It’s always cool to catch a car show when you are traveling.
This past week (Super Bowl Sunday) while visiting family in Alpharetta, Ga, (just outside of Atlanta) I got the chance to ride into the ‘big’ city and take in the event – Thanks Brian!!
There often more than 1500 cars on the first Sunday of every month and even though it was cold and damp (and it being Super Bowl Sunday and the home town team was playing) there were a lot of cars!!!
We got there as it was starting to break up but there were still a lot of cars. Here’s a few pics.
Take a look at this awesome creation. Built on a C4 Corvette body to best look like a 1957 Chevy!
Check out this Nissan!!! It’s power plant is in the next pic.
Nice straight six!!!!
Nice custom ride!!
Here is a great look for a Road Runner.
No one standing around new anything about the car.
I wasn’t even able to scratch the surface. There were rows of Mustangs and Corvettes, long with 100’s of European and Japanese high-end rides and not all of them ‘stock’.
Welcome back. I’m continuing on with the Engine Mini-Series – Ford’s Small Block V8s. This post covers the 260 CID.
I did mention I’d touch on the 255 but that is really out of chronological order and was merely a muted 302 used on for 3 years. It was dropped for poor performance.
So following the 221 engine (to see the post click here) was the 260 CID. This came about after the poor performance of the 221 and even with the release of a tweaked version. Enter Ford’s 260 CID. It retained the same intake and exhaust ports as the 221, the valves were larger (intake was now 1.76 and exhaust was 1.45). With it’s bore increased to 3.80 with no change to the stroke the engine put out 164 hp (about 20 more than the 221). It had a plane jane hydraulic cam and a compression ratio of 8.7:1 and capped off with a two barrel cast iron intake and carb.
The 260 was the engine Carrol Shelby used in his original Cobra and it was selected by the British car maker for the Sunbeam Tiger.
Shelby’s 1962 Cobra
1962 Sunbeam Tiger with Ford 260
The 260 was in service from 1962 to 1964 and it powered the likes of the Fairlane, Meteor (at least as an option), Comet(at least as an option), Falcon and in 1964 even the Mustang 64 1/2 (F code cars).
Engine was an overhead valve, Cast iron block with a bore and stroke 3.80 x 2.87 and Compression ratio 8.8:1 with 164 hp. It held 5 main bearings, hydraulic lifters and Autolite 2 bbl carb (Model C40F-9510-B) (Mustang configuration). The 260 was also called the Challenger 260 and could to be found topped with a Holley 2bbl Carb vs. the Autolite.
So far my writings are about engines have been ones I owned and the 283 was the engine in my very first car. It was a 1966 Chevy Impala. It was a gift to me for my 1976 high school graduation. The car was restored by my father, who was …
Oh yes, believe it or not, the 283 put the Corvette at the cutting edge of performance in 1957, fitted with the RamJet FI (fuel injection) system (“fuelie” was the gearhead term for that). In 1958 the 283 was the base engine for the Corvette, but the 283 that use …
This is the part of the engine series where I list the uses for the power plant. The 283, as I mentioned, carried Chevy engines to the next level, by being the first engine that car manufacturers were able to coax out the same horsepower as the displacement. From 1957 (its …
It’s not often that the normal day in the life of a Director of IT includes an opportunity to drive a 1929 Detroit Electric. But this is exactly what one of my days included just this week.
The car has taken years to restore and is period correct in almost every aspect. As you can see in the video it might need a few tweaks and I am finishing up the clock for the interior.
The Detroit Electric Model 97 (1931); Electric cars represented a significant part of the automobile market in the earliest days. As today, electrics suffered from a …
You just have to read the entire article and then seem my comments.
I make no judgement (like some of the other commenters) on whether Aaron is a “real car guy”, in fact I’m sure he is a ‘car guy’ – just one of ‘THOSE’ car guys. (If you are a real car guy you’ll know what I mean).
Courtesy of BMW By Aaron Miller @aaron_m_miller
I’m going to take a lot of heat for what I’m about to say. While no manufacturer can expressly admit it, behind closed doors, deep within the bunkers in Detroit, Munich, Stuttgart, and Tokyo, most engineers will nod in agreement. With enough soul searching, quite a few of my fellow automotive writers will find themselves agreeing, too. The visceral allure of the manual transmission as we know and love it isn’t….
Here in the U.S. we tend to be a bit myopic when it comes to cars. Of course American muscle is what it’s all about and toss in some well deserving European and Asian models and maybe just maybe you think about the culture down-under (I do, anyway. Love to get a hold of the a Holden!!!). Very little thought is given to the rest of the Globe – especially considering that a few U.S. car manufacturers’ last stands were south of the border – way south!!
Here is one example from Hemmings – chase the link below to see the entire article. Oh, I just ordered Banovsky’s book Weird Cars. It is in the mail from Amazon.
Recently we told you that the fastest car ever produced is up for sale. Now, one of the most interesting looking cars in the world just hit eBay. It’s a Drop Tank Lakester and it’s 100 percent jet-powered.
The Lakester is 16 feet long and was inspired by the world’s first cruise missile, the German V-1. While it looks like it used to set records, it was built to be a show car—a driving work of art—but it can shoot six-foot flames out its tailpipe.
Here are a couple of links to another lakester I wrote about previously:
In the sea of muscle cars and hot rods here at Barrett-Jackson, this streamlined chrome roadster really stood out as being truly unique. Constructed from the wing tip tank of a Lockheed Super Constellation airplane, the “Lockheed Lakester” is built to …
Even at my age I still love cranking the music while I’m driving. When you have a long commute, you don’t mind it as much when your tunes are on. A couple of months ago my CD player in my 2007 C6 Vette decided to toss error message rather than belting out music. I thought perhaps the CD was bad and changed it out. Nope…still only read errors. Ejected that one and tried a third and got the same result.
Ya know, radio ain’t what it use to be, it’s sad when you can go nearly half your drive hearing only one track and the rest of the trip is listen to a couple of voices attempt to entertain you and fill the ‘dead air” with totally horrible local commercials. After programming the buttons on the receiver and about a month of actually mashing the buttons on the radio, 40 times a each way, I decided to pick up a used stereo online and swap them out. It only took a few minutes to find a used stereo (receiver and CD player) that coincidentally came from a 2007 Corvette and of course you trust that it works and this one did.
I hadn’t up to this date spend any time taking the dash apart on the C6 -unlike my 1970 Mustang and 1984 Corvette where I visited behind their dashboards a lot. So I reached out across the nation, via Google to find instructions. Needless to say there are a lot of videos out there and after the first time pulling the center dash off it’s pretty easy (yeah…I had to do that more than once).
Caution: As with most tech laden cars, be careful of all wire connections. Highly unusual for me, I avoided all those fit falls.
This is the lower part of the dash (ashtray cig lighter areas) opened up. You can clearly see the back side of the cigarette lighter (maybe we should call them – power port – whole generation out there that don’t know that this luxury item is). Additionally, there is the connection to the to a second power port and at least in most models the traction control. Just highlighting the necessity to be careful.
In short you have to remove the consul storage lid (a few hex drivers are required for that) and the unsnap the cover for the emergency brake as well as remove the shift knob. The rest pulls off easily…BUT…first disconnect the power ports.
There are a few screws for pulling out the cd player and receiver and you’ll need to disconnect the power and antenna.
You can find that all out on one of the online video or you tube and since this isn’t the subject matter of the post I’ll let you find the one you like.
Dropping in the replace stereo is just as easy….piece of cake! Just before putting all the trim pieces back in I rested the CD/Receiver units and tested it. It played for a few seconds and then “LOCKED”. Clearly a bad sign.
Stay tuned for how the options and how I handled it.
There are some areas of your drag, oval or road course beast that are weak areas for the stress of 420 hp and 400 ft-lbs of torque. Here is a great way to eliminate one. Chase the link at the bottom for the complete story from Chevy Hardcore!!
When considering the essential parts list for a race car build, we tend to think of exhaust headers, cylinder heads, turbochargers and so on. While it might not be the most glamorous piece of the puzzle, the starter is an absolutely vital component in your build – if it kicks the bucket, you’re dead in the water. And though it may not see the same sort of prolonged stresses that a driveshaft or set of tires sees on race day, it’s still contending with plenty of abuse from heat exposure and demands of high performance components which typically operate far outside the design specifications of an OEM starter.
But it was Dreyer’s government which plumped for an unlikely Nürburgring buyer: auto racing parts company Capricorn with a head office not far north of the circuit in Düsseldorf. Her transport minister, Roger Lewentz, said at the time that it was …
Roo Motorsports, the new Aussie NASCAR team based in Salisbury, plans to enter the truck-racing series next year and perhaps the Nationwide series in the future. Roo held an event, complete with satellite link to owners in Australia, earlier this month …
I’m a bit old school about driving like feeling the road (yeah even the pot holes!!) and not floating, making a car hit the curve just right and shoving the clutch pedal to the floor and find the next gear! That’s all part of the enjoyment for me. But paddle shifting is here to stay and I’ll be disappointed if the clutch pedal disappears from all new cars.
I’m sharing this article from Mind Over Motor as it hits on some key points I can relate too when it comes to this “new fangled” 🙂 way of changing gears.
Mind Over Motor
I am someone who has publicly lamented the decline of the manual transmission. But I’m also someone who has enjoyed the merits of modern paddle shift gearboxes in many cars.
I find myself very much split on this issue, so lets take a look at the various reasons why shifter paddles are replacing a gear lever and a third pedal in some of our favorite cars.
Note: To clear this up right away, by “paddle shift” I mean cars with automated manual gearboxes, either dual-clutch or single-clutch. I am in no way talking about anything like a Toyota Camry with the “sport package”, which has paddle shifters as a marketing gimmick.
1. More versatile on the road. (Having your cake and eating it too)
If you had something like a Lamborghini Diablo back in the mid 1990s chances are you had a lot of fun out on the open road. However, when you got into town and hit traffic, the heavy clutch made driving the car more of a $250,000 chore than an enjoyable way to spend a weekend afternoon. Considering the average speed of traffic on most roads is around 25-30mph, you’d be spending far more time putting along slowly than stretching the car’s legs. It’s a wonder why most owners hardly ever drove their exotic cars.
Today, Lamborghini only offers their cars with a paddle shift transmission. The sales numbers spoke for themselves, once paddle shift was offered back around 2004, demand for manual Lambos simply fell off.
Paddle shift basically solved all the issues described above with the Diablo. Now, in an Aventador, you can rip your way into town and then just put the car in automatic mode when you hit traffic. You have a car that is a ferocious supercar when you want one, but is also just as easy to drive as a Toyota Camry when you don’t. You are no longer writing a six-figure check to put yourself through misery. And I agree, that is a major plus, especially in cars that had very difficult manual gearboxes like most supercars did.
Chase the link below for the rest of the article and come back and let me know what YOU think!!
Paddle Shifting the 997. Porsche 997 GT3 Cup Paddle Shifter. Created by Holinger, supplier of gearbox components to Porsche AG, this paddle shift system is designed specifically for the 997 GT3 Cup, replaces the tunnel-mounted sequential …
Paddle shifters are the ultimate “cool factor” of a car. For people who experience paddle shifting for the first time, you might as well be Mario Andretti. They look super cool on the car, and are functionally genius. However, there …
The automatic features several shift modes, as well as manual paddle-shifting, and the manual transmission features automatic rev-matching for drivers who haven’t yet mastered the heel-toe shift method, and it has a no-lift shift feature allowing you …
Nestled in the engine compartment is Audi’s familiar, silky-smooth direct-injected 2.0L TFSI turbocharged four-cylinder engine, mated to a traditional six-speed automatic transmission with Tiptronic paddle shifting. The engine churns out 200 horsepower …
Okay, at first blush, this seems kind of like a meaningless publicity stunt: TV star and multiple People Magazine “Sexiest Men Alive” honoree Idris Elba hops into a brand-new, immensely powerful super-coupe and obliterates a speed record set when George V was still king and Charles Lindbergh had just landed in Paris.If it seems silly, it’s because this was not in any way a fair fight. Look, Idris Elba is a certified badass, but the 626-hp Bentley Continental GT Speed he was driving benefits from 88 years of automotive evolution that Sir Malcolm Campbell absolutely didn’t have at his disposal back in 1927. That’s a sizable advantage in favor of the British star.Stick with us here, though, because there’s a very cool parallel to all of this, and it’s something that even Bentley didn’t think to highlight.See, if you read Bentley’s press release, it lays out the bare facts: The undeniably attractive Elba, star of Luther and The Wire, sought to break the “Flying Mile” record, a top speed run that takes place on a seven-mile stretch of smooth, firm beach on the shores of Carmathen Bay, Wales, known as Pendine Sands. The defending champion of the Flying Mile was Sir Malcolm Campbell, whose two-way average of 174.8 mph has gone unchallenged since 1927.
He used this!!!
So I’ve got to think that the only reasons this record still existed is that no one bothered to drive there since 1927. Seriously!!! You can read more by chasing the link below…I’ve got to run, I’m going to break the speed record for a one way trip to the end of my driveway. Don’t worry, I’ll send Road and Track some PR shots and a pic of my C6 sitting at the end of my driveway!!
The ‘Flying Mile’ is a historical high-water mark, a thing of legend. In 1927, Sir Malcolm Campbell drove a modified Bentley—the Napier-Campbell Blue Bird—to a U.K. land speed record of 174.8 mph. That’s faster than most of today’s sports cars, just …
