[DeTomaso] Gearing

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/4/08 13 08 0, adin at frontier.net writes:


> "A real dog" - a stock (most)Pantera is a "real dog" with performance 
> not near the appearance.  
> 
>>>Actually, John Taphorn and I were just chatting about this on the phone 
the other day.   He was in Hawaii and Dennis Yogi kindly let him drive the 
Hawaii 5-0 pushbutton, which is BONE stock.   JT was shocked at how incredibly fast 
it was.   The early cars with 310 hp really had performance to match their 
appearance--this was partially due to power, and partially to gearing.

Tom Todak's car wouldn't pull the skin off a bowl of cooling butterscotch 
pudding.   It had a low-compression 351C which was old, and tired, and then he 
put too-tall gears in the car (for that particular motor, which as I said 
generated something like 150-180 hp at the rear wheels on a chassis dyno).   THAT 
car was a real dog, no doubt about it.

Putting a 550 hp 427 stroker in it fixed the problem entirely. :>)


> One might need to select a lower gear for 
> the job, but the cruising (hiway, not burger king) advantages are more 
> realistic.  I'll never understand why anyone would think a cleveland 
> should have to run @ 3500rpm in a cross country situation.  
> 
>>>Panteras used for highway cruising (which is to say, virtually all of 
them) really benefit from a taller .655 or .642 fifth gear, which drops 500+ rpm 
at cruise.

Depending on the cam profile and resultant torque curve, lower rpm doesn't 
automatically translate to better fuel ecoomy.   Years ago I read some tests of 
non-Panteras, where they discovered that if a motor didn't have enough 
bottom-end torque, running with too-tall gears (too-low rpm) required a greater 
throttle opening to maintain cruising speed, and DECREASED fuel economy.   In that 
article, one car in particular got better freeway mpg running in 4th gear 
rather than 5th.   'Lugging' an engine is never good for economy.   But I agree, 
there's no need to spin it at 3500-4000 rpm on the freeway either!


> The 
> Cleveland is, by most standards, just a little gurly-man motor - but 
> still has sufficient "oomph" to have reasonable gearing.  By "real 
> dog" Mike must mean it won't do wheelies.
> 
>>>I could probably have kicked the crap out of Tom's old Pantera setup with 
my 85 hp Scirocco.   Not anymore though!!!!!

Mike



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