Craigslist find

'56 Ford. These are nice trucks, too bad about the chevy engine. $4200? He's desperate to sell it seems. Could be a good deal for someone. Needs some TLC, but could be a great driver.

'56 F100

How to choose your coil springs

So you need new coils for that muscle car? There's a few things you should keep in mind.



1. Is this a original resto?
2. Have you modified the car?
3. What are you looking for in the ride / performance department?

The coil springs on your car were speced by the OEM supplier according to several variables:

1.Model
2.Engine size
3.Air Conditioning

So all of these need to be taken into consideration when choosing your replacement coil springs.

Lets assume the simplest of the above, an original resto. If you have a 68 Chevelle with a small block and no AC specify all of these when buying your new springs. Any parts man worth his salt will be able to get you the proper springs (I like Moog) with that info. This will give you the factory ride height and handling, as would be expected with a resto.

Now what if you modded the car? Say you have a 454 in that 68 Chevelle now. Well at that point I would consider a big block (they did have the 396 in '68) spring for the car. The extra spring load and rate will improve the handling with the heavier engine.

Now what if you want to lower or raise the car? Well here you're pretty much on your own. To raise the rear of an A-body GM simply use the El Camino springs from the same year. To lower the car go with a proper aftermarket spring, these should be properly engineered to maintain the ride quality of the car. I never suggest cutting coils. Hotchkis makes a nice product if you want to drop your car.

Finally is the situation where the spring is no longer available (NLA) for your car. 1969 GTO front coils are an example of a spring that is NLA from Moog. What then? Try to find the specs for the springs that were originally on your car. Then find a similar spring. 69 LeMans springs happen to be a good alternative for a 69 GTO.

OK, thats it for now on coils! Another post will tackle the rears, variable vs. constant rates.

Carlisle

Spring Carlisle is this weekend. Given that I'm broke I won't be there.

http://www.carsatcarlisle.com/

Hope you made it though and found some deals! For once it looks like the weather is going to be beautiful.

I'm going to start saving so I can make it to hershey this year.

The $1.6M Volvo

Catch this video of the McLaren F1 crash test? Wow. No visible damage to the passenger compartment at all! Very cool. Given all of the engineering that went into making that car fast who would have thought it was safe too.

Volvo eat your heart out, the only car EVER to have been driven away from the test.

Another ebay gem

Yeah I've got a bit of the thing for the second series chevy trucks right now. Looks a little rough around the edges but would make a great driver.

58 Apache

Prius Emissions

anybody catch this over on autoblog.com?

Post here

Time for new tests for hybrids? I mean how hard would it be to adjust the idle speed for different types of cars? Best part is that at least here in MD DIESELS don't even have to go through emissions!

Vintage Speed Parts

Nice post one the HAMB here:

Vintage Speed Parts

Its an old post but it got me thinking. I love old speed parts, particularly intakes. I've got a flathead hexagon tool 2x2:



A Freinman 2x2:



A Edelbrock 573 for a Y-block:



And a offy 3x2 NOS with 3 97s:



I'd love to have a few cobra intakes for SBFs, maybe one of the old ones that took the 4 Weber IDAs? Man I always loved those.

The meet and greet

One of the greatest aspects of buying and selling old cars and parts is meeting folks that are into old cars and parts as well. Twice in the past 6 months or so I've made 1-3 hour drives to scrounge parts from folks, a T10 and Y-block in PA and a Y-block intake with 3 strombergs in northern MD. Both times the sellers had the parts I wanted, as described and the deal could have been done in 5 minutes. But I ended up at both places for 2+ hours.

Why?

Because car folks are nice (generally), love to chat cars, and love to show off their stuff. In PA I got to see a 67 chevelle, 25k ORIGINAL miles, tri-power, 4-speed. Beautiful. In MD there was a 41 ford pick-up, a M-37 dodge and a pile of Y-blocks that I copied the numbers off of for him. He was selling out of Fords, hmmm wonder if that 41 truck is still there.

Those 2 experiences are exactly whats missing when you buy your parts from a catalog or from the 'bay. Instead of a nice hour or 2 of chatting you get a bill, tracking # and another $200 on the old credit card.

I'll take the cash buy, BS session any day of the week, thank you.

Is Ebay killing swaps?

So every car guys loves them. This time of year as the weather warms you start to get excited for them and here in the Mid-Atlantic, Spring Carlisle is right around the corner. Look at that they even added a few cuties to their website.

Yep, the swap meet. The place to find parts that aren't repopped or are just plain old and cool. Stuff you can't buy from a catalog, deals you never imagined, finding that tagged carb for your 63 Vette on the $5.00 carb table. The stuff dreams are made of.

But now we have another resource for this stuff, the great ebay. Whats is this 800 lb gorilla of old junk doing to swaps? In my opinion, its hurting them and the 'little guy'. Ebay offers a nationwide market place for a swapper's goods that even the largest swaps, like panoma, carlisle and hershey can't begin to touch.

Who's been to a swap in the past few years and made a seller a reasonable offer on a part only to be declined with 'I could get twice that on ebay'. I had it happen twice at hershey last year. Ebay has convinced most sellers that their stuff is worth 2x the market price. But who's to blame? If you bid stuff up on ebay, you are.

Ford flathead intakes are a great example of this. How many 4 carb intakes intakes have you seen bid up to $500+ on ebay and not hit the reserve? Plenty. Who out there has a flathead that needs 4 97s? Not many folks.

My point is this: If we continue to bid items up to crazy prices on ebay we'll continue to see the decline of the swap meet. If more folks ignore the 'bay and start to buy locally like the old days, the swap meet will rebound. What will actually happen? Only time will tell, but it will be an interesting experiment into the buying mindset of the vintage auto parts consumer.

Greasy piles of parts v. Shiny Internet Pictures delivered to your door.

Which makes me think of another thing the internet destroys... I'll save that for tomorrow...

Where are my parts made?

This has been an ongoing issue across many facets of American life: Where did this product that I'm purchasing originate from?

Unfortunately far too many Americans simply look at the low price and don't care. They place the value on the price, not the quality or job chain that the product supports.

Auto parts have become an excellent example of this. An excellent example is the conversation I had with a friend the other day. He walks into NAPA to get a muffler for a '97 S-10. OK the counter guy says, we have 2. $48 for this one, $135 for this one. Huh? Well you see the $48 one is made offshore, the $135 is made in the USA and has a lifetime warranty. Which one did my buddy walk out with? Yep, the $48 one.

Why? His focus was the price, why did he need a lifetime warranty on a part for a truck with 250k miles on it that was 10 years old? He doesn't. What would his additional $87 have bought if he went with the other muffler? Yes, it would have supported an American worker.

However the simple fact of the matter is that it costs significantly more to produce a give part in the US. Its as simple as the cost of living and what you have to pay your employees.

So if you want an American made rotor, spring or drum for your car you have to be prepared to pay more for it.

Thats the simplicity of the price difference, I'll be tackling the issues of supply and quality on the subject in the coming weeks.

Here's an American made brake drum for a Chevelle:

Truck Love

I'm in love:

1959 Chevy Apache