Mike, when you did your burnout, did the slicks smoke right away? I have always found that fresh slicks wil smoke right away, but old hard tires, take much longer to get the smoke rolling off them. Hardly scientific, but could indicate how subtle the rubber compound is after sitting several years. Also, soft tires will usually have lots of rocks sticking to them, but older tires don`t cause the rocks to stick as well. And, are they bias or radial slicks? I have never used radial slicks, they tend not to work very well with stickshift cars, but from talking with Stocker and S/S racers with radials, that once they start spinning, they just don`t recover like a bias slick will. And the radials usually will work with higher pressures than a bias tire, but they also don`t grow as much at high speed.

Car looks fantastic, Mike. Hope you have a successful shake down sesion this weekend, and no bugs to work out. Looking forward to a full report Sunday night or Monday!

Is the engine in a vehicle, or out? How was it prepared for storage, or was it just set aside with no preparation? Assuming it was oil stalled, or fogged before storage, and in a dry location, may not require much, but at a minimum, I would remove all the spark plugs, and take a close look at the pistons and cylinder walls, preferably with a borescope. If it looks OK, squirt a bit of either Marvel Mystery oil, or a light engine oil in each cylinder, change the oil and filter, and remove the distributor and valve covers, and prime the oil pump until a steady stream of fresh oil is dripping past all the rocker arms, and only then, rotate the crankshaft a couple of revolutions, while still priming the oil pump. Check to make sure that all the valves are opening and closing properly (not stuck or sticking). If the engine is in a vehicle, I would swap on a known good carb, and run a hose from the fuel pump into a fresh jug of gas, install the distributor, and fire it up. Obviously make sure the cooling system is full and bled, everything is attached and snug, and an air cleaner is on. A back fire from the carb, or sucking in a bunch of dust, rust, or other crap from the fan blowing stuff around, and into the carb is not a good thing.

Is this everybodys opinion of all automotive swap meets in recent years? The biggest swap meet that I ever went to , has been the Portland swap meet in Oregon, but since I have moved to the East coast of Canada , I have always wanted to take a big swap meet in the US Northeast. So, in a few weeks, a buddy and I are driving to the spring swap meet in Carlisle PA. Anybody have any thoughts about Carlisle? I believe it is only about an hour rom Beaver Springs, so if nothing else, it will give me an idea on how to get to Beaver Springs for the FE Race and Reunion in September. Looks to be about 18 hours of driving, each way. How about the Hershey swap meet?

A spool if great at the dragstrip, but no way would I ever want one on a street car.  I have 3 9" 3rd members for my 59, the "normal" one is a N case with 3.50 gears and a 31 spline Detroit Locker, the dragstrip one is a 4.33 spool, and even driving the 1/2 hour to my local dragstrip, with the spool, I hate it when I have to go around a corner. Great way to find any weak links in your rearend, however! Also good for attracting cops and attention, when the tires are chirping and dragging around corners or in a parking lot.

Personally, I usually leave that plug behind the distributor, a press in cup plug. Considering the challenge of tapping that hole correctly, without going in too deep and having the pipe plug protrude into the front lifter bore, or not deep enough , and it interferes with the distributor body, not to mention it is at the end of the lifter feed passage, so the oil pressure is likely lower there, I feel any potential benefit is outweighed by the potential problems. I can say that I have never had a properly installed cup plug in that location ever leak or fall out, in close to 50 years of playing with FEs.

Can`t speak for Sunoco (yet), but I have run 3 year old VP C12 with no issues, performance wise, however, when I was racing my NHRA Stock Eliminator Mustang, we had to go thru NHRA Fuel Testing several times per event, and I had some C12 from my 55 gallon barrel, that wasn`t even a year old yet, that barely passed, and the fuel tech suggested that I buy some fresh C12 from the VP trailer at the National event that I was at, which passed fine, even though the ET slip showed no improvement. That said, a few weeks earlier, at a NHRA Divisional race,that same batch of fuel passed easily. Funny thing is, a buddy was racing his 65 Impala Stocker at that same race, and he doesn`t run his car very much, and his C12 passed OK, even after sitting in the cars factory  (vented) gas tank for 3 years, go figure. I don`t have the Stocker anymore, so I don`t need to worry about fuel check anymore, and I now have a barrel of Sunoco Supreme that I am running in my Fairmont, that was new last year, but I also have a couple of 5 gallon cans of Sunoco Standard which I bought in 2022, that I hope to run this year. I have never tried race gas that was 5 years old, but my buddy has used some 3-4 year VP C12 on the Dyno, and it seemed OK. I have never had race gas "go bad", so I have no idea if it gets a bad smell like stale pump gas does or not. If it smells normal, and looks clear, I would likely give it a try. But I would certainly want to use it up soon. Or maybe you could mix the old gas with some new gas of the same grade.