I never bothered to check... I just took a day highway trip in the old beast, cruising 70-75.
It has a 302, Edebrock 600 4V, Performer 289 intake, 14x2" K&N, Pertronix, windage tray, roller chain, mild hyd. cam, stock heads and manifolds, dual 2" with h-pipe, and 5th-gear final drive ratio 2.58:1. I got 17 whopping MPG, with vacuum gauge showing 13-14" Hg. most of the time, with all windows down. Do you think that's good, bad, otherwise? : ) Just curious; not like I care all that much, but thought I would check it today...
Mine had a 289, 750 Holley double pumper, Torker single plane intake, velocity stack, .470/290º cam, slightly worked heads, Hedman Hedders, dual 2 1/2" with h-pipe, and 4th gear final drive ratio of
4.11.
I got 16 mpg around town, including the occasional 8000 rpm blast down the street. Just goes to show you what real gas used to be like.
Well said. As i've mentioned here before, my 1st car was a 68 galaxy /w
2BBL 302 and AT. Got 15 city and 18-19 highway--on REAL gas of the
1970s. My cougar which is lighter, has low mileage engine, electronic ignition, and so on, but w/a 4 bbl, gets 12/14. I really can't see a bunch of difference between the two powerplants. But one car was lighter and more aerodynamic, and has better power, but the other, which was bigger, heavier and less aerodynamic, still got way better mileage! If the difference isn't the california gas of then and now, I don't know why they aren't more comparable.
I will repeat that once I treated the engine with Tribotech, I did get another 1- 1.5 MPG out of the car, from a low point of about 10.5 -11 MPG.
yup. was 13+ the first couple of tankfuls and then leveled off to a solid 12 all summer long. Basically a 10% increase.
(By the way, I emailed the company my praise and they said they had a number of testimonials like mine on file.)
I'm swapping to a new 22 gallon tank when the weather cools down, and i plan on making a close examination of the old tank for any sort of pinhole that may be causing a leak that I can't visually detect. If my mileage doesn't improve under the new tank, that will confirm the difference in mileage is indeed the gas used between then and now.
Take my word for it, the difference ain't cuz I drove more conservatively at age 18...
My first 67 had 100 pinholes in the top of the tank, covered in crud, that allowed evaporation to occur. Glad I didn't smoke, and it answered why my eyes got red in the car!! Got pulled over and was accused of being stoned a couple times. Man, the ways we learn things... it had a
302 with 289 heads, Autolite 2-bbl, 3.00 gears, C4, stock convertor. It "inexplicably" got NINE, 10 at best. New tank brought it to 11. Rebuilt Autolite (leaking down the barrels, slowly "washing out" the rings) made it 13, and Pertronix + first Accel coil + K&N made it 15.
When I was 18, you could buy a new 225-hp Mustang GT for just $14,000 ; )
So does that mean I should run 93 in my car? Do you guys?
I use 89 because that's the cheapest I can without pinging. I imagine the C/R is no more than 8.5:1, but I time @ 12* BTDC with total advance around 2800. It doesn't ping, but would 93 give me better mileage, especially if I keep it 2000-3000 all the time?
Most of the cars 13 I've owned have had EFI, with the exception of a
225-6yl Plymouth Volare, two 67 Mustangs and a few late-70s Celica beaters. I've run whatever didn't ping, and lately with 89 at $2.00 in STL, I run 89 in the Mustang. I grew up on the E. Coast and mom lives in Santa Fe so I can imagine you pay $0.20 - $0.40 more / gal.
When I was 16 (May '72), my parents gave me 1600 dollars to spend either one of two ways. I could go on a 6-week school-sponsored summer tour of Europe, or I could buy a car.
In those days, 16 Benjies could buy a lot of car. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with the Recycler in hand, and finding a low mile Ram Air Cobra Jet '69 Mach I for exactly 1600 bux.
Man, it was a terrible thing to consider. In the end, the idea of being in a foregn land with 80 other kids my age and away from my parents won out. It was a very interesting experience but...
Knowing what I know today, and still being in possession of the Mustang I bought a year later, would I still have strolled through the streets of old, bathing in the ambience of ancient cultures?
Hell no. I would have picked off the Jet and kicked ass from the start, and the well-rounded education be damned.
Tough decision... I learned to speak, read and write three languages, so naturally I would have considered the trip to Europe carefully
Drool drool... sheet mon
I bet it was... $1600 was a lot more in real dollars ... uh ... six months before I was born than it was when I was 16, in 1988. Don't mean to "date" you, CJ, I just know what you mean
HELL YEAH. I totally agree, with MBA, 192 credit hours, and whatever else I have for my fifty grand in student loans.
When I was 18, I had the choice of doing a lot of things with the $3500 I saved over a year while working at an equipment rental shop, including plunking it down on that black 1990 LX 5.0 I so drooled over.
But I ended up going to Bondurant for five days, and learned some crucial fundamentals about how to -really- drive a car. My great uncle used to race with Bob; he had a '57 Testarossa. They actually raced at LeMans together. Quite some stories Bob could tell. His eyes lit up when I mentioned that. We had a couple nice chats.
He said I had some real talent, flatly as can be... I wanted to be Jerry the Race Car Driver. I cracked off laps in the top three, if not #1, every single hour I was there.
And do I regret working a year to save that, only to spend it in a week? HELL NO. I threw around race-prepped GTs and Formula Fords six hours / day, for that week in Chandler, and loved it more than anything else I could have at that point (save the obvious attractions for an
18-year-old). By the way, I got a 3.4 mark that week, with "OK for Comp. License" on my card. Many got below 2.0.
And I will go back at my first possible opportunity to brush up and refine my car-chucking skills. I'm glad I still have 'em; I autocross here and there to try to stay sharp... and quick '67s with 16:1 manual steering aren't nearly as forgiving as newer ones, even if it's just a bit wet on the roads
I recently tried to show my 23-year-old brother in law how to heel-and-toe shift. He is still trying, usually putting too much revs up before downshift, approaching turns at scary rates in his 97 SS Camaro, and scaring me in the process :). "No, it's not supposed to step sideways like that... and trail-braking does not include locking the rear tires."
SIGH, time flies, and we ramble about old days before we know it.
It's good to shoot the shit here and there. No true car guys in my immediate midst. Glad I came back to RAMFM after 5 years for some of that. No huggy bullshit, just good car fun.
it's only sold at NAPA. Reason I know about it is our local auto shop call-in radio show guys were given a demonstration when it first came out, and--if i recall correctly--they took some kinda v8 that had been treated with it, drained the crankcase dry, and drove around for an hour with no problems. (In their web site testimonials a guy from MOTORWEEK reports he likewise drove a 94 Mazda for 40 mins w/an empty crankcase with no engine damage.) That sold our guys on it, and they've used it in their cars and at their shops since then, with no complaints about the product. Other people have likewise called in the show to report good experiences with it. I can only say that's it's helped me get an extra 1 MPG+ from my own car. Pricey, tho: $32
I'm not sure how it works except it's supposed to change metal at a molecular level and cut friction. Not a chlorine-based treatment. Unsure if it's teflon
The company, tho, has ZERO advertising budget and that's why most people don't know about it.
I remember looking at a used 62 t-bird for $750 back then and passing because the guy wouldn't go $500... And I think the basic mustang was like $1999 in that era, wasn't it? (or was that the maverick?)
Right... I completely forgot about that. And it never quite did make sense to me why it would need be that high. I do remember that regular leaded in my area was 88, so that makes sense....
I remember it vaguely, but only from jokes, etc... I was a toddler in the early 70s ; )
Snake Oil. Car makers spend millions of dollars to get 1-2 more mpg out of their vehicles. If all they had to do was add a $10 can of oil additive, don't you think they would? Don't go by what the salesman tells you. Find independant confirmation. Find out if that guy who wrote the testimonial actually works for MotorWeek, and what he does. I am a published author, and I say it doesn't work. Of course, I have never published anything related to automotive products. But I guess I should have left that last part out :)
well, let's see: I've used it and it works. Two top auto mechanics in my area have used it, and it works. Others who've called into their show have used it, and it works for them as well.
But then you're a published author who says it doesn't work.
So let me weigh whether your infallible opinion should hold more weight for me than my own experience...
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