69 and a half value

Tell my 428 Cobra Jet that, it burned three valves due to seat erosion using unleaded... I had the heads rebuilt with hardened exhaust valve seats and it's been fine for 20+ years now...

 

Yep. 'Would have done it anyway with or without lead. The hardened seats is the ticket to longevity.

 

Sorry you'll never get me to believe that... It had a valve job at approx 75K mi for a burned valve on #5, then after approx 15K mi of unleaded had three leaking, that time due to seat erosion... A good friend did the work I know they were done right... Back in the day of leaded fuel, valves rarely gave problems before 125-150K mi, usually the engine was worn out by that time anyway...

I've also just found out my Comet with 66K mi has a set of '75 or later heads that have factory hardened seats, wonder what happened with the orig???

 

offer him $1500 so if you did buy it cheap you could still sell it for cheap. thats what everyone wants when theyre buying a car right? they want to feel like they got a good deal.
so if you get it for anything under $2k and ask $3k and you sell it for $2500 you did okay. you helped the guy out and you made a little money in the process. on the flip side someone else got a good deal on a solid car.
everyones happy including your wife once it sells that is

 

You can't make people believe what they don't wanna believe. The original 302 that my '73 came with ran fine for over 100,000 miles after leaded gasoline was no longer available and was still running fine (total of 189,000 miles) when I swapped it for a fresh and warmed-over 302. Basically, the lack of lead changed nothing. If the valves are gonna sink into the seats, they're gonna do it regardless of the presence of lead in the fuel if not equipped with hardened seats.

 

All cars sold in the US since 1971 have hardened valve seats.

 

Basically it was a incremental change over in the early/mid '70s as all the '75 models were required to use unleaded... The German built 2.8 V6 in the MustangII & Pinto wagons had not changed even by '76 and those had massive head failures due to the unleaded(as did the early 2.0 4cyl)... A friend had one, wound up swapping a 2.3 4cyl into it because there were no used heads avail, all had burned out seats... This was in '79 or '80...

Not much chance the big four(remember there was also AMC), would have gone to hardened valve seats if it wasn't for the mandated no lead fuel...

 

It's pretty well known by now that lead has lubricating/dampening qualities. I've been around hotrods all my life and have seen more than a few mistakes by now.. "self inflicted" one's included as well. Many of the guys who tryed to tell us about these issues eventually drove by us laughing while muttering "told ya so" as we cheaped out by not using the overpriced lead substitutes to mitigate the potential issue. Those kinds of remarks tend to really sting an ego and hit home as you're pulling the heads off for yet another valvejob on an otherwise fairly fresh motor.

As for a stock motor not having these issues? Well of course a stock 302 with measly "82lb valve springs"(and that if they're even close to new spec's) combined with a cam that makes a power curve fall over a cliff at 4,800rpm will not show as many seat issues as a performance motor would. Big cams and longer periods of WOT makes more heat and those stockers will never live near that edge. It's when you start using bigger cams, stiffer springs and winding them at WOT that the issues start showing much more quickly. Also consider that induction hardening doesn't go that deep and machining for oversized valves and multiple valvejobs will quickly eat it away to further increase the likelyhood of erosion.

And FYI. Seats don't pound out so much as they erode. In other words.. the material gets microwelded and burnt away.. not just pounded in. Otherwise.. it would just get mushroomed out as it was moved and displaced.

Personally.. I'll stick with the worlds leading engine builders and the lessons learned from the school of hard knocks to keep my seats in good shape.

PS.. after all that I forgot to add my valuation guess too. I'd say between $4-5k.. or maybe slightly more if it is really "as good as it gets".

 

Thanks for the input guys I have laid eyes on the car. Many if not most on this forum have better trained eyes than me, but I do know a solid car when I see one. This is the kind of car you could take to a car show and not be ashamed or you could just drive it. To me that's "as good as it gets". I already have a hot rod Comet to get my kicks however if I bought this car and held on to it too long I'd get the itch to drop a stroker in it and ruin a nice example of an early model Maverick.

Hardend valve seats can fix the problem of wear whether it's due to a lack of lead or not. The bigger issue is ethonal. That junk is less efficient, hell on carberators and serves no purpose other than driving up food prices and advancing some folks half baked political ideology. Just one guys opinion.

 

yes they will fix the issue.. but it's doubtful it will even cause problems on that lo-po motor anyways.

As for the ethonal concerns. It's been discussed here and everywhere else thousands of times and IMHO, is still often overblown. I personally love the stuff and have run it on 7 vehicles so far(at up to 50% ratios with custom efi tune/carb work) without issue. So, if they want to give me 105 octane at the pump to pep up all my mod'd rides? I'll take it!

Even if you burn 30% more of it(running at 100% ratio).. the cost is still better than race fuel and readily available wherever I want to go. Then there's the fact that you can run a much more agressive tune to help offset the increased consumption. It also burns much cleaner than pure gas and helps a motor run cooler if tuned properly too.

I would have to agree that the crop land could be better used for other purposes.. but we only use feed quality corn to make it anyways.. and I see no starving cows out of the deal either. There are other alternatives being developed to make it(did you know one of the major beer makers uses their by-products to make it?).. but as usual it's all about the bottom line on this particular day in time. I guess when the middle east starts making more than we do and selling it to us at over inflated prices?.. my mind will quickly change.

 

There is plenty of oil in the U.S. both on shore and off. Drill for it. The alternative energy crowd can't make it in a free market without government subsidies which really is'nt a free market. I have no problem with the use of Ethonal if crude oil were in short supply and the market demanded it however neither is true.
Ethonal was forced on us.

Maybe if we produced enough cheap domestic oil I could save enough in fuel every month to buy this car.

 

Amen to that!

 

Did someone say beer byproducts to make ethonal? The only beer byproduct I know of is called Keystone. No way I'd put that in the Comet. The day after I do the valve seats would be trashed. An automotive hang over. It would truly have a...head...ache.

Sorry could'nt resist.

 

'Looks like you and I will get along just fine.