Fins and Four Barrels

 

There are a lot of things guys forget: anniversaries, birthdays, doctor’s appointments, prepping for a colonoscopy, even picking up wives from the airport. However, no matter what old men may not remember, there is one thing they can recall with crystal clarity: their very first car.  

My first automobile was a beat up 1960 Plymouth Belvedere - gifted to me by my grandfather. It was a quirky car, right down to the push button automatic transmission. Light blue with a white top, it  immediately became known among my friends as the Blue Marauder. This vehicle looked like the first cousin of Christine.  If you painted it black, Batman could’ve used it to drive around Gotham City. 

That’s because like the Batmobile, the Belvedere had fins. Of course, lots of cars had them back then. Inspired by the space race and fighter jets, these automotive appendages began as nubs in the early fifties, and flourished into magnificent wings just a few years later. Cadillac was the undisputed fin champion; however, other auto makers had finned vehicles of note. The 1955 Ford Thunderbird is still a classic.  And my one of my best friends owned a 1957 Chevy coupe, which was the greatest finned vehicle of all time, in my opinion. 

Not my 1960 Belvedere. The fins on the back of this thing were about as subtle as a lime-green leisure suit. That didn’t matter to me. Because like any self respecting teenager back then, my objective was to convert my car into a hot rod.  

So the quiet factory muffler was replaced by a loud one.  Spring spacers were used to raise the back end. The top of the air filter cover was turned upside down to increase the air intake to the carburetor. Notice that none of these “performance enhancements “ were very expensive. That’s because most of us had no money. And if we did, the first thing we bought and installed was an 8-track tape player. Real work on the engine to make it run faster almost never happened. 

Unfortunately for me, Mark, one of my neighborhood buddies who, like me, knew next to nothing about working on cars, convinced me to go to a junk yard, where I could buy a larger carburetor and manifold for the Plymouth.  According to him, a simple afternoon changeout would make the Blue Marauder much faster. I liked this idea. 

One of the great mysteries of my life is why my parents would allow me to do something like this. They barely asked me any questions. But if had been my father, I would’ve asked plenty of them - and then said,”No!”.  The reasons are obvious: 1) taking off mufflers and flipping the top of air filter was the extent of my car knowledge. 2) we only had a few basic tools around the house. A pair of pliers and a Phillips screwdriver was certainly not enough to work on a motor. And, 3) there was no such thing as YouTube.  

Undaunted, soon we began  carburetor transplant surgery. It didn’t got well from the get-go. We didn’t drain the radiator, which flooded the engine compartment. Even though I was no mechanic, I knew this was bad. We took off the spark plug wires and didn’t return them to the correct plugs. Who knew that mattered? We forgot to use gaskets. Why do cars even need them?  A gazillion more problems, large and small, turned an afternoon project into an automotive version of the Bataan death march. 

After about a week, it was kinda finished. At that point we did the only smart thing that was done during the entire project. We pushed the car out of our garage before we tried to start it.

Both Mark and I had visions of success - especially me, because I sprayed a whole can of highly flammable starting fluid into the carburetor. Once behind the wheel, I eagerly pumped the gas, and inserted the key. The starter turned over, and amazingly, the Blue Marauder sputtered to life.  Almost immediately there was a loud boom, and a giant plume of flame burst from the carburetor.  The engine was on fire. If that car been in the garage it might’ve burned our house down.  

I panicked, grabbed a garden hose, and sprayed the engine for a good 5 minutes. It hissed angrily until the fire went out.  Smoke and steam erupted from under the hood. 

All of this commotion caused my father to walk out on the front porch, where he witnessed the entire sordid episode.  When the smoke cleared, he shook his head, sneered and said,”Do y’all have a brain between the two of you?”

This ended our attempt to become shade tree mechanics. We pushed the Plymouth into our yard in a spot normally reserved for Dad’s work car where it sat for weeks.  Weeds began to grow up around it. One afternoon when I came home from school, it was gone. Mom informed me that she had a tow truck take it to the junk yard. Then I was instructed to get the lawn mower and cut the weeds where it once sat. 

Once the mower was in the front yard, I pulled the cord once and it started right up, running perfectly. 

If only the Blue Marauder could’ve done the same thing.