The FORD Lounge

[85lebaront2]

Ok, but it is rather lengthy, so I will have to do it another day. FWIW, Bull Island is an old name for Poquoson, there is also a Cow Island they are on the west side of Chesapeake Bay East of Hampton VA.
Cow Island: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1577224,-76.3582086,16z?hl=en
Poquoson: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1293364,-76.3802314,14.17z?hl=en

Suffice it to say it involved my Shelby and several various Chevy and Mopar performance cars. My best friend, John Gleason was driving it.

[Gary Lewis]

ArdWrknTrk wrote

Bill, I understand where the term Monte Carlo bar came from.
I have a client born in Monaco, and I've crewed their yacht to there.
(I've never been to see any racing. 😩)

I've not been to see any racing there, but I've driven the circuit, or part thereof.

Several years ago our family was taking a tour from Seville, Spain to Rome.  I was driving our rent car and as we got into Monte Carlo we saw all of the Armco barriers and grandstands that were going up.  Then it dawned on us that the next weekend was the F1 race.

About that time we rounded a rather tight turn and I realized where we were and floored the little 2L rent car knowing what was ahead - The Tunnel!  Here's the "rather tight" turn we were in:

[ArdWrknTrk]

Doing your best to emulate your favorite Gran Prix driver.

The kids must have LOVED it!

Janey is a saint!  😇

[Gary Lewis]

ArdWrknTrk wrote

Doing your best to emulate your favorite Gran Prix driver.

The kids must have LOVED it!

Janey is a saint!  😇

Yes, she is.  No doubt about it.  

But only one kid loved it - our son.  Our daughter could care less about racing, of any kind.  He was and is into F1, so he's the one that figured out why we were seeing the barriers and stands. However, I'm the one that twigged to where we were when we hit that turn.

And the reason I mentioned the size of the engine on the rent car is 'cause it didn't go very far very fast.  But, it was a manual so I was able to keep it in lower gears and pretend we were going somewhere quickly.  

And now I have a picture of that turn during the race hanging in my shop, courtesy of our son.  

[85lebaront2]

Here's the answer to your question, Jim:

[Gary Lewis]

Cool story, Bill!  I like it.  

[grumpin]

That’s great!

Edit: I had a 1973 Vega that the PO put a 215 aluminum block from a Buick in. When I was stationed in Southern California I kept up with a Vette one night, he motions me in a parking lot and asks what’s in it.

I said it’s stock he laughs and says no it’s not and wants to see. It was a fun car.

[Nothing Special]

Not my story, but still a fun one...

Back when I worked at General Motors (this was in '85 - '86 while I was driving my brand-new '85 F-250) a guy I worked (Arnold) with told me about a day when he was in Germany.  For a year or two he was "loaned" to Opel and was working there.

He was driving on the Autobahn with a German Opel engineer riding along.  They were driving an Opel Kadet, which was not a very inspiring car, but it was testing a turbocharged engine that was pretty inspiring!  He had changed into the left lane to get around a slower car and WAY behind him a Mercedes flashed his lights at him.  Arnold had seen the car before he changed lanes, but knew he could complete the pass and get back to the right without holding up the faster car.  And he was right, he was back in the right lane before the Mercedes had to slow down.

But that wasn't good enough for the Mercedes.  He hit the brakes as he pulled even with Arnold and glared at him as if to say "how dare a Kadet trespass in the Mercedes lane!"  Then the Mercedes hit it again and pulled away.

The German engineer with Arnold didn't think that challenge should be ignored, so he told Arnold "go pass him!"  Arnold pinned it, caught up with the Mercedes (who was still in the left lane) and started flashing his lights!  The Mercedes started speeding up, but Arnold stayed on him and kept flashing his lights.  It took a while but eventually the Mercedes yielded, and Arnold pulled past.

Of course at this point Arnold can't slow down and let the Mercedes beat him, so he keeps it floored for the next 20 minutes or so, until they get to a city and there's a speed zone.  At that point he (gladly!) slowed down and the Mercedes sped on past.

Arnold said that while that Kadet had the power to blow off the Mercedes, it really wasn't designed to go that fast.  He was SOAKED with sweat from trying to keep that Kadet in its lane!  He doesn't know how fast they were going (the Kadet's speedo didn't go that high), but thinks it had to be over 200 kph.

[Gary Lewis]

Cool story!

But 200 kph/125 mph isn't all that over there.  Probably 20 years ago I was tooling down the autobahn in my rent car at about 100 mph, and got passed by the same Mercedes.  But a bit later I was passed by an MX5/Miata.  Since I had a new one of those I was a bit surprised that it was going that fast and tailed it.  Turned out that it was running in excess of 125 mph - 'cause that's as fast as I wanted to go and he was pulling away.  

[Nothing Special]

Gary Lewis wrote

Cool story!

But 200 kph/125 mph isn't all that over there....

You're right, I wasn't doing the math.  Like I said, I heard the story a long time ago.  I'm confident in the overall story (at least as I heard it...) but I'm thinking I'm not remembering the speed he said correctly.  I really doubt I just missed the units (200 mph would be unbelievably fast for even a Mercedes prior to the mid 80s (and after really)).  Or maybe I am remembering (mostly) correctly and Arnold said the speedo went up to 200 kph and they were well over that.  Anyway, I gotta believe that with the shape of an Opel Kadet they were probably generating significant lift, and it couldn't have been fun at all!

[Gary Lewis]

The Kadet was LIGHT, and I have a story about one, so that speed in one would have been nerve wracking.  The MX5, as it was known there, was also light but much lower and it didn't seem to be suffering from the speed.  Or, that's so it seemed from my not-too-close vantage point.

[swampedout]

A 2L engine is small!
But try the 1.6 in my suzuki! Maxes out around 60 mph but its a lot of fun getting it there

[Danny G]

had a 1.6l vw diesel lol, that thing did well for its size.

[85lebaront2]

Guy I used to ride to NNS with had an Opel Kadet wagon with the 1.1L base engine (54 HP) one day we left to go home and it was rather windy, he got out onto I-64 headed East and when he shifted to 4th the car just wouldn't accelerate. He let off, speed dropped like a rock, h e put it back in 3rd wound it up as far as it would go and went back to 4th, same thing, maxed out at 52 mph.

Years later I had one of the Opel Rallye models in my shop, 1.1L with dual Solex downdraft 1 barrels, 67 screaming hp. It had a horrible cold stumble, the heat passage in the intake had plugged with carbon, so a call to the Buick dealer got a set of intake gaskets and a lot of soaking, drilling and some heat got it working again.

[Angelo Voltura]

It blows my mind how some cars have less power than my ATV.

[Gary Lewis]

A buddy of mine had an Opel Kadet in the late 60's.  One day he brought it over 'cause it ran horribly.  Dad asked him what the last thing that was done to it and he said he and his brother had put points and plugs in it.  Dad put a timing light on it and it was spot-on, but idling very poorly.  Dad turned the timing up and it ran much better.

So he checked TDC and the balancer was off several degrees.  Then he asked when the aftermarket A/C had been added.  Recently.  Turned out that when the A/C came of with the engine wound up it was slowing the engine so much it was slipping the balancer.  

Later my buddy and I were sharing an apartment as we both were getting married in August of '69 and needed to conserve finances.  One day he came to the apartment and got out of the Kadet w/o leaving it in gear or setting the park brake.  It rolled forward gently and hit a corrugated trash can that was up against the building.  I left a little crease in the trash can and bent the bumper on the Kadet.  

[FuzzFace2]

grumpin wrote

That’s great!

Edit: I had a 1973 Vega that the PO put a 215 aluminum block from a Buick in. When I was stationed in Southern California I kept up with a Vette one night, he motions me in a parking lot and asks what’s in it.

I said it’s stock he laughs and says no it’s not and wants to see. It was a fun car.

I had the Vega and the 215 / 200 hp (v4) but never got the 2 together

I did up a little 302 with 351 heads for my uncles 67 Bronco we raced off road.
Took it to 100 yard drags one weekend and a lot though I had a SBC in it for how well (beating everything) it ran. I had to pop the hood so they could see the SBF to believe me.
It was great to run 14" paddle tires on the rear and little paddles up from, the fronts were hardly on the ground. Motor would run to 7500 RPM but you would shift between 7000 to 7200 RPM. I wished I knew he was getting rid of it as I would have bought it and dropped the motor in a car body and gone drag racing.

Then to bring you back to earth you hop in an old VW 1300 bug with 36 HP
or my 73 Fiat 850 sedan with it's 817cc and hardly36 HP on it.
Them were the days!
Dave ----

[Rembrant]

TheScatch wrote

had a 1.6l vw diesel lol, that thing did well for its size.

I've had about a dozen VW's, and have been running the diesels for quite a while now. The old NA ones were slugs and you had to push them up the hills, but they'd get 50 MPG all day long, and sometimes more.

The last real fuel miser I had was an 03 Golf TDI. The little bugger would hold 16 gallons of fuel and if I kept the speed at 65 mph or lower, it would get 800 miles to a tank. Man I loved that little car.

My current VW Golf TDI just barely gets 40 MPG.

[fords4life]

Had Friday off so I took my son (3yr old), my Dad and my wife's Uncle to the Sportsmans Expo down in Denver.  Parks and Wildlife has a free fishing pond for kids so Hunter got to catch his first fish.  A nice little Rainbow trout.  He was pretty excited and I sure had fun.  He also had to try out all the ATVs, trucks, Jeeps, quads, etc.  I think he's going to have wrenching in his blood.

[grumpin]

That’s great!