I haven't checked into the insurance yet and thats an important thing I need to find out about. I will contact my agent and see whats available. I have read some posts on here about different companies and problems with them.
I used to drive my '64 panel daily, 230 with a o/d (3 on the tree). Only let me down once due to a cheap center support bearing. I have full coverage on all the cars now as this is the only way to get theft coverage here (some sit outside). That said you have you to be one with the car and understand all of it's moans and groans to catch something before it becomes a problem. You also need to check things out every other weekend (or weekly depends on the miles driven). My '47 will be good for a daily once I do some swapping (rear end and trans mainly), I wouldn't hesitate to drive it daily now if I wanted to get up 45 min earlier....which I don't. At least here for a daily it either needs to be inside a garage or have a functioning defrost and time to get warm enough to work.
the thing about gas mileage on old cars is you can make up whatever number you want and impress all your buddies. had a buddy with a 48 Chevy that got 20 MPG and it didn't even have an odometer. that my friends, is a mathematical genius right there.
I drive a 1950 Chevy styleline every day rain or shine. I know it’s not a flathead so probly not comparable in gas mileage but I’ll gladly stop and get gas a little more often to be able to drive a nice old car every day. I say buy it and drive the wheels off of it! Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
im with you . millage is really not a factor .but I cat waite to get my latest to where I can check and lie about the millage . im hoping for close to 20 with the 235and 3,08 rear but ill bet that don't happen . I know my 64 gmc sucks it up so bad o don't even check with 3 spd and tall gears I had big hopes . not . still my current favorite , weather permitting . kinda like the hog 60 to 80 degrees.other wise I wear out the old lesabre .plus if I get ut off in it I can ram um
It is what it is, can't make an older design carbureted V8 as efficient as a modern computer controlled EFI engine. What you can do though, is maximize both performance and efficiency, with additional benefits like easy starts hot or cold, smooth idle, clean long burning plugs, reduced cylinder wear, reasonable range on a tank of juice, and crankcase oil that stays sludge free. There's no perfomance benefit to wasting gas out the tailpipe.
A friend, over beers last night, tells me you get better mileage by accelerating and coasting down the road than holding a steady speed. Sounds wrong to me, but after looking it up there are those who believe it to be. It's called Pulse and Glide. Anyone heard of this?
Yeah, we did that when I was on the supermilage project in college. The reason is that an engine that is throttle is not as efficient as one that is not throttled. But a better approach when you're on a road with other cars, is to gear the car so the engine is running lower rpm, with the throttle open further. That's why overdrive gives better mileage.
Hmm OK, I think I get it. Under pulse, with the throttle open, volumetric efficiency is increased, and under glide the fuel is mostly cut off. Doesn't sound like something one would want to do for a length of time long enough for any substantial savings. Thanks.
Preferably the engine is turned off completely for the coasting period. So it's indeed a quite annoying way to drive. More of a fun fact than practically usefull on the roads.
I'm not inherently against the notion of daily driving an old car. One of the questions I haven't seen answered yet is how many miles a year do you intend on driving it? "Daily driving" means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. If you live in a rural area or work fairly locally, and you keep your total milage to around 10K a year, I see no reason why a well-maintained mid-40s Ford with a flatty couldn't do that. But if you're running long distances daily and driving in congested, urban environments, then I would highly reconsider your choice. I also see that you're in Florida, which is great, but it's hot as hell in the summer, and you have no air conditioning in that car. Is it acceptable to arrive wherever you're going dripping sweat? I really feel like this is a fact specific analysis.
Big mileage claims but then again the V8 60 hp engines were not known for power and were slow. I've drive hot rods in one form or another as daily drivers most of my life, driving a hot rod year round sacrifices have to be made, gas mileage usually suffers, never warm enough in the winter, cook in the summer but the man that drives a hot rod year round gets noticed and has a lot more fun commuting back & forth. HRP
The last two sentences aren't making sense to me, especially the throttle being open further at a lower rpm. Care to clarify and/or explain?
I've heard of, tried, and sometimes use some of the various tactics. https://ecomodder.com/forum/EM-hypermiling-driving-tips-ecodriving.php
The engine is an air pump, it wants to fill the cylinders completely every time - and at full throttle you let it do that, more or less. When you start closing the throttle you restrict the pumping ability, making the engine waste work trying to draw air in. The theory is that the engine can be more efficient when it's working unrestricted, for example by going to a low rpm where full throttle power is quite low anyway, and let the engine run close to full throttle there. Of course, there are many other design consideratuions in engine construction, so things like valve timing may make the engine inefficient at such low rpm. You can't take a screaming high rpm engine and run it at low rpm and expect good performance in any way, everything needs to work well together.
Old thread but if you go down through the years and check minimum or entry level wage with the price of gas the norm has always been that what ever minimum wage is you can usually figure that it takes an hour of work to buy 3 gallons of gas. That has been a constant since the mid 60's when I started driving. I started out at 1.25 as a Boxboy in a grocery store in 1964 and could buy 3 gallons of gas for an hours work, the kids at the same name store here in town now get 15 but when they go out to the gas pump their hour of work still buys three gallons of gas. Crap, now I have to go back and see if the OP actually bought that car or not. I'd have to believe that there are still far too many guys who have no clue as to how much maintenance a pre 60's car needs if you actually drive it on a daily basis/ Grease job every 1000 miles Oil changes at 1000 to 3000 depending on the quality of the oil. Tune ups every 10K Adjust the brakes every 5 K if that on most of them. If you run Bias tires you only get about 20K out of a set of tires. That was my dad's standard procedure when I was a kid in the 50's and was pretty well my standard procedure with my 51 Merc. The only real hassle of having a 6 volt system is getting 6 volt pieces. Plenty of guys put thousands of miles a year on cars with 6 volt systems but the problem comes with you need a 6 volt bulb or other 6 volt piece. You can't always run into O'Reilly's or Autozone and get one and go. You have to order it and wait unless you are in an area where a lot of older trucks are still in use on farms in the area. Plus you can't stick an aftermarket radio in the car to have tunes on 6V unless you can find an old 6 volt AM-FM for a VW but I had a buddy who had a 12V battery in a boat box in the trunk to run is AM-FM CD player in his 6 volt ride. He could run it a whole weekend of going to a rod trot without charging it. A deep cycle boat battery would give you plenty of cruise time sound wise. We run an inverter on our sailboat that runs my wife's C pap, the laptop and even a small TV for a number of days without charging or only charging with a small solar panel.
The cars that were built in the 1950's and before were not designed for today's highways or speeds...Today's cars get better mileage and are safer to drive....I took me awhile to come to grips with it to...LOL....My stock OT new pickup has 400HP sets in traffic all day with the air on and gets 20 mpg on the highway...I do have a memory to play with on the weekends but never want to use one as my daily driver....
This could be one of those moments where I get this... or it's one of those moments where I don't but thought I did.
One slice of my latest Cat scan. Can't quite understand it either but I'm trying to make sense of it. I had a conversation with a mechanic regarding cylinder boring. Part of the discussion centered around just that needle and seat profile. When I read what was written, I thought, that's like a new Ford traveling down the high way dropping cylinders keeping the speed limit. Wide open throttle blades, sipping fuel that's tightly metered, and coast the boat gearing.
Oil and grease intervals can probably be doubled. Modern lubricants are just that much better. It's really hard to overstate how big the change is. All the brake/wheel/hub components should last just as long as their modern analogues once all the consumables have been replaced with modern stuff as they wore out. Pretty much every electrical and plastic/rubber component we have today is worlds better so after your first 10k ignition tune up using modern (cheapo aftermarket) parts it will just be points for the next 100k. As you replace natural rubber steering joint boots, o-rings, seals, etc with modern FKM replacement parts their lifetimes will increase to match. Putting 100k on a 1950s car in 2022 should be a lot less labor intensive on a per mile basis than putting 100k on a 1950s car in 1952. The problem is there are no fresh cars from 1952. Whatever you get your hands on will come with a pile of deferred maintenance that must be dug out from under. I have a coworker who put about that mileage on a super beetle (which is pretty close to 1950s tech and manufacturing quality) after extensively rebuilding it since it had sat for decades. He said the worst part was hills on the highway.
I was just gonna post that, lol. No idea what my hot rod gets for mileage, and don't care. Even when I dd it.... And I get all the comments about the downsides of hot rod driving, but when I'm behind the wheel those things just don't seem to bother me. I'm too busy having fun. It ain't about mileage, right? It's smiles per hour!
You should tell your friend that he should make a cruise control that does that There! I just gave him a Million $$ idea. If you measured the MPH statistics of Pulse and Glide techniques , the actual average speed is a lot lower than a constant cruising speed. If you lowered your cruising speed to the pulse and glide average you would achieve better results. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The absolute best method is to learn "momentum driving" . This is a technique that small bore racers do! [Formula Ford, Formula V etc etc] The idea is to not scrub off speed , and to exit corners really gentle [in a race car this is to prevent "snap oversteer] To prove a point, I challenged a few friends on a "Luge" which was pure gravity. [I was fastest on every run] I purchased a O/T Toyota Hybrid for Mimi. [these are rated at 4.5 L/100 or 52 mpg in the real world] The first time I drove it home from the dealership ,a 200km trip or 125 miles I decided to test the economy of this thing It only took 6.5 litres [1.71 gallons] to fill up at home....... averaging 3.25 L/100 [ 73 mpg] I didn't drive slow or Hypermile [life's too short for that] ,and I had the AC /heater on most the way to dry out the carpets which were still damp from shampoo/grooming. Momentum driving does require some anticipation and concentration and gets better results than any cruise control [except in the Laziness dept]
I have my own method when running out of gas, as I often do. I call it Punch and Sputter. I punch the pedal franticly until it sputters, then pop it into neutral.
this might help radial tires could give it a little edge. https://www.automobile-catalog.com/...en/full-size_ford_1gen_deluxe_coupe/1948.html
Hello, When we had the Flathead 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery, it was very reliable and took us thousands of miles of trouble-free road trips. Gas was a no brainer. Those that got daily/weekly rides to high school and surf trips paid and it kept the tank relatively full most of the times. There was not a worry about gas mileage, but driving around was important, so there were some costs. But, the Flathead power was lacking on steep coastal roads, warranting a downshift to 2nd and at times, first gear. If we were fully loaded with teenagers, two heavy longboards, it definitely a 1 st gear climb up a steep highway. In the San Diego County coastal area, there are plenty of good surf spots next to the highway. One in particular had a nice beach sand front parking lot, a short walk to the water and a nice paddle out to some great waves. The Torrey Pines Beach location was at the base of the famous Torrey Pines tall cliffs. But, as good as the surf was at this location, cars could not turn left and head North to go home. We all had to turn right and go up the steep grade of the coastal highway to the top of the cliffs. Then finding a turn around spot to go back down the steep hill towards home. We knew this steep hill was going to be a slow Flathead powered grind. A first gear start as usual, but this time and every time, we had to be in the slow lane in first gear. The weight of teenagers, two-three heavy longboards and beach stuff was a weight we could not do without. So, we just had to be patient for the very slow 1st gear climb. Gas mileage for any car took a big hit on this long winding steep grade to the top. Alternatives in later years was the fast moving I-5 freeway with a hill in the milder range, but was now a 2nd gear climb in traffic. The Flathead for us, being stock, gave us tons of reliable driving miles, but it did lack power necessary to fully enjoy those long road trips all over So Cal. Although, the Flathead powered sedan delivery was not the chosen hot rod to go up to Big Bear Mountain (approx.. 7000 ft. elevation) for the Winter holidays. Jnaki Back then, gas mileage was not a factor, since it was very inexpensive as we see it (a quarter for a gallon of gas) today, but the inflation calculator puts the $.25 cents of 1960 gas to $2.50 per gallon currently. Something we haven’t seen for many years… YRMV
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