Holden 186

[GTRPSI]

Lol, listen to you old farts... these days cars are much heavier full of electronic gizmos and what not...and all the tricks racers used to use are done from factory now so the engines are much better, there is no need for shotpeening rods or adding 4 bolt mains, it all.comes standard...

I mean a 4.5lt motor in a >1000kg Torana....of course its going to be fast...now try making a 2.5lt 1600kg Cressida do 10s without a turbo..

You couldn't do that in the old days..

Let me whack you one with my walking stick young fella.

We did what we did because there were no off the shelf piarts to affordably do anything.

The best we could do to our rods was to massage them by hand and buy some ARP rods, convert the gudgon pins and pistons to full floating and resize the big ends.

We needed more oil pump pressure, no aftermarket pumps, shim the sucker up.

We needed a big cam so we bought the biggest hydralic one and ran it with solid lifters (poor mans solid race cam)

There was no internet, there was no google to research with, working it out meant speaking to someone kind enough to share some hard earned knowleage, going to the track and sussing things out or plain old suck it up, try it and see.

Believe you me i blew up more than 1 oil filters due to too much oil pump shimming.....engine out again, try again....out in, out in, out in, finally nailed it for those bearing clearances.

The suspension arms use to buckle under load during launch, you worked out that cutting some steam pipe and welding into the C channel of the rear arms did the job to strengthen them.

Nothing was handed to you on a plate, your were left up to your own ingenuity, no google with pages of results or images to study.

Now with modern engines, yes much of the work is done, shit, you guys got Alloy heads and overhead cams that already flowed pretty good, we got push rods and iron heads, hell you got Electronic spark running from a ECU that you could alter as needed, we got weights and springs hanging inside a distributor that we needed to play with weights and spring tensions, christ you even got EFI and O2 sensors and exhaust temp sensors, we got carbs, jets, a screwdriver and a sparkplug socket to work it all out.

And the list of what modern engine have to make better power and vehicle advancements with less know how goes on....Drum brake rears, home made water injection, want to save weight, use a 12V hair dryer motor as a window demister, weld the diff because you didnt have LSD's for your model.....

Today its either aready capable or you just open a catalog on line and its all there.

Ok i need to go and take my old fart afternoon nap and diper change now, you have tired me out making me think.

[ARTZ]

Exactly, you could tune your car with a screwdriver and a spark plug socket...

I cant tune my car without thousands of dollars of gimmickry now...

And efi is great yeah, but when you had a problem you looked at the carburettor or your dizzy...now we have to go through a list of 200 sensors to figure out a problem...If I am lucky a 1000$ computer will tell me the problem, but often it doesn't even know what's wrong and displays a problem distantly related to what is actually wrong and I still have to use my engineuity to figure it out, especially if that car is modified in any way..

Was vacumn leak even a term in the old days, because it sure is now..always good fun trying to find one..alot of the time it's coming from some part that's not even needed except for emissions reason...Speaking of emissions, another term foreign to the days of old..

Yeah alloy heads are great...you could fill your radiator with rain water, now we have to use expensive fluids to fill it or risk engine destroying corrosion..

You could fix.most of your problems with a tub of grease and a piece of hose...now I need a plethora of tools just to change my spark plugs and it takes half a day to do it, some cars I nearly need to take the bloody engine out to do it..

And while I have the internet to help, I often have to read through three days of rubbish to find answer to my actual problem, then I have to decipher that answer from pages of possibilities and riddles...

You needed parts, you went to your local store and bought them, there was only 5 different models of car anyway.. Now, I almost need to learn other languages and search the internet for hours for the part numbers before I can even search for the part. Even then there is 4000 variations of that part I have to choose from.

Cars are smarter its true but it takes a smarter man to figure out how to make them tick..sure there is chequebook racing, always has been..But for most of us its still about making the most of what we have at our disposal...Even the stuff from the catalogue doesn't always fit..

Edited March 21, 2015 by ARTZ

[zebra]

Not everything is on the interwebs

Try a holden/commodore forum for help on the VN onwards 5L that extends beyond, "how do I get my car to sound cool, or what pod filter do I buy?

There are a few very smart guys out there, but they have all but disappeared because all the knob jockeys who think they know it all because their mates cousin ran a 12 in his VN SS.

[ARTZ]

Lol...remember when 12s in a VN SS was considered fast...

Remember when 500hp was considered alot...

And you needed at least 8 cylinders to get there...

Edited March 21, 2015 by ARTZ

[zebra]

Remember the cost of getting a VN SS in the 12s!

Actually, even now it isnt cheap

Fkn nugget engines, need to LS swap my VT

[ARTZ]

You need more compression....say 12.5-1 should get you there. As long as you dont mind a head gasket change every 6 months...

And if you strip everything useless and some things useful out of the car, you might be able to get it down to 1.5 tonne

Edited March 21, 2015 by ARTZ

[GTRPSI]

Cars are smarter its true but it takes a smarter man to figure out how to make them tick..sure there is chequebook racing, always has been..But for most of us its still about making the most of what we have at our disposal...Even the stuff from the catalogue doesn't always fit..

Come on, your sounding like old guys back in the late 70's complaining about "modern engines and polution control. (I was one of them)

I remember when polution control was first released, just 1 or 2 sensors and 2 vacuum hoses extra and everyone thought the sky was falling, many almost collapsed when vacuum operated warm air exhaust manifold air intakes were released, looking back its pretty funny shit compared to what we deal with today.

Eventually you get your head around it.

You see there lies the problem, as you stated, cheque book racing, its what most people do today, just look on here, page after page of it, brand names, quite often not needed, quite often the stock part worked or could be made better to do the job with a dye grinder or welder if you knew what to do.

Its not the most of us, its actually the few of us that make the most of what we have, those without the cash know how to pull a multimeter out and test a sensor or trace a fault, those with $ just source another one and test, fail and write another cheque for another part or just tow the car to a workshop.

The average person has no idea, they see a fast car they like, buy it and start handing out fist fulls of cash to keep it working.

Reminds me of the GTR saying, anyone can afford to buy one, very few can afford to keep it.

Having said all that (crap), modern engines are not THAT bad to work on, sure on GTR's your hands end up looking like they just got pulled out of a bag containing some feral cats due to a lack of space (especially after replacing the intake manifold gaskets or turbos in car), however thats the price you pay for the latest whiz bang technology, who would have dreamed that 10-15 years later that a car so technically advanced would have ever been produced for the general public and affordably now in the hands of teenagers.

It was a jump so far forward in Technology that it brought to the normal person (Us) something that was only avaliable to the super rich in terms of performance a few years earlier in Porshe's and Ferrari's.

Part of the old school fun (and now modern fun) is solving the problem without laying out big $ or paying a workshop to solve it. Sure you need a backup car as a daily........

Yes you need to understand the principals (both wiring and plumbing) but those who are technically minded can get on top of them with a simple workshop manual. (and some home made bent spanners, for like undoing the starter motors on GTR's)

Funny thing, quite often when looking into a old school engine bay these days, half of my amazement is how much room there was to perform work, you forget what you had back then, my usual thoughts are you could climb into the engine bay, there is so much room, its like being in fantasy land, i just want to hug the car.

Anyway, im just looking down at the scabs and wounds on my hands while i type this......its a show of the times with tight engine bays to get the most of a modern engine.

Thanks for reminding me why i loved those old cars and engines so much, but remember even back then, getting power out of a NA without real knowhow was a black art only in the hands of the devoted, much of what you have today came from us old timers searching for more out of a race engine, manifold runner sizes changing engine charaterisics, combustion chamber mods, bearing clearances formulas are all at the press of a button today, in our time it was all held very close to our chest just to keep our engines a few feet infront of others cars......

Edited March 21, 2015 by GTRPSI

[ARTZ]

Geez 3.49am...is that your usual wakeup time or you just needed to pee again...

[zebra]

You need more compression....say 12.5-1 should get you there. As long as you dont mind a head gasket change every 6 months...

And if you strip everything useless and some things useful out of the car, you might be able to get it down to 1.5 tonne

Its cost vs gain

a reliable 450 crank HP out of a 304/355 is a 10 grand exercise.

I have a a box worth of stout bottom end bits sitting in a box (H-beams, good bearings and flat tops etc) but

700 bucks for a roller cam, 500 on roller lifters, 600 on rocker arms, 1000 on a bit of headwork, 900 for an intake manifold, 800, on headers....and it might crack 400hp and run a 13.

Or I can buy a hypergear highflow and a fuel sysyem for the 33 and with some tweaking of the rear end, run 11s

[ARTZ]

What happened to the snoarer?

[zebra]

Its still around, gave it to my dad

[The Bogan]

Kids these days don't know how easy it is for everyone to have big power.

My GTR LJ with 202 and triple SU's would need tuning every week or 2.

I keep wanting to purchase a old steel bumper car, but then I think of fuel costs, my last real car was a early Bronco which used about 30 l/100k.

On topic, good would on the 186.

[Rbdirty30]

Gtr psi you should see the home made spanners I've made over the years to make my triples carb fit and custom made extractors, aswell as trying different manifolds and having to grind the sides of them just so I could get a bent grinded down spanner on it so I could get half a turn of a nut to try get it on the motor, ahh the stressful fun of it all haha it makes you appreciate your car alot more and putting the hours in and learning along the way when building a motor or car

[jiffo]

Although cars like Commos and Falcons were relatively simple machines, one could buy a Haynes, Gregory's or factory workshop manual and do some reading.

Can't do that these days.

When the 32 GTR was released, it cost $1100 Au for a workshop manual, I still payed $500 from Nissan a few years back.

The first Rb20 I dropped into a VB was all wired in using multi meter, no pin-outs available back then.

Wife has an i-30, can't buy a workshop manual. Best choice is a pretty useless CD from the States.

So when the "experts" service the car, it's all a guess as most of them seem limited to oil changing. These things really are a throw away vehicle once the 5-year warranty expires.

And this is only petrols.

With Euro 6 diesels it's all but over. Anyone wanting a long life simple technology engine can no longer think diesel.

[GTRPSI]

I loved those old cars, i remember learning from my old man how to rebuild a manual gearbox and change a clutch for the first time, it was on his mates FC Holden, 3 on the tree, was so easy to rebuild and put back together again.

Needed to change the rusted out rear welsh plug on the FC's motor? Remove the vinal floor covering and cut a 6" X 6" hole in the fire wall from inside the cabin to access the rear of the engine so you didnt need to pull the engine out, a simple sheet metal plate and some self tapper screws covered the hole again.

My relative bought a old EK wagon as his first car, he brought it over to me beacuse he reconded it had lifter noise and thought the engine needed to be striped to get to them, nah, just remove the rocker cover and side cover, job done in no time, he was amaized how simple they were to be worked on.

Those days life was a lot simpler than today......

[Rbdirty30]

Stick with old cars and life stays simple just trying to find parts these days is the hardest parts, trying to find LJ axles in tas is bloody hard! I'm thinking I'll put a HIlux diff in the torana soon [emoji106]

But I'll be honest i love my GTR but not as much as the xu1

[GTRPSI]

trying to find LJ axles in tas is bloody hard! I'm thinking I'll put a HIlux diff in the torana soon [emoji106]

Just a word of warning after what happened to me once after a diff conversion in a LJ Coupe.......

Had a mate that i did a 265 to 904 torque flight conversion for in his LJ Coupe, usual stuff, high stall, manual shift kit, high lift solid cam, yella terra roller rockers, triple side drafts, etc and he brought it over for me to do the final tune after the run in period.

When i thought id had it tuned i took it for a drive out on the main road with my mate, nailed it, she launched hard, took off like crazy, looked down at the speedo after a few seconds and she was almost off the clock and just kept pulling hard.

Finally went to brake to wash off some serious speed and the rear locked up, on off, on off again fighting the rear wanting to swap sides with the front.

Eventually we stopped with fresh GT stripes in our jocks.

He put a 9" with drums conversion in the rear and didnt tell me, he also didnt know about a little thing called brake bias and balance and never thought or tried to test it before heading over to my place.

The drums and cylinders provided with the 9" put too much rear brake for the light LJ coupe.

Be careful, watch for it, you have been warned......

[Rbdirty30]

Holy crap that's crazy! No worries cheers for that! I was going to put a full set of Volvo disc and calipers on it all round because I've had them in the shed for years.

[niZmO_Man]

(but wasted good VB)

What.

You old farts make my tinkering with the RB30E in my R31 seem like new school.

I hated carbies, working on them were annoying (used to work on cars with my dad back in the days).

[zebra]

haha

Nothing like getting fuel all over you hands and hot engine, because a cloud came over and you need to re-jet your 750dp