NorthAmericanguy wrote:djfourmoney wrote:I've owned two Mustangs; 1967 Coupe with a 351C Swap and a '79 Cobra Hatchback with a '85 GT Swap. A friend of mine is putting some AFR Heads on his '92 Convertible, very familiar with Fords as a whole I'm a Ford Man first, but disappointed with the cars they have pushed out since the late 80's honestly and when I tried to buy a Focus from them, they wouldn't finance it and they wanted it back. I ended up with a few more Neons and then a Neon SRT-4, ran low 12's on the stock turbo before I made the swap to Stage 3R Turbo.
Back on Topic -
As I've said before people can choose to have children or not, but its a choice. If you choose to not have children or a wife, great that doesn't make you smarter or better looking and its likely you'll die sooner.
If your in America, then P4P is illegal and how many Western Women are going tolerate just being a companion without tying the knot? I am not making the case for being married or having children, I just know my father died alone in his bed at 68 years old. After suffering a stroke when he was in his mid to late 50's and before that developing diabetes, my friend this is just reality and he partied with the best of them. He traveled to Europe, went to Reno often and played the Ponies in his final years.
In the end, I doubt that's how he wanted to go out, alone and WAY TOO SOON.
If you come from this direction being the victim of a divorce in your childhood, I highly suggest picking up some really good books on Divorce and how Adult Children deal with it.
My mother has been divorced twice and I don't see a problem with being married.
351 Cleveland huh.. Yea, never had the chance to see what they can do, and your friend should love the AFR heads, they are the best! As far as your Neon, that's pretty fast man... 12 sec. You must have used NOS. No?
As far as marriage and long life... Dude, living to 68 is GOOD! How much longer do you want to live? I mean come on man, past a certain age it's no longer worth it to even be living because you're too old and you can't get around.
I can only go by what I have seen, and that is, all the married guys I knew died BEFORE their wives and they did so around the age of 50-60. The men died WORKING because they had to keep bringing in money to take care of their wives and ensure everybody had money when they died.
I have worked for a lot of old women (coast to coast) and I see this very often, in fact, I have never been in a house where the wife died first and then the husband was left alone. It's the other way around, the husband died first, then his wife collects the money and keeps the house, she then lives for another 15-20 years in comfort on his dime.
As far as divorce and such.... The bigger picture is that
I simply don't want the responsibility of taking care of a woman and children.
Dodge Neon SRT-4 is a factory TURBO CHARGED car, 2.4L DOHC 4 cylinder, 225hp (at the wheels!), properly driven does high 13's off the showroom floor, stock tires. I got it used (33K), it was a 2003 model (first year) and cost me $11,300 (20,000 New). The Cleveland Swap isn't hard and sort of unusual in a sense that Ford stop making the engine in the late 70's for emissions reasons. But its been the basis of Ford's small block professional motorsport program since the early 70's, so there's dozens of parts for it. Its basically a small block engine with Big Block features from the 429-460 family. After 35 years, there is more understanding around this engine than ever before. I had it in the mid to late 80's and it basically didn't run very long. It was a 351-C 2V (2 barrel) with some potential, but more is to be had from the three or four alum heads or the really hard to find 4 barrel (4V) heads.
Just to keep this short, 4V heads respond much better to increased displacement, the knock on the engine when it was released was the soggy low end and mid-range, but it screamed past 3,500rpm. But if you increase displacement from 351cid to say 393cid with a kit from Speed-O-Motive (yes really) in my modeling and in real time, it makes even more power and a ton of torque, without touching the heads at all, but for a minor clean up around the valves, no porting. You can use an offset crank and different rod to get I think its 401cid or you can get a 400M block which are starting to get scarce but still possible to locate.
With the right cam, aftermarket intake (better choices with the 351-C block), proper carb, tuning and 3" exhaust, 500+hp and 500+lbs is TOTALLY possible with 11:1 Compression and Pump Gas. An engine with 13:1 compression and running on E85 makes even more power.
Well I don't know about you, but my Grandfather (on my mother's side) lived to be 76, but was only cut short because he didn't like going to the doctor and by the time it was discovered he had cancer it was too late. He got up every morning at 4am to pick up feed for his cattle and pigs. He didn't slow down until about 2-3pm everyday. He retired from brick laying in Chicago in the late 40's when the doctor suggested because of his breathing problems that he get away from the cold and move to California.
My step father is 78 and besides the replacement knee from a degenerative issue that goes back to an injury decades earlier (injured his back same time) and is functioning just fine. My mother is 68 and passes for late 40's easily.
Like I said, you see marriage as a no-win situation and I guess that's okay. I have seen my grandparents make it to 50 years of marriage, a decade before my grandfather died and two decades after my grand mother died.
I don't think living to mid to late 60's is long enough. There's so much I want to see and much of it has nothing to do with traveling but I want to see how man responds to increasing dependence on automation and robotics to free man from repetitive, mundane task. I also want to see the continue decoding of life and many believe we'll be able to significantly slow down aging if not stop it all together very soon.
Besides at 41, after 27 years if everything goes as planned (and it never does) my children will still be in school or just out of school by then and starting their lives.
