[DeTomaso] Gearing

[adin at frontier.net]

So . . . Tom's problem was the motor and not the gears?

This is the wonderful thing about Amerika, you can have what you want  
(to pay for?) no matter what gets elected for president.

Now, your Scirocco (how evAr its spelled) will probably spin over.  I  
doubt the Ford engineers ever geared "aunt tilly's" station  
wagon/torino/ranchero/whatever to spin more than about 2500 at highway  
speeds.

Those of us that don't live 20 minutes from Sears Point need a little  
cruise speed with out spitting the exhaust valves out the tail pipe.

Hope the weather is treating you OK.

best,




Quoting 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
>
>
>
> **************
> Start the year off right.  Easy ways to stay in shape.
>
> http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
>