Forget Wagner, give me Weber
I could not help but laugh about the conversation on ex haust notes on cars and t his one will live forever in my memories; a nice big fat 351 Cleveland in a coupe with four 40mm IDF Webers. You’d get on the top of Greenmount, a ver y steep descent into Pert h, and pull t he auto back into second. With no t hrott le application you’d roll down t he hill wit h t he Webers f uelling up into the hot muff ler and clack ing and popping out t he back. It was even better in t he tunnel, loading up the system with a quick stab of t he t hrott le and t hen backing off for more of t he same.
Alas the Webers are now of f t he car, however t hey have now been replaced wit h a healt hy, hydraulic roller-cammed 351 with t win t wo-and-a-half-inch ex haust with no balance tube that sounds the best when it gets past 3500rpm. It’s best just to keep it quiet around tow n but it’s only a couple of minutes to get out of tow n and rip through t hose toploader gears wit h that wonderful tone out of t he rear of t he car. The boys in blue have only ever
“THESE DAYS A V8 TARGA FLORIO IS ACTUALLY STARTING TO BE WORTH REAL MONEY”
“NOW THE OLD VAL FIRES UP AND IDLES JUST LIKE A BOUGHT ONE”
pulled me over to have a look at t he car in t he 10 years I’ve owned it. Motor on. Dave Gray, WA
Marley says...
YOU ARE A man after my own, black, heart, Dave. And nice to see you still own the old girl, albeit without those tuneful Webers. Funny isn’t it, when it comes to the wallopers: I’ve owned a range of loud-ish cars over the years, and motorbikes as well. What I’ve found is that if you’re riding/ driving like a dick, then a loud exhaust is one more thing to book you for. But take it easy and you’re generally left alone. I know that statement will bring howls of protest from anybody who has recently been done for a loud zorst, and it’s true that there are some mean-spirited coppers out there.
The other thing I’ve learned over the years is that a slightly naughty exhaust is much more likely to be ignored if the rest of the car looks like it’s meant to be that way. A clean, otherwise original SLR/5000, for instance, will probably be left alone even if it’s making a small racket. But the same make and model with a not-tooengineered small-block conversion and bog falling out of it will be a major contender for this week’s episode of You’re Nicked.
Meanwhile, I can understand why you ditched those Webers at some point in the last decade, too, Dave. I own a VH Charger (still very much a project at this stage) and the first thing I did was fit a set of triple Webers. But despite everything I, and a few blokes who know their carbs, did, we could never get that 265 running sweetly with the triples on board. I ended up switching to a modern Holley four-barrel with a mechanical choke and vacuum secondaries and now the old Val fires up and idles just like a bought one. The point being that if you can drag the car out of the garage on a Saturday morning to either drive it, or tune it. I’ll take the former every time, thanks. Same goes for the hillclimb car I’m building. I know it’d make more grunt on triples, but I’ve gone for another Holley, purely because when I roll it off the trailer, it ’ll be to race it, not fiddle with the damn carbs.