"Good deals" should be stuff "Joe Average" can find....

A lot of the buff magazines are crying the blues about circulation being down, and they claim it's because the "Baby Boomers" are getting older and retiring, that the "Millennials" don't care about cars,etc,etc. The real problem is their stale and put out the same dreck month after month. I've said it a million times a couple of them should change their names to "Modern Fuelie Swap Monthly". I am sick to death of seeing old Camaros and Chevelles with LS motors, old Mustangs with Coyotes, and Old Mopars with 5,7 / 6.1 / 6.4 liter Hemis. I'm a hardcore gearhead-I was writing tech articles for Popular Hot Rodding when I was in junior high-If I'm sick of it, I'm certain the average casual reader wants to vomit day-glo. I'm also sick of cars that people have over 100 grand invested in. If your lucky enough to have that much expendable income-good for you. Enjoy it. But the average guy who lives on 15 bucks an hour doesn't want to read about some other asshole's "Toy" that cost 150K!! I'll give Hot Rod some credit- a while back they did a big article featuring reader's cars and the rule was you couldn't have more than $25,000 in the car-including the original purchase price. Now that was nice-these were cars that anybody could afford to buy and build. There was guy with a '76 Trans-Am that had a Herb Adams VSE suspension and a stompin' 455 under the hood. There was a guy with a Supercharged '92 Mustang GT that ran in the 11s, and a guy with an '84 Chevy Stepside pickup that had a 454 in it and ran in the 12s. There was a guy with a '71 Pontiac Gran Prix that ran in the 12s-with a 455, a TH400 and 3.55:1 gears. These were all very cool rides, and they were affordable. Anyhow what irks me the most are some of their "How To" articles or new "Project" cars. You know "12 seconds for $1,200" or "10 seconds for 10,000" or "Budget" engine build. Don't get me wrong-I don't mind if someone says they bought a set of used headers for $40 at a swap meet,or their buddy sold them a used Edelbrock manifold for $50, or gave them a used 750 Holley carb. That stuff happens all the time. What drives me up the wall is in the middle of their "Budget" build article-"Hey-what about that set of ported and polished Brodix aluminum heads that we almost forgot we had?" "Joe's brother not only gave us the disc-braked,3.73:1 geared posi rear end out of his wrecked Trans-Am, he helped us put it in the Camaro and bought the beer!"  Ugh. The two biggest offenders are Super Chevy and Mopar Action. Super Chevy ran the "10 seconds for $10,000" thing. I was find with seven grand for a 550 hp 406 inch Dart small block Chevy crate engine that was complete from carb to oil pan. That's reasonable. What made me want to firebomb their offices was the "engineless" '79 Camaro they bought to put it in. This car had a currie 9 inch Ford rear end with 4.88:1 gears, a TCI built powerglide with a 3,800 rpm converter, and 8-point roll cage,a safety fuel cell,Competition Engineering traction bars,and Center Line Wheels with Moroso drag front tires and BFG drag radials in the rear. For $2,700??!!!  The Currie 9 inch rear alone with GM mounting points costs $3,300 in Summitt!!!  The TCI tranny and converter is close to 2 grand, the tires and wheels another $1,500, the traction bars and the roll cage another grand, and the fuel cell another $500. Gee, I'd like to buy a car with 8 grand worth of custom parts in it for $2,700!!! "We only went $700 over budget".  I was livid. No one could duplicate that build for under $20,000-double their claim. Mopar action did the same thing. They had a "Budget" buildup of a 440. It started out ok-they bought a used 440 out of a '77 Chrysler Imperial in a junkyard for $300. Then they took the block to a machine shop to have it bored .030 over and cleaned up. Standard operating procedure. They ordered forged TRW pistons instead of cast, in case they decided to put nitrous on it later. No problem there. Then it began. They decided to use a forged crank and a set of "Six-Pack" rods with ARP chrome-moly rod bolts that they had "Laying Around". Check Summitt-a forged steel 440 crank from Eagle is $1,200, and a set of Eagle forged rods is another $600. Then they bought a big cam and some Edelbrock heads and instead of the Performer RPM / 850 Holley induction they were thinking of-"Hey what about that "Six-Pack" setup we also had "Laying Around?" Edelbrock still sells the manifold, Holley still sells the carbs, and Mopar performance sells the throttle linkage and the air cleaner. If you have to buy all that stuff retail-it would cost you $2,300 for a complete "Six-Pack" setup. Add the $1,800 for the crank and rods. How nice that they had $4,100 in premium parts just "Laying Around!!" That's the kind of shit that pisses people off immensely. Sure-when I managed a Pep Boys service center I once bought an LT-1 350 Chevy engine for $160. Some idiot had bought one of our $699 "Long Block" rebuilt 350 Chevy specials and turned this in for the "core". After seeing the camel-hump heads and 4-bolt mains, I triple checked the numbers on the block heads. Great googliemooglie-it was a for real LT-1! I asked the store manager if I could have it. He said sure, as long I paid the company the $160 "core charge". I paid him and turned handsprings all the way home. But that's not something you run across every day. "Good deals" should be something the average Joe can find at a awap meet or a junkyard-not a "Moon Rock" Mastermind