THE Random Chat Thread - AKA "The RCT" - No shirt or shoes required - Open 24 / 7

[releventchair]

 

[releventchair]

 

[Evan in CA]

Good morning everybody

 

[releventchair]

Good morning everybody

Mornin Evan!

 

[Oregon Viking]

Good early afternoon !

Lunchtime? No..... better..... quittin' time !!

 

[Oregon Viking]

Guess what day it is ??

 

[Oregon Viking]

 

[Oregon Viking]

Leftovers from an estate sale, I'm guessing too high of prices but I will look anyway !!

 

[Oregon Viking]

A 'local legend' had one in high school.

By 1973, the muscle car era was dead. Compression ratios had been slashed to run on unleaded fuel. Emissions equipment strangled airflow. Insurance companies had priced high-performance cars out of reach for young buyers. Every manufacturer had surrendered. Ford's Mustang had become the Mustang II. Chevrolet's hottest Camaro made 245 HP. Mopar had killed the Hemi and the Six Pack. The party was over.
Pontiac's Special Projects group, led by engineer Herb Adams with support from Skip McCully, looked at the landscape and decided: not yet.

The 455 Super Duty was not a warmed-over production engine with a hotter cam and a sticker on the fender. It was a hand-built race engine. Every single SD-455 was assembled by two-person crews at GM's Milford Proving Grounds, off the regular assembly line. Every single one was individually dyno-tested before being shipped to the Norwood or Van Nuys assembly plants for installation. No other production car engine in 1973 or 1974 received this treatment. This was an off-line, hand-assembled, dyno-verified race engine delivered through a dealership.

The block was a reinforced version of the standard 455, with four-bolt main bearing caps, additional webbing and material in stress areas, and provisions for a dry-sump oiling system. Forged aluminum flat-top pistons. Forged connecting rods. A nodular iron crankshaft with minor enhancements (original plans called for a forged crank, but production received nodular iron). Unique round-port cylinder heads with large valves and significantly better airflow than the standard 455 heads. Rochester Quadrajet four-barrel carburetor rated at 800 CFM. High-flow exhaust.

The compression ratio was 8.4:1, brutally low by muscle car standards but necessary to pass the new emissions regulations and run on available pump gas. The original plan had called for 10.25:1 compression with the aggressive Ram Air IV "041" camshaft. Pre-production test engines used this spec and were rated at 310 net HP. But the combination barely passed emissions testing. At the last minute, the cam was swapped for a milder grind and the rating dropped to 290 net HP at 4,000 RPM with 395 lb-ft at 3,600 RPM. The 1973 Pontiac literature had already been printed with the 310-HP figure. The 1974 literature corrected to 290 HP.

Even at 290 net HP, the SD-455 was the most powerful production engine in America. The 1973 Corvette's LS4 454 made 275 net HP. The SD-455 Trans Am was faster than the Corvette. Hot Rod magazine compared a Super Duty Trans Am to a $10,000 DeTomaso Pantera and declared the Pontiac the better buy. Car & Driver gave it rave reviews. A Jaguar XKE cost $9,200. A 454 Corvette cost $6,200. The SD-455 Trans Am? About $5,500. Nothing else came close for the money.

Production was limited by supplier delays. The first SD-455 Firebirds didn't reach dealerships until late summer 1973. Total 1973 production: 295 cars, split between Trans Am and Firebird Formula. Total 1974 production: 1,001 cars. Grand total: 1,296 Super Duty Firebirds across both years. Of those, only 212 of the 1974 models had manual transmissions.

The SD-455 was the fastest American production car from 1973 until 1989, when the Corvette ZR-1 finally surpassed it. Sixteen years. No other American car made between 1974 and 1988 could match it in a straight line.
Specially tuned versions at GM were said to make approximately 370 to 400 HP. With the originally intended higher compression and aggressive cam, the architecture was reportedly capable of 500 to 600 HP. Skip McCully, Pontiac's Special Projects Engineer, later said he would have preferred 10.25:1 compression, the 041 cam, richer jetting, and more vacuum advance, but emissions regulations made it impossible.

Everyone quit. Pontiac didn't. They hand-built a race engine, detuned it to pass emissions, rated it at 290 HP to keep insurance companies calm, and sold it through Pontiac dealerships for $5,500. The 455 Super Duty. The last real muscle car engine. The defiant, tire-smoking final salute to an era that everyone else had already abandoned

 

[Oregon Viking]

A holoflash guitar finish is a dynamic, holographic effect popularized by Kramer in the mid-1980s. It refracts light to create rainbow-like patterns that shift as you move the instrument. It is typically created by heat-transferring a thin foil onto a glossy polyurethane or polyester base.


Original 80's Kramer guitar body, I bought it with the neck being unrepairable.

 

[Oregon Viking]

Loeb park on the Chetco river.

 

[Gare]

Good EVENING EVERYONE!!!!

 

[DizzyDigger]

Good morning...afternoon or evening..whatever applies...

Gorgeous day here...mid-70's..love it!

Dug this one out just for OV....

 

[releventchair]

A holoflash guitar finish is a dynamic, holographic effect popularized by Kramer in the mid-1980s. It refracts light to create rainbow-like patterns that shift as you move the instrument. It is typically created by heat-transferring a thin foil onto a glossy polyurethane or polyester base.


Original 80's Kramer guitar body, I bought it with the neck being unrepairable.


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[Oregon Viking]

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[releventchair]

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[Oregon Viking]

 

[pepperj]

Morning everyone

 

[ToddsPoint]

Good morning!☕️

 

[Pick_axe]

Good morning, diggers!