I gave up my last bona fide hobby when my oldest son started driver’s ed. The engine was not original. It was a transplant from a Ford Fairlane GT. The “GT engine” as it is/was known, was a 390 ci engine that was the pre-cursor to the 428 Cobra Jet engine. It was forever more fast!
In a teenage boy’s hands, it was a death machine.
Now, it seems my hobby is cash flowing the two youngest kids through college without pulling any money out of savings and my retirement accounts.
My old Z28 with a 454 LS6 engine was also pretty sweet… The LS6 wasn’t a stock engine for the Z28.
It was rumoured that some engineer often used to drive it at 150 mph… Heard that he went from Assinaboia, Sask to Regina in 45 minutes… over 100 mile trip.
Back in the early 70s.
Dik
Kind of like making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, huh?
I hear it’s much more fun…
Dik
I drove the part of that trip between Assiniboia to Moose Jaw last fall.
It didn’t impress me as a fast road.
Two lane and narrow.
Where there any shoulders at all almost 50 years ago?
Narrow if I recall… and almost no traffic at the time. It was a paved road… not really a highway, and no mounties. I was in my younger stage… 10 feet tall and bulletproof.
…and flat and straight as I recall…
Dik
Bought my '66 Galaxie 2D hardtop, 390-4V, 325HP, 4 speed, almost new from Ford’s ‘resale lot’ when I worked there. Some manager must have specified the odd build, manual trans with air conditioning, and turned it in because the air didn’t work very well. The problem was that the Bowden cable loop end at the heater control valve had not been fastened to the valve crank, at all, so the heat was always on; took ten minutes to find and two to fix. Sold it after 120,000 happy miles.
Best sounding car ever; people who didn’t like cars would flag me down to say they loved the sound it made. I regularly detoured to take it through tunnels at full song with the windows down.
Gas was cheap then, and it really needed its 36 gallon tank; maybe 12 mpg highway with a 3.25 axle.
I loved the top-loader 4 speed, but a modern six-speed double overdrive would have transformed it something wonderful. Wish I’d kept it and done that.
In the ‘70’s one of the guys who hung out at Dad’s Shell Service Station had a ‘63-1/2 Galaxie 2D Coupe (had that sports roof thingie going on). The emblems said 390, but it was a 427 side oiler bored and stroked to about 500 c.i., dual 4V Holleys on a hi-rise intake, 4 spd top loader, 4:11 traction lock differential, Hooker headers, and a wicked cam with roller tappets. Holy moly!!! One night at the drag strip he let me drive it down the strip. I think I was 14 or 15, but that night I was as big as a tree and bulletproof!!!
To bad he painted it Carolina blue, should have been NCSU red.
