On my Moms 56 Customline I used to take the front exhaust crossover pipe off, pull it apart and bolt up the left side so the pipe pointed towards the fenderwell. Probably didnt help much but sounded good to a 16yr old. Had to quit when it finally burned the wiring there.

Dan      Kingman Az.      86409

Shame on you guys. Thank god I never did any of this stuff.

Frank/Rebop

Bristol, In ( by Elkhart) 

Way back in '63 a neighborhood friend bought a '54 business coupe from a small car lot in the area. It was a 239 with overdrive so it might have had 4.11 gears? Anyway he totally "gutted" the interior except for the bench seat. He dropped in a good used '57 312 and a T-10 four speed. With a good tune-up, that '54 was one of the fastest cars in L.A. (Lower Akron).



Light means Might!

FIGHT CONFORMITY! 

I had a push pull switch on the dash of my ’56 Customline Victoria that was placed on the lower face of the dash just in front of the shifter so my knuckles would push it in upon shifting to third gear.  At this point the car had a top loader four speed with a T handled Hurst shifter.  This would shut off one set of points in the dual point distributor and retard the timing.  This allowed more ignition timing for the launch and then the ignition retard was good for mph at the end of the track.  It took MSD quite awhile to add that retard feature back into their boxes so I could do the same thing again with an electronic ignition.

 

This just went along with side gapping and indexing the spark plugs.  Although each little trick didn’t accomplish much individually, together they made a big difference.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

In 1957 there were no paved roads near my home, but there

was a timber bridge over prarion bayou just wide enough for

two cars. Only about 100 yards long, but we made do. One of

the guys had a 57 fairlane with 312 tbird special engine (4 bbl) , and another had a 56 with a 312. Some how the 56

always got to the end of the bridge first. Asking him years

later, he said he used to put rosin on that plank deck on his side of the bridge. Don't know if true. I was driving my dad's

53 f100 with it's flathead. Did'nt race it though. My driving

privileges were too precarious to risk.

I

55f100

West Monroe,La.

ok, enlighten us "young guys"...

mothballs in the gas tank??!!

Mark

"God Bless Texas"location: Houston,TX

When I was a young guy and my job at the station was pumping gas, checking oil and wiping windows - we had a mechanic who drove a little Oldsmobile ('63?) with an aluminum V8, turbocharger and side draft carb. It used a little tank of "go juice" (factory part I think) that was injected into the air stream when the boost came on. He never used the Oldsmobile recommended stuff - instead there was a kerosene can of "homebrew" on the back bench. This was rumored to be a mixture of moonshine and carburetor cleaner. i don't think the magic ingredient was 'shine - the station owner...and the mechanic would have used that for other purposes.......

This little car was very quick (especially from a rolling start) and the local hot shots soon learned to fear the little grey car - Corvettes, Mopars and especially.....the knuckleheads at the Fina station across the street ('57 chebbie)....got a lesson in being humble. So....my buddy Brad Davis and I decided to try our own version of the "magic chemical" in the Davis family Poncho. This involved a windshield washer from the salvage yard - and numerous concoctions we dreamed up to try. Isophryl alchohol and water seemed to work the best - but our seat of the pants dynamometer was probably less than calibrated. At any rate - the Davis Pontiac must have had the cleanest spark plugs in southern Missouri.    

 
 Steve Metzger       Tucson, Arizona

Not sure what the active ingredient is (naphtha?). Could be a car-culture "old wives' tale", but if it ever DID work, it was likely back in olden days when pump fuel was pretty tame, and most anything flammable was an improvement.

6 VOLTS/POS. GRD. NW INDIANA

As far as old school tricks, I have my 86 volvo rigged with a piece of bailing wire so that when I hit the gas, it turns the throttle and hits the choke a little. The computer should be smart enough to do that on it's own, but...



hehehe...when I was in the 8th grade me and a friend moved some cones so that if you wanted to go to the airport you had to take the long way around the school. DOT wouldn't move the cones because they thought it was a school thing, and the school thought it was a DOT thing. It was funny for about a week, and then we moved them because it was getting to be a little annoying...



Mothballs? Ha! I've run my volvo on a mixture of 30% acetone! It seems to make the car more powerful, but your gas mileage goes straight down the john. Like, less than a mile a gallon.

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People should not be afraid of their government, a government should be afraid of the people.

--Alan Moore

Back when trucks were way under powered truck drivers used to throw moth balls in the fuel tank, both gas and Diesel and it gave them noticeably more power. Since I grew up around trucks I tried it my my 50 GMC was well as my 56 Ford sedan. I don't know what it did, but it helped. And it would throw real pretty flames out of the exhaust especially when I had the cutouts open. I tried them a few times in a 220 Cummins. The truck would pull a gear higher, but the pyrometer would jump up to the red line in a hurry. Instead of the normal foot long flame out of the stack, I would have a 2 foot flame. Beings we were gasoline distributors and I hauled gas out of the Big Spring, TX refinery, I had access to avgas with lead which I think was 130 octane. I had to bump up my timing to get the full benefit out of that.

Kenneth

Fredricksburg, Texas