High Speeds

[TKisner]

"195's up front"

So you were probably doing close to 90 then, that's still pretty fast!

Actually he would be going faster. This is because the car traverses a greater distance than a 165 per each tire rotation. At least I think so

[volkdent]

Actually, I made an assumption. The aspect respect ratio is actually the determining factor. I assumed he had 195/50/15's or 195/55/15s, as these are the usual sizes that will actually work up front. Stock 165s have an aspect ratio of 70 or 75 as I recall, so the diameter of the stock wheel tire combo is much larger than the diameter of the assumed tire sizes. The lower the aspect ratio of a fixed tire tread width, the smaller the overall diameter, the faster the tire spins for a given speed.

Jason

[davidt]

Hi. My car is a very modified 1972 1302 Superbug. Injected/intercooled/turboed 1915cc with 13psi boost. Coil-over front suspension with 225-475lbs variable rate coils, adjustable camber/caster tops, vented front discs with 4-pot Volvo calipers, rear discs, adjustable 19mm rear swaybar, decent alignment, front spoiler, 16x7in alloys with 205/55r16 Dunlop Sport Maxx RT tyres. This car really handles and goes very well. Using a VBox Performance box, I have measured a genuine 191kph before the road went up a hill. Car was very stable and still had another 500rpm before the limiter. Maximum power is at 5000rpm and the engine was revving to 5700rpm. Data logs show that the engine revs were still increasing in a straight line up to that speed and had just flattened out, so that was most likely the top speed.

David

[Bruce2]

160 mph in a 66' chevelle station wagen. There was a 396 in it. . Had an aftermarket speedo.

BS.
Your aftermarket speedo was way off in it's calibration.
How do I know? With a 1:1 top gear ratio out of the trans, GM didn't offer any rear gear ratio that would allow the car to go that fast. And 365hp isn't enough.

Now, if your car was a 2dr hard top and your name was Smokey Yunick...... Then I'd believe you.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I'm sorry but even the smaller station wagons in those years are still equivalent to pushing brick wall through the air. Add to that the other drag/frictions: (it was in those years that GM put the wing on the rear of the top on some of their wagons to break the suction the air flow made as it exited the body. It was said it was to keep the rear window clean, which I think it did to a certain extent, but I also think there was more to it than that). I'm pretty sure it would take a lot more engine than a stock 396 to push it that fast and remember, unless the car was modified to do it those years of cars weren't really that strong of cars body and suspension wise ("wise" being the key word here) e.g., "clean enough" air flow wise to go that fast. I am pretty sure that top speed was tried by some on the street but on the salt lake for instance I am not sure (not positive though) that a stock combination would be allowed. I'm more or less from that era and that was about the time-line that I switched away from GM to other brands of cars.

160 KPH is equal to 99.419 MPH which could be doable by the stock 396 in a land barge. Still not really that safe though.

Lee

[66brm]

It was 2005 guys......

[FJCamper]

Hi Fog, et. al,

I have a line of plausible reasoning that might make the station wagon that fast.

If he were running under the metric system, the distance between kilometers is less than miles, which is what makes them Ferrari's seem so fast.

Also, the same kilometers/miles difference makes it seem as if those foreign cars get better fuel economy.

If you're really looking for confusion, try a British furlongs-per-forthnight calculation against the Imperial gallon. I'd do it but lost all my Whitworth spanners.

FJC
FJC

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Did you know that there was an attempt to bring the Whitworth system back a few years ago ? If I knew why I forgot but was surprised to hear of it. The Whitworth system, as I remember, was done during WWII to keep the Germans from salvaging the fasteners off down airplanes and reusing them.

The metric system came about in France in, I think, 1812. Just another measurement system to be different than other measuring systems. As I understand not everything has been converted to the Metric standards. Think of Knots, vs. Metric and Miles. Knots are still used as a measurement. The same with Cable lengths used when determining how far away a enemy was or how far a cannon would shoot. I still think the world is very confused when it comes to measuring.

"If he were running under the metric system, the distance between kilometers is less than miles, which is what makes them Ferrari's seem so fast.

That is what I was saying when I compared MPH to Metric but I didn't think about the Ferraris and fuel milage. Makes me wonder if that is why Chitty Chitty Bang Band won so many races in the early 1900s.

Then there was a cartoon on "Pearls before Swine" (https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/pear ... /s-2109907) comparing Canadian vs. American spelling of the same words.

Lee

[eskamobob1]

Ok, for real though, the fact that the US and Britain both have MPG and they are entirely different units bugs that crap out of me. I was getting all stoked about an engine swap I was reading about because it actualy got decent MPG (~25 city, 27 highway or something like that) while putting out solid power. About a week and a half into researching and even figuring out how I was going to get the engine and transmission, I realized all the stats I had been looking t were British MPG and the US converted was ~20MPG and the swap was far less attractive...

[H2OSB]

I've had my Subaru LegacyGT over 125 several times. Solid and stable. No issue what-so-ever. My 1303...when I hit 75 it's a little scary. Every bump in the road, I can feel.

H2OSB

[Ol'fogasaurus]

https://onlineconversion.vbulletin.net/ ... 475-uk-mph

I did a search of British MPH and American MPH and this is what I got. The difference between gallons are 20 % according to the URL above which seems to agree with what you found out. Something I didn't know Thanks !

Lee

[TZepeSH]

I don't understand why you say that a Ferrari "feels more fast". Just because the speedo is in KM/h instead of MPH? Speed is the same relative to a point, no matter the unit. If I say am travelling at 128km/h and you say you are going 80mph, it's still the same thing. Just because it is 128 makes you feel like it is more speed? I just want to understand the "feeling" part...
I get the confusion for fuel consumption, if the gallon is not the same and mile is different length. But as an European, I am used to l/100km, and liter is the same all around the world and km has same length. I am always confused about imperial units and I have tried many times to understand how they work. But I guess it is just how you get used to them, seeing meters/km, liters and so on is easier for me, as it is easy for you with miles, gallons and so on.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

TZepeSH, what you said it pretty much true but lets put it this way: if you are riding in something that feel like you are going very very fast (even when sitting still it might) and your bowels are reacting to this then you look over at the speed-o and see the needle pointing to where you expect to see a "60" but instead of that you see a "100" without thinking your bowels can quickly panic and lose their will to work .

The world is slowing coming to the point where the Metric system, good or bad, is becoming the standard but until then confusion still is rampant. Now that we are in space; dealing with the big, small, heat, cold speed and much more so there new words are coming into the lexicon that don't really mean much to most of us... yet.

[Bruce2]

I'm pretty sure it would take a lot more engine than a stock 396 to push it that fast

My mistake, in 66 you couldn't get a 396 in a Chevelle Station Wagon, so the biggest he could hope for was a 327. Disc brakes weren't available that year either.

160 KPH is equal to 99.419 MPH which could be doable by the stock 396 in a land barge. Still not really that safe though.

Maybe he had a Mexican market Chevelle. I pulled a speedo out of a wrecked 66 in Acapulco about 10 years ago. Since Mexico has always been metric, the stock speedo read to 200km/h, not 120mph.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Hmmm, for some reason I thought that there were a few of those made with the 396. Maybe it was only available in the sporty two door and hard tops not the wagons. I must have seen some engine swap toys I guess as I hung around places where rods would show up. https://www.chevyhardcore.com/news/chev ... ions-1966/

My last chev was a '62 Impalla twodoor hardtop with a factory 4-speed. I later found out that it was what was called a "tolerance car", something Chev did for quite a few years. Parts that did not pass the "go-no-go" jig but only by a smidgeon were thrown into storage then when enough of them were available they would mate parts and build some cars. I ran into a couple of them about the same time and they all had the same problems... they broke or wore parts out quickly. I switched away from Chev in '67 and haven't been back since although there is a couple I would loke to have... maybe!

Lee