Posted on 02/19/2012 12:09:07 PM PST by Brookhaven
That reminds me of a friend’s V8 Vega. It twisted the unidbody and he actually had to cut the doors at the front fenders so they would open and close which meant it was soon un-drivable. It moved though.
The Kamback, I built the engine for a friends, it was a cool car. Unfortunately, it needed a windshield and the Kambacks was different than a regular Vega (how stupid is that?). He was poor as I was so we ended up putting the window (because we bought the wrong one and they didn’t have the correct one so they said) in and it hung over one side. Not a great rig bit it lasted as long as he had the car. It was like a modern version of a 55 Nomad, OK, so that’s stretching things but it was a cool car.
Hopefully that will be rectified in November, but my Faith in an Electorate that could propel a phony like Obama into the White House does not inspire confidence that such illustrious ignorance can be overcome.
Cool, a report by a regular driver. Does he plug it in every night? Did he buy the quick charge option and has he noticed an increase in his electric bills?
Did he donate the $7,500 Tax Credit to Obama’s Campaign?
Just funnin ya...
I never took a longish trip without my tools, gasket set, and a spare head in the back of my Vaguely-A-Car.
It sure did handle well, though...after I replaced the sour-slide with a 75 Astre 4-speed & axle; and also used the stiffer & better spring-rate Astre rear suspension.
I had 4 wrecked Vegas & Astres for parts, BUT every one of them had wrecked front ends and destroyed engines. I was never able to drop an Iron Duke into it, like I really wanted to.
Yes, of course, which is the only "advantage" a hybrid has over a regular car. In a regular car, you use gas to get up to speed, then scrub off that speed as heat in the brakes, then use more gas to get back up to speed again. So you end up using twice the gasoline.
In a hybrid you use gas equivalent energy to get up to speed, then about 10% of that energy is returned to the battery during braking. When you accelerate again you use the same gas equivalent energy to get back up to speed, but since you "recovered" 10% it only takes 90% of the energy to get back up to speed. So your "gas tank" is 10% larger.
Just don't run the heater, or the A/C, or the radio...
That having been said, the "one gallon" equivalence to the entire multihundred pound battery fiasco is a compelling image. I'm sticking with my fossil fuels thankee very much.
So am I. Very much so, thank you very much!
He’s kind of a Libertarian, but I guarantee you he claimed the $7500 tax credit, LOL. Not a political guy at all, just loves tech stuff. You know the nerdy kind who has all their home HVAC, security, lights, etc on a master computer control.
Mine had the slip and slide powerglide as well and put the 4 speed box in as well. It was the good 4 speed that I think was made by Borg Warner?? Not the Opel one that had the shifter sticking out of the tranny.
Carried the same tools and parts except I never carried a head because I’d had ones the were checked out by a machine shop, milled, the block milled everything was square and it still wouldn’t hold a head gasket for 2 months so I figured why bother? I think it was the block because I had one block that would hold head gaskets and one that wouldn’t and they were both sleeved so I chalked it all up to ‘tolerances’ and what they said was acceptable wasn’t really correct.
It did handle great.
I’d though about the Iron Duke but you could get performance parts for the regular Vega engine. Of course adding power to something that was so unstable was probably unwise.
Thanks Brookhaven.
Mine had the water bath block, with sleeved cylinders, but without the coolant distribution tubes, so tended to eat the valve(s) on #4. Not as often as a gasket, but often enough that on longer trips I added the freshly machined head to the kit.
And, yes, it was the B-W 4 speed. Good thing I had made the conversion, too. I had to drive it about 50 miles out of the Oregon Coast Ranges over logging roads to pavement, then find an open shop, after my brakes failed: tranny & hand brake only.
Not a bad idea at all, especially if you'd done it a number of times as every Vega owner who was mechanically inclined to do, it didn't take forever to swap head gaskets (I always used the special Fel Pro one since it was supposed to have addressed the design flaws of the original) the only thing is the head weighed more than the block. I carried my empty block into high school auto shop and people wondered how did I suddenly get strong to be able to pick up a block, then I let them pick it up and they were less impressed...
Remember the device you had to use to get the cam out? What a nightmare. Luckily I was a military brat and the Base auto shop had the tool and they'd let me borrow it anytime I needed it so I called the shop in LA I'd bought the high compression pistons from whose name I've long forgotten and asked which stock cam was the best (I was poor) so I went to the wrecking yards which had no shortage of Vegas which should have given me a clue. I got my header there as well.
So I grabbed a couple of cams and if you had tool and the hood off and only put 4 bolts in the cam cover, you could swap cams in minutes except for the cam belt tension was set by the sliding water pump which technically meant you needed a new gasket ever time you took the belt off but nine times out of ten and if you didn't use a pound of gasket seal it didn't leak luckily since it was harder to change the water pump than the cam. So I went with the one that I felt gave me the best seat of the pants feel. Not terrible technical, I should have use a stop watch and an exact length of road but I didn't.
What has happened to our society that term tranny & hand brake only has a sexual connotation ??
The Vega was good for laughs with 300 h.p. We stiffened up the rear suspension with additional coil springs and inflatable air bags in the coils. The ride was very bad; we also put in a modified turbo 350 automatic tranny with a 3500 rpm stall speed torque converter. The engine ran an Edlebrock single plane intake with a 650 cfm Holley double pumper. The dang thing would lift the front end about a foot off the ground upon takeoff if we revved the engine up with the front brakes locked. Eventually, the rear end blew up and on one run the right front upper ball joint broke clean off. Too much power and too little re-engineering. And we also cracked the windshield because of the torque which caused body flex. I figured at that point it would have cost another $10 grand to make the thing work.
About ten years later we now have built a 1972 Camaro SS with a 410 cu. in. Chevy big block. At least the Camaro is the proper platform for a 400+ h. p. engine.
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