If you’ve been reading my “stuff” on this blog or Facebook or Racing in America http://www.racinginamerica.com/ (Henry Ford foundation) you might wonder…what’s wrong with this guy? Does he write for a living? Well if I did I’d be starving and driving a 1993 Honda Accord with only one plastic hub cap (that’s really my son’s car…he’s a starving artist – I have a plug for him on my blog – RJS Graphic design – he’s pretty good and he won’t strave..Mom won’t have any of that!!) instead of a shiny red 84 Corvette and restored 70 Mustang. I do it for fun, I haven’t made a single dollar from any of my writing. I don’t even have sponsors or advertisers for the places I leave my droppings. Actually this costs me money!!!!
So…yes..I do this for fun and the very informal approach I take…..eeeerrrrkkkkk…..ok folks…I don’t have an approach..real writers do. The way I like to do this is to just sit down and type…there’s no drafts, unless I save it to finish later, there is no real planning,(hell my poor readers are lucky if I remember to run spell check!!!) other than a Post-It-Note or an email sent to myself when I get an idea. Nope, I just sit down and type. If it is on a project I’m working, I sometimes take a break and with the fresh smell of GoJo still on my hands I just start typing and up loading pics. 99.999% of my blogs are done in one sitting. Type and post. (Sometimes I re-read them…mostly to laugh at my super great witt…HEY!!!!! DID YOU JUST ROLL YOUR EYES????!!!! That’s rude!!!)
So I have a list of ideas and one of them was to start a regular piece on engines (I mentioned this a while back.) But man, there’s a lot of stuff out there and great publishing works like the Hemmings nation and Hot Rod magazine do this all time. Am I going to add some thing never before discussed? Nope. Am I going to present it in way that nobody ever has? Well the way I write, yeah probably, no one write like this I don’t think.
My idea was to talk about an engine and include when it was first introduced and what it was used in and for how long, that kind of info. I’m a big fan of history, history of anything, buildings, streets, towns, cars, really anything that as a little history, I’m interested in hearing about.
So my issue was I just hadn’t sat down and picked one yet to write about. I was going to do the Ford 302, the engine my Mustang has, or the Crossfire in the Corvette and I will. But the other day I got my September issue of Classic Car #72 from the Hemmings nation and on the cover was “12 Dynamic Dodge Darts Fun Cars that you must own”. That triggered a memory of the Dodge Dart I owned when I was in college, I think owned it about 5 months..just long enough to remove all the rust and patch the holes and get it into primer before selling it.
As I read the articles in this issue, I remembered the 318 that my Dart had in and as I read further I decided to kick my series off with Mopar’s 318.
So over the next few posts I have some interesting details on configurations and various cars it was used in and some specs. I’ll try to remember to list the references so you can look up additional info.
Thanks for Reading
Tim
