|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » 1960s » Engine Swap ( RSS)
-
|
Welcome to Project Car Hell, where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! In our last matchup , the big-block '72 Ford Torino took advantage of Graverobber's Mad Max-themed PCH Tirade⢠to unleash the Lord Humungus' dogs of war upon the '70 Mercury Cougar. Today, we return to a couple of familiar themes rolled into one: the perennial Britain-versus-France PCH Superpower battle and good ol' Fun With Engine Swaps! I admit it- after finding the '60 Peugeot 403 near my house, I've been searching for a French car project to call my own (this in spite of having been the owner of a sadistically unreliable Peugeot 504 in the past). Thing is, the old Peugeots have something of a power deficit, and it just seems wrong to take the easy way out by doing a Japanese drivetrain transplant. Then Vintage Racer found this genuine Offenhauser turbo engine . Now we're talking! The Offy is a torque monster of a four-banger...
|
-
|
You want to drive a car powered by the most reliable automobile engine ever produced , you want to burn non-petroleum fuel, yet you don't want to drive a boring ol' Mercedes sedan like every other anti-dinosaur-juice diesel demon in town? Loyal reader Vance has pulled our coat about this '67 Cougar with a freshly rebuilt turbo-equipped Mercedes-Benz OM617 installed; this setup looks like it was done right, though the price seems on the painful side and the performance is likely more tortoise than hare (albeit a tortoise that could win a 500,000-mile race with ease). [Craigslist Los Angeles] galleryPost('VeggieCougar', 6, 'Mercury Cougar Gets Mercedes Diesel Power');
|
-
|
Perhaps you breathed a sigh of relief after Chevy-Powered Porsche Hell was over with, figuring that (with the small-block-motivated 911 winning so decisively) you would be spared the temptation of a hacked-up Porsche sporting a non-Stuttgart engine for quite a while. However Project Car Hell doesn't work that way; just because you were able to walk past the fiery gates once doesn't mean you won't be lured right back in by the same king of bait! That's why we're returning to Porsche Engine Swap Hell today, this time going for six cylinders instead of eight. 914 owners often talk about the 914-6 when that starts-with-a-V car manufacturer is brought up. Yes, if it has a Porsche emblem on the hood and a six-cylinder engine in back, it's got to be a real Porsche, right? Not so fast, though- what if you were to put a Volkswagen six-cylinder in your 914? What would you have then? We're not sure, but you'll be sure to come up with an answer to that question soon...
|
-
|
The Detroit (well, actually South Bend) machine put up a good fight against the Detroit-powered British Leyland product yesterday, but it's tough to beat a PCH Superpower and thus the voters gave the victory to the V8/IRS MGB-GT in yesterday's poll. But are we giving up on America as a credible PCH contender? Hell no! That's the thinking behind today's Detroit-versus-Paris matchup, and we'll see how things sort out. Big American pushrod V8s are always cool when installed in a European car- just look at the Jensen Interceptor or Facel Vega to see what we mean. However, the nature of Project Car hell is such that you need to drop your crude-yet-potent cast-iron powerplant into a car whose designers never imagined such a combination in all their wildest opium dreams. You could just pick out the car and do the entire swap from scratch, but it's far more insane fun to start with someone else's half-finished project! Say, this 1967 Peugeot 404 (go here if the ad disappears...
|
-
|
The majority of voters felt that an eternity spent wrenching on a pair of Willys Station Wagons would be preferable to eternity spent with a '58 Pontiac/'62 Mercedes-Benz combo, according to last Friday's Choose Your Eternity poll . That's fine, but what if you'd prefer endless toil on a hopeless challenging fast car? Something with light weight, V8 power, and primitive 60s suspension and brake design, perhaps? The red-hot iron gates are opening- come on in! The Pininfarina-designed fastback body on the MGB-GT looks great, most of us would agree, but that old BMC B engine left something to be desired in the power department. From personal experience, I can say that an MGB can barely get into triple-digit speeds with a stock B, and the six-cylinder and Rover V8 versions aren't enough better to justify the funky handling. That's why what you need is an MGB-GT whose funky handling is justified... by the presence of a good ol' small-block Chevy . In fact, you...
|
-
|
We took a break from the PCH Superpowers and watched the Rotary Honda 600 pound on the Rotary Starlet in yesterday's all-Japanese Choose Your Eternity poll . However, Britain's defeat of Italy last week can mean only one thing: Britain must now take on PCH SuperGigaPower France in an attempt to claim the rusty, oil-leaking PCH Intergalactic Superchampion crown! Why the heck didn't Jaguar put truck beds on their cars straight from the factory? Take the XJ-S, for instance: V12 torque, comfy leather interior, beautiful lines- in short, everything you want in a cartruck! Obviously, it falls to the Jaguar owner to deal with this shortcoming. Those of you who have been planning to build your own XJ-Schero can save many months of hard work by starting with this Rancheroized 1990 Jaguar XJ-S as the basis of your project. For some inexplicable reason, this car failed to sell for the chump-change price of two grand, and that means the seller is likely ready to deal! The seller, clearly...
|
|
|
|