Thread: 4 Bangers

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Yep. My track T has a 2.5L four-banger and 4-speed tranny out of a 1987 Chevy S-10. I am planning on replacing the TB injection with conventional carburetors. Otherwise, it will be stock for now.

Click on my name above and go to the thread on my buildup. I am posting it step by step with lots of pics.

Ultimately the power comes from fuel combustion so efficiency is the key idea. If I were not involved in a lifelong obsession with a Model-A roadster ('glass replica) I would be looking for a '74-'76 Pinto "frog" and then try to find a Thunderbird turbocharged 2300 Pinto engine, "they" say it is a bolt in! The nice thing about a turbocharger is that you can rig up a dash control for the waste gate and turn it on or off when you want it. Still I would think that more power even from a 4-banger means lower mileage; the power has to come from somewhere and the somewhere is more fuel. Even so as I recall the Pinto mpg was not that good even with natural aspiration. I have tried to "detune" my 350 to some extent for mpg at 250 HP but you know the Buick V6 was heavily touted by Brian Brennen in Rod Action back in the early 1980s as the best all around answer but folks still preferred V8s. The V8 nostalgia lasts until you are gone, for me the ultimate would still be a flathead with finned heads and a beehive oil filter on the firewall but I have tried four flatheads and found all of them to be cracked! Believe it or not someday it will be hard to find a 350 SBC, can you imagine that? Then folks will be looking for Grand National Buick V6 turbo setups! But wait (!) let's find out how Eli Manning likes his new Hybrid Caddy first. Maybe the shocking truth is that in ten years rodders will be running electrics with extra batteries? You have to admit it is easier to set up Nuclear power plants in some remote place and then plug your hybrid into a wall outlet in your garage than to get Congress to give permission to drill in Anwar! All you need then is some sort of secondary small diesel engine to get you home to your wall outlet after your batteries drain down! Let's see what sort of a hybrid Ferrari comes up with, you know some changes are coming but rodders will find a way to soup them up too! Just some ramblin' comments; change is coming!

Don Shillady
Retired SCientist/teen rodder