Ace-Garageguy

A lot of us know what you've been going through, and care very much. Stay strong.

You can not get internal parts for these, and entire gearboxes are virtually unobtainable from anything but wrecks.

Very very nice collection of Fords there, sir.

I had a decent '62 double-cab pickup, and a very clean '67 Westfalia...both right up there at the top of my "sure wish I had 'em now" list.

The stock 5.3 LS makes around 325HP and 340 lb/ft of torque. Yeah, that would get you down the road. ^^^ See my post above... EDIT: A fully dressed (accessories like steering pump, alternator, etc.) aluminum LS weighs around the same as a dressed cast-iron even-fire 4.3 V6, so there's that. But REMEMBER...not all LS engines are aluminum. The ones that came in trucks are mostly cast iron, much heavier. EDIT 2: Last fully dressed LS I swapped (into a '47 Caddy) was a low-mileage takeout from a 2000 Corvette wreck. IIRC, the engine and 4L60E slushbox, including the engine harness, black box, and drive-by-wire throttle pedal ran around $3500. I paid another $1500 to get the black box reprogrammed for stand-alone operation with the gearbox, and an engine bay harness with all new sensors, and nothing dangling and useless. After that you're looking at custom engine and trans mounts, exhaust work to connect the factory manifolds and probably a decent system all the way to the tail, driveshaft mods, a custom radiator, and appropriate fuel system mods.

Not my favorite engine of all time, but GM's older even-fire 4.3 V6 would be in my top 5 candidates-for-swapping list. It's basically a smallblock Chevy with two cylinders removed, pretty much bulletproof reliable if you get a good one. Though thousands were stupidly destroyed by the "cash for clunkers" program, there should still be many many many available for reasonable money...and they came equipped with a variety of manual and automatic gearboxes, making the driveline swap easier. A custom-length driveshaft with the appropriate GM trans yoke is all you need there. IMHO the desirable years for swaps are '87-2006 (in '87 they got a one-piece rear main seal like the SBC, in '92 they got a balance shaft that smoothes them out some, and 2006 was the last year for a separate distributor). These are all in the 130-165 HP range, with 210-235 lb/ft of torque. A distributor-equipped engine with a carburetor would be the easiest swap, not requiring integration of any electronics (which can get very expensive very fast if typical car-chimps get involved). EDIT: The 4.3 in my '96 Blazer is entirely adequate to pull a reasonable trailer with a 4000-pound vehicle, driving through an automatic. My Blazer weighs about 900 pounds more than your little pickup, and a V6 engine would be a vastly easier swap than a V8.

Security is not something I've ever experienced, unless it was the direct result of me taking personal responsibility for my own.

"The contemporary form of authentic greatness is a civilization built on the spirituality of work." Much in line with Ayn Rand's idea that ALL work is honorable and satisfying if you do it to the best of your ability, whatever that may be. These thoughts do not, however, take into consideration that a great many people think they're entitled to everything while putting out zero effort to produce anything.

None of my stalled projects are "dead", they're only waiting for the right time to come back out. Of course, I may be dead before the stars are all in alignment again...

Zoom Zoom got it right. The additional weight of the truck over an early Miata is the major consideration.

PM'd

In this case it's "bored", not "board"...unless you're a plank.

I like it. A lot. A whole lot. But you're right. Initially, A/FX cars had to be built with factory-available parts...main structure, engine, gearbox, rear end...(though they didn't have to be factory-available on the model of car they were used to race with), and nothing like that amount of engine setback would have been legal. Mickey Thompson's A/FX Tempest is a good example: 421 Pontiac V8, manual gearbox behind it, and the Tempest's transaxle rear end and independent suspension replaced with a stout Pontiac solid rear axle. However, something like your Corvair could conceivably have been a class-legal M/SP (modified sports) car...depending of course on the sanctioning body. The engine setback is even too extreme for that though. But as you say, more likely it was built as a crowd-pleasing match-racer. Man, I miss those days.

The old lost-kitten bait-and-switch routine...

It's easier to deal with a man who knows he's a hypocrite than one who sincerely believes he's a saint in spite of the evil he does.

Planned obsolescence, today's version anyway, may well be more the effect of ignorance, incompetence, and inexperience than actual planning.

If you don't walk the walk, it's probably best not to talk the talk.

Receiving is way better than giving according to a lot of folks, whether they admit it, even to themselves, or not.

Back when I was a lad, "quail" had meanings besides feathered flying creatures, now largely forgotten.

Your beliefs don't make you a good person. Your behavior does.

Games People Play is a song from the Alan Parsons Project.

Missed this one way back when. Very nice indeed.

11 oz. box of blueberries. Eat 'em like candy. Filling, sweet/tart, only 180 calories, and they're really good fer ya. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7442370/. EXCERPT: "An increasing body of evidence suggests that blueberries and anthocyanins reduce biomarkers and risk of diseases that constitute major socioeconomic burdens, including cardiovascular disease (CVD), type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and neurological decline. In these observational analyses, anthocyanins often provide benefits over and above other plant food phytochemicals, including other flavonoids (2–6). The intake of even moderate amounts of blueberries (approximately one-third cup) and anthocyanins (<50 mg) daily is associated with disease risk reduction (2–4, 6–9)."