NMC – Pace Car Display.

This is a great collection for Indy Pace cars.

[vodpod id=Video.9452167&w=425&h=350&fv=file%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fvid299.photobucket.com%252Falbums%252Fmm296%252Ftimsweet2200%252FPaceM-9.mp4]

NMC Main Gallery II

This is brief run down of the car’s in the main gallery.

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Main Gallery II, posted with vodpod

NCM Raffle Cars C4 and Owner Pick up

At the entrance. Here are two of the cars that are up for raffling. There is also the a vette you can “try on”. In this clip I stated that the vettes at the end of the building were there for customer to sit. No true. That is where the code R is fulfilled. Code R is for delivery at the NCM. You can view a 1984 C4 in the window.

[vodpod id=Video.9074107&w=425&h=350&fv=file%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fvid299.photobucket.com%252Falbums%252Fmm296%252Ftimsweet2200%252FM-1.mp4]

Thanks for reading
Tim

Almost Live Corvette Musuem and Assembly Plant

Yes…I’m going to try it again!!!   Weather permitting I’ll be posting from both places, tomorrow 5/16.

Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading.

Engine Mini-Series – Pontiac’s 326 Follow Up

Charles – Thanks for dropping by and giving us some of your insight.

Here is what he provided:

Hi, i’ve never heard of the Chevy reaction in 38 years of studying GM’s history.  Pontiac was violating GM’s rule of limiting cubic inches of cars smaller than full-size to one cubic to every ten pounds of car’s weight, so cars like Pontiac’s Tempest/Le Mans, Buick’s Special/Skylark, Old’s Cutlass/F85, and Chevy’s Chevelle/Malibu were limited to 330 cubic inch displacement. Pontiac marketed the 336 as a 326, and after some time, someone in GM figured out the actual bore and stroke made 336 cid. Pontiac had to change the 336 down to the 326.  Then for 1964, Pontiac (Thank You – John DeLorean) created an option for the Le Mans, the GTO option, since the standard Le Mans engine obeyed the limit rule, there was nothing in the rule saying you couldn’t offer an optional extra cost, bigger engine.  Can you say 389 cid, 348 horsepower ?,  OH YES, turn it on, wind it up, blow it out, GTO.

1964 LeMans GTO Convertible

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Chevy’s 283 – OH WOW – 300 HP in a What?

 So I just can’t let the 283 go.  I will find one,  restore it and hang it from my garage ceiling, umm…yeah..I don’ t think the misses will have a problem with that….ok maybe just store it a corner of the garage..or turn it to a coffee table..yeah……um…no.
Check out his 1966 Corvair with 300 hp 283.
Link is here:  http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/driven/1012_1966_corvair_corsa/index.html
1966 Corvair Corsa Front Three Quarters In Motion

REVIEWS:

First Drive: 1966 Corvair Corsa

From the December, 2010 issue of Automobile Magazine
By Don Sherman
Photography by A. J. Mueller

The Chevy Corvair’s swing axles and heavy tail are implements of the devil, at least according to Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed diatribe. Paul Siano, the creator of the mid-engine Siano Special, doesn’t buy any of that. He has owned, modified, and drag-raced Corvairs for more than half of his seventy years without suffering a single unintended spinout.

Siano bought — brand-new — what began life as a 1966 Corvair Corsa after supercharging a Volkswagen Beetle and owning a ’64 Corvair Monza Spyder convertible. He drove the coupe 50,000 miles before ripping out the stock 180-hp turbo engine.

A vintage Crown Manufacturing kit provided the means of upping the cylinder count and moving the engine from the back porch to the rear seat. That package included a tubular-steel subframe, an engine-to-transaxle adapter plate, a new transmission input gear, cooling-system pipes, a new shift linkage, and two new antiroll bars.

Siano’s prize possession is a rare, experimental, 283-cubic-inch aluminum engine block that General Motors pitched out as scrap. Engine builder Bryce Flinn added a roller cam, aluminum heads, and the induction overkill. Siano fabricated the necessary bits and brackets with an emphasis on minimal weight. He also added four-wheel disc brakes, Minilite wheels, radial tires, and a Ron Davis aluminum radiator.

Siano didn’t partition off his eight-pack of Weber intake trumpets, because he’s a patron of the rolling, reverberating, internal-combustion arts. Living with Webers is not for the meek of heart. When cold, they spit and stumble. When they’re up to operating temperature, they fill the interior with a combustible cloud of reversion gases. Smoking is discouraged.

Headphones are available for those rides when hearing preservation takes precedence over the din of a barely muffled Chevy V-8. Only two things keep the whirring water-pump pulley from biting the occupants’ elbows: the flush bolts that Siano installed in place of hex-head screws and every human’s natural preservation instincts

1966 Corvair Corsa Cylinders

REVIEWS:

First Drive: 1966 Corvair Corsa

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More Photos
1966 Corvair Corsa Front Three Quarters In Motion
1966 Corvair Corsa Engine

When we drove to the test track, Siano’s homebuilt special revealed evil streaks: quick but heavy steering, vague shift linkage, and a throttle pedal that offers yes and no but very little maybe. However, a few miles were enough to establish an amicable working relationship.

Offered the opportunity to redeem itself, the Siano Special settled into stride to post a reasonably impressive performance report: 0 to 60 mph in 5.2 seconds, the quarter mile in 13.9 seconds at 104 mph, and a top speed of 130 mph. More amazing, the handling balance is excellent, offering just under 0.90 g at the limit of adhesion and only a touch of easily controlled oversteer when the fourteen-inch BFGoodrich Radial T/As finally let go. The cobbled-together chassis held firm over bumps, and the dampers kept body motions nicely controlled throughout the testing gauntlet.

Back in the Corvair’s day, GM fiddled with various mid-engine sports cars, only one of which (the Pontiac Fiero) ever made it to a production line. Leave it to a motivated Corvair enthusiast to demonstrate what can be achieved by adding a couple of cylinders and relocating the engine to a more productive location.

The Specs
Engine: 4.6-liter (283 cu in) OHV V-8, 300 hp (est.)
Weight: 2600 lb
Weight distribution f/r: 44.0/56.0%
Drive: Rear-wheel

Engine Mini-Series – Pontiac’s 326 Prt 2

The 326 was used as the base model for the Pontiac Tempest.  That was going to be the extent of the division’s uses for this engine.
For 1963 and 1964 production years that was the case.

But in the 1960’s GM had a rule that production A-body or intermediate-size car would carry no more than 330 cubic inches and none were to be sold.  Pontiac had the idea that they would bring on the Tempest GTO would have the 389 as its base engine, but GM set the rules.  So the best Pontiac could do was to offer the GTO with the base engine as the 326.

1964 Tempest GTO, Yes you'll find 'em with a 326

However, on the order form there was a check box to order the 389.  This is how the 326 got in to one of the most famous iconic cars of the muscle car era.
1965 was the year and the 326 offered was with 250 and 285 hps in both automatic and manual transmissions.

That’s enough to make it a piece of historical automotive hardware. But there is one more noteworthy pair of shock towers this power plant was mounted between that was the 1967 Pontiac Firebird.  Yup it powered up its second iconic car with a 250 hp version and a 285 hp version.

326 in a 1967 Firebird

67 F-bird

And that, fellow car crazies, was the short life of Pontiac’s 326.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Engine Mini-Series – Pontiac’s 326 Prt 1

Even while operating within the huge conglomerate that is (was)  GM, the divisions all strived to retain some semblance of their earlier identity or develop a separate identity. Even with continued mounting to conform (within reason) to use standard tooling and
engines parts out of the GM bins they strove to be unique.

The Pontiac division made this effort “job one” with slightly different body parts and paint schemes (Trans Am paint schemes).  What I think made them standout was the effort to stuff unique power plants in their offerings’ engine bays.

With this in mind, I selected Pontiac’s 326 CID engine.  This short production run engine had some special Detroit steel wrapped around it. But we’ll get to its uses and an interesting note about its purpose as related to circumventing a rule or two.

The 326 (restored)

This engine came about as a need to replace Pontiac’s aluminum 215 V8 engine. (It was actually built by Buick.) It was expensive to
build and not well received by the public, most just couldn’t get over the aluminum part and worried about durability and even about the ability for it to
say lubricated and whether coolant would eat way at the aluminum.  Of course we not differently now where aluminum is desired in many, especially with heads.

The 215 Aluminum (Buick built)

Coming up how –  Pontiac used the 326 –  a unique dealer trick that put this engine between the fenders of famous car and the difference between a 326 and a 327.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

 

Pontiac V8 engine

Pontiac 326 engine in 1967 Firebird

Checker Cab Note from a Reader

Thanks Bill.

This web site claims you CANNOT tell Checker years 1960 to 1982 apart:

http://jalopnik.com/#!266317/checker-marathon

I still wonder what would have happened to Checker if Ed Cole had not died in a plane crash. Ed Cole was a GM Engineer who was ‘the father’ of the Chevy 283. The story goes that Checker was about to go out of business, and Ed Cole had accepted an offer to take the company over. Ed had retired ‘comfortably’ from GM, and wanted to have some fun with Checker. Legend has it that Ed planned to get the GM Impala/Roadmaster RWD chassis, drop in a a Mitusbishi V6 drivetrain from the Diamante, and keep the SAME Checker body panels. His goal was to keep the car in fleet sales with great MPG and long term reliability,

Knowing what I know today about Government regulation for automobiles, I have to think that Ed Cole would have prolonged Checker perhaps another few years, or so. Crash test alone cost about 1 million dollars per car model today.

My THREE cents for the day!

Happy Easter, Bill

Name That Car – 2A

Here this one is going to be a tough one.

Jump in the ‘way back’ machine and guess this early turn of the 20th Century car.

Name That Car

Good luck.

Remember you need 5 correct answers to win.  If you are reading this on Facebook you need to chase the link and post on the blog.

Thanks for playing.

Tim