Re: Late model muscle car's
Wow, are you guys missing it. Alan, you can't buy anything at 1970s prices anymore! A big-block muscle car of the '60s was $3,500-5,000 depending on what you got. It would run 14s, 13s or 12s with some work. The new Camaro V-6 will run low 14s. With old cars you got poor mpg, constantly tuning (plugs, wires, carb adjustment, points, etc.) and not much comfort compared to today's cars. And a house back then was $25,000-40,000. Today's cars cost $25,000-50,000 and a house is four-10 times that. Plus, today's cars last twice as long as cars of the '60s and '70s did. You can get 150,000-200,000 miles with a little care. You were lucky if you got 110,000-mile from older cars. So, one could argue that you get twice the product for same (albeit time-inflated) price. Could you imagine at $3 per gallon if your hot rod got 6-9 mpg? No one would own one. Chalk one up for EFI. Now you can have a fun car and get 20-plus mpg. Boy, technology really sucks.
Modern EFI is a breeze, it's all nuts and bolts. So what if you control fuel and spark with a computer or re-flash tool? I can't speak for the GM cars, but the Fords are relatively easy. The last carb car I had was a '84 Monte SS and there were more vacuum lines than actual engine parts. It sucked to work on! How could anyone possibly complain about the performance of modern-era muscle cars? My Wife's 2007 Mustang GT (automatic) went 13.28 at 105 in good air with only a re-flash of the computer. It cost under $30,000. Alan, what house are you buying for $60,000? That would mop up just about any muscle car of the '60s. Now, I love '60s and '70s muscle cars and agree that you can't compare the style and character to new cars, but as far as performance and comfort goes there is no contest. You will not get the same civilian reaction cruising a '70 Road Runner or '69 Camaro or Mustang as you will a new car, you can thank the 5-mph bumpers for that. The styling on the older cars was just plain awesome. I recently put a blower kit on the GT and with street slicks went mid-11s at 116 mph. That's with stock gears, exhaust, converter and it still gets 24 mpg on the highway. Jeff, BTW, the new Shelby will run mid-11s/120-plus in good air with sticky tires. I drag tested one and it will be out in the next issue of MM&FF. Evan |
Re: Late model muscle car's
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Re: Late model muscle car's
P.S. If I had the advantage of a 200-R4 or a 700-R4 installed in my 73 Corvette I probably could have picked up 3 to 4 more MPG. Thats as good as my 91 gets with all of the bells and whistles and metric crap on it.. All it takes is a little work to have a nice fuel efficent ride instead of monthly payments. No its probably not going to happen with a 454 Chev, 455 Pont. , 426 Hemi, 460/428 Ford.
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Re: Late model muscle car's
I worked at "Tune-Up Master's" in 1979. V-8 Monza? Simple. Get a really long bar, wedge it between the exhaust manifold and gearbox and stretch the motor mount and place a block in place to hold it while you change the driver side plugs. Piece of cake.
The last guy I knew that had a '68 327/350 'Vette sold it. Why? It was so dang hot in the interior you couldn't stand driving it if you went over 45 minutes. Evan - thanks for the tip. That's bone stock with ET Streets? 3.55 gears? What kind of launch / shift RPM? I'm assuming this was all pretty "non-abusive" testing? I'd bet the 605 HP option is over kill in your opinion? |
Re: Late model muscle car's
68 vette's were some of the worst ever produced.....thats no secret. 69's were much improved. The one that cooked me the most was a big block 427/435 HP roadster. 4 1/2 MPG with 4:88 rear but ran 10.90's in street trim except for 8 inch slicks. Never had the heads off the engine.
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Re: Late model muscle car's
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they run $700-850K. I guess I could buy a nice Vet, Challenger & Mustang and stay under that amount of money. Oh and out here in LA LA land the dealers at up to around $90-110 per labor hour. Yes when my wife retires in another couple of years we are selling out and moving out of state! |
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Re: Late model muscle car's
Alan, thank you for the information. I don't know what I would ever do with a
7000 sq ft house or 30 acres. Jeff Lee is the only person I know with enough kids to make use of a 7000 sq ft house. I'll be darn happy with a 1800-2000 sq ft house on maybe one acre, just enough room to add a nice shop to the back of the property. We will probably look outside the Denver area since we have children & grandchildren there. |
Re: Late model muscle car's
An Auto, Chally 08, Stock tune CAI, 13.24 is best @ 13? cant remeber.
EVERY Person I have seen race a 6 gear chally has at least once in the night bopped 3rd ? I have no idea why. Bad drivers most likely. But every track Im playing with the SRT8 at someone has an 09 6sp and wants to grudge, none has won, 13.4 is the fastest Ive seen out of one. Thats with the stock gears and a 20's The 09's have an ACTUAL LSD unit, mine has "modulated" traction control. And spin is a big issue on stock rubber. Just my 2 cents. (Ive got an armrest full of timeslips so if you want actual times I can look) A BIG Item on these is that they suck oil into the intake, then burning that (or not burning it) throws the sensors all wonky, the computer responds, oddly, I actually had one of the "BIG" names in SRT8 performance tell me "My Computer was bad" and they couldnt tune the car, after trying for some 4 hours , I was near them at the time so I thought I would see what they thought they could do, a call to Mopar and they told me about this issue, my sons long arm, a shop vac, some carb cleaner and a $99 catch can, problem solved. Just a thought, it caused problems ( a lot less severe ) for me. Cheers Chris Quote:
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don't forget the EPA.... btw, i DO work on late model stuff all day.... |
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