I call them "Yaddas." "Yadda put a 350 smallblock in it. Yadda put A/C in it. Yadda subframe it and add discs."
Yaddas don't have much experience with antique vehicles, and even less experience with a wrench. They think you can transplant an engine in one hour (with commercial breaks every ten minutes) and NOS makes every car do 10 second quarters. If your numbers-matching museum piece can't drift, they ain't impressed. I've been extremely rude, and once threatened physical harm, to jerks who think helping means, "Yadda waste a ton more money, you're doing it all wrong."
Once upon a time I had the patience to try to educate the Yaddas. I tried to show them the flawed mathematics of irrevocably destroying a $50K museum piece by adding $100K worth of new speed parts to create a $15K jalopy that still can't keep up with a stock Hyundai sedan. I tried to educate them on the physics of making 3.5 tons of steel go fast or turn corners; they know better, they have seen all the Fast and Frivolous movies.
I started my project without the pressure of preservation. The original engine was laying on its side in the back of the truck, bleeding through a jagged hole in the crankcase. The engine in the truck is a service replacement 248 inline block, so the "numbers matching" originality is already gonzo. Even then, it's not worth the money or effort to "upgrade" to a 350-sb, I would see zero improvement in performance unless I completely re-engineer the driveline and suspension.
My "shut and go away" question for the Yaddas used to be, "If I wanted a race car, why would I start with a moving van?" These days, however, you may find that the person you are speaking to has invested $100K in modifying his/her gender; the argument that originality is good and useful is not only alien to them, but offensive. In that case, I ask the Yaddas to form an orderly queue; I can't personally offend all of them at once.
