Prince Valiant
04-28-2004, 11:25 PM
Rode in joe's 1970 Chevelle 454SS....
What a sweet car. For those that haven't cruised around in one of the premeire muscle cars, what a treat this is. At every light, every eye was fixed on us...this car most certianly does not fit the typical shape of what's currently on the hwy.
The car's tone right now is a little on the overmuffled side. It seems that the origninal owner like to do some long distant drive in this beast and muffled it accordingly. It is downright docile sounding, and according to joe, that will only be a temporary predicament.
The gears are also more suited to a high speed, easy going vehicle. To give you an idea of how long legged this thing is currently, we correlated the RPM in first gear to the speed we were traveling. Get this: In 1st gear (a 4speed manual), traveling at 35mph the engine was only turning over 3200 RPM!!!! :wow Reving this thing up to 6500 in first would net you 70+mph :wow
While the guy who sold it to joe claimed 3.08's, I honestly wouldn't be suprised if 2.73's came out of that thing.
What a smooth ride though....didn't feel a bump once while out on the hwy in the thing. And with it's high gears and thus low rpm's and being overmuffled it was sometimes hard to tell if the thing was even running...which proved to be a problem.
You see, as we went down the road, I noticed that the manual choke on the thing wasn't fully off. So as I reached to check it, the bracket (which is striped btw) let go causing the choke to close, and thus causing the car to stall...as we coasted down the road, both joe and I looked at each other wondering "Is it on?". Proved not to be of course, but was an easy matter to get started again. While it's easy to leave the choke partially on with it's current switch, no reaching for the choke anymore.
Joe was kind enough just to run it up just a bit...from the seat-o-pants meter it seemed to feel like a low/mid 14 second car in it's current trim...very respectable considering it's gears. Could be more though considering the gears gave a different feel during acceleration
We did run into a black LS1 formula as we came down the road and one could tell the guy was eager to race, what with the downshifting and all. After a little egging on by the ls1, joe pulled a downshift to second while we were at 35mph and got on it for a bit (keep in mind this was before checking how fast joe could go in each gear) and of course...the LS1 pulled the 454 with the three guys in it, but not by all that much...honestly I wouldn't have been suprised by losing by more based on the seats of the pants feel up to that point. Had joe known that he could have used first from that speed, it might have had at least a more interesting outcome...alas, joe has plenty of time to find out what the current set-up can do. Thought it was funny that the guy continued to try and run joe again and again.
What a sweet car. For those that haven't cruised around in one of the premeire muscle cars, what a treat this is. At every light, every eye was fixed on us...this car most certianly does not fit the typical shape of what's currently on the hwy.
The car's tone right now is a little on the overmuffled side. It seems that the origninal owner like to do some long distant drive in this beast and muffled it accordingly. It is downright docile sounding, and according to joe, that will only be a temporary predicament.
The gears are also more suited to a high speed, easy going vehicle. To give you an idea of how long legged this thing is currently, we correlated the RPM in first gear to the speed we were traveling. Get this: In 1st gear (a 4speed manual), traveling at 35mph the engine was only turning over 3200 RPM!!!! :wow Reving this thing up to 6500 in first would net you 70+mph :wow
While the guy who sold it to joe claimed 3.08's, I honestly wouldn't be suprised if 2.73's came out of that thing.
What a smooth ride though....didn't feel a bump once while out on the hwy in the thing. And with it's high gears and thus low rpm's and being overmuffled it was sometimes hard to tell if the thing was even running...which proved to be a problem.
You see, as we went down the road, I noticed that the manual choke on the thing wasn't fully off. So as I reached to check it, the bracket (which is striped btw) let go causing the choke to close, and thus causing the car to stall...as we coasted down the road, both joe and I looked at each other wondering "Is it on?". Proved not to be of course, but was an easy matter to get started again. While it's easy to leave the choke partially on with it's current switch, no reaching for the choke anymore.
Joe was kind enough just to run it up just a bit...from the seat-o-pants meter it seemed to feel like a low/mid 14 second car in it's current trim...very respectable considering it's gears. Could be more though considering the gears gave a different feel during acceleration
We did run into a black LS1 formula as we came down the road and one could tell the guy was eager to race, what with the downshifting and all. After a little egging on by the ls1, joe pulled a downshift to second while we were at 35mph and got on it for a bit (keep in mind this was before checking how fast joe could go in each gear) and of course...the LS1 pulled the 454 with the three guys in it, but not by all that much...honestly I wouldn't have been suprised by losing by more based on the seats of the pants feel up to that point. Had joe known that he could have used first from that speed, it might have had at least a more interesting outcome...alas, joe has plenty of time to find out what the current set-up can do. Thought it was funny that the guy continued to try and run joe again and again.