To get on a previous post; (the quote disappeared) regarding Fords and their multitude of applications: That was the thing that I found so frustrating building Ford pickups, all the combinations that don't work together. For my money, I liked the FE series, the last one I had was a 360 which is a dog compared to a 390. But it had a 4 speed, so it was fun to drive. But yes, try and figure out which transmission bolted to what and why this carb didn't fit on that, it was enough to make you weep.
My friend who built a 427 medium riser for his Cobra was convinced FE stood for #$%^%$# expensive after it was finished
A not pleasant one: When Daimler and all other German owned auto manufacturers refused to build equipment for the Nazis, General Motors agreed and built trucks and equipment for the Nazi party even after it knew about them committing crimes against humanity.
An easy one to remember: the B.F. in BFGoodrich stands for Benjamin Franklin (not the same guy, though).
Sorry, but that isn't true at all. D-B and the other car companies built lots for the German war effort and for the Wehrmacht or the SS. They had no qualms about for who and what they built. They were all heavily involved with the camp system and in a lot of cases their "Vorstand" or boards should have been in front of a War Crimes tribunal. German industry was for the large part heavily centralized and production of various components for just about anything military could come from almost any other company, D-B built tanks, guns, and trucks under license, as well as their own models. Mercedes was supplying staff cars based on the 170V chassis almost to the end, - or at least until the Stuttgart plant was bombed into oblivion. Carl Borgward built his name on army trucks and self-propelled howitzers, and after the war he had a successful little sedan called the Isabella. He never faced any kind of retribution or anything even though his trucks were used in every theatre on every front or in every camp. Where GM gets it is the fact that Opel was one of their divisions, and the engine Opel used in the Blitz truck was a complete copy of the Chevy Stovebolt 6. GM gladly accepted royalty payments and made a lot of money from the Nazis during the war, even though this money was supposed to be paid to and held in trust in Switzerland for the duration of the war. (It was all quietly paid out in 1946) GM, Ford, Dupont, and IBM were some of the biggest American beneficiaries of German war contracts, and the surprising thing was because they were foreign the Germans actually paid foreign exchange cash in US $ or in gold bullion. There's a good reason why all of that "missing" Nazi gold (worth 7 billion dollars) was eventually found to be residing in Fort Knox instead of Moscow as was claimed by the US after the war. There were a lot of American companies that were getting their bread buttered on both sides of the conflict and that would very much like to bury that portion of their history. So while the Nazis actually paid their foreign obligations, (sure, they stole from others to do it), the German companies who were owed hundreds of millions of Reichsmarks in government contracts got diddly-squat when the Nazi tent folded up in 1945. The only thing that accomplished was to drive the value of the Reichsmark into the basement making an American cigarette the most valuable currency in Germany from 1945 to 1948 and leaving most people (except for the very rich with foreign assets) destitute. GM came out of the war with most of their Opel division intact; they'd lost a factory to the Russians, but that was essentially it. A former Opel executive who had American training and who probably knew an awful lot about the camps and what was going on (he was from the truck division) was hired by the British to run the Volkswagenwerk that they had stumbled into. (It wasn't on their maps) He was Heinz Nordoff. Volkswagenwerk came out in pretty good shape, the Brits helped hide the tooling when the French came looking for booty in 1945, and they shopped the factory around to other car companies because the British Army wasn't in the business of building cars, hell, they couldn't effectively manage a motor pool to begin with. Henry Ford II was invited and told his hosts that the Volkswagen will never go anywhere, as a car "it wasn't worth a damn". The Brits eventually dumped the company to the new West German state and the "Land" it was situated in, who all sold it off in the form of shares as a capital company. Porsche was not running until 1948, after Ferdinand Porsche got himself released from a French prison. They wanted him to build a French Volkswagen, he refused, so they threw their lot in with Citroen and the 2CV. But D-B, DKW, Auto Union, Borgward, MAN, Magirus-Deutz, and BMW lost their shorts, as well as most of their car factories, as the war ended. BMW in particular got nailed hard; their primary car factory was in Eisenach in the Soviet Zone, and what was in Munich was taken by the British company Bristol as reparations and marketed as a Bristol 200 (or something like that) from 1946-to 55. The Commies in the East made what was called an "EMW" which was a pre-war 328 until BMW successfully sued them to stop in 1952. If you owned either of those "foreign" cars you could get parts off of BMW's shelf. BMW and D-B supplied just about every engine the Luftwaffe ever used, and what they didn't design they built under license. They got squat for it all in the end except a mountain of worthless Reichsmarks and ruins as the Allies had extensively renovated all of their factories. But they were all in it as thick as thieves, make no mistake. Sorry for the history lecture...
Hey Marc... your stuff beats all the secret hoard hunters'. Ive always had a fascination with 20th century history, but most of the TV crap is just that. These "historians" are always looking for Rommels gold, or Yamashitas treasure, and you know damn well they're never gonna find it; just keeps dragging you along for ratings. Your lectures are always concise, and non partisan. Its all still a dark chapter in mans' history that should not just be swept under the carpet. It amazes me today with some of the facts that are coming to light. Weiter mit der Vorlesung! ws
My pleasure; my apologies if I came off as condescending or anything. I'm a frustrated history prof; by that I mean that's what I should have done as a vocation instead of being a chemical plant operator working shift work for the past 30 years. Now I do training and development, and when I'm standing in a classroom I love it when the guys get me going on a historical tangent; - admittedly, that can be tough in a WHMIS course, but I manage. So anytime I can get on a stump and lecture, I somehow take advantage of it. So another way I manage to preach history is by doing articles on coin history; - the coin is just the vehicle, the real story is what's around it. If you ever want to read about a variety of historical topics you can read me (and others) in our publication "the Planchet" on www.edmontoncoinclub.com. I do a number of US history topics as well as my specialty, which is European medieval and modern history. (Yeah, I know, shameless plug, but someone's gotta do it! ...)
Marc, it's not too late to do teaching. I think you'd be darned good. I always enjoy your 'lectures'. Keep 'em coming Professor.
The later 318 series engines had totally different cylinder heads then the early ones. They were (in my opinion) much better engines. I'll give Chrysler credit, they saved the good parts of the A engine and got rid of the bad ones. 318 type engines with the polyspherical combustion chambers had a lot of problems with sludge. In fairness, some of that was due to the road draft tube. Sludge issues pretty much went away for auto manufacturers with the adoption of PCV.
I have a very clean complete Poly Engine. Came with the place we bought and somehow I ended up with it.
And McQueen would have been a better choice for McQ, in which John Wayne used Pythons and a Model 10 S&W. I wanted that T/A, but I was only 14.
The full size Canadian Ponchos of that era also used the full size Chevy frame, which was narrower than the US Pontiac frame. Several years ago there was a 68 or 69 Pontiac Parisienne for sale in Ontario with a 427 and a 4 speed!
Our little podunk homemade race sleds out of a tin shop while drinking beer after work went back east to the World Series and won . Fun times back then, weren't they Guy? I miss all the testing and innovation people like you and the guys on the Outlaw Team used to do. Having an idea on what might work without any CAD or computer modeling, just build it and see if it goes quicker..... and nobody can explain what 220+ naturally aspirated HP out of 800cc driving something that weighs 450 lbs. with 100% hookup feels like! Something a fella has to experience
