🚀 go-pugleaf

<yum!>

Oh boy, Vegas!  My brother bought a '72 Vega GT with a sleeved
engine.  The work had just been done and it ran terribly,
but he paid $700 for it, had a carburetor job done on it,
and it ran great after that.  Surprisingly quick car.

My brother thought he could use some more power and spent some
bucks on a header and a single side-draft Weber carb & manifold.
That didn't breath too well (the Vega is a low RPM engine) until
he put in a different cam that was set up for low and midrange power.
Adjustable shocks, wide wheels and tires, a couple of paint jobs,
and new upholstery/carpeting have made it into a very nice car,
which has lasted for 6 or 7 years.  He finally totalled it by
hitting a deer, and it's sitting in my parents' back yard.  If
anyone is interested in buying a Vega with some rather exotic
parts in it, let me know.

All in all, it was still a Vega.  Even when new they would rattle
for ten minutes after crossing railroad tracks.  The engine was
never designed to be sleeved, and the cylinders probably suffered
from cooling problems.  My brother put new rings in the thing last
summer and the sleeves were (though not scored) wallowed out in the
middle so badly that it should have been rebored.  The GT's had
posi-track rear ends with a ratio of about 3.6, so they were quick.
When the rear end went out after a few years, the posi was too
expensive to find, so he replaced it with one from an automatic,
which was so high geared that the engine would turn about 2000 RPM
at 60 MPH.  It was no longer as quick, but would still blow away any
Vega that hadn't had a small-block V8 added to it.  Still, I'd have
to say the car was worth rebuilding.

He replaced the car with a '69 or '70 Volvo (145, I think).  It has
the B20B engine (dual Strombergs) with a thick head gasket (newly
rebuilt) and alcohol injection to cure pinging.  (These things have
disk brakes on four wheels, for crying out loud!)  He promptly went
out and got some really nice wheels and tires for it.  Some people
never change, I guess.

Marion Hakanson         CSnet:  hakanson%oregon-state@csnet-relay
                        UUCP :  {hp-pcd,tektronix}!orstcs!hakanson