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Re: [MorrisMinors] Traveler on New Frame

To: morrisminors@smartgroups.com
Subject: Re: [MorrisMinors] Traveler on New Frame
From: rfeibusch1@earthlink.net (Richard Feibusch)
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 09:00:25 -0700
>My morrie has hotted Dato 1400GX , 5 speed, disc brakes, telescopic shocks,
>lowered 2inchs, & at around 90mph she becomes very unnerving as the front
>gets pretty light on the steering, it feels like it is ready to take off, I
>very much dought a Morrie would get any where near 160MPH, not by a sain
>person anyway, it would be doing close to 8000RPM at that speed.
>Trev  -Aus
--------------------------------------------
Trev,

You sound like the kid hot rodders who were around when I was in high
school - They would stick a 327 cube smallblock Chevy and 4-speed out of a
wrecked Chevelle into a 1934 Ford with a dropped front axel and 1948 Ford
hydraulic brakes and wonder why it flipped over going around a gentle bend
at 65mph!

We built a street rod out of scrapyard bits that featured a cut down prewar
Ford frame, a 41 Willys pickup cab chopped off at the bottom, just below
the lower door hinge (simple sectioning) and a beer keg gas tank. It used a
32 Plymouth grille. My friend Greg built up an Olds 324 V8 to street racing
specs with a cam and 2, 4-barrel Carter WCFB carbs and bolted it to a
LaSalle gearbox  Had to rebuild the car THREE TIMES because the first two
times when we got on it, it actually TWISTED the frame until we learned to
box and reinforce it.

One of my neighbors stuffed a 283 Chevy into a bugeye Sprite - that car was
dangerous the minute you put the key into it!!!

You also have to remember that California hot rodding was built around drag
racing - straight line and top speeds usually just around 100mph so
sustained high speed stability was not generally a consideration.

as NHRA drag racer John Force tells CNBC's Dennis Miller: "In our sport, we
always kind of compare it to sex. You've only got to do it for four or five
seconds.''

I personally went for the smallest versions of big cars with the biggest
engines like Olds Super 88s and Buick Centuries that were fast and well
engineered out of the box.

You only would have to put on some glasspaks and a low restriction air
cleaner to make it breath. You could find fast old Mercs and
Dodges/Plymouths as well but I was a GM fanatic.

When the Chevy 327 became available in 1962, bolting one of these into a
55-57 Chevy became the standard conversion as the stock car could handle
the additional power.

NHRA drag racer John Force tells CNBC's Dennis Miller: "In our sport, we
always kind of compare it to sex. You've only got to do it for four or five
seconds.''

What is the fastest anyone has driven a Morrie with stock-ish suspebsion??

I once did over 85mph in a 1275 - 5speed car (if you believed the
speedometer) - had more to go but had enough sense to realize that that
would not such a good idea.

Cheers,

Rick Feibusch
Venice Beach, CA

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