I’m not a “huge” numbers matching guy, but there are a few cars that I think we should always try to keep their original power plants. Corvettes are one of those cars and Mustang – mostly.
My 1984 Corvette had the much loved (by much loved, I mean hated) GM CrossFire engine (with all of it’s 205 hp). It was a huge pain. I must have rebuild those injectors 5 times in the course of my ownership but there just weren’t that many CrossFires left out there.
So Corvettes should retain there original engines and the same is true as I mentioned some Mustangs. Clearly not with my 1970 Mustang that was born with a 250, six cylinder with dealer installed under-the-dash A/C. It wasn’t going to cut it. Turn on the A/C and you had a peddle car. I didn’t stray to far, I ordered 302 long block, bored .030. I caught some flack from the local Ford 6 cylinder crew for the swap…but it might have been because I didn’t offer them the tired old 250. I donated it to young kid was learning at a local shop and needed a engine to work on. You can see a lot of those details right here on my blog. Entirely different story with #ProjectSportsRoof (1973 Mustang). It’s a 351 Cleveland and there aren’t many of those left out there. I rebuild the engine a year and 1/2 ago. Just had a lifter go rouge (with only 250 miles on the rebuilt) It now has a new comp cam lifters and rods. For less than 1/2 of all that was spend I could have dropped in 400hp Windsor crate engine, but I just couldn’t.
What do you say?
Tim
#ProjectSportsRoof
1973 Mustang -Project Sports Roof – Mach 1 Grille Part II
Ah ye ol’ceasefire injection. A good ideal on paper, but even GM could not keep it in production beyond two years. I agree that keeping original, numbers matching is generally the right thing to do, value wise, but in many cases the car is more driveable and enjoyable with a powertrain upgrade.
I know of a mopar guy that recently discovered a GTX for sale that actually was supposed to have the motor and trans out of the super bee he actually owned for the past 20 years. I do not agree with his purchase of the GTX just to reacquaint the original power train sacrificed from his super bee. The time and money will never be recouped from this overboard of correctness (especially going into a economic slump).
I will say for me that ‘history’ of the vehicle is much more important and I will pay more for a fully documented car. Even Tim Allen has said that he likes to buy cars that ‘have their full life’s story’ whether they are numbers correct, or not!