Anybody besides me ever wish the whole liter thing would go away?
Back in the good old days (cubic inches) a 345 inch motor was a 345. a 350 was a 350 and a 351 a 351. Now there all 5.7 Liter.
Way too much time on my hands today.:rolleyes:
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Anybody besides me ever wish the whole liter thing would go away?
Back in the good old days (cubic inches) a 345 inch motor was a 345. a 350 was a 350 and a 351 a 351. Now there all 5.7 Liter.
Way too much time on my hands today.:rolleyes:
Yep, liters X 61 equals cubic inches.
Cubic Inches = Engine Size
Liters = Soda Pop Size.
:LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:
JMHO
AFLAC
Well as far as I know it is written on every oil container somewhere that 1quart=946 ml or 946cc. To all intents and purposes 1 ml = 1 cc = 1 cu. cm. although that is really only true at 4 degrees C since only at that that temperature does 1 ml of water = 1 gram of mass and the density of water on which the liter is based does vary slightly with temperature. So basically a liter is roughly equal to a quart. The way I remember which is bigger is to recall the picture that ran in pulp magazines for over 20 years for the Charles Atlas body building advertisement in which a muscular guy kicks sand on a skinny guy at the beach with his girlfriend and I recall "A leader is bigger than a squirt!" so OBVIOUSLY (!) a Liter is bigger than a Quart! (Sometimes it takes silly rhymes to remember this stuff, but it works!) So since 1 inch = 2.54 cm, 1 cu. in. = (2.54x2.54x2.54) cc = 16.387064 cc. Thus a 2.0 L Pinto 4 cyl is about 122.05 cu. in. and conversely a 355 cu. in. SBC would be (355 x 16.3870 )= 5817.385 cc or 5.817 L. I know it's annoying to convert to metric values but the advantage gained is that the metrics are all related by powers of 10 and of course that is helpful since we can then use our fingers and toes to count (Ann Bolynn had 11 fingers, however so there are exceptions!). If you really want to get confused check out the British Imperial Gallon versus the U. S. Gallon or try to work on a British sports car where the measurements are not metric but may not all be SAE either! That is why I have several "adjustable" cresent wrenches! Hey how about those side-draft carbs, aren't they fun!
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder
DennyW, maybe you can appreciate that the reason my figure is not as svelte as it was when I was 18 is due to the fact that when I sent in my quarter for the Charles Atlas book it never came and I am still waiting! While I am on a British car memory lane how about the monocoque floor pan with a driveshaft tunnel that only permitted a "blind" insertion of the drive shaft into the back of the transmission! I wasted three hours on that one before calling a foreign car agency and they had a good laugh. It seems you have to wrap the front universal joint with a lot of masking tape to make the driveshaft into a rigid "spear" which will then slide onto the trans splines. When you start up the car the tape flies off but who cares!
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder
Yep, duct tape on the socket u-joint when reaching bellhousing bolts. :)
Good tips to know from the Pros! At the moment I am worrying over the last things I have to do to the Brookville frame (battery box, headers, mufflers and leaks in brake line fittings before I put the 'glass body on the frame) BUT it does help to wonder how to get access to things like the master cylinder and the battery after the body is on. On another thread C9x has pictures (Questions about Model A seat) of his under pinnings and man oh man it is all very tight on a Deuce frame so I am scratching my head on the '29 frame, but it helps to know that a lot of folks have done this before. Back to the liters, you can see from my example of the Pinto 2.0 L engine at 122.05 cu in that Tech1's easy conversion of 61 cu in/liter is good enough for estimates. Another conversion that is good to know for gas tank dimensions is that (4x946 cc)= 3784 cc/U.S. gallon so that if you measure a gas tank in inches as length x width x depth to get cubic inches you can divide the 16.387 cc/cu in into the 3784 cc/gallon to get (3784/16.387) = 230.914 cu in for one gallon. The guys who design gas tanks say to just use 231 cu in per gallon. I try to remember this as the size of the Buick V6, so every two revolutions the V6 gulps in a gallon of fuel-air mixture. Thanks for the floppy-universal-socket-tape-fix for the socket wrench!
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder
Mike check out this converter at http://www.csgnetwork.com/cubicinchlitercvt.html For the dumb metrics to know the difference between 5.7 liter as the 348 and the 352 you need to go out to like 4 places in cubic centimeters and that's just bullcrap.
It's not the point of knowing how to do the conversions, I can do that (but thanks everybody). I guess it's all this political correctivness that started around 66 When Ford labeled some 427 galaxies as 7 Liters as an advertising gimick.....
This was followed shortly after with the government deciding that Highway speeds should be in KPH instead of MPH so we would conform with the rest of the world. Anyone remember the dual speed limit signs you sometimes saw in the 70s along with the dual reading speedometers? As I remember this was done to help poeople with the transition from MPH to KPH...that worked really well :LOL: .
I guess the world moves on, but it doesn't mean I have to go with it, I still believe real engines are measured in cubic inces :3dSMILE:
I agree with MikeP's point completely - I think it actually serves to dumb down Americans just a little more. But its great for 99% of the consumers. Its simply orders of magnitude rather than exact figures.
But orders of magnitude don't work well for exact calculations.
They are however great for comparisons.
Its all about resolution vs. ease of comprehension.
Thats my analogy (like Don's "A leader is bigger than a squirt!") for approx. MPH to KPH conversion. 80 KPH sat right over (well real close to) 50 MPH on the speedo.Quote:
Anyone remember the dual speed limit signs you sometimes saw in the 70s along with the dual reading speedometers?
So - a kilometer is approx. 5/8ths of a mile!
Exactly right - but a 351 is actually a ~351.9 - so rounding occurs everywhere. There is also a 352 (another 351.9 I think) - someone else will have to remind me as to what that was about.Quote:
For the dumb metrics to know the difference between 5.7 liter as the 348 and the 352 you need to go out to like 4 places . . .
OK -
I think I'll go pickup a 1.892 quart coke - this discussion has made me thirsty.
Maybe a 1.6555 quart bottle of bourbon too! AKA 1.75 liter or for me and most of the people I hang with - 1/2 gallon.
:D
Bert
Another way to hold the nut in the socket is to pack the socket with wheel bearing grease. Maybe having 11 fingers would work also.
Ron
I had a guy come up to me Sunday as I was getting in the car and start going on about how the "cubes" were on the side of the car again. At first I wasn't getting his drift, but then it dawned on me. He meant the 281 emblem. Then he continued on about how he wrote a letter to Ford a few years ago telling that if they wanted to sell cars to "baby boomers" they'd better get back to using cubic inch emblems instead of those @%*# liter things. He was pretty wrapped around the axle about it!:LOL:
Well my point is the fact that when some goof begins with "...a 4.1 liter Wazoo V-6..." you can convert to what it really is in normal American size. 61 cubic inches = 1 liter = 1,000 cubic centimeters. 4 x 61= 244 and the .1 = 6 cubic inches- total 250 CID. Quick, how big is 2.3 liters in cubic inches?
Using CID is more precise to tell that a 348 ain't a 351 even if both are 5.7 liter. When it gets to "is it a 5.70 or 5.77 liter?" it's getting freaky deaky. For exactness you'd have to be breaking crap down to cubic centimeters where displacement would look like 5,751 cc. Bullhockey!!!
A "348CID" engine puts ONE picture in our heads. A "5.7 liter" is ambigious and does not specify THE engine but rather a groups of engine sized generally the same yet they're way different.
The 7 liter business began in the 60s when Henry Ford was pissed after Enzo Ferrari decided not to sell out to Ford. Ford committed to building a racing program with the Ford GT-40s and Corbas vowing to beat Ferrari at their forte- prototype GT car racing. The rest is history and that's when the liter bullcrap began in automotive namaclature on Galaxies with 427s.
Just think the Beach Boys couldda been singing "she's real fine, my six point seven..."
Anybody, especially on these boards, that describes his "4.6 engine" ought to be strung up.
I agree - but - I bought a 4.7 Dodge truck - how do I determine exactly what it really is?Quote:
Anybody, especially on these boards, that describes his "4.6 engine" ought to be strung up.
Everything I read says 287ci (286.811578 = 4.7x61.02374).
But - thats assuming its REALLY a 4.7
Maybe its really a 4.7358618137793586561557846175931 L
Thats 289 exactly (using 61.02374 ci/L) - :eek:
Bert
While we are having fun, let me recall another adventure with metric units in the SAE world. I use metric units every day in Chemistry so when I actually bought a brand new 1973 Vega two door wagon I thought why not get a few frills so I paid an extra $180 for the "Rally Pack" option. When I took delivery of the new Vega (a very nice Fisher body style, but let's not talk about the aluminum cylinder walls) I found the "Rally Pack" consisted of a thin decal pin stripe on the sides AND best of all, a DECAL on the speedometer showing Kph alongside mph! WOW, a $180 decal! Anyway from that decal I figured that 1 mile = 1.6093 kilometers, so 100 Kph is about 62.1 mph, and yes a kilometer is smaller than mile. Regarding the case of 11 fingers, there is a recent TV ad where a guy has 6 fingers on each hand for a total of 12 fingers and supposedly he gets more office work done. Anyway it is clear that there is great resistance to metric units in the U.S. and my favorite suggestion is to keep all the measurements actually the same as the SAE sizes and just change the blueprints to read the sizes in metric! The only sanity to it at all is that as far as I know the metric folks do agree that 1.0000000 inch = 2.54 cm with no further decimals needed. The same sort of problem occurs in science where NIST/NBS routinely refines the numerical values of basic physical constants about every 10 years using a least-squares fit of all the constants to all known physical data. In Theoretical Chemistry this caused severe problems back in the 1930-1940 era but has been solved by defining every physical unit to be "1" in terms of the formulas so that as new values were updated only the algebraic formulas were needed to relate to the real world and this has worked out very well using what are called "atomic units" so modern 2005 calculations can be directly compared to calculations from the 1930s even though the values of the constants have been updated several times. Not to offend any of our friends in France (Viva LaFayete!) but you may recall that the meter was supposed to be exactly (1/10,000) of the circumference of the Earth at the equator, cut into a piece of metal kept in a temperature controlled case in Paris, BUT (Oh Oh!) they didn't have the right value for the Earth's circumference, SOOOO the meter is totally arbitrary based on an error! Too late now because the meter has been redefined in terms of laser wavelengths and adopted as an international standard. So the king's "foot" = 12 inches and maybe 1" is the king's thumb knuckle and maybe the Biblical Cubit is the length of an average forearm but you got to start somewhere and now with lasers length has been refined to many sig. figures. The worst cases are the need of Chemical Engineers to carry around pocket tables of conversion factors, but probably the several systems of units in electrical measurements are the most difficult but I like "atomic Units" which by the way define 1 bohr =0.529177 x 10^-8 cm (this value is presently under revision but the 0.5291 part is pretty definite) so there we are back to metrics, but in "atomic units" all the units are "1" times the formula for whatever is being measured, I like that system but for cars I guess all I need is 1.6093 Km/mile, 946 cc/qt. and 61.02374409 cu in/L or roughly 61.024 cu in./L.
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder
Don, it isn't often that I get to correct a retired scientist, but I think that you'll find there are 61.024 cubic inches in a liter, not 61.387. You may be confusing the cc's in a cubic inch, 16.387. :)
The one exception being the 60's GTO emblems, right?
And with the fabulous "world car" concept we can all have 2 sets of tools out to work on out more modern beasts. Again, car companies- make it 100% metric or 100% SAE instead of half-assed!
My 96 Eldorado has a feature in the computer that allows switching to metric. It works on the analog speedo and the digital read-outs too.
Hey, I know and understand the metric system and use it when I'm in a foreign country. I just don't want to use it here. We ain't like tiny Europe with countries spilling over on each other. The USA is VAST and most none of us ain't ever gonna use it cruising between California and Illinois.
I got your metric system right here!http://www.spacespider.net/emo/whacky071.gif
you can pack it with spaghetti strip caulk works very good for holding nuts in sockets and for packing a to lose swivel socket and the tape trick is very good to i do not know were i pick that up at but it has save my a$$ and the liter thing gto had 389 6.6 they went to400 6.6 ?? to dam much math for gm and to much for me :whacked:
389 came with 6.5L badges, but hey, 6.5 6.6... whatever it takes.Quote:
Originally posted by pat mccarthy
... and the liter thing gto had 389 6.6 they went to400 6.6 ?? to dam much math for gm and to much for me :whacked:
yes 6.5 is litre emblem was used on 389 and 400 from 64 to68 ?i do not get to much from is i have over 10 liters in my gto:3dSMILE:
Tech1, you are correct and I have edited my previous post to the correct number. I guess it was past my bedtime when I typed that! SBC offered the 5/8 estimation for converting kph to mph and that is also very good since I get roughly 62.14 mph at 100 kph while the 5/8 conversion gives 62.5 so that is another one I learned. Maybe the conversion we need most in these times of much higher gas prices is to convert (miles/gallon, U.S.) to Km/L. I recall when I first hosted some graduate students from Europe and THEY were mystified by mpg since they were used to Km/L! I get for that conversion:
(miles/U.S. gallon) x( 1.6093 Km/mile)x( 1 U.S. gallon/3.784 L) =
mpg x 0.425291 = Km/L.
So you could say that in the U.S. we get more than twice as much mpg than they get in Km/L in metric countries but actually the 0.425291 conversion is just for the equivalent value in the metric system. The real problem will be when we have to pay say $2 per Liter, that will be $7.57/gallon! Maybe this discussion sheds some light on why European sports cars have small engines and also why an American V8 has so much more power and torque than little 2 L engines designed for more expensive gas. Sorry Tech1, I guess that was my first error this year!
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder
Just caught up with this thread and not to be axle wrapping.....:)
If a centipede a pint, and a velocipede a quart---
how much did the precipice?? :confused:
My apologies to the followers of LaFayete (and Louis De Broglie too) for criticizing the French meter and then making a mistake myself. All I can say to Walt is to remind him of the last word of a dying centipede (dyne-centimeter) which was "erg!" because in the centimeter-gram-second (cgs) smaller version of the metric system a dyne is a unit of force and when multiplied by a cm you get a very small unit of energy, namely an erg which is 10^-7 Joule. You ask what is a Joule? Well a (small) calorie is the energy needed to heat one gram of water (1 cc) by 1 degree C. The Calorie we use for dietary values is actually 1000 of these small calories. In a famous experiment, Joule converted heat calories to mechanical energy units and found the conversion is 4.184 Joule/cal. Now since we need to remember which unit is larger there is a helpful saying: a calorie is valuable, it is worth many jewels (Joules), how many, why 4.184.
A calorie is worth many Joules, how many? 4.184 and each Joule is 10^7 ergs just like the dyne-cm said?
While we keep this thread of comedy going, maybe someone from overseas can tell us current prices of gas in something we can convert to $/liter. How about it from Europe or Down Under? How come we have not heard from the Hot VW folks where 88 mm barrels used to be the hot modification for the Type I flat-4 engines? As I recall VW barrels came in several oversizes and I mistakenly put some oversize pistons into smaller barrels using parts from several engines and they dropped in without a ring compressor, I just squeezed the rings in with my hand and the pistons moved freely UNTIL the engine warmed up! When the pistons heated, it would be very hard to start hot, BUT (!) since the engine was in a dune buggy with no doors I would just put my left leg over the side and push start it like a scooter and once the engine turned it would cough off and run again. However this procedure was very inconvenient in traffic or on an upgrade! However, I was much younger then and poorer so I did a lot of dumb things with that dune buggy and that is when I bought my first set of metric wrenches!
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder
Thought I'd bring this quote over from another thread just to demonstrate a shift.
Not intended as a put down to this presumably young fella, just to point out that a newer generation feels the need to convert from cubic inch to liters as a point of clarification.:3dSMILE:Quote:
Originally posted by 72CHARGER
LIKE OTHERS IN THE PAST I HAVE AQUIRED A NEW TOY. I HAVE A 72 DODGE CHARGE WITH 318 (5.2L) .....
Golly gosh, these forums might get really interesting if your gummint ever decides to convert to metric just like the rest of the world :LOL::LOL::LOL::LOL:
I am surprised this old thread is still active. The "error" I made caught by Tech1 was that 2.54 x 2.54 x 2.54 = 16.387604 cubic cm = 1 cubic inch since 1 inch = 2.54 cm exactly. Then 1 Liter = 1000 cubic cm. For years I have told students the way out of this problem is to just keep the SAE blueprints and add the metric dimensions on the same blueprints. Sure it comes out in unusual decimal equivalents but that is better than redrawing all the blueprints and remachining all the parts! If you work on a Pinto 2000 as I did you will find all the external bosses are threaded for SAE bolts while the internal measurements are all in metric units! Having previously worked on VW engines I already had a set of metric tools. I ran into this problem again recently on the GM 700 R4 transmission tailstock. 9/16" SAE bolts will initially fit the four bolts on the rear of the unit but will eventually strip out the metric threads. Fortunately for me when I installed a new shifter I caught this problem before I stripped out the whole/hole threads. If you use longer metric bolts there is enough thread depth in the transmission bosses to put the bolts through the whole/hole boss and even put a nut on it. Whew, when I saw the thread junk come out of the hole with the short 9/16" SAE bolts I thought the 700 R4 case was a goner but thankfully there is enough thread depth to just use longer metric bolts and catch the deep (metric) threads allowed by the boss "ears" on the back of the transmission case. I believe after 1980 the external bosses on the 700 R4 are METRIC!
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/Teen Rodder
Somebody did some digging to find this old thread :LOL:
I remember when I started out years ago, the only tools in my box were SAE and doing a lot of grumbling when I had to basically duplicate the wrench sets with metric. I still begrudge having to give up toot box drawer space for the metrics.
But time marches on, I started out my grandson with his first tool box a couple of years ago and when he gets wrenches or sockets for birthdays etc he ends up with both metric and SAE.........of course he knows when he’s working on a project with Grandpa the metrics stay in the tool box ;)
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Every time I encounter a metric fastened I resent it. It's like "WHY"? Another way to sell more tools under the guise(?) of needing to conform to the rest of the world! Marketing! You can bet the tool companies loved it!
".....Every time I encounter a metric fastened I resent it. It's like "WHY"? ......"
I grew up in a world when the US was the was the globes preeminent economic/manufacturing power and SAE was our standard (and we were PROUD of it). Somewhere along the line under the name of "falling in line with the rest of the world" our elected officials decided we needed to change whether the majority of the voting public wanted to or not (think early political correctness).
Anyone else remember the multi-million dollar fiasco about changing all the speedlimits and signs to kilometers?
I could go on, but I think I'll just send the soap box back to the Craigslist thread.
.
Metric is so much easier when it comes to finding the right socket/wrench.The only oddity is that 5.5MM that some Ford and others uses. Both of my vehicles are American made, and have mostly SAE fasteners, but I'v been known to grab the metrics to work on them. 14mm fit's almost exactly 9/16" and 13mm" fits almost exactly 1/2". 10mm is not quite right for 3/8" and 12mm is not quite right for 7/16". There actually a little closer tolerance than the actual 1/2" or 9/16" socket/ wrench so they fit nice and tight.. I do have more SAE tools than metric. I don't buy a metric fastener unless the bolt is captive and I need to. So much easier to remember 3/8" course or fine thread for example, not so easy M10x 1.25.
Another nice thing about these moldy oldy threads popping up is nostalgia. It reminds me how much I enjoyed the humor of Walt Zander (RIP).
I always figured it was the chebbie guys who started using the "litre" phraseology because it sounded better when they had to tell someone that their 350/350 Whaever got whooped by a 5.0 Litre then it did to admit they got whooped by a 302 Mustang????????;):LOL::LOL::LOL:
:LOL::LOL::LOL::LOL:You are a DEEEEP thinker, Dave!!!:LOL::LOL::LOL::LOL:
well all i can say is you have not lived life.... till it.s fullest .. to you had 10+liters under one 66 GTO hood ..... ford what???
I've lived, Pat. Blown 514" Ford in a 240 wheelbase rear engined digger----Chevy what????
About to turn the earth backwards by 1320 feetAttachment 54734
I whooped that 302 mustang (Avrid Boyken had dumped boat loads of money into). with my 389 66 GTO. What really ticked him off was his then girlfriend had the same car (well a 67 GTO) so he was ticked that she could most likely whop him too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Severson
did you say something thing dave :) street car 632 pump gas no need for a track to have fun with fenders and all steel
the only 5.0 muskrat that ever gave me a fit was a one that some guy put a 440 mopar in it . i gave him a car length with the 50 chevy at the time i had a mild 454 in it
