On Thursday 17 January 2008, Ed Greshko wrote: > Well, it is sort of like customizing your car. You can go out and buy > cylinder liners and matching pistons and rings and everything is OK. > Then you decide to do a bit of street dragging and end up damaging a > piston. So you need to change it. You find one that is from a > different manufacturer and decide that it is close enough...only to find > out that performance is now in the toilet and you're burning oil. But here there are standards. You can indeed mix aftermarket parts to a limited degree; you can use an Edelbrok intake with a Holley carb, typically, for instance. You can even get kits to take a small block Chevy (say, a 327), convert it to run backwards, and adapt to a Prosche transaxle to really boost your vintage 911's horsepower. But this again points out the enthusiast nature of Fedora; enthusiasts will go to these sorts of lengths, regardless of their field of enthusiasm (I've done a couple of engine rebuilds in the past, and have seen the results of real standards put into practice, and have seen the lengths an enthusiast will go to get it to work). Now, piston sets are balanced and must be used as a set. But you can mix one manufacturer's pistons with another's rings and another's rods and yet another's crank and yet another's bearings, thanks to journal size, bore, and stroke standards. But you get a real enthusiast, and something like a 327 small block in a 1986 S10 is possible; or even something like a Ford 300 inline six cylinder with six individual Weber single barrels on a performance intake with a roots blower putting out an incredible 500bhp with torque that's drag-strip worthy (see fordsix.com if you're interested in such things!) in a vintage 64-and-a-half 'stang. Or a 527 Hemi Chrysler engine making nearly 1000 bhp in a similar configuration in a 69 Charger. Or the '70's Camaro that's here locally, about 20 miles from here. This Camaro is a real head turner; I think it has something to do with the 6 inch lift, the Super Swampers, and the old International Harvester four-wheel-drive undercarriage. But I could be wrong. Sure would come in handy today, with six inches of snow on the ground. But I think that guy has modded that Camaro for rock-crawling.....sure does have a huge transfer case! If we understand that Fedora is an ideal enthusiast Linux then the whole 'user is responsible for their own mix and matching' attitude is very understandable. If we think that Fedora is an ideal newbie or general-user distribution, then, well, I have an old Crosley four cylinder you'd love to drop into a Ford Festiva. I'll come back in twenty years after you've made it work. :-) -- Lamar Owen www.pari.edu
