I thought I liked them all until that 68 Skylark showed up on Pawn Stars as a collectable muscle car. Then it went to "The Count".
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
What is your LEAST favorite "classic" musclecar?
Collapse
X
-
Originally posted by RockJustRock View PostFor a while in the late 70s-80s the 73 Mustang was touted as the crème de la crème for collector cars. The last "real" Mustang. THAT trend certainly died. Cougars from that period, ooff! But this Mustang is O.K. Looks more like a nostalgia funny than a Pro Mod....
[ATTACH=CONFIG]n1031580[/ATTACH]
And Terri, HERE is an ugly grill....
[ATTACH=CONFIG]n1031581[/ATTACH]Terri B. Long Hauler, Cars and Cones participant, Land Speed Racer
Want to know why I like wine? Have you ever thought about what fish do in water?!
Comment
-
-
Originally posted by Deaf Bob View PostGetting blood from a stone!
Getting every last ounce of "good" out of them!
Best damn fun you can have with your clothes on!
Don't knock it till you try it!
I have watched those races. Shameful.
At 345k new england miles, I am fixing an air conditioning system, aligning a hood that was out by .25 inches..
Admiring the wax basking in the sunshine...
flicker a little bug here and there away from the masterpiece.
blood from a stone heh?
evil deaf bob.Previously boxer3main
the death rate and fairy tales cannot kill the nature left behind.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Deaf Bob View PostThere is a certain satisfaction in full throttling towards somebody and they KNOW they are getting creamed, eyes wide, hanging on for dear life!
. .
new nick!
Previously boxer3main
the death rate and fairy tales cannot kill the nature left behind.
- Likes 1
Comment
-
Originally posted by squirrel View Post
huh...they sure seem to work well. Having grown up fixing a few mopars, I can't see any significant plus to either one.
siamezed ports on just about every engine for a start. And god, the suspension on them is bad. Not saying mopars were especially good handling cars, they aren't, but they sure are a step above what gm was selling. I will admit, I do admire the aftermarket GM cars have. I mean, for christs sakes, try to find anything for a '60 Phoenix. It doesn't help that chrysler had to over engineer everything.
Oh, rod angle... for god sakes gm, you couldn't make the rods longer? And that intake port design, what the hell boys? Does the skirt on the blocks REALLY need to be that thing on a chevy small block? The inner engineer in me just can't over look that kind of stuff.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Polyhead View Postsiamezed ports on just about every engine for a start..
My fabulous web page
"If it don't go, chrome it!" --Stroker McGurk
Comment
-
I think he's talking about valve arrangement rather than individual ports. Some engines have their valves IEIEIEIE on a V8 head and others EIIEEIIE. But most MoPars use the second arrangement so I'm not sure. The second type means more symmetrical intake runner lengths while the first allows bigger ports.In general though most musclecar era engines over-emphasized intake port size under under-emphasized exhaust port size. Witness the Ford Cleveland where Jack Roush discovered that by milling out the stock exhaust portion of the head and starting over he could make them a lot more competitive. In stock form Cleveland vs. Windsor was kind of a toss up because the Cleveland lacked bottom end torque. Intake port shape and profile is more important than volume as demonstrated by the LS engines.
There, hijacked my own thread.
Might as well keep going. Rod angle isn't as critical on it's own as it is combined with bore to stroke ratio. That was all hit or miss back then with GM hitting a really good balance on the 302, punching out the 283 to 5 litres. Suspension he may be talking about rear leafs where Mopar positioned the axle closer to the front eye for less wrap up under power. The small block Chevy being a skirtless block was looked upon as a plus. Unless the main caps are tied to the skirt it was just extra weight it was thought. Cross bolted mains, is Poly head a closet Ford guy?Last edited by RockJustRock; May 16, 2015, 08:15 AM.My hobby is needing a hobby.
Comment
-
Originally posted by RockJustRock View PostI think he's talking about valve arrangement rather than individual ports. Some engines have their valves IEIEIEIE on a V8 head and others EIIEEIIE. But most MoPars use the second arrangement so I'm not sure. The second type means more symmetrical intake runner lengths while the first allows bigger ports.In general though most musclecar era engines over-emphasized intake port size under under-emphasized exhaust port size. Witness the Ford Cleveland where Jack Roush discovered that by milling out the stock exhaust portion of the head and starting over he could make them a lot more competitive. In stock form Cleveland vs. Windsor was kind of a toss up because the Cleveland lacked bottom end torque. Intake port shape and profile is more important than volume as demonstrated by the LS engines.
There, hijacked my own thread.
Might as well keep going. Rod angle isn't as critical on it's own as it is combined with bore to stroke ratio. That was all hit or miss back then with GM hitting a really good balance on the 302, punching out the 283 to 5 litres. Suspension he may be talking about rear leafs where Mopar positioned the axle closer to the front eye for less wrap up under power. The small block Chevy being a skirtless block was looked upon as a plus. Unless the main caps are tied to the skirt it was just extra weight it was thought. Cross bolted mains, is Poly head a closet Ford guy?
Well the Polyhead is an IEIEIE engine... well more specifically they go one step further and appose them, so really it's a cross flow head which is even better. I will admit, I question those bent rocker arms, but they don't seem to fail, so...
No what I mean is that on GM stuff they just put the exaughst ports way to cloose together in the middle of the head and lead to really poor cooling of the exaughst pocket area, which means a high likelyhood of detonation at any compression ratio above 8.7:1 on pump gas. Look at the polyhead, that thing is 9.1:1 and that was mopars grocery getter motor! Perfomance engines started at 10:1 and went to the moon from there. GM just didn't pump enough water through the heads, and being a closed chamber engine doesn't help.
Reducing rod angle increases torque. That's why you see such big torque numbers out of mopars. consider that the 318 polyhead managed 340lb/ft of torque, those 6.123" long rods were one of the big reasons for that.
GM sold being skirtless as a feature but it really isn't. It decreases the modulus of the block meaning it just isn't going to be very strong. It's why you REALLY need crazy amounts of horse power, you always see a hemi in there. The real advantage isn't in the heads, because you can get after market heads for any GM block that probably pump more air, but the blocks are a weak point. That really deep skirt on the RB blocks makes them just crazy strong. Sure, it also makes them crazy heavy.
It's about material choice as well. High nickel castings, forged bottom end parts, nice big bearing surfaces, aluminum pistons. This was stuff you only seen on the top end GM performance motors and chrysler decided it was what EVERY engine needed. Kind of dumb and costly, but they are bullet proof.
The torqueflight is amazing as well, even if under certain conditions they can become a floor shredding bomb. (burnouts in low kids, seriously!) They are kind of complicated compared to other automatics of the day, but it also have you trans that shifted nice and easy and soft when just stumbling around town, but could slam gears amazingly hard when wide open and the engine wound up tight. The partial throttle kick down module was great too and it's kind of annoying that not all torqueflights got them. The torque converter was a step beyond as well. They reach stall speed quick and lock up amazingly solid. Not real great for drag applications but for a street car they really work nicely.
On the suspension deal. I'ts front and rear. Torsion bars have some BIG advantages over coil springs and I don't get why more people didn't use them. In any case, GM muscle car front suspension just won't hold camber angles through it's full length of travel, and mopars will. GM cars have in the best case scenario pretty noticable bump steer, mopars don't. The turn out on the inner wheel isn't what it should be on any muscle car but chrysler sure was a hell of a lot closer to correct than anyone else. Then to top it off the entire setup is fully adjustable. I had -1 camber and 3 degrees caster on my '64 dodge polara. Drove really well. Of course with that much caster you did notice the grades on the road but totally worth it for the amount of grib it had. Did away with much of the rampant understeer that chrysler products are known for. The other thing you get with torsion bars is the engine sitting much lower in the engine bay. Lower center of gravity. Next time you see a mopar, look at the axle centerline, and then look at how much of the weight of the car is below that centerline. Sure they didn't often ship with antisway bars, and on modern radial tires that suuuuuuucks. But on the tires of the day it made perfect sense, you ran out of grip before you really started to roll the car too violently.
And yes, those semi elipticle leaf springs out back were pure genius. Just one of those really simple, yet elegant sollutions to a really complicated problem. You can control axle wind up, yaw, and suspension in one rather cheap to make part. Then plop one of chryslers really rather nice 8 3/4" rear ends in there and you've got a pretty decent setup for the money.
Comment
-
Talking about engine geometry started out as something fascinating for me, then became a good way to make my head hurt. Look at this:
Then you take a look at what is winning races.
http://www.enginelabs.com/engine-tec...power-numbers/
http://www.enginebuildermag.com/2011...ne-technology/
In short f*** everything for the sake of the valvetrain and RPM. All because of a cubic inch limit. This tech doesn't bleed over to nitro because their big factor is fuel volume and getting it lit controllably. I say controllably because a nitro motor once running will continue happily as a diesel it just won't make full power that way. Pro Mod, no cubic inch limit, nearly TWICE as big. Up goes the deck height and they might listen to a discussion of rod length, maybe not in search of a longer stroke.
Suspension #1 priority is ride quality because people then used the test drive as the biggest factor in buying decision and sales was #1 priority. In other words if it wasn't a Corvette what mattered most was those tar strips in highways back then. That bit about axle location I got from a Chrysler engineer giggling about how the other guys had to clamp a chunk of iron to their springs. Look at old pics of factory MoPar race cars. No traction bars! Now Cal Tracs are an elegant replacement so again it becomes moot. In the front a torsion bar is just an unwound coil spring. Saves space in some areas, loses it in others. Using them adds weight in accomodations for them. Adjustability is a bonus, but how often do you REALLY need to adjust ride height?
Drivetrain durability is the Mopar strong point. They put the 8 3/4 removeable carrier axle standard behind many small blocks where Chevy used the 8 1/2 12 bolt on big blocks. C clips and all. 4 sppeds were more important than autos then. Automatics were just for the slow versions of Stocks and Super Stockers. For power handling Ford was best with the top loader, then the Mopar 833 and Muncie and Saginaw last. Of course remember in racing this meant literally stuffing them between gears with little or no clutch power release. Again not a big factor on new car test drives. Maybe this would be the Poly Head test drive?
Last edited by RockJustRock; May 16, 2015, 11:34 AM.My hobby is needing a hobby.
Comment
Comment