More on "Restification".....

Here's my opinion on "Restification".  If you want to build a Concours show car that's correct down to the hose clamps, then do it. Except we all know that on say,- a Concours '69 Mustang that the "Autolite" battery is an Interstate or an Exide in a repro case, and the Firestone Wide Ovals are Coker Tire repros,so is it really "all original?" No, it isn't. It's restored a certain way that certain people deem acceptable or correct. If that's your bag, go for it. However for the other 90% of us that want to drive and even-gasp!-race our cars on the strip occasionally, "restification" makes a lot more sense. Here's some good examples. I've mentioned it before, but 4-speed GTOs, Firebirds and Olds 442s had Hurst shifters from the factory. Chevelles, Camaros and Novas had the awful Muncie shifters which were body-mounted and would bind up under load. Forget powershifting at six grand; try to shift one quickly above 3,500 rpm. It's a crapshoot whether or not you get the next gear or neutral. Now even if your car is otherwise bone-stock, but you want to run it at the Pure Stock Drags or bracket race at your local strip-it would behoove you to replace that awful shifter with a transmission-mounted Hurst or Mr Gasket unit so you could shift it quickly when you wanted to, and be competitive in your class!  Mopar guys know how crappy Chrysler's points were. I've said it before-back in the day you never saw a Mopar racer at the strip who didn't have extra sets of points in his toolbox, and they were usually Mallory or Accel! Mopar lovers rejoiced in 1972 when electronic ignition was introduced. So if you have a 440 Charger that you like to run hard, or even just take long cruises in, you haven't "ruined" it if you put in a Mopar Performance or Accel or Mallory electronic distributor! You've made the car MORE reliable and easy to drive! If you have a 351CJ Mustang that you want to drive at all, you will be much happier with an Edelbrock or Holley carb than you will be with an Autolite 4300. They were awful when they were brand-new. My dad was a Master Ford Tech in the early '70's, and 351 Mustangs and 460 T-Birds had so many problems with cold starting, stumbling,crappy gas mileage ( even for a big V8; I'm talking a brand new car getting 5-8 mpg! ). If you bitched hard enough Ford would have their dealers replace the 4300 carbs with an electric-choke 600 Holley, and warranty it! If I remember correctly the part number was either #6619 or 6919. Anyhow, thats how bad those carburators were when new,much less 40+ years old. So why suffer with bad performance just so you can say that it's numbers-matching down to the carb?  Really?  If you have a '70-74 Firebird or Trans-Am, even if you don't want headers, by replacing that awful, restrictive "crossflow" muffler with a true dual exhaust system and re-jetting the carb, you can pick up 30 or 40 hp with the stock manifolds. That's how restrictive it was. Read some '70-72 Car Life or Hot Rod road tests. 400 and 455HO GTOs and LeMans GTs ran 1/2 second quicker in the 1/4 than Formula 400 Firebirds and 455HO T/A's!!  Because the GTO / LeMans models had true duals, and the F-bodies had that restrictive crossflow design. Bone stock it was costing 25-30 hp. Why do you think the 1970 GTO base 400 was rated at 350 hp, and the same engine in a Formula 400 was rated at 330?  Why were the RAIII and RAIV rated at 366 and 370 hp in the GTO and only 335 and 345 in Firebirds? Because of that restrictive exhaust system!!  GM, Ford or Mopar, if you have an automatic transmission, a B&M or TransGo shift improver kit will drastically increase performance. Seriously-will anyone know by looking at the car that you changed some springs and weights in the governor, or a couple of plates in the valve body?? Here's another thing-even if you have a "premium" musclecar-say you have an LS6 Chevelle or a Hemi Road Runner, but you'd like a little more performance. On the Chevelle-way back in 1970-Hot Rod gained 71 hp on the dyno by adding headers to their LS6 test car! Stock, although it was rated at 450 hp-it pulled 380 hp on the dyno. With just the addition of headers,no carb tuning or bumping the timing or anything, on the next run it pulled 451 hp! Even on a 454, you will notice a 70 hp increase! Because the intake was designed to clear the low hood of the '70 Corvette and Camaro ( The LS6 was initially going to be offered in the Camaro and Nova SS as well as Chevelles ) it loses 15 hp over the taller '69 427 aluminum manifold. By adding headers and the '69 manifold and replacing the 780 Holley with an 850, you could easily gain 100 hp, and the car is still basically stock. Just save the original intake and exhaust manifolds and carb in case you ever want to sell the car. On the Hemi Road Runner, adding headers and replacing the 625 cfm AFBs with 750 Edelbrocks will add 75-80 hp. If it's an automatic, a higher stall-speed converter will definitely help cut a few tenths off your 1/4 mile time as well. You've greatly improved the cars performance, and again, you haven't done anything major to the car that can't be put back to stock in a few hours if you need to. So don't be too hard on people who want to maximize their car's performance with a few minor mods. Yes, anyone who even thinks of putting an LS motor in a '69 Z/28 or a 6.4 Hemi in a '70 'Cuda ought to be dragged out into the street and shot. Barring that, I don't think you need to storm anyone's house with torches over an HEI distributor or a set of traction bars!!  Mastermind