Posted by T Stone (IP: 208.202.251.22) on September 08, 2000 at 11:55:51:
In Reply to: 73 wieght questions again posted by Ron J. on September 08, 2000 at 02:17:10:
Ron,
First off, the GVW I think is not the weight of the vehicle itself, but rather the amount of weight that the vehicle was designed to safely haul. The splits indicate how the weight should be evenly dispersed over the axles. IE...if you try to haul a trailer behind your Mav with 3500 pounds and you blow your tires out and trash your suspension after wrecking your vehicle, Ford could say hey...the vehicle only had a XXX GVW and you overloaded it.
Second, where is the 170 number coming from? Any numbers that I've seen for the factory 250's indicated that they were around 100 horsepower. In fact, the numbers for the 302 are only around 150 horsepower.
I know, I know, everybody has a buddy who had a 72 with a 302 that would pull the front tires off the ground 3 inches in the Dairy Queen parking lot and would run at least 150 miles per hour on the highway!!!
Well, let me tell you something, I had an original 72 with the 302 that I began drag racing 17 years ago when I turned 16 years old. In stock form with only headers installed and no posi rear-end, it ran 10.0's in the 1/8th mile at around 69 miles an hour. Oh, I forgot, we had also taken the back seat out and the heater/AC box under the dash to save weight.
So a lot of these guys are full of crap. These little cars only had so much horsepower from the factory and wuld only run so fast. However, they make a GREAT platform to start with! They are light weight, can easily be converted to a V-8 if you so choose, and beefier rear suspension parts are readily available. Besides, if you just slap on a set of cool wheels on one, they make one SWEET looking little ride.
With a 302 from the factory, these are quite capable little cars. But if you start making some basic and minor performance modifications to them, they can quickly turn into a little street-beast! Go at your own pace and put money into it as you can. Keep the car though. Years from now, you won't regret it. It will be plenty fast, and you'll have something different from all of the cookie-cutter cars running around today. In short, your ride will have some CHARACTER.
But, that's just my opinion....I could be wrong. :)
: Mine is a 2 door with no air, reg brakes,reg steering and 10" drums all around. 250 with c-4. All stock car. Why does the sticker say 3640? I figured at first it was a misprint, but the split wieght between front and back is at approx. 1820. Thats 3640. To me that sounds a little heavy for that size car.
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: If the car really does wiegh 2640 instead, man. My Mother has a 97 Cherokee w/4.0(258) at 185 hp. And they run out pretty dang nice they do. So when I'm done building mine up, she should really fly. Cause if I'm going to be getting 170 to the ground at 2600 lbs, and the jeep gets about the same hp at 4900 lbs! I can see now what yall meen about these cars runnin real good without a lot of fancy shmancy upgrades.