Why do I hate anything alox?

Walks

Well-Known Member
I HAVE to go to an indoor range. PC makes a difference. But I have taken a long while to get used to it.
But I'm only using it at the indoor. And light loads.

My Chiropractor Bud who still shoots Cowboy loves it.
 

dale2242

Well-Known Member
No PC here. Don`t plan on it.
I have enough 50/50, Tamarac I think, to last the rest of my life.
I have yet shoot on an indoor range.
The smell is OK but it is a bit messy.
To each his own.
 

Petrol & Powder

Well-Known Member
Because I have to size bullets anyway, I might as well lube them at the same time.
I invested in a lubersizer, dies and spent a lot of time figuring out what works and what doesn't. I'm wedded to my current system so no powder coating for me.
The smell doesn't bother me at all. I have a huge supply of 50/50. The smoke can be a bit annoying at times but not enough to make me switch to powder coating. I'm certain powder coating has some real advantage but I'm just old school.
 

Petrol & Powder

Well-Known Member
It was Hydramatic's engineers, but GM spec'd a price point and 75,000 mile life expectancy. God bless them, they fed LOTS of mechanic's kids and are still doing it today. I've done a lot of cash-on-the-side bench jobs, poor people helping poor people have transportation.
Continuing the thread drift .......automatic transmissions have come a long way but even back in the stone age there were a few that stood out from the rest.
The GM Turbo400 was a LOT stronger than the TH350. You had to take care of it, fluid and filter every now & then, but they would take a lot of abuse. I had one that the fluid was nearly black and the car would not pull a hill. Changed the fluid and filter and it was fine. It went another 6 years without a hiccup before the rest of the car died.
The GM Powerglide only had two speeds (fast and faster OR slow and slower) but they were nearly impossible to break.
The Chrysler 727 was bullet proof but its smaller brother the 904 was not.
 

popper

Well-Known Member
IRC powerglide had tabbed in converter blades and they broke off easy. 50s hydro had a rear pump so you could actually push start an auto trans. but the valve body was very complex. Turboglide they furnace brazed the blades in. In those days, a vehicle just never got 75k mi. unless it was a commercial rig. Even though gas was cheap, people just didn't normally drive that much. Speedos went to 100 vs 160 they now use - t make you think you got a 'fast' car.
On subject, LLA gets me at outdoor pistol range when the wind blos in you face and mag dumps make you ill but the smoke poll guys blanket the firing line so you can't see anything but that smoke doesn't bother my sinus. Used to be several on Wed. morning and it was always 'sorry guys' as the cloud drifted by. Now it's mostly the loud sound of brakes from the guy next to you. And not slip on the gallons of 223 brass on the concrete.
 

Petrol & Powder

Well-Known Member
The Powerglide used in the early Vega (not one of GM's better ideas) had an air-cooled converter. There were actually huge round holes in the bell housing. You could hear the air whistling around the converter when the car was idling. It was one of the few cars that you tell if it had an automatic just by listening to it!
A lot of the old automatics had rear pumps and you could push start them but you had to get it going pretty fast.
You could get a lot of those old American cars over 100K miles but you had to maintain them and very few people did.

Sorry for the drift, we'll return you now to your regularly scheduled thread.
 

Rockydoc

Well-Known Member
Continuing to drift, back in the 1960's there was a guy from Texas who built the first sports racing car with a wing,(now they all have them) for down force. His car had a Chevrolet engine with a Powerglide 2 speed transmission. He had all those Ferraris and Porsches for lunch!
I watched him race several times at Sebring 12 Hours of Endurance.
 
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462

California's Central Coast Amid The Insanity
Jim Hall and his Can-Am series Chaparral.
At the time, I heard that Chevy could not figure out his transmission modifications.
Later in the car's evolution, Hall mounted a snowmobile engine, at the rear of the car, that drove two fans that were used in conjunction with sliding shirts to create a vacuum or sucker effect. The car was promptly banned.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Jim Hall and his Can-Am series Chaparral.
At the time, I heard that Chevy could not figure out his transmission modifications.
Later in the car's evolution, Hall mounted a snowmobile engine, at the rear of the car, that drove two fans that were used in conjunction with sliding shirts to create a vacuum or sucker effect. The car was promptly banned.
Now this is drift that isn’t drift. A car that creates a vacuum in a thread about alox. They both suck.

Well played
 

Petrol & Powder

Well-Known Member
Hey in motorsports it's not cheating until they change the rules and you get caught. When it comes to the rules, If you're not pushing the envelope, you're not trying hard enough.

Remember Henry "Smokey" Yunick ? He was legendary for finding loopholes. One of my favorites was the basketball in the fuel tank that was inflated when the judges checked the tank's capacity and then deflated for the race so that the tank would hold more fuel. The other one was the enormous fuel line that held an additional 5 gallons of fuel. Smokey said the rules dictated how much fuel the tank could hold, they didn't say anything about how much fuel the fuel line could hold.
 

RBHarter

West Central AR
He was the one that drove the car back to the pit garage with the fuel tank sitting at the tech teams feet ?

It only cheating if there's a specific rule and you get caught .
At the air races in the T6 class they are limited to the 10-1 blower . Among alterations to the system were oversized impellers , 12-1 drive gears , and oval impellers . Of course the faster gears were caught first . They count the blower impeller blades by turning the engine through , when 3-4 go 270° and then 2 go 200° ........ then they started measuring depth of the case inside .....then they had to take 3 measurements because the housings were being manipulated to meet the measurements ....... Enter longer blades .... Only busted for several reasons by braggery of pulling 44+ in mg manifold pressures . That's a full pound of boost on a 1340 cid engine . It's just 40-50 hp .
 

358156 hp

At large, whereabouts unknown.
I remember Smokey making subtle body changes on a NASCAR Chevelle, he changed some radius' here & there, and chopped the top slightly and (I think) changed the angle of the windshield to enhance the aerodynamics, but leave the original windshield uncut. The car didn't pass tech at first, NASCAR used cut templates of vehicle profiles to insure against cheating, and his car failed the template stage. So he took the inspectors out to the parking lot and had them check their templates on a new street car. Yup, the templates didn't fit the production car either. Smokey was one of a kind...
 

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
Smokey was an excellent pilot in WW2 also, flying B-24's from Africa and Italy. Never made rank over 1st LT because it didn't want to fly anywhere but the back corner of the box, nor responsible for anything else. It was said that was where you had more room to go sideways and up and down and not hit one of your own planes. It is also reported that his planes had the few number of bullet holes at the end of the flights and a long list of EM that wanted to fly with him.
 

popper

Well-Known Member
All of them 'pushed' the rule limit. Even heard of a guy that had his own measuring devices made so the inspectors used his (on his car) and -- no problem. he did get caught finally. If you don't push the limit, you get nowhere.