I guess that I must have missed this thread the first time, so here is my 2 cents worth on the whole deal. Years ago, I had a mild street strip 70 R code Mach 1. It had a mild solid lifter cam, headers, and a modified Edelbrock Streetmaster intake, with a Holey 780, and had the factory big spline close ratio Toploader, and 4.30 gears and a Detroit Locker. With 28@ tall slicks, it ran mid 12s at 112 MPH, but it felt like it really wanted my gear. But being mostly a street car, even the 4.30s sucked on the freeway, even with the 55 MPH speed limit at that time. One weekend, a buddy lent me his big spline, wide ratio Toploader, which had the 1 3/8" input welded to a wide ratio front gear, so it was a 2.78 1rst gear ratio, with the cluster and all the remaining gears regular wide ratio parts. Back in those days, dragstrips did not have 60 foot timers, but the car felt so much stronger off the line, but when I hit 4th , it broke the 31 spline mainshaft, so I coasted the 2nd half of the 1/4 mile. But I am sure the car was on a pass at least 3 tenths quicker than it ever did with the close ratio. On one long freeway trip with the car, over 300 miles each way, all freeway, I swapped in a 3.00 center section, and although it was fine on the freeway, it absolutely sucked in town, especially from a dead stop. It was embarrassing how slow the car felt.
On my current car, a 4000 + pound (with driver), 59 2 door sedan, with a moderate, aluminum headed .030" 428 CJ, I am running a small input output SB Toploader, and I have 3 different 9" center sections that I swap as required. The "main" is a 31 spline N case with 3.50 gears and a detroit locker., for the occasional trip to the dragstrip, I have a 4.33 ratio with a spool, and for freeway trips, I have the original 2.91 gears, on a 31 spline open. I have used all 3 center sections every year since I put the car on the road 4 years ago, the 3.50s are a nice combination for general street driving, and on the freeway at 60-65 MPH, the 428 is revving 26-2700 RPM, which sounds pretty revvy with the 4" stroke and loudish exhaust system. The 4.33s are much better than the 3.50s at the track, but absolutely suck on the freeway (3400 RPM), and even in town, they are a bit much, as I live in a semi rural area, so the street that I live on is a 50 MPH speed limit, and everything is close to 10 miles away. The 2.91s are currently in the car, and freeway speed puts the tach at about 2100 RPM, but hard to be positive, as the speedo is calibrated for the 3.50s. But the 2.91s are pretty doggy starting off from a dead stop. Keep in mind, that my 428 made 470 HP at 5400 RPM, and 515 ft/lbs of torque at 3000 RPM, so this is hardly a peaky, high RPM engine. With the wide ratio and 3.50 rear, it has the same starting line ratio as a close ratio with 4.2 ratio. Having owned both close and wide ratio Toploaders, in both 351C 4V 70 Mustangs, and several 428 CJ cars, I can`t imagine anybody that has actually driven similar vehicles with both transmissions, would ever even consider choosing a close ratio over a wide, UNLESS they were actually road racing the car. The 5.0 FOX Mustangs had 3.35 first gear ratios in the T5 5 speed, and even with 3.08 gears, had more starting line overall ratio as a CR Toploader with 4.30s. I can imagine that despite being quite light, a 5.0 Fox Mustang with a CR Toploader would be an absolute slug without at least 4.88-5.13 gears at the track. If a person doesn`t care about performance at all, and just wants a 4 speed, then I suppose the CR would be acceptable, but I would never choose one again. The only thing that would be worse for performance, short of an automatic, would be a 3 speed manual, with or without overdrive, or one of those 3/4 speed OD "Orion" transmissions from a late 70s-early 80s Granada or PU/Van.

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.