Why is it that all the new cars from the big three have to be so friggin difficult for the DIYer to work on?! Anymore you have to have a degree in computer diagonstic and analysis to change the oil! I started about 10 years ago working on an old 84 monte carlo that had a 305 4bbl and a distributor cap and rotor. I could adjust the timing I could change the A/F ratio I could adjust the idle speed. Nowadays you have a computer do it for you. I still work in the automotive industry but hell Im the old dinosaur by still having a carb on my car, and Im only 25!!! I didnt have to worry about flashing the ECM everytime I adjusted something. I wanted more power I put a power adder on it. NOS Blower, better heads etc. NOW AFTER I pay over a THOUSAND DOLLARS for heads I have to pay ANOTHER 400 JUST to get the heads to work on my setup! WHY?! During the 80's we were concerned about "Fuel Economy" During the 70's we were concerned about POWER. I would LOVE to see nothing more than some car maker come out with a NEW RWD car with a 502 BBC port and polished heads, Dual quad carbs on top of a tunnel ram. You know I can see it now, with the HP and torque ratings dropping so fast, in 30 years youll see 100 HP cars at the dragstrip running a 20 sec quarter and being considered "fast". THAT IS SUCH BS!!! I guess we have to do what we have to do. Its just a pity to see all the old Detroit iron rusting away in some salvage yard

 

i think things are just getting better... the big 3 all make a car with atleast 500hp and 470tq, with the rustang coming in at $43k. in 03 the top monte had 200hp / 225tq. now you can buy 303hp / 323tq. i'd say were headed in the right direction.

 

Yeah, I have to agree with 2000LS here. In the 70's it wasn't about power either, about 73 or so all cars took a nose dive in power due to emissions. You have to goto the 60's for power. As of right now we are seeing the same thing. In the 80's it was about gas milage and still is just that were getting alot more HP and Torque with it. Ask anyone that had a 60's Corvette that can line up with a 2000 Corvette what their milage was. They put out about the same HP numbers now except you get about 3 times the milage out of them.

I'm not the happiest with the tuning software that needs to be done... I really miss the timing light, but I can do so much more with reprogramming that I can't do just adjusting the carb. I'm able to fix the air/fuel mixture holes in my fuel map now where I couldn't just tuning the carb or adjusting timing.

 

i like the old stuff better myself because it was so much more simple its like mcook1999 said back then you got a cam and put it in and there you go more power change the heads more power it was simple now you need to do ecu tuning and all that stuff witch if you are not good with computers you are out of luck so that means i am out just as well as alot of other guys out there
i find that the older cars are faster then the new ones and alot more fun to drive
but the tecnology is good though like 04intimidator said about the corvettes you cant compare a 60 vette to a 06-07 vette to me the old vettes or like a novelty car and the new ones are a supercar
but to each is own on the new and old tecnolgy its personal prefrence in my point of vu!!

 

I agree on alot of points you have too. I did like the fact you could easily swap carbs or swap a cam, do a little timing and call it a day. On the other hand, who in the 60's could pull 200 HP on a V6 and still get 31 MPG... that was unheard of. My dads old 63 Plymouth could lay over 120' of rubber if he wanted to, had roughly 500-600 hp compared to vehicles he raced, but only got 7 MPG. Could you imagine if that was your daily driver these days!!!! It would cost me $20/day just to goto work instead of about $3.50.

 

oh yes i agree with you 100% on that one man now in days they pull some insaine numbers on v6 witch is cool
but i was meaning more for like a hot rodthing where you dont have to look for gas milege

 

i know i'm not old enough to have been around back in the 50's and 60's, but those were the cars, and i love my dads 56 chev that he has, and one of my favorite movies to watch is american graffiti just for the cars and the lifestyle in it

cars back then were amazing, and all the restored ones are awesome!! and yes sooooo much easier to work on than the newer cars with all the computers and stuff in em

 

I would just like to say i would rather have a car from the 60's or 70's that all i had to do was open the hood take out some bolts put on the headers and put the bolts back in rather then having to go through an 80 step process to do that with my car. me and my dad completly rebuilt a 69 dodge dart swinger 340 and that was honestly not that bad becasue you did not have to worry about all the wiring just put something where itneeds to go bolt itup and moveon.also to me i could care less about mpg as long as the car goes fast and sounds nice and looks nice that is worth putting in premium and only getting 7-10 mpg

 

Yeah, I would love to be able to have those days back, they might come again soon. The ECM's are getting better at self programming and tuning themselves so it may just be a matter of time before you can just select performance and the car tunes itself. My old Saturn was heading in the right direction with this but all I think it did was raise shift points... I wasn't really into hotrodding at the time (I bought a Saturn didn't I). Hopefully in the future you will be able to "Plug and Play" the equipment in and the car will detect the changes and adjust acordingly. DOD technology is another great example of these adaptations. It really is too bad we have to deal with all the wires through... that's just an electrical mess.

On the otherhand, alot of people couldn't afford a hotrod only car back then and still can't. They tricked out their daily driver like many of us have. Just one more big differance is the commute to work has gotten much longer. In the 60's people typically lived with 3-5 miles from work. It was unheard of anyone driving 60 miles to work. Now the average commute is more in the 10-15 mile range and more and more people are driving 60 miles to work these days. If you look at it from that point of veiw, the commute is 3x or so longer than it used to be and gas milage has gone with it.

 

He's a scary thought to think about as well. With hybrids becoming more popular we may have to hotrod them in the near future.

I try to keep positive about it and remember what hotrodding is all about - The science of adding performance to an otherwise stock car - so as long as I can throw some headers on or maybe put a larger electrical engine in the system (Nuclear NOS???) I'll be happy.