Don and Peter's Hot Rod Corner

[MountainDon]

Hey Peter; what kind of cars are you into?   :-?



Note: No problem Guys, but it seemed that this deserved it's own space. 

Glenn

[benevolance]

Anything from the 40's through to the 70's

Love 50's cars...Back east they are impossible to dig up....I mess with a lot of 67-76 Mopars....I have a 48 chevy 5 window coupe...A couple of 56 chevrolets...a 65 mustang fastback...

nothing completely restored...I guess the 67 volkswagon squareback is pretty close...and I have a 68 swinger I pretty much restored...

I always have 30-40 classic cars...

Always great to meet more car people....It is what I do for a living...Restore buy sell junk classic cars....

[MountainDon]

Love 50's cars...Back east they are impossible to dig up....

More or less the ame thing back home (Manitoba, Canada). Although there the winters were so cold for Dec thru to Feb salt didn't help the roads so we dodn't have a s much salt to deal with as the East. However most all 50's car would have cancer to some degree. One thing I noticed when I first visited New Mexico 23 years ago was the number of 50's vinatge detroit iron driving around in everyday non restored condition.

I love the cars or my youth.
Trivia: You may be aware of some the the differences between some US and Canadian models of the "same" car. Like Canadian Pontiac's of the 50's were really Chevy's with sheet metal changes that mimicked the US models. The strangest model year was the '59, the year Pontiac went "wide-track". The Canadian models had the wide bodies but a narrower track.

[benevolance]

Yes I am aware of the Pontiac difference..I have a 64 bonneville convertible from Kentucky....Got it ten years ago it has been in storage inside since 1970....Rust free needs restored....389 hi-po garnet red with black top and matching red leather interior...

In Canada the pontiacs used the Chevrolet engines...and they had models that were chevy's with pontiac badging...Such as the Canso acadian(66 chevy II nova) and the Beaumont (Chevelle)

My dad has an auto salvage and I grew up pulling fenders and doors off mostly 60's cars in the yard....They are all gone now crushed they got so rusty....

Down here in SC the rain kills the 50's cars....It rains so much that when the window rubbers dry out water gets into the floor pans and trunk pans and rusts them out from the inside out

I junk 2-3 cars a month...Mostly 4 doors and rusted 2 door cars....I am an addict...My wife says I need to go into car rehab

[Amanda_931]

My first car was a 2-door Dodge station wagon--from somewhere in the 50's--'56 maybe.  Apparently it was the Canadian model, modified for sale in Hawaii (no heater!)  Before I got it it had been parked--rear end out--in a carport in Hilo, where it truly does rain a lot  The back end was rusty enough that one day some nice person was changing a flat for me, got tired of the back window--held only by one of its hinges (two piece window went up, tailgate came down like the one a truck) falling down on his head, so he wrenched the durned thing off.  Which meant that the hole in the back seat right over the hole in the muffler would pour black smoke out the back window every time we went up a hill.

It made a great beach wagon. Until it finally died.

But I didn't have any GM vehicles until this century.

[benevolance]

Amanda

Funny enough they made heater delete cars ford chev and dodge until 1967 I believe in CA, AZ, and HI   I believe maybe that the last year for the Dodge heater delete was 1966....In my drag car I do not have to keep the heater because they came without them from the factory...Which saves me a bunch of weight.

I have had several 55-56 chevrolets from California that were heater delete....Nasty trying to drive them home to Canada in the winter.....

[jraabe]

Hi guys:

Yes, Seth is my son and has posted here as "Maui Wowee". But he has changed jobs. He is now working and living at a neighboring farm and they don't have even the slow dialup that he had before. His old Dell laptop sits alone in the corner.

He was here about two weeks ago as was his older brother. It was good to see them both and to confirm that Seth is still alive as he has pretty much given up on new technology such as the telephone!  

He's a good kid and certainly has honed his self-sufficiency skills. [highlight]Mr Organic [/highlight]to be sure.

He's pretty harsh on me, of course. "All you ever do is talk and type, dad!" He would prefer if I gardened all day...

[glenn-k]

Seth wasn't a problem -- in fact I kind of miss the old Maui Wowee.  Maybe we'll hear from him some day -- he sure knows how to straighten the unthinking old timers out.  It only took a bit of searching for me to figure him out.

I was talking about the nude Asian pictures that "Donald" posted in my name.  Seems he's blocked pretty well now.

Nice to know Seth is doing OK.

Better get that garden going, John --  apocalypse may strike this year.

[MountainDon]

Hey Peter! Sometimes it takes me a moment or longer to catch on to everything.  :-? I had not realized you were from eastern Canada... at least that's what I think I figured out. So of course you knew all about the older Canadian car differences.  

What do you drag race? For a couple years back in the early seventies I used to pit crew for one friend's BB funny car and another friend's alky burning motorcycle. Loads of fun!   [smiley=laugh.gif]  Then the left turn-right turn bug bit me and I wandered off into sports car road racing land and spent my own small fortune there. Still love that big American V8 thunder though.  

[benevolance]

promise not to laugh

I like to drag race slant 6 valiants... Wanting to build a 69 valiant...Cannot find one that suits me...So the earlier valiant is what I have now...

I like the 66 and older valiants...They are over 100 pounds lighter.... My 6 cylinder car with my 190 pound arse in it and fuel weighs under 2800 pounds...

I have no money to mess with it of late...wife and a house will do that to a guy....I want to get the car into the 12 seconds...12.99 would make me a happy man...

Naturally aspirated slant 6...Bored to the max, stroked a little...Hyperpak 4 barrel aluminum intake...With a header...Crashbox 4 speed (normal 4 speed with every second gear filed so you can speed shift under pressure without hitting the clutch...)

Luckily for me a couple Genius men out in California started to mess with the slant 25 years ago...Perfecting techniques for lightening the rods and crankshaft...allowing for higher RPM without fear of blowing up the engine....

I need to finish a head for the new motor...Time as much as anything is killing me...It needs a couple hundred man hours of porting and polishing...then it can be machined for oversize valves and have relief cuts for the combustion chambers...etc.....

The cool thing about the slant 6 is that there is a club here in the south east and they race at a dozen local tracks and have dlant 6 events....One in Bristol Tn coming up...Several in Ga and NC.....So I can have fun on the cheap...

I will not have any more than $3500 in the race car with it getting in the 12's...Unless I am dead wrong about the car

It stinks that I have assisted in the building of local stock cars for circle track racing and some drag cars as well....and I cannot go racing because I do not have the money....

Cool that my name is going on a local drag car and stock car this year....I work on and partially sponsor (with parts only) their cars...so my name goes on the side of the car....

It is a curse having more than one hobby... Unless you are rich enough that you can just pay for everything and never run out of money or have to worry about bills.

I am going to post some pics of a warehouse I found locally here in Lake City SC...I fell in love with it and showed it to the wife and she wants me to buy it and renovate it after the house is finished...She has this idea to open up a farmers market....

Where in the name of God is the money going to come from for all of this I keep asking her.... Nevermind that someone in our church let it slip that the building can be bought for nothing....

[MountainDon]

No laughing here Benevolence. My foray into the road racing was with a 4 cyl. Volvo 122S sedan. Strong engine; 5 main bearing. Not too many folks think of Volvos as racers. There was a company in Portland, OR that had goodies for them. They had a new modified cast head that breathed deep and made a real killer engine when combined with everything else.

My brother-in-law used to race a 6 cyl Acadian (Chevy II) in L/stock I think it was. Lots of fun for the bucks expended. He did pretty good; ran a 4.11 rear end.

My Dad had a Valiant for a number of years. That was called a G-engine I think..

Good luck on porting & polishing the head for your slant-six. That'll make a big difference.

[benevolance]

Well you port and polish until you lose your mind...And then you port and polish some more...You drill it out for oversize valves...You ceramic coat the oversize valves...And the boss the sides of the combustion chambers for the huge valves.. clearance issues....

And you take the head to the flow bench guy to have it tested...And if you do not have the specs where they need to be....you go back and try to port and polish some more....

Luckily some super smart drag racers have their test data and flow charts published so you can tell when it is correct...And then seramic coat the inside of the chambers on the head....

For a few years now I have toyed with the idea of pouring a newly designed head for the slant...I would need help though and access to a real machine shop....Neither are available to me presently..

Should be able to get another 50 horses and shave 20-30 pounds in weight with a newly designed head....

We are talking something stupid like a 1000 man hours to design and successfully build the head...the first one is the hard one after you get it figured out they become much easier....

No way I can invest in a project like that and pay the bills....

I can just see me trying to explain that to the wife....hehe...better I tell her I have a mistress or something...That she would expect and maybe understand...

[MountainDon]

.hehe...better I tell her I have a mistress or something...That she would expect and maybe understand...

I totally understand.    

I paid a shade over $1K    for a single bare 4 cyl newly designed head, flow tested and guaranteed; in 1970 dollars. Add the $$$ for the valves, springs, Weber carbs,  and so on and it was a very expensive head. But it breathed real fire into the engine.

Of course the money pit didn't end there...  

Being single and accountable to nobody else helped.  

[benevolance]

well at least you understand how dramatic the power gains can be from a oval port head with corrections in the flow of the chambers...

hehe...I already have the car, rear axle, transmission.... Getting the head would just about do it for me...

Of course everyone at the slant 6 race would pester me to death wanting to find out where the head came from...

If only I was smart enough to make it happen....It would be soooo cool to race and then after when everyone was having a beer in the pits casually open the hood to gauge the look on people's faces as they see the custom 1 off aluminum head for the car

By the way I love the P122 S volvos....Never raced them...But had a rust free California Volvo a few years ago....Super neat little car...Had a 2 carb intake on it and a header with performance exhaust....worked pretty decently

they are fairly rusty here in the Carolinas...Sadly... I have gone on a few wild goose chases to look at some that are supposed to be solid

Yuck.... I wish there was a barfie  emoticon here so I could just post a picture of someone throwing up...

I will have another P122....And I want a Notchback Type III Volkswagon.... You are out in the dry climate....If you see a volvo or a Notchback VW let me KNOW!!!!

[glenn-k]

I'm waiting for you two to get into hot rodding Cummins Diesels.

[glenn-k]

Now that there is a place for this stuff, here is a cool video my SIL sent me --   I don't know who or where but still cool.

[benevolance]

Glenn

Not much of a diesel man myself...Only because I am not into large trucks or heavy machinery...

The first generation pickup truck diesels were absolute junk....And the First couple generation car diesels were severely underpowered.

I had an old Rabbit diesel...14 years ago...It was noisy choppy and stunk like a furnace in addition to being underpowered....The damned thing gave  50 miles to the gallon...(Canadian gallons are a little larger than the USA gallon)

Now that in Europe Passenger car diesel engines are quiet, silky smooth and they have made huge strides in making the Diesels emission friendly (huge part of this is the low sulphur diesel fuel)

Only now Diesel is 20% more expensive than Gasoline...So much of the added mileage per tank you would see is evaporated by the higher cost... When you factor in the the additional cost to get the diesel engine in the car in North America Versus the same car with the gasoline engine...Most today will just opt for the gasoline engine and be done with it.

So my experience with diesel engines is quite limited.

As far as hot rodding the diesel...I do know several people that have added performance chips and exhaust to their new Cumming diesel pickups.... You can add another 30 horsepower so easily and actually slightly improve mileage...

I can ask some questions at the next local car club meeting...I am one of the only mopar guys there that does not have the money to run out and buy himself a new diesel dually for an everyday driver...

I was for a drive recently in a cummings diesel dually with the chip and a performance exhaust and it would burn rubber man... Squeal the tires as the automatic transmission went through the first three gears....Chirping like a bird on steroids...

Pretty impressive stuff if you ask me...

It will be 20 years before I can afford the same truck...

[benevolance]

I dunno how that is even possible man.....Balls of steel comes to mind...

Maybe they are tilting the camera for an extra effect?

WOW

yes talking about the truck that looks like it is climbing straight up towards outer space

[glenn-k]

First gen Cummins was a bit short on power but still a 1/2 million mile engine - gave my 92 to my buddy in trade for what ever--- He loves it and gets over 20 mpg in a full size 4x4 3/4 ton.

I have a 60 HP chip and doing near 300 HP on a 99 24v Cummins-- would burn the duals before I loaded it down - still does a little in first -automatic at 11000 lbs.  Upping the exhaust from 3" to 4" adds 28 horsepower.. cheaply - that is next.

I wouldn't buy new either - this one was $15995 - I won't pay $50000 for a new one.  It is nice and still does the job.  A necessity for here in the mountains in the winter and for work.

[benevolance]

see you know all about the hot rodding...

I was not aware the chip was good for 60 hp...I knew the exhaust was a decent gain...

330 horses on the diesel and it still working like a stock engine without any driveability problems isvery impressive. in my opinion anyways

Question, what does the chip and exhaust modifications do to the truck for emission testing...They do not have the emission testing here in SC...I know california is pretty strict on a lot of stuff

[glenn-k]

It doesn't change much if done properly.  The 24v is especially clean burning due to the injector in the center of the cylinder.  No cat needed.  If there is enough boost it keeps down exhaust gas temperature and smoke.  

Chips on the 24v are available to take the stock engine up 200 hp more but most of the better ones go to 160 HP in about 5 switchable steps.  Going over 60 hp requires beefing up the transmission with a better converter and valve body.  I just did that a couple months ago and am slowly building up from there.  Nearly all factory converters are sloppy junk.  My mileage came up about 2 miles per gallon when I changed converters and put in a Suncoast Valve body.  There are better parts available for the trans also that become necessary as you get more horses.

The truck gets more reliable and uses less fuel as improvements are made -at least to a point.

[benevolance]

Glenn

The problem is that it is so expensive to get anything done....Damned mechanics

A lot of shops here charge $80 an hour

But I too am very impressed that with a little tinkering you can take a truck like yours...Do minor improvements to the transmission exhaust and computer chip and improve fuel mileage and power...

Makes you wonder why detroit does not go with smaller engines for more fuel efficiency and make these improvements we are talking about standard

We have talked about global warming the environment and use of fossil fuels in several threads....This is just another example of how the government and detroit do not want america saving money on fuel or getting better mileage

Detroit makes no money on selling better products...And the government loses it's largest tax resource if we start using less fuel and saving on the fuel we do buy ( because of a drop in demand)

[MountainDon]

Re: the hillclimb. I was sure the guy was going to fall over backwards, then when he didn't was sure he was going to roll all the way down sideways. Then he didn't.   Wow!  

I like this one on youtube.  he rolls but does it very gracefully and recovers.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=McBznI6h2jA

[MountainDon]

By the way I love the P122 S volvos....Never raced them...But had a rust free California Volvo a few years ago....Super neat little car...Had a 2 carb intake on it and a header with performance exhaust....worked pretty decently

I will have another P122....And I want a Notchback Type III Volkswagon.... You are out in the dry climate....If you see a volvo or a Notchback VW let me KNOW!!!!

Those SU's were strange but effective carbs. It never seemed quite right somehow to have to check the oil in your carbs, though. I ended up with twin Weber DCOE 45's. I had a few of those volvos for the street too; a 121 (same car 1959 with a single downdraft carb; a 123GT, same car with O/D trans, diff badges, posi rear end, trim, seats different. That was a '69 with a B20 engine (2 litre, bored out to 2.2) The racer broke rear axles so I ended up with a 9" Ford under it. I liked the 9" Ford for it's removable carrier... could change the gear to suit track.

THere are a couple 122S's I see around here but the owners get very protective about them when asked if they want to sell. I've got first dibs on a nice red 2 door.

[glenn-k]

The problem is that it is so expensive to get anything done....Damned mechanics

A lot of shops here charge $80 an hour

Same here or even higher.

If I had to use mechanics at shops my truck wouldn't be running.  I got on a forum called DTR  (for Dodge Cummins - all performance ranges).  I have a couple mechanic friends and my buddy I gave my other diesel to if I don't want to work on it myself.

http://www.dieseltruckresource.com/dev/index.php

It is much like this one with 11000 members.  Most people on there will not let a mechanic or a dealer touch their trucks unless there is no way around it.

On that forum you can learn to do nearly anything or repair any problem with your truck by yourself including find computer code problems and directions right to the guilty part or sensor.