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The Bad Oil
The black stuff of the ages, the life of the party, but even KY struggles to keep them up. Some engines are just not so grand.
Cast back to the boat anchors of yesteryear. The roadside is littered with the cracked and broken corpses of motors long gone. The dynamic duo of dud! The motors that throw more legs out of bed than a St Kilda street walker. The plastic fantastics, the 253 and 3 0 8. They are so bad that they make Alfa’s look reliable.
But the years go by and what was once great now is a has been.
Yet when we turn the looking glass inward, we may spy something dear to our hearts that once was mighty yet is now toothless and withered.
The hallowed 351. Venerable, powerful though antiquated. A big block with small capacity and yet a hunger to match! An engine with the finesse of a Jenny Craig dropout, but without the cred. It was engine for all us Ford lovers to pin our hopes upon but only if we wished to travel in a straight line. Handling. Not even a chance. The shear weight of physics grasping unyieldingly makes resisting plow on understeer an effort comparable to global warming! Horsepower on tap but with compromise.
What I hear you ask? You are not besotted with the legend! How dare you tarnish an icon! But before you leap, take a look, a long close look and ask yourself this question...was a engine barely capable of a 14 second quarter in the days of yore really that fast? In the US of A they were doing 11’s and 12’s! If an old truck engine has a problem moving the most basic of all engine components around its insides...it is a good engine?
If our heart could not freely pump blood would it be legendary? No we would not last. Deteriating bore condition, oil starvation, core shift, and an inability to rev, the 289 and the humble 250 are more deserving of recognition. Big is not always better, unless you are talking silicon enhancement! So why the love of things large and useless. Big car, big schlongs, big macs? Mmmmm big. Its Homer hedonism at its finest! Think big, not big block!
But I do love my Fords, from '69 to '01. I just think to stop and smell the roses every once in a while and not to believe all hype. I will own Fords to the day that I move on, but sometimes it’s easier to tug and to tug when in real life the roads are where the legends are made.
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