[geeks] Stuff fo' sale

[Phil Stracchino]

Janet Campbell wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Aug 2006, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> 
>> Side note:  When I lived in Spokane, Washington and drove a rather
>> highly tuned 1970 Camaro SS350, I had to learn to shift into neutral
>> whenever approaching a light or stop-sign in winter, because on a snowy
>> or icy road, with 350BHP and 388 lb.ft of torque on tap, it was
>> impossible to apply enough braking effort on the rear wheels to overcome
>> the idle torque of the engine without locking up the front wheels.
> 
> This sounds like a classic case of a misadjusted (or missing) brake 
> proportioning valve.  Especially with a mixed disc/drum setup, it's 
> important to get things balanced properly.

Nope.  Nothing wrong with the proportioning valve, and it was fine on a
dry road.  It's just that the thing made enough torque even at idle that
you had to put it in neutral to stop under full control on ice or snow.

Wouldn't have been a problem with ABS, but hey ...  wasn't an option on
the '70 Camaro.  :)

> The usual suspects for high performance classic V8/auto vehicles (lumpier
> cams, single plane manifolds, high stall converters) all tend to decrease 
> idle torque, so unless your idle was cranked way up it probably wasn't the 
> problem.

Nope, none of the above.  I went the supertuning route, not the
drag-racer route.  I wanted the engine responsive throughout the
performance envelope, not just at wide open throttle.


-- 
 Phil Stracchino                     Landline: 603-886-3518
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net         Mobile: 603-216-7037
 Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker, Free Stater