gone by the time I hit second gear some would just give up.

The Chevelle I built would have reeled the duster in through 3rd and prolly blown by in 4th .. but it never matched that gut wrenching, can't even move my eyeballs launch the Duster would do :)

I used all the tricks I had learned when I put Duster together.
Tunnel was matched to heads, heads were '68 ported an polished a bit right to the Chrysler templates, headers were matched to heads, carbs were highly modified 660's ..850 baseplates, secondary metering blocks (so each barrel had an idle circuit), inlets smoothed, checked and rated by Airflow Research when I finished with them (I wanted hard data on just what I had managed to do with my grinder :) .. both rated at 800 cfm.

Milodon dual line swivel pickup oil system ensured I never had any problems ..even had an external pressure adjust doo-dad on it. The 12 quart pan was a pain on rough roads, banged it up now an then.. finally went to a 10 qt. pan.

I ran 10: 1 TRW's in it .. because I wanted to run pump gas.
(The Chevelle was a Daeco baby ..120 octane it liked ..not much else :)

Whole car was setup for 6k rpm shifting.. I had read twistin a 440 to 7k was askin to scrap it, .. so I rarely did. (went to 7k shifts tryin to make the Pro-Gas field ..it only added 2 tenths.. surprised me :)

Sheesh .. I could go on for awhile .. LOL.

-GE

lazs2 · « **Reply #77 on:** September 16, 2002, 09:08:04 AM »

grey... sounds like you have built some high budget specialty cars... sounds like a lot of fun and I agree with your assesment of the 440... the cheapest rush you can get but they don't breath and the lower end is surprisingly fragile. I had a 68 RT charger with a 440 and it was a very entertaining car that never caused any fuss like the big block porcupines.

Heck.. I don't even do "full power" shifts anymore (well, very often anyhow)cause I am tired of the work.

as an old "put a straight axel under the '55 and 4.88's" guy I am mellowing... I really like the "g" machine trend these days of turning the old muscle cars into multi faceted performers... accelerate, handle and stop... great fun. I like running 2400 rpm at 80mph and cornering flat and allways haveing a choice for the right gear. something about dropping two gears in an uphill sweeping turn and pulling away rapidly from a boxy german car as the road straightens but continues uphill.... It must be weird to see a huge old el camino do that. Wouldn't want to get on a skid pad or tiny little autocross course with that car but in the real world.....

oh... coolest g machine Ive seen is a 68 charger with viper v10 and 6 speed... 12" discs all around and full roll cage... recaros etc. silver car but I doubt you would have trouble finding it in a large lot next to all the other silver cars.
lazs

hblair · « **Reply #78 on:** February 24, 2003, 05:26:57 PM »

Thought I'd punt this for more car talk.

Pop traded the 'glass roadster above for a '55 chevy bel air. Nice car. Meanwhile, the '34 cabriolet that he bought like 3 years ago to rebuild is now back from the fabricators. Frame is all boxed and reinforced w/ brake & fuel lines run inside the rails. New floor installed. Lt quarter replaced. New metal fenders. New rumble seat. The guys did a real nice job on the floor.

Looks like we're gonna finish it in the shop. I have a love/hate relationship with street rods. When I was a teen, seeing a car I worked on in a show with people oooing and awiing at it made me feel really good. But the being a hermit in the shop sanding til you have no fingertips or the ol fingers just outright bled kinda sucked. We hope to have it roadworthy in about 9 months. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Lotsa bare steel:

hblair · « **Reply #79 on:** February 24, 2003, 05:29:27 PM »

Nice job on the floor w/ recesses. Notice hump for rr. axle chunk clearance..

hblair · « **Reply #80 on:** February 24, 2003, 05:32:31 PM »

LT1 looking at home. This thing hasn't run in like 4 years.

Bonden · « **Reply #81 on:** February 24, 2003, 06:00:38 PM »

Wow, great project hb - the floor looks great, keep us posted please

Kanth · « **Reply #82 on:** February 24, 2003, 06:11:25 PM »

looked that way to me too until i pulled up a pic of the viper..man the vette looks pretty sad in comparison..

it looks from the front view like they totally wiped away any vestiges of individualism and style that it had left.

Quote

Originally posted by Grayeagle
On the new Vette look:

Looks a lot like a Viper to me.

-GE

Mini D · « **Reply #83 on:** February 24, 2003, 07:08:28 PM »

Nice work on the floorboard welds. Are you doing all the bodywork at your shop?

BTW.. if you're looking for a rearend to drop in that thing... try Dutchman Motor Sports. Check out the rolling chasis on the 57 in the project cars section.

MiniD

Mini D · « **Reply #84 on:** February 24, 2003, 07:17:16 PM »

Doh! missed the "in the shop" reference.

Make sure to keep the pictures coming.

MiniD

lazs2 · « **Reply #85 on:** February 25, 2003, 09:09:07 AM »

man... all that room to work makes me drool.. The damn healey is a fabrication only car... every part has to be fabricated and shoehorned in. Can't realy buy anything for it. Oh... I bew up the 396 in the elky but it is a 468 now and I did get the vintage air system installed. The six speed is still holding up and the car is a blast to drive. The coolest tool that has come out in the last ten years is the flux core wire feed welder....

now everyone can afford a wire feed welder to fab up floor boards and such.
lazs

hblair · « **Reply #86 on:** February 25, 2003, 10:10:30 AM »

rgr, will do bonden. Mini-D, we haven't done anything to it yet. Pop unloaded it yesterday after getting it from the fab shop. He'd been planning on letting somebody else do all the bodywork, but it was taking longer than he wanted and costing more than he wanted to spend. He figured we could finish it up ourselves. I don't know where he got the "ourselves" part tho.

lol lazs, a 468 in an el camino? I bet it gets squirrely with ya doesn't it? One of our bodymen has a 70-something chevy luv with a big block cheverolet in it.

He has a problem with traction off the line.

Cool think about wire welders these days too lazs, is you can plug up to a 110 volt outlet. All our migs run off 110 now, no need to have 220 volt outlets all over the shop.

Naso · « **Reply #87 on:** February 25, 2003, 10:26:24 AM »

'nuff said.

Naso · « **Reply #88 on:** February 25, 2003, 10:27:25 AM »

My greatest desire.

Naso · « **Reply #89 on:** February 25, 2003, 10:28:51 AM »

6 oc view.