Re: Is Ford Running on Empty?

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what exactly is your point, other than proving to us you know how to = copy and paste????

Reply to
Tom
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Where I live there is a Ford dealer right next to a GM dealer and despite my having been a Chevy guy for a long time, I'm going to buy a Ford this time around. Mustang to be exact.

Why?

Because GM cars are dull. They look dull. The colors are boring and the styling looks like they took 1970's/80's notchback cars like the Buick Regal, Monte Carlo etc and rounded off the corners. The insides still scream OLD FART CLUB (of which I am a proud member of at 46yo) even though the motors are starting to come back.

What rocket scientist put the fire breathing V8 in a FWD car, the MonteCarlo?

Even Dodge had the good sense to go RWD with it's Hemi's and although the styling doesn't appeal to everyone at least they took a chance. the interiors are very modern with a touch of retro and well done too.

The Malibu, Cobalt and Impala are other snoozers except maybe for the Cobalt in SS trim which is nice but rough around the edges especially in the handling department.

In contrast, the new Ford Mustang was a stroke of genious. I just hope Ford doesn't screw it up with the rumored changes they are making next year.

Ford IMHO has one problem and it is the same problem as GM. They bought way too heavily into the super sized SUV market and now that gas prices are skyrocketing it is coming back to get them. Unlike GM though, Ford was smart enough to offer some hybrids and even though they kinda suck(very high repair costs) it is good for public relations and people are buying them.

I think the big three really have to do some serious market research, hire some talented designers with fresh ideas and look toward the future (like Japanese companies) instead of a quarterly bottom line.

Reply to
lymee

Why not, lets see, Olds Tornado, Caddilac Eldarado, Coupe DeVille, STS, Buick Rivera to name a few. The Toronado set up was so bullet proof GMC used it in its RV they offered in the 70's and early 80's that still has a cult following with almost 75% of those sold still on the road.

Probably because of Mercedes owning them, Mercedes is stil rear wheel drive. And the hemi is a marketing ploy to the inth degree, to compare what they are offering today to the 426 hemis of the late 60's and 70's is a joke.

I rather like the Monte Carlo, but the Impala misses the mark

I will agree, with the exception of the rear quarter windows the car is sharp, me thinks it needs some chrome in the bumper areas though.. But the rest of the line up looks like they just stretched the designs. The Ranger has a better profile than the Colorado

They built what was selling, and the japs jumped on board as well, Honda and Toyota both offering full size v-8 powered rigs now.

They need better advertising.

Whitelightning

Reply to
Whitelightning

Bill Ford needs a product like Bill Gates:

Costs virtually nothing to make, distribute & sell with absolutely no warranty whatever. You know it doesn't work correctly from day-one so you get the government to OK that *and* you get the customers to pay *you* to fix it - over and over and over again. When the customers get sick of that, you paint it a different color and start all over.

During the worst period in Ford history (I'm sure that could be argued to death), a single days output from one Ford plant would be worth more than 5 years of anything Microsoft has foisted on an its consumer base.

Funny world!

Reply to
FanJet

Can we assume you are stuck with a MAC? ;)

mike

Reply to
Mike Hunter

Only if he has WiFi.

Reply to
aarcuda69062

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What the hell is your point, Tom??? Other than proving that you can ass = for no particular reason?=20

These are the kind of heads up I appreciate from the Usenet groups I = frequent. I can't keep abreast of everything, and I appreciate people = posting noteworthy on topic information here.=20

Reply to
My Names Nobody

An RV is hardly considered a performance car and while the STS is certainly fast enough, the first corner it takes will be the last. Those cars are not really considered "performance cars", like the SS is being marketed as.

Marketing of course. It's all about marketing. Compared to the engines of the 60's and 70's it depends upon what you are looking at. Todays engines are lighter, have better fuel economy and are certainly far more reliable albeit more expensive to fix. I'm not sure I go for the 8/4 cylinder thing. Then you have the suspensions.

I used to own a 1972 340 Plymouth Duster and while it was certainly a screamer in the straight line it was actually dangerous on anything even mildly curved. Most of the muscle cars from that era were like that as well.

It's not *bad* but the interior is way out of date, but not really retro like say the Mustang. It's certainly a pleasant enough ride and has a lot of power but it looks basically like the same car GM hasn't been able to sell in years, only with a much better motor.

I actually saw one like that. I'm not sure how the owner did it but the bumpers were different and they sure looked like chrome to me. It was on the freeway so I didn't get a close up look.

The Freestyle is pretty nice but they gave it a wheezer of a motor.

Yep. The SUV market was extremely hot for a while. Personally I could never figure it out but..... I just pointed that out to my wife today when we saw a Tundra go by. It's interesting to see the Japs make a mistake for a change :)

Even if it was just bad luck!

That's certainly part of it.

Reply to
lymee

Hell no. Governments everywhere, large and small, are like mastodons in a tarpit. They know they've been taken but they'll pay anything to make it look like they haven't, just a hint that things work like the salesman said. I do that for them. Or, more precisely, like Microsoft, to them.

Reply to
FanJet

What chages are they planning for the mustang?

The mustang GT is a well d> On Sun, 16 Jul 2006 10:05:36 -0400, Grover C. McCoury III wrote: >

Reply to
Picasso

I wouldn't go as far to say the toyota & honda's are fullsize. I would call them a midsize pickup.

Reply to
Picasso

I don't know. I read somewhere that every body panel is being reworked along with a new V6 motor. Might just be rumour. Might be too many beers while surfing the net :)

Anyone??

Reply to
lymee

But Bill Ford runs an actual business and can't tax almost every car made the way Bill Gates can essentially tax computers with Windows. Bill Gates didn't create but just brought order to the PC business the way the public highway system brought order to auto travel.

Funny economics. People who worship capitalism as a religion should realize that their god isn't just far from perfect but often outright absurd.

Reply to
rantonrave

Few. I have a 2007 GT Convertible on order. After two reds a black and another red since '99, I picked a new color, 'Alloy' as dark metallic grey, and added the hood scope. I should have it in two weeks.

mike hunt

Reply to
Mike Hunter

"Bulletproof" or not, high horsepower FWD cars have torque steer problems. And you must admit, given the choice most every performance nut would opt for RWD over FWD.

1) The modern 6.1L Hemi is NET rated at what the old 7L Hemi was rated in GROSS HP. 2) And a modern SRT Hemi car will walk any old Hemi car.

So the modern Hemi's performance isn't a joke.

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Now let's see if re-using the Hemi name is a "marketing ploy".

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Conclusions So Far Unless there is something that has been under-/over-estimated or overlooked, it seems that this new Hemi has evolved into something as high-tech as the LS6 engine. If so, this means (from the street performance enthusiast point of view) it is hot right out of the crate (see output curves in Fig 1) and chock full of major power potential. Its crowning feature is going to be the cylinder head, so let's take a serious look at this all-important piece of hardware now.

Cylinder Head The advantage of a hemi design of combustion chamber is that the valves (and most importantly the intake valve) are always moving away from the shrouding effect of the cylinder walls (Fig 2) as they lift off the seats. However, the new hemi is not actually a true hemi as per its

426-inch predecessor. The hemi style of combustion chamber was put to good use during WWII when the output of supercharged aero engines could basically decide the fate of nations. For a two-valve combustion chamber, the hemi layout not only allows the largest valves to be accommodated but also to have the highest flow efficiency. The downside of a true Hemi configuration is that it does not respond well to a high compression ratio that inevitably requires a combustion-inhibiting, high-domed piston. For an engine with a typical bore/stroke ratio, this means it works great with a supercharger and CRs less than 8.5:1, but not as a normally-aspirated unit with 10:1 or more. To get around this problem the new Hemi has the sides of the true hemi form filled in. With the two spark plugs it is equipped with, this allows all the advantages of a true hemi, including blower capability, along with the ability, if required, to successful utilize high compression ratios.

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Seems there was a valid reason to slightly modify the old Hemi design. The new Hemi needed more compression and the old Hemi design wouldn't cut the mustand.

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Flow Capability We can see that Chrysler's engineers were targeting the best two-valve head possible. There are two important questions that need to be asked here: How well did they succeed for the head in stock form and, since no aftermarket heads are available, what is its porting potential? The graph, Fig 3, gives the answers here and you are going to like them. First, the intake port. The stock port with its 2-inch valve flowed a whopping 270 cfm at only .600-inch lift. It hit the peak flow figures, which are produced at .700-inch lift on a stock LS6, at only about 375 thousandths lift. This is good news but there is a lot more. Peak figures are not the whole story. Good mid-range figures are also important. The new Hemi did extremely well here. At 250 thousandths lift, the stock head was nearer a $10,000 Winston (Nextel) Cup head than it was to even a good modified parallel-valve head.

A check on the intake port velocity (Fig 4) showed the intake to be a super high-speed port with valve-to-port areas very similar to what is seen in Formula One. Velocity probing showed 90 percent of the port flows at a velocity greater than 90 percent of maximum. This is far better than a typical 23-degree performance head for a small-block Chevy or, for that matter, the LS6.

The exhaust port showed the same high-function trend by hitting 161 cfm at 600 thousandths lift through its 1.55-inch valve. It also had a far better than average port velocity and velocity distribution (Fig 5).

We spent a day and a half on the flow bench in an effort to find out what this head does or does not like in the way of port mods. We are sure there is much still to come, especially with some bigger valves, but we did find what it took to produce, at 600 thousandths lift, some

302 cfm on the intake and 195 cfm on the exhaust. As the nearby photos show the work to achieve this proved simple. In essence, the porting involves little more than just tidying up what Chrysler's engineers provided in the first place (great job guys).

Final Conclusions The bottom line here we think is that even in today's world, the Hemi, a year after its introduction, has got more going for it as a hot rod motor than perhaps the small-block Chevy did in 1956. Even with the limitations on valve lift brought about by the stock rocker, the cylinder head has more than enough flow potential to clear the 600-hp barrier and probably do it (relatively speaking) with ease.

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"...clear 600-hp barrier and do it with relative ease" certainly sounds like a no-joke engine.

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So will it be a success? This depends on the factory as much as anything. First, they must put it in vehicles that inspire hot rodders to do something with them. The Hemi truck is a great start here as the sport truck market is big. Introducing a viable pony car to compete with the Mustang would probably clinch the deal in that department. But it will still need a little more than just the right vehicles. The factory will have to support this engine in aftermarket parts. This appears to be happening but as far as we are concerned, it can't happen fast enough. We're avid Chevy fans and have owned many Chevy vehicles over the years, but this 5.7 Hemi has totally convinced us our next truck just has to be a Hemi-powered Dodge.

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Hmmm... avid Chevy fans admitting the new Hemi outguns their brand's best. Not too shabby for a "marketing ploy" and a joke compared to old, huh?

Patrick

Reply to
NoOption5L

If you own a new hemi, if I were you, I would not bet your title that you will 'walk away' from any old Hemi. LOL

mike hunt

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Reply to
Mike Hunter

Don't laugh. Find me an original road test where a normal production Hemi car posts a trap speed of 109 mph. You don't have to bother looking because you won't find any. 105 is it, with most posting trap speeds closer to 100. And if you've been a subscriber to Hemmings Muscle Machines magazine you'll have noted a few times where they've stated the old Hemi cars aren't as fast as the new SRT Hemi cars, or more like not even close to as fast.

Me... I'd bet the farm on the a new SRT Hemi...

Patrick

Reply to
NoOption5L

Me too. And don't even talk about fuel economy, efficiency and cornering ability. The new Dodges clean house in that neck of the woods. I drove the 5.7 Hemi and while I don't really like the styling, it was a seriously powered ride! You literally have to hang on to the steering wheel to keep from flying back in the seat. Quite nice. The larger Hemi can only be better....

However, the Mustang, even the V6 is simply more fun to drive. It really is. I dunno why, I really don't but IMHO it is a more fun ride. I think it might be because the Dodge feels *heavy*...

Reply to
lymee

The Dodge is heavy. The Charger is about 4200 pounds. It is slower than my 1994 Corvette, even though the new Dodge has about 75 more horsepower.

Reply to
Mark Jones

Apples to oranges. How about a Barracuda with an old hemi? ;)

mike hunt

Reply to
Mike Hunter

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