Cars are cool. No matter how you slice it or dice it, they take a personality of their own. I’ve had the good fortune to engineer a few really cool vehicles, owned a shop and worked  on and sold a few more, and owned a few classics. Camshaft Chronicles is all about the cars I’ve come across, the good and the bad (avoiding ugly cars), and my opinions of them.

As we move to autonomous cars, aerodynamics making cars look alike, buying cars based on the bluetooth connectivity and multi-media systems, I think we’re losing the essence of the basic premise of what made car ownership so special: a personal connection with a machine that launched our freedom from the moment we got that driver’s license and could drive anywhere at any time. That ability to be masters of the road and imbue some of our own passions into a a collection of iron, steel, plastic and rubber that was styled to launch flights of fancy.

The cars of the 60s, whether muscle cars, pony cars, large sedans or land yachts, pale in comparison to today’s cars when it comes to quality, aerodynamics, engine efficiency, horsepower per cubic inch, crashworthiness, and nearly every other ingredient that makes a car, except ONE: Cars had personality. They had style. They had elegance. It started with fins, it launched into sporty cars, then muscle cars and pony cars.

I think we’ve lost that today. People don’t buy cars based on pizzazz or personality. Who pays attention to when the new models come out any more?

This page is dedicated to the style, the personality, the passion for the automobile. The ultimate freedom machine.

And for my first post, my first car. It owns a special place in my heart. It’s the only car I owned twice.

Enjoy!

I bought my first car from a friend of my Dad through work. He gave me an option: buy the 3-year old ’69 for $1,000 then and there, or he would put it up for sale and if it didn’t sell he would sell it to me for $900. I paid the $1,000. It had a 302-2V with a 3-speed manual. Power nothing – manual brakes, manual steering, manual windows, no a/c, no fold-down rear seat. It came with an AM radio. And a hood scoop. With turn signals in it. That was the bomb. I loved watching the lights blink in the turn signals in the back of the scoop.

I had many adventures, starting with being able to date my girlfriend. Her mother wouldn’t let her go out with me on the back of my motorcycle, and borrowing Dad’s car was an iffy proposition.

The first mod was a cherry-bomb exhaust. The old man worked for Ford and had access to suppliers. Voila. I don’t remember the sequence of mods, but what followed was a 4-barrel manifold and an Autolite carb. I learned the difference between 480-cfm and 600-cfm Autolites. And Holleys. I still love Holley carbs. I cut a hole in the hood underneath the scoop and made it functional. I bought a ’64-1/2 with chrome headers and dual quad setup. I sold the dual-quad, put the chrome headers on the ’69, and sold the ’64-1/2 with a 2-bbl manifold and carb and came out ahead. Somewhere along the line a dual-point distributor was added.

Behind the chrome headers I installed a Boss 302 exhaust system. Bigger diameter pipes meant less back pressure which meant more power, baby! I put in a Boss 302 oil pump. Probably overkill, but I had learned two important things: lubrication is key to long engine life, especially at high rpm, and better flow into and out of the engine meant more power.

I got an AM-8 track and installed the ubiquitous 6×9 speakers on the package tray. Bigger tires in the rear, stock in the front. Snow tires for the winter.

When I bought the car the second time, I installed a 4-speed and learned about rear axle ratios. With the 3-speed she came out of the hole like a bandit. When I dropped in the 4-speed, it was like starting in 2nd! The base car came with a 2.73 rear axle. 4-speed cars came with a 3.25 to make first gear in each match up. With the stock 2.73 axle I was turning 2,000 rpm at 60mph. The 3-speed went back in.

I learned how to put a clutch in it when it literally exploded one day while getting it on. It had seen it’s day. What I later learned was that I damaged the rear trans seal by jamming the driveshaft yoke in poorly. All the trans fluid leaked out and when driving down the highway in Kentucky the trans froze up, snapped the input shaft in the rear diff, with the driveshaft bouncing down the road. Fortunately a local mechanic was helpful and found a used input shaft at a junkyard, fixed the trans and the seal, and got me on my way.

During my second ownership I also owned a Mach 1 and enjoyed both cars. I loved the Mach 1 for its 4-speed and 351 and wood-grain dash and shaker hood, the high-back buckets and the performance. I loved the blue fastback for its simplicity. And that hood scoop!

Sadly, the shock towers rusted out. The cost to replace them was more than the car was worth repaired and I sold it to a mechanic friend of mine who parted it out. Like one’s first love, I remember the car fondly. Watching the video, I remember the feel of accelerating through the gears, watching the front end come up as the torque kicked in, tracking the scoop through the corners like a directional beacon, and a certain gorgeous brunette sitting next to me. But that’s another story, and this is about the car.