those vans get crap for mileage. bout 17/23 or so real world. my kia van is rated better than average for mileage at 18/25 (with 244hp and 24?ft/lbs) my 5.4L f150 gets that.....
My 54 with a mild 350 gets 18-20. I could prob tune and swap a slightly smaller cab and find 22 real easy
I dont want to sound negative because everyone has the right to build their hotrod as they see fit hell its yours But i cant see for the life of me why a 4 banger should ever end up in a 53 chevy If there is one thing I have learned about cars is that they arent cheap !!! so for my money it would have to be a nice v-8 wouldnt have to be radical or nothing like that but the few miles in fuel economy that I might lose would be outweighed by the cool factor again thats just my opinion and probably doesn't mean squat to anyone besides my wife, on second thought it doesn't mean squat to her either do whatever floats your boat!!!
A friend of mine tried this back in the 80's when gas was not available after about 7pm. Stations were closing early to save gas. He put a Chevy V6 in a 1930 Chevy 4door Sedan. Thinking he would beat the system and get better mileage that the rest of us with V8's. The problem was not so much the weight but the Chevy had a very flat front grill and wind shield. Like driving and old flat nose semi with a sleeper! He could not keep it over 70mph and still keep up with the rest of us and his mileage was horrible. He dismantled it down to put a turbo on it and it has been setting since. Another friend did the same by putting a Pinto motor in a Model A Sedan. Floor boarded it would do 68 mph. But he did win the Oldies But Goodies drags because it was consistent.
Rules for "building" MPG in any car/engine combo #1, read this post: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=265331&highlight=minivan #2, keep your foot out of it #3, [if your starting from scratch] choose/build an engine to deliver low end torque instead of high reving HP. #4, Set your tire size/ final drive ratio so that your cruzing speed exactly matches your torque peak.
just out of curiosity , what is this "small economical car" you have? is it front wheel drive or rear wheel drive?
In Alan Johnson's book HOW TO PINSTRIPE, he breifly comments on his old (30's 40's ford, i dont remeber) truck that he runs a reliable turbo toyota truck engine.may be wrong on the makes but i know he's still driving the truck
I was being hypothetical.... And yes FishTank, we have morris minors coming out of our ears.. do not want! >.<
In case you guys missed it the first time: Once you go boosted you'll have a very hard time going back to n/a. The torque curve of a turbo banger looks like a table.
i think a lot of people think older cars weigh a lot more than they do. people always try and tell me my 58 chevy weighs 6k, but everything ive ever seen searchin the net says about 3600 depending on options and such. need to hit the public scale at the junkyard.....
Do you guys run a 3 speed and overdrive to get those numbers? Or a T5 maybe? My '57 Chevy with 235/Powerglide gets a very consistent 13 mpg all day on the highway or driving around town. Transmission/rearend gearing (final drive ratio) have WAY more to do with MPG than the size of your engine. An old guy I met said (and he may have been full of shit, but who knows) that he had a '52 Ford with the 223 OHV I6 and a 3 speed with O/D and got 32 mpg with it. The shipping weight on my '53 Ford 2 door sedan with V8/3 speed and virtually no other options was 3050lbs. Compare that with new compact cars. Damn, new cars have gotten FAT.
I'm going a similar route. I took the body off of a s-10 truck, and put the whole drivetrain under a 1949 ford. I'll tell you what, I lifted the s10 cab and bed, and I also lifted the 49 ford body, and neither one is really very heavy. The 4.3 vortech makes 200hp and even more torque, and with the 5-spd gets 21mpg in the city hauling ass everywhere. Yes, a LS1, LT1, tuned port, or 5.0efi can get decent mpg on the freeway if your carefull, but in town they all get 15-17, and worse if you put your foot in it. But true, its nice to have a V-8, if you can afford it more power too ya!
I read this on another forum - talking about a new BMW six cylinder 3.0litre motor... "Like anything, it depends on how you drive. If I nurse a 3.0 along, driving for economy, it'll give me 33-36mpg at best. If I drive it normally, occaisionally squeezing the throttle for a bit of fun and to enjoy the motor, it'll give you 27 - 30mpg. If you use the throttle and the brake like a two pole switch, it'll just break 20...." I´m not sure how much power it puts out, but it´ll get the car to 60 in 6.4 seconds. I don´t doubt for a minute that the electronics would be a nightmare of epic proportions, but the point is that these new motors really do deliver the goods in terms of power and economy.
I've heard of guys claiming high 20s out of 49-54 Chevys with the 235 or 261, 2 carbs on it, with a T5 and geared so they can cruise at 75-80 down the highway. And I've heard similar claims of guys with 250 six engines in later cars. How much is BS, who knows. Those early 50s Chevys are light enough and round enough, we had an '87 T-bird that was 3400 lbs on the reg, had an EFI 3.8 and AOD trans, and I got close to 30 a couple times with it - once while trying to average 80 MPH down the highway - I think you could build a Chevy to pull close to 30, but you'd need to know what kind of torque you need to overcome the aerodynamic drag of the body. Too small a motor and it's working hard all the time to move the car and you get worse milage, better to have too much motor and drive it easy.
Ok here is a simple way of looking at things, the more the car wieghs the more fuel it uses, putting a smaller motor in a heavy wieght car will still give slightly better mpg, because the smaller engine typically weighs less. therefore the car overall ends up slightly lighter. however the gains are small, and agrueably out wieghed by sluggishness resulting from the reduction in available torque. I think it's valid to say that a stock 50 plus year old motor probably does not make as much power as a new motor of half the size, at a push when it was new it might have got close. Cars have gained pounds down the years, even a small saloon is now typicaly 2200lbs, where years ago the scales would have only nudged 1500lbs at most on that sized car. Bigger cars have if anything remained about the same, the extra glass and gizzmos tend to have been ballanced by a reduction in engine wieght and the use of thiner steel, which has kept the kerb wieght up in the 3300 to 3900 area for a typical model. so the answer is largely down to what you are talking as being smaller modern ecconimic, there are plenty of cars which are up round the same wieght, the engines of which will be undoubtly smaller in displacement and still haul that body no problem, in fact I have been racking my brains as to exactly what one would use ? Most small stuff has been FWD for decades. BMW I guess, that would be smaller displacement RWD, engine out of a BMW would have plenty of power, and use less gas.
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