Thread: World's Biggest Muscle Car? (^-^)

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they broke my heart with the nader bumpers. i have been working on vettes all my life. love them. during the nader years i pretty much lost interest. sad part is the nader cars are the same car just ruint with the nader bumpers and detuned engines. i remember in 84 they were putting 350's in 1ton's to get the mpg average for the year. but those vettes can still be bought right and with a little southern engineering they are fine. hard to restore because the value and cost of a resto are too far apart .

Nader is one of the most worthless POS to ever walk the earth.

Originally Posted by NTFDAY

a smog pump, an absolutely worthless piece of junk.

This is not quite true, a neighbor of ours years ago raised exotic fish in a 500 gallon aquarium, a aeriator pump was outragously overpriced for the thing so a smog pump driven by a small electric motor worked like a top!! OK on a car they where junk, like the '81 pickup I had with a detonation retarding HEI on it, that piece pinged so dang much with the 305 & smogger heads that you couldn't even get up a hill, tell I yanked it and put a standard HEI in it.
Roger, I restored a '72 SS Chevelle, just at the start of the smog equipment, it actually was ordered without the EGR & smog pump but had 5 lines to the gas tank for venting and recirculating/reburning the fumes, I couldn't find a replacement tank with enough lines coming out so we had to salvage the original! Yeah, real glory days..

Originally Posted by DennyW

Back then, they were known as a top end cruiser, with a little work, you could bury the speedo.

Originally Posted by Matthyj

Roger, I restored a '72 SS Chevelle, just at the start of the smog equipment, it actually was ordered without the EGR & smog pump but had 5 lines to the gas tank for venting and recirculating/reburning the fumes, I couldn't find a replacement tank with enough lines coming out so we had to salvage the original! Yeah, real glory days..

I think it would be quite interesting to understand the (legal??) details involved with the "...little work" that would let a guy bury the speedo on one of these "top end cruisers". The only way I could bury the speedo on my '78 T-Bird was with a shovel, or maybe on a looooooong downhill slope if it was steep enough.

MattC, thanks for posting your comment and picture! It's generated a lot of discussion, and poked a few memories, too! Not necessarily GOOD memories, but memories just the same.

Some where around 75 my father in law brought a 68 Chevy half ton with a 307 to Missouri from California. It was a dog so we decided to eliminate the smog pump amongst other things. I plugged the holes in the exhaust manifolds with pipe plugs and cut and plugged all the hoses. Pretty sure it was a points dizzy so replaced points, rotor, cap and wires and a new fuel filter. I couldn't get it to fire and there wasn't enough movement in the dizzy and if memory serves me right I had to re-stab the dizzy a tooth or two advanced to get it to run. I thought it ran pretty well though my father in law wasn't happy so he had a valve job done and shortly thereafter it blew out the rings so he had it rebuilt.

Originally Posted by rspears

You guys remember those cars of post '72 a lot differently than I do. The '73's had miles of vacuum lines, with all kinds of pneumatic switches to do weird things trying to control emissions while increasing efficiency; the '74's were worse and they kept it up for about ten years. EGR systems were a really neat idea, weren't they? Using exhaust gas to slow down the flame path in the cylinders to prevent knock - what a great idea! And as bad as they were you couldn't change things without violating Federal rules, with fines in five figures for shops that knowingly defeated the OEM package. Yeah, it was a grand time in US automotive history - NOT.

Don't worry, they're not as concerned with gas engines right now. They've been beating on the diesels since a little before 08. The EPA is doing everything they can do to have the internal combustion process happen externally of the engine for the next emissions laws. But none of the engine manufacturers have developed the technology yet.

I think that the EPA expects the systems to capture the methane gas emitted by cattle in the fields (flatulence) to be perfected to the point that we can generate all of our electricity from free methane, with enough left over to power all of the cars in the USA. Any that cannot be powered by methane will be converted to solar power, or possibly wind generators generating electricity free.

How far can we derail this? There were actually "scientists" here last year going around to the new sites of the wind farms claiming these are worse for the environment than any other energy source besides coal. Claiming that all the resources to manufacture and the land they take up aren't worth the end result. Sheesh, pick your gripe tree hugger!

X2 on the wind farms. If they weren't subsidized they wouldn't exist. They're too expensive. The energy expended just to create the base on the big ones is huge. Most often, if the windmill sustains a catastrophic failure ( think lightning or tornado ) the unit becomes a permanent eye sore, as the cost of a crane is prohibitive. Since wind is not constant, the wind farm creates constant power spikes to the grid, and the grid has no means for storing the power for release during lulls. Also, these things are dangerous. In cold weather they can form ice on the bladed, which can sling off upwards of a mile or more. The tips of the blades are going extremely fast and create a sound wave when they pass by the base. This low frequency sound wave is annoying ( whup whup whup ) and actually cause health problems. There is more bad news. They slaughter birds and bats. The avian population in vicinity to windmills is devastated. If any other industry caused such impact, the EPA would shut it down.

Originally Posted by 40FordDeluxe

----- Claiming that all the resources to manufacture and the land they take up aren't worth the end result. ----

The power company I worked for was and still is a leader in exploration of alternate power generation technology. Back in the late sixties, I was in a meeting to lay the groundwork for testing wind generation options for large scale installations (farms), and I made an off the cuff comment to that effect, and after the meeting, I got my butt royally chewed for it. I still hold that idea, though.

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Originally Posted by Rrumbler

The power company I worked for was and still is a leader in exploration of alternate power generation technology. Back in the late sixties, I was in a meeting to lay the groundwork for testing wind generation options for large scale installations (farms), and I made an off the cuff comment to that effect, and after the meeting, I got my butt royally chewed for it. I still hold that idea, though.

I have a friend who moved over to manage one of the largest wind farm holdings in the USA, with wind farms scattered up through five or six states, all erected with tax subsidized dollars. He shared with me that he's seen too many days in the middle of summer, those sultry days when the thermometer is peaking and air conditioners are running hard, when his entire grid is sitting idle, not enough wind to move a blade. The only thing keeping the AC on is fossil fuel burning. And the comment that we're gonna install enough solar panels to power all of America? That's just plain HOGWASH! 1) There's not enough viable land area, 2) Do you not want lights after sunset?

Sorry, rant's over, back to that T-Bird.....

don't forget that you can't create or destroy energy thru normal means-----------it just changes from something in motion to either heat or cool-------The wind generators take heat out of the air and change it to electric and the air is then cooler-----great option to control global warming

Originally Posted by rspears

wind farms scattered up through five or six states, all erected with tax subsidized dollars.

I believe the tax subsidized dollars says it all. Get the government out of it and it will go away, same as ethanol.
FWIW, a wind generator was installed on the DC-10's I worked on, have no idea if it was ever used, maybe Jerry knows.

I forget what we called that thing but they or something similar are on most jet airliners----in case of lost of all engines they pop out and generate some electric for emergency power plus a small hydraulic pump-----never had to use one----------------


And in response to icing of the wind generator blades------just like on the vanes in jets--------they are heated so icing isn't an issue------

The crew I worked with performed all of the initial electrical tests and I don't remember doing any on it. We might have verified the wiring so any testing must have been done on the flight line.