Month: September 2020

My Search For American Muscle – Part XIV

ONE SIMPLE QUESTION

I follow a few muscle car pages on Facebook just to torture myself with seeing what everyone else out there is enjoying while I sit carless in front of my computer.  

One day someone in Arizona posted that they were selling a 1966 Plymouth Satellite convertible, powered by a 318 Poly for $28,500.  It looks awesome and I was really trying to talk myself into inquiring about it.  The big issue is Arizona is pretty far away and buying a car sight unseen makes me extremely nervous.  Plus it has a 318 Poly for an engine.  

The 318 was one of the general workhorse engines for Mopar and there were many, many cars equipped with the 318.  In the Mopar enthusiast circles, the 318 has a nickname – “boat anchor”.  Basically, it’s a dog of an engine as far as performance goes.  But there is one saving grace:  it’s a 318 “Poly”,  and there’s a lot of love for the poly version of the 318.  Poly means that the combustion chamber is polyspherical, kind of like the hemi.  Kinda.  So, it’s a unique little engine that some Mopar lovers like to play around with.  Me?  I’d pull the damn thing and put in a hemi, probably a Hellcat.  Or at least pay someone to do that for me.  

Here’s the 1966 Plymouth Satellite for sale in Arizona.

I finally worked up the interest thinking it would be a fun driver even if it was woefully underpowered.  I poured over the pictures and came upon a photo of the door jamb showing the VIN of the car.  In the picture, however, was an unusual green wire coming from the car into the door.  I found that to be weird since there is nothing powered in that door – no power windows, door locks, lights or stereo speakers.  So I clicked on the comment box for that photo and asked one simple question:

“What’s the green wire for?”

A day later I checked back in with the post fully expecting to have it explained to me.  Nope.  But not only was there no answer there was no photo.  The poster deleted it!  What the hell?  Instead of giving an explanation, or even a “I have no idea,” they just decided to delete the photo.  Now it looks like they are trying to hide something.  My best guess is that it was an old speaker wire for a speaker mounted in the door, but the door panel looks new was probably replaced sans speaker.  Just a hunch.  But this guy decided to hide the photo for whatever reason and now I’m more confused than interested.  

I put a link to a video of the car below.  It is a nice looking car.  I’ll keep an eye on it.

This isn’t the deleted photo, but if you zoom in you can kinda see the green wire in the jamb of the door.

Link to the owner’s YouTube video

Chasing a Sub-6 Mile – Update #2

Time for another update, so here’s how my attempt at getting under a 6-minute mile is going .  (See below for the links to the previous two posts.)

I had not given the sub-6 mile attempt much thought since the last time, as I was still hoping to increase my miles for the Big Hill Bonk Last Runner Standing ultra. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has killed that event and I will have to wait until April 2021 to give that one another go. I wasn’t that focused for some reason on keeping up with getting under sub-6 minutes until I was at a group ride and one of my Facebook friends (Hi, Angela!) who read my blog inquired about it. I mentioned the above and that I have also been dealing with the typical aches and pains that usual appear at this time of year after the work I have been doing, things like plantar fasciitis, piriformis butt pain, etc. All things that I typically just ignore and train through.

But I have done a couple of attempts, one of which was a total failure and the second one today that turned out to be consistent with what I think is going to be my best effort from here on. Here are the summaries:

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 – Attempt Number 3

  • TIME:  DNF
  • WHERE:  BEARSKIN TRAIL, MINOCQUA, WISCONSIN
  • WEATHER:  Mid-50’s degrees, windy
  • LEAD-UP:  A bike ride with Kari the day before
  • COMMENTS:  This was just going to be a quick and easy 4-mile run before heading back out of town and a six hour ride home.  But seeing the day was pretty cool and I was feeling pretty good, I decided that I would warm up with two miles of light pace and then turn around and hammer it.  Well, I did that and totally threw out the pacing strategy that I had learned from previous efforts, mainly starting a little slower and pushing for negative splits.  No, I went out like a shot and burned out very quickly.  By the time I hit the half mile mark I was near hyperventilation and had to pull the plug on it.  My watch showed 3:22 for that effort, well off the pace I needed.  I blew it.  It was a little bit of a surprise, but I quickly realized my dumb mistake.  I jogged it back to the car and enjoyed the Northwoods scenery as I went.

SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 – Attempt Number 4

  • TIME:  6:24.8
  • WHERE:  MOKENA JR. HIGH SCHOOL TRACK
  • WEATHER:  72 degrees, light wind, low humidity – a perfect day
  • LEAD-UP:  A bike ride the day prior and an easy-paced 3-mile warm-up
  • COMMENTS:  As I started the 2.75-mile jog to get to the track I could tell this was probably going to be a wasted effort.  The upper leg soreness from the bike ride the day before was pretty evident, but once I got there I decided to see where I stand.  This time I made sure that I held back at the start and the first two laps were pretty good.  I felt smooth and wasn’t really feeling terribly taxed.  I pushed harder for the third and fourth laps and surprised myself when my watch showed 6:24 at the mile mark.  I think I need some more speed work training and a cooler day to get this time a little lower.  I think I might be capable of sub-6:20, but I’m thinking maybe my goal should have been to get under 6:30!  I’d have done it by now!

Stay tuned, I plan on doing my last effort or two in October.

 

Chasing a Sub-6 Mile – Update #1

Chasing a Sub-6 Minute Mile

 

My Search For American Muscle – Part XIII

CAR CURIOSITY

I’m still searching for a muscle car to own and along the way I have developed a sort of search methodology.  You would think it would be pretty simple – go to Google, enter in the year/make/model of the car you are looking for and then start looking for the one that catches your eye.  Once you find the “one” all that is left is to pay, pick it up, and then enjoy.  But I like to go into much more depth and look into the car’s past for some reason.  And I do that because it can be worth the effort.

This week a 1970 Pontiac GTO popped up on a website I follow and it caught my eye.  I’m not really “jonesing” for a ’70 Goat, but this one was nice – red on red, 4-speed, and purrs like a kitten on the video.  Most of the time I can find the VIN in the photos or in the description and then the journey of discovery begins.

 

This red 1970 GTO caught my eye. Listed at Bluelineclassics.com

The first step for me is to usually find the VIN and do some research on the car by going to a website that can decipher the VIN and fender/cowl tags and tell you something about the car. This car’s VIN begins with the following: “242370B”, which is Pontiac-speak for Pontiac (2), GTO (42), two-door coupe (37), 1970 model (0), built in Baltimore, MD (B). This one checks out as a true GTO.

1970 was a peak year for muscle cars and horsepower, and that usually means cars from that year would bring in substantial money on the market. It seems unusual to me that this car would be under $50,000, being a numbers-matching car (the engine and drive train are stamped with the sequence number of the VIN). This car does lack the Ram Air and hood mounted tach options, but it is a four-speed and is presented nicely. So naturally, I had to try to find out more about the car.

I Googled the VIN and was surprised to see this:

This is the same 1970 GTO located in Ohio, the same state where the current seller is located.

This is the same car sold by a Chevrolet dealer in Ohio that sells classics on the side. It was listed for sale at $27,900. What? Now my alarms are going off. How does the car get sold for such a low price and then flipped for $17,000 more? Interesting stuff.

I also found a forum called “The Supercar Registry”, and someone had recently made a post about it. The poster mentioned the red on red GTO and how it looked pretty good. Then the experts checked in.

  • “Beautiful car, but it needs the correct bucket seat releases.”
  • “and correct dash (72 dash) and that stupid Buick sticker on the air cleaner…”

So apparently the bucket seat releases are from a 1968 Pontiac, and not the 1970.  The dash comment I had to look into and confirm, it is consistent with a 1972 model GTO and not the 1970.  Weird.  And the “Buick” sticker comment was explained in a further comment that it is consistent with the stickers Buick used, even though it bore a Pontiac emblem.  Pontiac apparently never used that design on their air cleaners.  

I also learned from the description of the previous sale listing that the car was originally painted silver and had been changed.  It seems to me that the car would be worth more and attract more buyers being a silver/red combo and not red/red just for appearance and originality sake.

I’m not that familiar with the GTO but I learned a lot was wrong about this one!