MISCELLANEOUS RAMBLINGS OF A 70'S MOTORHEAD

I am constantly amazed, when I attend a cruise or walk around at a show, at how perfect many of the cars are. So perfect in fact, that they are BETTER than the factory ever built them. Now don't get me wrong here, I have nothing against frame off restorations or going to great lengths to make every detail perfect...there's a LOT good to be said about that, but it's just not how I remember things. Here was the routine as I recall it. We'd get home from work on Friday, give the car a quick wash, coat the tires with brake fluid to make them shine and off we went for a night of fun!! Let me tell you, by the end of the night our cars were a far cry from the perfect examples we see cruising today. I mean, the rear quarters were covered with rubber, the engine was usually dripping oil and anti-freeze, some wouldn't start with out someone sticking a pencil in the carb to hold the choke open...we're talking about cars that were drove hard and put away wet. Then at least once each summer, we'd try to revive the paint with a Blue Coral job. Talk about fun, a whole day of rubbing the finish and the more of the cars' color you saw on the rag, the more good you figured you were doing. They would look great for a while but we would eventually beat them all up again. I don't want to leave the impression that we didn't keep our cars clean and shiny because we did, they just weren't perfect. You have to understand, these cars were not only our night time cruisers but they were also our daily drivers. As a result, most of us drove 20 footers, cars that looked flawless from 20 feet away. In fact, mine is STILL one today, don't let the pictures on these web pages fool you.

What we would do to the cars themselves is another whole story. A friend of mine wanted to fit bigger tires onto his 68 Fairlane hoping to launch better from the light. So he got some HUGE tires mounted onto his chrome reverse Cragars and found they would rub slightly on the inner fenderwells. NOT a problem. He took a piece of 2x4 lumber and a ballpeen hammer then commenced to hammering down the inner fender lip. When he was done it may have looked a bit beat up buttttt, the tires didn't rub anymore and he felt he was getting the most rubber he could on the road without doing a tub job. That's what the cars were truly like. Holes cut out in the hood with jigsaws, sometimes not even centered, exhaust pipes that didn't extend past the floorboards, air cleaner lids put on upside down to let more air in, you name it, we did it. Heck, I can recall the first thing many owners of the Corvette Split Window Coupe did was cut that irritating split out and replace it with last years rear window. If you were to take some of those cars and put them in a show today, people would just shake their heads in disgust!
It's really funny when you think about it.

Another bit of craziness occurred in the factories where these cars were produced. I was listening one day to a couple of fellows discuss a hose clamp of all things. One guy insisted it was not the right one for that year car while the other fellow stood his ground and said it most certainly was. Don't get me wrong, it's what they're into and that's cool. BUTTTT I hope it doesn't come as a shock to anybody to find out that if GM/Ford/Chrysler/AMC ran short on the "proper" hose clamps, they were not about to stop production while waiting for a shipment to arrive. They would find some suitable clamps SOMEWHERE and that is what was going on those cars. Who really cared?? I mean, GM got SUED by some of their customers for putting Chevy ENGINES into their Oldsmobiles! How many of you remember that event??? I've experienced a bit of the "That's Not Correct Syndrome" myself with my own car. I can't tell you how many times I've been told my power brake booster is "SUPPOSE" to have a gold cadmium finish! When I tell them mine came with a bare steel one, they tell ME "No it didn't !!" Ok folks, I am the original owner with photos of that engine the day I drove it home and the booster had no plating....period! As one fellow walked away I heard him tell his friend, "He's full of it, they were ALL plated!" So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is this. YES it's fun & important to restore our cars and yes it's very embarrassing to have drool dripping off your chin as you look over an absolutely perfect GTO, Catalina etc. But we should never forget what started this whole thing in the first place!! Those "Run Into The Ground American Muscle Machines" that sent our pulses into an over rev condition
NOT because they were perfect but because they weren't!!
THAT'S what it's all about!!

DOING THE CRUISE THING

THE MUSCLECAR "YARD STICK"

It really makes no difference what sort of things you get involved with, you'll find that everything gets measured in some fashion or form. If it's dogs you are interested in, the arguments between Labrador and Chesapeake Bay Retriever owners could go on endlessly. Which type of dog is faster or smarter or hardier!! I think you get the picture, it's that basic instinct we have to compete. The big problem with that is people tend to argue their opinions so for almost anything that exists, we tend to put a yard stick to it. Set a standard so we can declare a winner!! It just so happens the "yard stick" for a musclecar requires a stretch of road a quarter of a mile long!! Yeah, you know it, I'm talking about the ET!! (and not that little funny looking creature that Speilberg made a movie about). Just in case you are not a car person, ET stands for Elapsed Time. In this case, the amount of time it takes for a car, from a standing start, to travel a quarter mile at full throttle. Of course, the lower the number, the faster the car. Though it might seem like an odd way to "rate" a car, it's where any normal musclecar conversation begins. I can remember it as though it were yesterday...it would go something like this:
"Hey, cool wheels, what're you runnin'??"
"Got a 400, stock except for headers and a gear, oh yeah, put a shift kit in it too!"
Then comes the million dollar question......
"What'll it turn??"
"Ohhhh, she gets low 14's mostly but I can't get it to hook up. I figure with some slicks, it should be well down in the low 13's...how about yerz, what'll it turn??"
"Ohhh, I'm into the 12's easy!"
Usually, from this point, the conversation can go several ways maybe ending up in a race to settle who's talking BS, sometimes with surprising results. It could be that "stock 400" has been bored, cammed and loaded with enough goodies to almost pull a front tire off the ground on launch or that "well into the 12's" car has nothing but a 304 2 barrel carbed smogger with Thrush mufflers on it. You just never knew! The fact of the matter is that so many things could affect how your car runs on any given day, that the ET isn't really an accurate thing. Even more than that, the person behind the wheel makes a huge difference too. This brings to mind someone I would give the "Street Brawler Of All Time" award to....Todd!!

HEADERS & A GEAR & YOU DON'T WANNA RACE?
TRICK!!

If you've spent any time at all cruising, I'm sure you know a "Todd"! He was just an average fellow a bit on the stout side & missing a couple of fingers from his job at the lumberyard. But more than that, he was a Motorhead's....Motorhead!!! He just lived and breathed cars, more precisely, AMC cars so you know he had to try twice as hard to overcome that "Don't Be A Gambler, Junk Your Rambler" mentality that many of the street guys had about AMC's. As it turned out, Todd was near impossible to beat and made total shambles of the ET criteria!! The memory I'm about to share is one that is etched in my brain and I know some of you will find this hard to believe
but it's true.

One of the guys was working on a Camaro for the strip. We're talking big time bucks with a built 396, tubbed, roll cage, single seat...the works. Everyone was sure that the ET would declare this car a winner! Well, the day of truth finally arrived and the Camaro was trailered up to the strip for it's maiden run. We all went up to watch but didn't plan to run our cars, except for Todd!! He showed up in a 69 Rambler Scrambler he bought the day before for a couple of hundred dollars. This car had major rust, blew oil smoke like a mosquito chaser and was obviously missing some major exhaust components! About the only good thing on the car was the slicks on the back. The laughs he got as he staged next to this Camaro would have made a professional comedian jealous, but there they were, side by side, Todd's Rambler sitting there putting out so much blue smoke it was getting hard to see the cars, when the green light popped and off they went. I'm sure you already know I'm going to tell you Todd blew that Camaros doors off but what you probably wouldn't expect to hear is he broke into the high 11's with that clunker!!
Ok, go ahead and say it..
"BULLLLLLLSH_____!!!!!"

Now in all fairness to that Camaro, it WAS it's initial run with a lot of "sorting" out yet to do and Todd was not one to tell all so that Rambler may have had more in it than we knew, but it was still an upset! It took a while for all this to sink in and I just didn't fully understand how this could happen but as I got to know Todd, I learned one of his secrets!! You just have to try your best to blow up the engine...Todd just DIDN'T CARE if he turned that motor into scrap iron!! With good rubber on the back, he would simply come out of the hole at redline and if his drive train survived that test, he'd run through the gears shifting only when the motor told him to regardless of what the tach said. Needless to say, his cars never lasted long but he was hard to beat!! He once broke out of the AMC thing long enough to buy and blow up a Camaro all within a nights' time. I'm sure the people he beat with that mostly stock car are probably STILL wondering how!! Todd found he could crank that 350 cubic inch engine up to almost 10 grand so he made that his redline. Hard to believe, yeah, but when that engine blew, there was no mistaking it.

A NICE 69 SCRAMBLER SIMILAR TO TODD'S

The point of all that is there just ISN'T any way to rate a musclecar!! I hear all these discussions about that was a 13 second car from the factory and this one turned 14's and in all honesty, the difference between a 13 second car and a 15 second car is 2 seconds. In reality, unless you are racing professionally for money, it's not a whole lot to bank on. Hey, a 15 second car is fast no matter how you cut it and if you get a guy like Todd behind the wheel, heck, who knows what it'll turn! Now I know I'm gonna hurt some feelings with this one but MY all time favorite GTO is the 74 Ventura based model. I just love it and if the SD engine had been offered in that car, I would have a GTO in my garage instead of the TA. But for so many different reasons, some of the GTO purist guys refuse to acknowledge it as one!! I've heard and read so many times how it was way underpowered!! Hey folks, it was a solid 15 second car, that is not a slow car!! In truth, what did a base model 60's vintage GTO turn??? I have an article that compares the 64 Goat with the 74 version and there was about a half second difference between them. See what I mean, this ET yardstick is flawed big time giving a bad rap to a LOT of hot cars.

At a recent cruise, I had the "good fortune" to end up parked next to some guy with a new Roush Mustang. The owner parked it and began saying loudly to anyone who would look at his car how those old guys with their big blocks have nothing compared to this car of his. According to him, it was the hottest thing on the road and he had plans to put a blower on it. I wanted to tell him it already had a "Hot Air Blower" behind the steering wheel but refrained!! Anyhow, with this blower, it was going to be an 11 second car. All I could think about was Todd turning 11's with his 200 dollar Rambler so big deal. But the fact of the matter is this guy missed the whole point of what this car thing is all about!! We need to measure our cars not on some magic number shoe polished onto the windshield at some drag strip, but by what these cars represent. It's that time in our lives when time stood still...when octane was our biggest worry!! We need to measure our cars by the pleasure they brought, the feeling of that rumble against your chest, the get together of friends at a quarter carwash parking lot or at the department store lot late at night. All those things that no ET in the world could replace. We still cling to it just because it's a great way to clear our minds and renew our souls!!
I wonder if they make a yardstick able to measure that???!!

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