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Would you say the 7th gen T-Bird, was perhaps the biggest muscle car of all time?;)
1972-76 Thunderbird
Just always had this thought seeing Jack Cassidy chasing Clint Eastwood in The Eiger Sanction (1975) movie, lol.:D
http://www.imcdb.org/i014122.jpg
I don't see how anyone could consider ANY Thunderbird to be a Muscle Car! By the Gen VII they were a Luxury Car Wanna Be, and definitely had zero muscle, IMO.
IIRC they had a bit of front end float with all that hood and a 429 stuffed inside..
Muscle cars are generally considered to end in 1972, supposedly started with the 1964 GTO, it was considered a medium size car with a large motor from the factory. Most models changed in '73 and thats why they ended that year, though some carried on the date of 1972 is still cosidred the cutoff year, emissions and power ratings took hold in '72 but they still grab that year. Though I don't know if I agree or not the Mustang and Camaro are technically considreed "Pony Cars" because the mustang started the small car stature with performance motor. so that name is used for those I have never heard a Thunderbird to even be considered a muscle car, but to each their own!
Muscle car: One of those most misused phrases in the English language. Tbirds, Camaros, Mustangs, Vettes, Cudas and Challengers, to name a few, are not and never were true Muscle Cars and if you weren't there in the 60's then everything you have is second hand.
As long as you kept in a straight line! LOLQuote:
Originally Posted by DennyW
Definitely not a slalom ride!
We always called'em grandpa's ride. Definitely NOT cool. Unless you were trying to impress some chick...
That 'bird is a turd...
C'mon Tech, tell us what you really think!!! :eek::LOL::LOL::LOL:Quote:
Originally Posted by techinspector1
0-60 mph in 10.2 seconds and quarter mile time of 18 seconds - not a lot of muscle there.. My father had an 1967 Oldsmobile 88 that was faster than the T-bird.. Just sayin'
You guys remember those cars of post '72 a lot differently than I do. The '73's had miles of vacuum lines, with all kinds of pneumatic switches to do weird things trying to control emissions while increasing efficiency; the '74's were worse and they kept it up for about ten years. EGR systems were a really neat idea, weren't they? Using exhaust gas to slow down the flame path in the cylinders to prevent knock - what a great idea! And as bad as they were you couldn't change things without violating Federal rules, with fines in five figures for shops that knowingly defeated the OEM package. Yeah, it was a grand time in US automotive history - NOT.
The late 70's were the dark ages. Air injection reactos, overly retarded timing, low compression ratios, etc....................a sad time in automotive history.
the smog vettes . those turds are still hard to deal with. if you want a driver they are in that rocking chair of price.
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Originally Posted by shine
My 76 probably falls into that category though all of the smog junk is gone including the single cat. I put true dual exhaust on it designed for a 73. Fortunately it didn't have a smog pump, an absolutely worthless piece of junk.
they broke my heart with the nader bumpers. i have been working on vettes all my life. love them. during the nader years i pretty much lost interest. sad part is the nader cars are the same car just ruint with the nader bumpers and detuned engines. i remember in 84 they were putting 350's in 1ton's to get the mpg average for the year. but those vettes can still be bought right and with a little southern engineering they are fine. hard to restore because the value and cost of a resto are too far apart .
Nader is one of the most worthless POS to ever walk the earth.
This is not quite true, a neighbor of ours years ago raised exotic fish in a 500 gallon aquarium, a aeriator pump was outragously overpriced for the thing so a smog pump driven by a small electric motor worked like a top!! OK on a car they where junk, like the '81 pickup I had with a detonation retarding HEI on it, that piece pinged so dang much with the 305 & smogger heads that you couldn't even get up a hill, tell I yanked it and put a standard HEI in it.Quote:
Originally Posted by NTFDAY
Roger, I restored a '72 SS Chevelle, just at the start of the smog equipment, it actually was ordered without the EGR & smog pump but had 5 lines to the gas tank for venting and recirculating/reburning the fumes, I couldn't find a replacement tank with enough lines coming out so we had to salvage the original! Yeah, real glory days..
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Originally Posted by DennyW
I think it would be quite interesting to understand the (legal??) details involved with the "...little work" that would let a guy bury the speedo on one of these "top end cruisers". The only way I could bury the speedo on my '78 T-Bird was with a shovel, or maybe on a looooooong downhill slope if it was steep enough. ;):LOL::LOL::LOL:Quote:
Originally Posted by Matthyj
MattC, thanks for posting your comment and picture! It's generated a lot of discussion, and poked a few memories, too! Not necessarily GOOD memories, but memories just the same.
Some where around 75 my father in law brought a 68 Chevy half ton with a 307 to Missouri from California. It was a dog so we decided to eliminate the smog pump amongst other things. I plugged the holes in the exhaust manifolds with pipe plugs and cut and plugged all the hoses. Pretty sure it was a points dizzy so replaced points, rotor, cap and wires and a new fuel filter. I couldn't get it to fire and there wasn't enough movement in the dizzy and if memory serves me right I had to re-stab the dizzy a tooth or two advanced to get it to run. I thought it ran pretty well though my father in law wasn't happy so he had a valve job done and shortly thereafter it blew out the rings so he had it rebuilt.
Don't worry, they're not as concerned with gas engines right now. They've been beating on the diesels since a little before 08. The EPA is doing everything they can do to have the internal combustion process happen externally of the engine for the next emissions laws. But none of the engine manufacturers have developed the technology yet. :LOL:Quote:
Originally Posted by rspears
I think that the EPA expects the systems to capture the methane gas emitted by cattle in the fields (flatulence) to be perfected to the point that we can generate all of our electricity from free methane, with enough left over to power all of the cars in the USA. Any that cannot be powered by methane will be converted to solar power, or possibly wind generators generating electricity free.
How far can we derail this? :LOL: There were actually "scientists" here last year going around to the new sites of the wind farms claiming these are worse for the environment than any other energy source besides coal. Claiming that all the resources to manufacture and the land they take up aren't worth the end result. Sheesh, pick your gripe tree hugger! :LOL:
X2 on the wind farms. If they weren't subsidized they wouldn't exist. They're too expensive. The energy expended just to create the base on the big ones is huge. Most often, if the windmill sustains a catastrophic failure ( think lightning or tornado ) the unit becomes a permanent eye sore, as the cost of a crane is prohibitive. Since wind is not constant, the wind farm creates constant power spikes to the grid, and the grid has no means for storing the power for release during lulls. Also, these things are dangerous. In cold weather they can form ice on the bladed, which can sling off upwards of a mile or more. The tips of the blades are going extremely fast and create a sound wave when they pass by the base. This low frequency sound wave is annoying ( whup whup whup ) and actually cause health problems. There is more bad news. They slaughter birds and bats. The avian population in vicinity to windmills is devastated. If any other industry caused such impact, the EPA would shut it down.
The power company I worked for was and still is a leader in exploration of alternate power generation technology. Back in the late sixties, I was in a meeting to lay the groundwork for testing wind generation options for large scale installations (farms), and I made an off the cuff comment to that effect, and after the meeting, I got my butt royally chewed for it. I still hold that idea, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by 40FordDeluxe
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I have a friend who moved over to manage one of the largest wind farm holdings in the USA, with wind farms scattered up through five or six states, all erected with tax subsidized dollars. He shared with me that he's seen too many days in the middle of summer, those sultry days when the thermometer is peaking and air conditioners are running hard, when his entire grid is sitting idle, not enough wind to move a blade. The only thing keeping the AC on is fossil fuel burning. And the comment that we're gonna install enough solar panels to power all of America? That's just plain HOGWASH! 1) There's not enough viable land area, 2) Do you not want lights after sunset?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rrumbler
Sorry, rant's over, back to that T-Bird.....
don't forget that you can't create or destroy energy thru normal means-----------it just changes from something in motion to either heat or cool-------The wind generators take heat out of the air and change it to electric and the air is then cooler-----great option to control global warming
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Originally Posted by rspears
I believe the tax subsidized dollars says it all. Get the government out of it and it will go away, same as ethanol.
FWIW, a wind generator was installed on the DC-10's I worked on, have no idea if it was ever used, maybe Jerry knows.
I forget what we called that thing but they or something similar are on most jet airliners----in case of lost of all engines they pop out and generate some electric for emergency power plus a small hydraulic pump-----never had to use one----------------
And in response to icing of the wind generator blades------just like on the vanes in jets--------they are heated so icing isn't an issue------
The crew I worked with performed all of the initial electrical tests and I don't remember doing any on it. We might have verified the wiring so any testing must have been done on the flight line.
I han intended to mention the blade heaters. And the oil bath heaters. During the cold operation, they reduce the generator's efficiency. And when there is no wind, the turbines are pulling power from the grid.
And- they'll never go away. It's cost prohibitive to tear them down. Not to mention haul off the tons of concrete in the base.
Nope, we're stuck with them.
I have some friends that live up in north western Iowa where the wind farms started being put in about 10yrs ago pretty heavily. They have friends that have them on their property. Apparently the ground gets leased from the land owner and in 20yrs the generators would be at the end of their life expectancy and the farmer or land owner was left with the base etc. I think that has since changed because there was a big brew haha about new sites not being able to get set up due to none of the farmers wanting to give up their land and get stuck with getting rid of the base etc 20 years later.Quote:
Originally Posted by firebird77clone
My friend Buck's brother in law is on the maintenance crew for Mid American wind energy. He was telling us all the maintenance costs and I believe he said all the wind farms in Iowa still only produce 20% at best of production at a given time. He said the gas collected from the land fills which runs large generators is far superior in $$$ to energy produced. But there just aren't enough land fills to make enough for all the needs. Which is a good thing. At the rate farm ground is turned into housing, we'll be in a land drought in 10-20yrs, so loss of more land and more waste streams isn't the answer either.
My son charlie is out of the navy now and is working at a plant in North Carolina that produces electricity by pulling the methane out of the landfill. Says that it is very cost effective but does have some problems with the other by products that are also produced by the landfill. 2 more of those landfill operations are going to be opened near my county by the end of the year.