Did we get to MASSAGE yet...? That carb has been massaged to the max... meaning.. we took those holley 4224 660 center squirt carbs and stuffed 850 plates on it , then flow matched for max flow then added center float bowls .... AH you get the idea ... misogynistic ...lol (na i like the womens)
Massaged, breathed on, blessed. Most of us have buzz words that define our existence within the world of hot rods. If that was a 331 built by "Da Grump", I'd call that my "holy grail" of small block Chevys. What's your holy grail?
I used to work with this know-it-all guy who called them "ring glands" - I'd just grin and shake my head...
We used to say we had to "blow the cobs out of 'er". I've heard others say "shower down on it" or "air it out".
During my trip to the endocrinologist today I thought of a couple more: Hang out the laundry, out the back door and chop it at 1000 foot. Now that one I never understood since the objective was to get the pig to the finish line...some 1320 feet away!
"Chop it at 1000 ft"= Shut it off so you don't break out(run faster than) your 'dial-in'!(also true in 'street racing' when you don't want to give away what you've really got for fear nobody will run you for 'pinks')
In the 80s some car magazine writers would say that the block was massaged. Guys around here would use that term. Didn't care for it then and don't like it now. And back to the clip thing. In the circle track when we stuffed the car meaning hit the wall and it was bad you would have to replace the clip which was the frame rails and roll cage that was all forward of the fire wall. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
In the fall of 1963 I moved from Nashville, Tn. to Carpinteria, Ca. Enrolled at Carpinteria Unified High School in 10th grade. I was introduced to the word bitchin by quite a few of my male classmates. Any nice car, motorcycle, or unusually crazy actions were referred to as bitchin. Cutting a brodie was another term I had never heard until my arrival in California.
That was my dad. "Ya gotta get 'em out on the highway and blow the cobs out". AKA "Italian Tuneup". He was no hotrodder though, he was puzzled when someone said in approval that an engine was "blown", because that meant an engine had thrown a rod or whatever.
"rack the pipes" - when you are cruising slowly and you put it in neutral or push in the clutch and rev the engine so that everyone can hear the glass packs rap. Maybe it is "rap the pipes". Going back to the 70's in terminology.
Getting on the loud pedal was a term we used in the Carolinas back in the day for tromping on the accelerator.
25 years ago I was a mechanic. Now I'm a technician. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I have actually seen them called "Ring Lands" in a book. It is old terminology, before the time of the Automotive Technician. When every mechanic was a trouble shooter and repairer of motors instead of diagnostician and technician (two different people).Not that I am complaining, I have made a lot of money telling the technicians what needed to be done. I grew up hearing them called a wrecking yard, or a junk yard. I prefer wrecking yard, but the wrecking yard I used when I was in high school most often was called a junk yard. That old guy was meaner than his junk yard dawg too. Here is one that I haven't thought of for a while and I hope I have never blurted it out. When I worked for Hap I picked up the term "pack it". It is kind of a 2 stroke dirt bike term for an overhaul. Not a complete rebuild but a quick freshening. like when we do rings and bearings but no major machine work. I do know that I used freshen or overhaul a lot.
Born and Raised So Cal - Bitchen was a Surfer Term in my area before Gray and then the rest of the Hot Rod world latched onto it. Bone Yard was common here in the 60's, as was Junk Yard ~ In the 70's the industry got together and decided that they were "Auto Dismantlers" and even started a trade group as such. We still called them Junk Yard's much to the dismay of my buddy who owned one. Ring Land is the correct terminological and Piston companies still use it.
Yeah, bone-yard is a common name, so is junk yard. Or if you have an area of the property where you park the old cars and store old parts, it's the "back forty". That one I don't know, but how about the OT term, "run the rack"? It's a mechanic's term, OT engines. Got to be some other old timers here that know that one.
I have heard guys call the ring land head land. I don't know that I have ever seen it that way on a piston chart. Help me out here a little bit, the distance from the center of the wrist pin to the top of the piston is called the deck height. Correct? I can never remember and am always thinking that I am wrong. I think that the reason is that deck height is also a block description. Something that some may find confusing when I am trying to answer a question is that I learned to use the term wrist pin slap for the sound that a loose wrist pin makes, but I also learned to use the term piston slap, when you can hear the skirts scuffing. Piston slap can mean that the piston is loose on the bore. Set up loose forged piston race car not so bad, wore slap out old ford baaaaaad. Run the rack, tune up a 318 cummins. rack stuck open, just destroyed a 318 cummins. Barkin out the pipes. Could mean that the mufflers are shot or it could mean that it is timed slow.
The distance from the center of the pin to the top of the piston is called Compression Height, not deck height. Wrist Pin noise we always called Wrist Pin Knock (although I have heard folks called it Pin Slap too) Piston Slap was always the skirt noise from the piston rocking. We had a Factory Nissan Rally car, real trick DOHC, injected 4 cylinder. It had Mahle Forged pistons and 13:1 compression. Louie Unser did the motor. This thing had close to .010" wall clearance cold! (most pistons today are around .0015-.003) It rattled like a death trap until warm, and then quieted right down. The motor had to idle until it hit at least 160° or it would scuff a piston or two.
Here's my take on all this. If we were all to attend a BBQ together , We all would have a blast diggin' on each others lingo . By the end of the day we would all be speakin' fluent Hot Rod Bill
Thanks, I am sure that you can imagine how many times I get that wrong. No one ever bothers to correct me for some reason. I actually had an '88 Nissan hard body for a while when I was in mexico. You could always hear the pistons slapping until about the time it reached operating temp. I took it in for warranty work and they just said that they all did that and took me around the lot and fired several of them up. Not a hot rod, and I would have fixed it if I could have got the rind off of it. I think that they used a different alloy in the older forged pistons, they were all pretty nosey until warm. You mill was just set up loose so it would spin.
That is true - most US companies used TRW Forgings and the alloy was considerably different than today, and they grew more, But These Mahle's were like nothing I ever saw before, or since. And Go Ahead, ask how I knew you could scuff them when cold
You mean 318 Detroit (8V71), right? Yep, running the rack meant adjusting the mechanical fuel injection linkage and valve clearances. And yeah if the rack stuck, and that would happen, the engine would "run away (keep accelerating uncontrollably) until it destroyed itself.
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