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QuantumChemist
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03 Dec 2021, 11:26 am

funeralxempire wrote:
QuantumChemist wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
QuantumChemist wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
maycontainthunder wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
maycontainthunder wrote:
Same thing happens to vehicles... they destroy the originality to make them shiny. In a row of vehicles I'll always go and look at the unrestored ones, they are the ones that interest me the most.


Pro-touring removes the originality to improve the functionality. :nerdy:
Personally I'd much rather have EFI than a carburettor.


For the vast majority of classic & vintage vehicles fuel injection wouldn't be possible especially if they have an autovac based fuel system.


Depends on the era you're defining, because Holley and others sell EFI kits for a number of older American engines.

Also, I'd yank the old engine out entirely and put it into storage as a curiosity then replace it with something better like a Honda K, Nissan VQ or a GM LS (maybe a Ford Barra, but only in Australia). There's a number of '80s through modern era engines with lots of support for swapping and lots of aftermarket support for improving. There's no need to put more wear on something old with limited support and much shorter maintenance intervals.


If you did that with an American muscle car, you would be kicked out of almost every car show for that specific brand of car here in the Midwest. The car clubs that I am a member of do not let members have non-brand specific engines in their cars, with the exception of vintage hot rods or rat rods. Going with a foreign engine will get you a permanent ban from those clubs. The same can be said of English, German or Italian cars with foreign engines installed. The one exception is the early Pantaras, which came with Ford 351s from the dealerships.

If you do not believe me, go stick a Honda engine in a BMW car and show it at an all BMW show. You will be likely be escorted off the premises when the hood is raised.


If you've never seen a modified or customized car at a car show I don't think you can act like you attend many car shows.

Personally I avoid one-make shows or anything that fixates on day-one restorations only because those shows are by and for unpleasant people who are more concerned about originality than fun, I'm sorry you've absorbed their terrible attitudes but you're not elite in any way for parroting those people.


There is a huge difference between making internal modifications to an original equipment engine and outright replacing it with one from another brand of car. Purists (like me) that collect cars want originality in our cars. This can be backed with prices sold at major collector car auctions (Mecum, Barrett-Jackson, etc.). Survivor cars with the most original, non-modified parts bring the most money on the auction block. Heavily modified cars with non-brand engines bring the lowest price, right next to non-running project cars. It is simple math. If you want to keep the value up, you leave it alone. That is the voice of the collecting community on how a car should be kept.

As for the slam: I have been going to car shows since 1980. There was a national show that I attended as a honored guest for a specific brand that I am an expert on. I also helped organize a few local shows when I was in graduate school, so I know what goes into judging a class at a show. Having non-original parts will get your score dinged the most in the survivor class. At one of the shows, I got to ride in an real 1970 Hemi Cuda Convertible. It later sold at auction for $2,000,000+. It would not have sold for anywhere near that if it did not have the original 426 Hemi between the fenders.


Personally I'm not concerned about cars collectability or their appeal to people who will keep them in storage, rarely if ever being enjoyed. I'm not at all concerned with how Mecums or Barrett-Jackson values a car. I care if it's fun and I care if it's able to be reliably enjoyed.

You're welcome to your preferences, but they sound like the preferences of people who view cars as investments. I don't share those preferences, I prefer tools to get used and enjoyed even if it means they get worn-out, modified or depreciate in value.

Purists (aka cork-sniffers) are just the elitists adjacent to car enthusiasts, their preferences and opinions only matter to them. Since my interest is in enjoying cars, not trying to flip them to some other speculator I don't care what the speculators prefer.

What's the point of a sports car you can't afford to enjoy? :roll:


I can afford to enjoy them, as I bought mine before the prices went up and up. I can remember buying complete 1960s project cars for $500 that now start at $20,000+ in worse condition. (Prices for common parts is what sometimes gets me.) The cars were out there, you just needed to actively find them. Once the public got into watching collector car auctions around the year 2000, nearly everyone with an old car started thinking that they were sitting on a pot of gold. Prices started going up and the available supply started to disappear to the average collector. High end cars (Shelbys, Hemis, Corvettes, etc.) went first and then everything else vanished as time when on. That leaves the smoggy cars of the mid-1970s and 1980s as choices to work with.

Your generation had a chance to get in, but you were likely too young to realize what was going on before it was too late. Fate has a tendency to do that. The price has went up to play in this part of the sandbox. I get many high school kids looking for a 1970 Dodge Charger (like in the F&F movies), yet have no idea how expensive they are. Good luck finding even a rough and rusty one (non-performance version) for under $25,000 now. If they find one, they will then need to dump at least $50,000 (plus time) into it to make it nice enough to drive, another $50,000 (plus time) if the want to be able to show it at shows. They usually tell me their entire budget is under $5,000. I tell them to go back and work a job until you have enough money saved. They can do it if they are really dedicated to buying one.

I do not mind being called an elitist on collector cars. I have spend decades studying them, so that would put me in rare company. Most collectors specialize in one brand only. I did not do that.



maycontainthunder
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03 Dec 2021, 11:42 am

^ some years ago Dad and I were at a car show about a hundred and fifty miles from home. Over the other side of the hall there was an AJS motorcycle... it was originally registered less than ten miles from where we live. Needless to say, it came home with us!

We both like the history aspect... we have a complete list of owners from new for this one.



funeralxempire
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03 Dec 2021, 12:05 pm

QuantumChemist wrote:
I can afford to enjoy them, as I bought mine before the prices went up and up. I can remember buying complete 1960s project cars for $500 that now start at $20,000+ in worse condition. (Prices for common parts is what sometimes gets me.) The cars were out there, you just needed to actively find them. Once the public got into watching collector car auctions around the year 2000, nearly everyone with an old car started thinking that they were sitting on a pot of gold. Prices started going up and the available supply started to disappear to the average collector. High end cars (Shelbys, Hemis, Corvettes, etc.) went first and then everything else vanished as time when on. That leaves the smoggy cars of the mid-1970s and 1980s as choices to work with.

Your generation had a chance to get in, but you were likely too young to realize what was going on before it was too late. Fate has a tendency to do that. The price has went up to play in this part of the sandbox. I get many high school kids looking for a 1970 Dodge Charger (like in the F&F movies), yet have no idea how expensive they are. Good luck finding even a rough and rusty one (non-performance version) for under $25,000 now. If they find one, they will then need to dump at least $50,000 (plus time) into it to make it nice enough to drive, another $50,000 (plus time) if the want to be able to show it at shows. They usually tell me their entire budget is under $5,000. I tell them to go back and work a job until you have enough money saved. They can do it if they are really dedicated to buying one.

I do not mind being called an elitist on collector cars. I have spend decades studying them, so that would put me in rare company. Most collectors specialize in one brand only. I did not do that.


Personally the only car from that era I have much interest in owning is a 240Z and I would rather not have the stock L24 in it, there's a bunch of better options to replace it with whether you're looking at it from a power, reliability or fuel consumption standpoint. A 6 speed and a better differential are obvious places the car can be improved.

It's mostly cars from the 80s and 90s that I have nostalgia for, but even those I'd rather make functional improvements to instead of keeping it exactly as it was. I can understand keeping a specific homologation model stock, especially if it's a clean example but plenty of cars sold to homologate a model for racing still are have lesser examples that would be great places to start for hotrodding.

Perhaps someday I'll regret K-swapping my Civic after a mint one sells for a lot but I doubt it. I'd rather enjoy the car now than worry about trying to preserve it for the next owner.


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Misslizard
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03 Dec 2021, 1:04 pm

I had a 65 Impala SS when I was 18, I should have never sold that car. :(
The original 327 had been removed and a 350 installed.A 350 with the flat top pistons, not the dish top ones.


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kraftiekortie
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03 Dec 2021, 1:12 pm

We didn't have the concept, in 1980, that a 1960s car could be an "antique." We just mostly thought of 15-year-old cars as being ready for the junk heap.

Like my Mickey Mantle bat. It would be worth a fortune now. I didn't understand that when I was about 12-13 years old, and broke it playing stickball.



QuantumChemist
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03 Dec 2021, 4:27 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
We didn't have the concept, in 1980, that a 1960s car could be an "antique." We just mostly thought of 15-year-old cars as being ready for the junk heap.

Like my Mickey Mantle bat. It would be worth a fortune now. I didn't understand that when I was about 12-13 years old, and broke it playing stickball.


I did back then in 1980, although I was pretty young then. My grandfather worked for a Plymouth dealership for fifty years before he died and would tell us stories of the cars he wrenched on. One of my uncles had a Hemi GTX, while another uncle had a 1964 Sports Fury with a factory 426 wedge. They used to race each other on the highway in the early 1970s. My grandfather had to take both cars away from them a few times because of the racing. I knew that these cars were special and would be hard to get later on, so I started looking for them in high school.

My parents talked me out of one of my greatest car finds. When I was a sophomore in high school, I found out about an old Porsche for sale in the local area. It was a toy of a rural doctor who died in an accident and the widow could not drive a manual. The price was $8000. I would have had to cash in my entire coin collection that I had to get it. My parents stopped me because it was way too much car for me at the time. They were right to do so. What was the type you wonder, 911 or 912 possibly? Could it be a 930 turbo? No, it was a very special 935 version (built for racing). Yes, I could retire on what that is worth now (seven figures). However I was a bad driver back then and would have killed myself showing it off. It sold shortly after that. A swing and a miss for me...

As for Mickey Mantle, I have a few signed photos of him, along with other great baseball players of that era. One of my good friends has twin brothers that have game used (World Series even) Mickey items in their collections. They got them from Mickey himself back in the day at the Yankees training camp. Their family had a lot of pull with the Yankee management. My old organic chemistry teacher grew up with Mickey in rural Oklahoma, as they were from competing small towns. It was his father that got the big league scouts down there to see Mickey play. The rest is history.



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03 Dec 2021, 4:36 pm

Misslizard wrote:
I had a 65 Impala SS when I was 18, I should have never sold that car. :(
The original 327 had been removed and a 350 installed.A 350 with the flat top pistons, not the dish top ones.


I missed out on a chance to buy an original blue 1968 Biscayne with the factory 427 and a 4 speed. That is a COPO dealership special ordered car. It was for sale at $2000 in 1995 in my hometown. I had just bought another car and was low on funds when that one popped up for sale. The guy that bought it still has it. It has only 40,000 miles on the odometer. He drives it in parades or shows only now.



QuantumChemist
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03 Dec 2021, 4:54 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
It's mostly cars from the 80s and 90s that I have nostalgia for, but even those I'd rather make functional improvements to instead of keeping it exactly as it was. I can understand keeping a specific homologation model stock, especially if it's a clean example but plenty of cars sold to homologate a model for racing still are have lesser examples that would be great places to start for hotrodding.


I used to own a 1LE Camaro IROC that I bombed around in college with. It was one I picked up on the cheap as a daily driver for $600 or so. It had rust and damage from a previous accident. I finally traded it off for a much better project car. It was fun to cruise in on the highway, as it had very high gears. It could do 140 mph when needed (closed race track).

One of my coin dealers has two Buicks in his garage. The first one is a 1987 Grand National turbo. The second is a real 1987 GNX. They were both faster than my 1LE Camaro off the line. He won a few lunches from me testing them out.



funeralxempire
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03 Dec 2021, 6:04 pm

QuantumChemist wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
It's mostly cars from the 80s and 90s that I have nostalgia for, but even those I'd rather make functional improvements to instead of keeping it exactly as it was. I can understand keeping a specific homologation model stock, especially if it's a clean example but plenty of cars sold to homologate a model for racing still are have lesser examples that would be great places to start for hotrodding.


I used to own a 1LE Camaro IROC that I bombed around in college with. It was one I picked up on the cheap as a daily driver for $600 or so. It had rust and damage from a previous accident. I finally traded it off for a much better project car. It was fun to cruise in on the highway, as it had very high gears. It could do 140 mph when needed (closed race track).

One of my coin dealers has two Buicks in his garage. The first one is a 1987 Grand National turbo. The second is a real 1987 GNX. They were both faster than my 1LE Camaro off the line. He won a few lunches from me testing them out.


Those GNXes are pretty awesome and 1LEs always seemed like deserved to carry the same cachet as the early Z/28 badge before it became just another trim level. It's a bit of a shame they didn't homologate it with a 302 instead of the 305 though, the shorter stroke and wider bore would be better suited for how it was intended on being sold and it would have gotten to weigh less in some types of racing (for example, the Holden Commodore switched to a 4.9 litre engine from a 5 and to weigh 165lbs less as a result).

Of course, they never really promoted the 1LE so except for the last year they only made handfuls of them so they weren't likely to put together a unique engine even if it just represented destroking a 350 with a crank they had already used before.


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"If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made... and they won't even admit the knife is there." Malcolm X
戦争ではなく戦争と戦う