When I was 16, gas was about $1/gal (1982) & I made $5/hr. So one hours wage put 5 gallons in my tank. Now gas is around $3/gal - I think I make around $15/hr (I'm salary)...so it's about the same. Doesn't mean I like putting $50 in the tank, but I think we've had it so good for so long we've been spoiled a bit. Adjusting for inflation, gas isn't near its record yet...
Oh, It's been done. Y'all better not think I was talking about anything newer than the thirties. MODEL A MODEL A MODEL A MODEL A
What i meant was people using 4 cylinders in their hot rods, like pinto 4 bangers in deuces arg! jeff
Yep. I saw it... and plenty of V6's to boot. :-/ Face it. Ya gotta pay to play. If I was into bangers I'd build one for that reason but sure as heck not for mileage.
I used to think 4cyl = gas savings....but then I learned a few things. I've had a bunch of 4cyl. trucks in my history of driving. I've had a couple S-10's and a couple Ford Rangers....none of them got better than about 20 mpg. When I first put the 289 in the Fairlane running a Holley 600cfm 4v carb, I was getting 18 mpg. That's with a 3:50 gear and an old 3 speed manual ******. 70 mph is right at 3200 rpm's.......if I'd had an overdrive ****** and a more highway friendly gear, I'm sure I could have pulled down 20 mpg with the v8. I've got nothing against 4cyl engines and I'd like to use one in a T bucket or something...but my thinking is that if you're going for gas mileage, you should shoot for something substantial like 50mpg or something. .....now where did all those Geo metro 3 cyl. engines go???
I don't care how expensive fuel gets, I don't ever forsee me pulling my Olds 455 and putting anything else in Big Olds. and no one I know has swapped out anything because of fuel prices.
Check out a few of the early 70's Hot Rod mags and you'll see plenty of articles about fuel economy,how to cut fuel costs blah blah , and the already mentioned Pinto's and chev v6's into rods. But look at the fuel economy of modern 'economy cars' like the ******** Prius and guess what ??? modern small cars are worse on fuel than their ancestors from the 60's. Sure engines are more efficient and far more powerful, a normal family car has performance that would put it into the muscle car catagory in 1970. But that performance hasn't been used to make better more efficient cars but Bigger and Heavier ones. look at a 1976 VW Golf compared with the bloated 2006 version .
Good point...been thinking about that too, lately. It still doesn't make it any easier when I pull up to the pump these days, however!
Why would I want to talk about the 70s? I guess the better question is why do you want me to talk about the 70s?
Its all about engine efficiency. Some people still think the smaller the engine the better the gas mileage. They don't take in account the vehicle weight. Not to long ago a gentlemen came into my work and somehow fuel economy was brought up. He asked me what I drove, at the time it was a 2001 v6 4runner. I told him that the gas mileage was horrible. He went on to tell me that his 96 I4 4runner was easily worse. I told him I would have thought his would have got better gas mileage because of his engine size. According to him its all about engine efficiency. The bigger an engine is the easier it is to pull or push its weight. If it doesn't have to work as hard its going to be more efficient. If the little 4 banger was to pull the same car it would be less efficient and would get worse gas mileage. Lots of these American cars had bigger engines just because they had to. Old German cars (VW for instance) has been making cars almost as long and has always had little 4 bangers. The reason for this is because they were a lot lighter, they didn't need bigger engines. Lots of the 4 bangers that are being used today on bigger cars can do so because of technological advancements. It turns out the guy was a teacher at a university of engineering. -Chris
You can, used SUV's are real cheap around here right now... It's more about the value of the dollar right now. It's worth a lot less than it was, as it is worth less the first thing to change price wise is the big import that is traded on the dollar.... OIL
That's true, I can put you in a 50 year old Fiat that got 45 MPG. The orginal Honda CVCC from the 70s got 50 MPG. Why? New cars weigh too much. A small car now weighs 2,700 lbs. My 37 year old 128 weighs 1,700 lbs. Automakers today are just full of **** about most everything. Take new trucks. They ride like ****. My $500 69 Chevy C-20 is much better riding than a new truck in my opinion. I don't worry about rolling in it because the center of gravity is reasonably low. If you corner too hard it slides, not rolls.
Now those are some wood inducing engines! I think you should start a new thread with a bit of story on those. Looks like a pair of OHCs there, when were those built?
My daily truck gets about 15MPG. It's costing me about $15 a day. My Merc costs me about $30 a month! Don't plan on changing out the V8 any time soon! It used to be my daily driver,but my companies insurance won't allow me to drive it to work,cause I travel back and forth during work hours. They said it's too old to cover. No problem. It will last longer that way...
I'd start a new thread, but it's been covered a bit on here. All this stuff is forties and earlier. I wish they were mine, but you can thank Speedy Bill himself for collecting these beauties. If you want to check them out, go to: http://www.museumofamericanspeed.com/index.shtml There's so much cool stuff on there. For the record, I've heard one of these duel cam motors run, and it RULES!
Something else to consider is around town a smaller engine may do worse than a larger engine - all else being equal. Takes more throttle to get it moving whereas the larger engine easily spits out the torque to move something along. On the highway, it's another story entirely, a smaller engine will nearly always do better - all else being equal. It takes little HP to move a car along once it's going, but RPM being the same, a smaller engine will do better than a larger one. So if most of your driving is in town, I'd opt for a V8. If most of your driving is on the highway, look to the small V8 or V6.
In the 70's there was talk of $2.00 a gallon gas. There were lots of Pinto powered rods in magazines. Andy Brizio even built a Mazda rotary powered T. I was building a '31 A Slant Window Town Sedan with a 2300 Pinto engine. One night I sat up in bed and realized that little old women on the way home from the supermarket in their new Buicks were going to smoke me from a stoplight without even knowing, or trying. I got out of bed about 2:00AM and jerked that mother out and threw it in the driveway. Of course, I put a 350/350 in it. No HAMB then.
I think Roth was interested in small lightweight futuristic stuff wasn't he? I mean he built double engined crazy stuff....sure. But wasn't one of his last projects actually powered by one of those Geo engines? Just curious. Seems like Roth was kind of down with the whole "less is more" thing. I know he liked his 3 wheel trikes a lot.
IN 1979 a friend of mine inhearted dads early 70's Plymouth Fury III. It was the biggest barge i have ever seen with a high outout 440. He drove it a little while and decided to dump it. Put an ad in the paper, the phones lit up, people wanted that 440.... People will always pay for fast cars, look at the crate engines out there now 500+ inches...
22 MPG from a late model Hemi car? Even with all those electronics and shutting off 4 cylinders on the highway? It's not hard to find 50s and early 60s cars that will do 20 MPG highway and weigh 4000 lbs; look at some of the Mobil Economy Run winners over the years. They drove those cars carefully and tuned them special to set those figures, but as a direct comparison in '60 Pontiac won using a Catalina with the 8.6:1 389 and got around 21 MPG; my '60 Catalina with the 10:1 motor would do 18 on the highway no problem - and not being babied, either. Imagine the same motor with a manual OD trans in a 2800-lb car instead of a 4100-lb car with an automatic transmission. Now those economy run cars had 2bbl carbs, no power steering, air conditioning, power windows, or any of the toys the late model does, but they were still pleasant to drive. I think it's just a matter of having a motor that makes a lot of torque on the low side of the RPM band, so it can overcome the air resistance and so forth that wants to keep a car from moving, without a lot of RPM. I suppose if you could build a 4-cyl that was still around 350-400 CI, it might make enough torque to be efficient... but otherwise, leave them to the econoboxes.
I love V8's and have several. But, those of you who think that a hot rod is not a hot rod if it has a 4 cyl. engine are simply ignorant of hot rod history. Use the search engine on this board and you'll find out about banger hot rods in a hurry. Traditional smack talk: "Four for go, eight for show."
Lately I've grown ever more partial toward the 4 bangers. I think someone will find a "used" Miller or Offy motor, weld the block back together, and have quite a track car when they're done. I'm thinking about my next rod, and considering a sleight-of-hand in a similar fashion.
Ya know...This thread is going two ways. One ,lets save gas with a 4-Banger and "try" to call it a Hot Rod. Two- Explain this gas situation with Media propaganda OR the truth. Somewhere in the HAMB is Oil Co. insiders that know the real deal.(THAT would be interesting) Build a 4-banger if ya want. Thats what rodding was all about...."Personal expression" . Like I've had flatheads BUT like early Ford overheads now. Won't own a chevy , like Chevy guys won't own a Ford . Fine....do your own thing....****T don't try to give me a bunch of **** about gas shortages contrived by greedy oil companys.Don't get me started on "Global warming"....the cattle in the US alone produce more greenhouse gases(FARTS) than all the vehicles on the planet.Don't eat Big Macs and save the world
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