[mchell]

Old crappy video but a good reminder of how these cars ran “back in the day”

https://youtu.be/KYCtEArPDEA

https://youtu.be/AkLvcOeof_k

https://youtu.be/1eOVt6SnKo4

[Formulajones]

Thanks to people like the Jensens and Dudek they are still doing this today.

https://youtu.be/x_qAN28TrtU

https://youtu.be/dHqcSUhM1tY

[grandam1979]

I was at the 87 race as a spectator it’s amazing the same cars that ran 13-14-15 now run 10-11-12 seconds in the quarter mile. I think they could run MH street tires back then also. I don’t think Mino even ran stock wheels he was the leader of the pack back then running mid 12’s.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by grandam1979

I was at the 87 race as a spectator it’s amazing the same cars that ran 13-14-15 now run 10-11-12 seconds in the quarter mile. I think they could run MH street tires back then also. I don’t think Mino even ran stock wheels he was the leader of the pack back then running mid 12’s.

Yeah the rules back then were a little more laid back. Some of those races even had cars with headers on them.

Todays rules are much more stringent, and with what has been learned over the last 30 years applied to engine building and suspension tricks, even with more strict engine rules it's impressive what's been accomplished.

But what I like more than anything is these people are getting the cars out doing what they were meant for instead of sitting around staring at them at the lawn chair nationals. Wish more people would get up off their butts and have some fun with these cars. Bench racing is boring, get out their and show us what it's made of.

[PAUL K]

The part I find incredible is all the cars that ran 13, 14 & 15's back then were all stock and now running 10, 11 & 12's they are still all stock.... talking about amazing all your friends.

[Formulajones]

While I didn't make huge advancements like that, it's somewhat understandable as to why even with the little changes I made.

My little RAIII ran 14.60's at 96 mph when it was stock and original 25 years ago.

With a simple rebuild and good machine work, it now runs very low 13's and I still haven't touched the trans or rearend.

Finding things like the original engine doesn't really produce the compression ratio they are advertised at, crankshaft doesn't even have the advertised stroke, and pistons down in the bore .020", deck height uneven and all over the place, poor head flow with stock valves and crappy valve job.

Degree in the camshaft where it needs to be and then finding rocker arms that actually have something close to the 1.5 advertised ratio was a big improvement.

A good round cylinder bore done with a torque plate, deck heights straightened out and zero decked and a crankshaft that has the stroke corrected. Now producing a true 10.13:1 compression ratio.

The engine is still stock, stock cam, stock heads, stock intake, stock manifolds, no porting, just a solid rebuild fixing things that the OEM didn't care about.
But I know you're a smart guy Paul and you know all this and more. I've only scratched the surface.

Now it's gone 13.10 and 106 mph. Still not as quick as RAIII's go today in the PS class and I did leave a lot on the table in my build, but still a substantial improvement for what I was trying to do.

I left compression on the table according to the current rules, and I used heavy TRW slugs with big 5/64 ring packs that robs some power, and I don't run a bunch of rear gear in the car either. I wanted to maintain a daily driver in the process that runs on pump gas.

Big improvements can be found in the suspension too. Tricky to go sub 2.0 60 foot times on a stock tire. A huge gain on my car was the rules allowing a 2 1/2" mandrel bend exhaust system over the stock crush bent 2 1/4" system. My car picked up 4 tenths and 3 mph with that change alone.

Regardless this stuff is still fun to do and cool to watch.

[mchell]

Originally Posted by PAUL K

The part I find incredible is all the cars that ran 13, 14 & 15's back then were all stock and now running 10, 11 & 12's they are still all stock.... talking about amazing all your friends.

Bwaaaaaaahhhhaaaaaa……. Exactly

[mchell]

Originally Posted by Formulajones

Yeah the rules back then were a little more laid back. Some of those races even had cars with headers on them.

Todays rules are much more stringent, and with what has been learned over the last 30 years applied to engine building and suspension tricks, even with more strict engine rules it's impressive what's been accomplished.

But what I like more than anything is these people are getting the cars out doing what they were meant for instead of sitting around staring at them at the lawn chair nationals. Wish more people would get up off their butts and have some fun with these cars. Bench racing is boring, get out their and show us what it's made of.

Last time I was out playing at the track there was zero other 60-70’s muscle cars …they are dropping out fast!

Good too see PLENTY of new gen muscle tho…. So drag racing still seems to be alive.

Lot of folks running their s10 pickups, beat up 80-90’s cop cars and 80- 90’s gbody thingy “muscle cars”.

And I won’t even mention the amount of electrics showing up now….. in droves

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by mchell

Last time I was out playing at the track there was zero other 60-70’s muscle cars …they are dropping out fast!

Good too see PLENTY of new gen muscle tho…. So drag racing still seems to be alive.

Lot of folks running their s10 pickups, beat up 80-90’s cop cars and 80- 90’s gbody thingy “muscle cars”.

And I won’t even mention the amount of electrics showing up now….. in droves

Yeah that's depressing for me. I see the same thing here. Tech peaked for me about 1975 so I'll always be a vintage muscle car guy, always drive them, always race them.

What's hard to understand, with Arizona being this huge classic car mecca with literally 10's of thousands of classic cars everywhere and having the weather to support it all year long, yet the dragstrips are nearly empty of them.
Funny part is you can go to any local cruise night and have a bunch of them talking smack, but come race day at a muscle car event and the place is a ghost town. The Pontiac races here come to mind. 1000's of Pontiacs, several Pontiac clubs all over Arizona. They all want to talk fast, but when the weekend of the Pontiac races gets here, they are no where to be found.

Another case in point. 2 weeks ago there was a large car show with over 500 cars with a chassis dyno on the premises. We took 3 classic cars down, entered the show but with the sole purpose of putting them all on the chassis dyno. No surprise, 500 classic muscle cars and we were the only 3 classics that did the dyno LOL. Everything else was modern stuff, super cars, new GM LT1 stuff etc.... Happy to say dad had the highest NA HP of the day competing against the modern stuff, but disappointed in the rest of the classic cars just wanting to sit there in their lawn chairs.

[tom s]

You might enjoy this!AHRA Winternations.Was there with Tyree with my 63 Lemans.Tom

https://fuelcurve.com/1965-ahra-winternationals/

[OCMDGTO]

Really cool old videos! I thought they were all 12 second cars once headers and slicks were added? Glad to see I wasn't the only one stuck in the 14s.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by tom s

You might enjoy this!AHRA Winternations.Was there with Tyree with my 63 Lemans.Tom

https://fuelcurve.com/1965-ahra-winternationals/

That's cool Tom, I've watched that before at the good ole Bee Line Dragway. Remnants of that track still exist that you can still see today.

I've started attending and most recently been a part of the ADRA here in Arizona where you can still see muscle cars (albiet mostly full blown race cars now) still racing, and they have a class that fits my cars.

In fact, Rick who has started another all Pontiac race here locally generally coincides with the ADRA events which is pretty cool to see and do.

[turbo69bird]

I wish they had a class for dealer sponsored cars like SCCA has for nostalgia race cars especially if they did the 67 through 70 stock eliminator rules or something. But I’m kind of biased because of my car.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by turbo69bird

I wish they had a class for dealer sponsored cars like SCCA has for nostalgia race cars especially if they did the 67 through 70 stock eliminator rules or something. But I’m kind of biased because of my car.

SCCA seems to do a better job at that, with owners that aren't afraid to use rare cars that have racing history, still hitting the track.

For what ever reason dealer sponsored drag cars tend to just sit in car collections anymore.

[Gach]

I wasn’t going to, but this bought back good memories. In 1968 I traded in my 1966 GTO 4 barrel 4 speed. For a new 1968 GTO 400 4 speed. Still have time slips and trophies from Connecticut dragway. Car ran 13.50-60’s with close exhaust, Eventually put set of headers, 4:33 gears recurve the distributor, and some jetting on Q’jet ran in E/S. Best ET ended up at 13.20 The good old days. Don’t know if you guys remember Don Gay 66 GTO he ran at Connecticut at dragway once. Then there was Stephen Pontiac with Ram Air V…69 firebird Think he ran 10.90’s factory sponsored. Believe it or not I used to drive to the track which was 45 minutes away race and then drive home.

[turbo69bird]

Originally Posted by Formulajones

Yeah the rules back then were a little more laid back. Some of those races even had cars with headers on them.

Todays rules are much more stringent, and with what has been learned over the last 30 years applied to engine building and suspension tricks, even with more strict engine rules it's impressive what's been accomplished.

But what I like more than anything is these people are getting the cars out doing what they were meant for instead of sitting around staring at them at the lawn chair nationals. Wish more people would get up off their butts and have some fun with these cars. Bench racing is boring, get out their and show us what it's made of.

Couldn’t agree more with this post!
I dread taking my RAIV car and never using it again making it a trailer queen. Even though I have other cars that car has been such an amazing car.

I wonder how parts are holding up for these guys parts are so damn expensive and rare for these cars . Gotta wonder if a regular guy can still compete or if it takes cubic dollars like most other racing classes .

In some SCCA racing classs the cars must be cars that were raced back in the original series it’s kind of cool in some ways but cars regular joes too.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by turbo69bird

Couldn’t agree more with this post!

I winder how parts are holding up for these guys parts are Dan expensive and rare for these cars . Gotta wonder if a regukar guy can still compete or if it takes cubits dollars like most other racing classes .

The pure stock racing is relatively cheap to do, assuming you have a car to start with. You can however get pretty serious with the pure stock program and really exploit a cars potential, and spend more money in the process, but what I like about this class is you can take that as far as you care to, still compete and have fun without cubic dollars.
Parts breakage is generally minimal since everyone runs on the same stock type tire and most of these types of cars aren't making really big HP.

Where it can get outrageously expensive is the FAST class racing. They "appear" stock visually, but anything else inside goes. Basically how fast you want to go depends on how far you open up your pocket book. Very cool to watch and amazing what they accomplish but too rich for me.

The only downfall I see with all of it, is that it's all over on the East side of the country where they are weather limited and very few events take place over a short period of months. What I'd love to see is expansion towards the West coast where we race year round. We have nothing like it out here at all and makes no sense to me. Shucks we don't even have stick shift class racing out here which is something I participated in frequently when I lived in Ohio. Very odd.

[tom s]

Great thing about the AHRA race was the real introduction of the Mopar altered wheel base cars.Tom

[SD455DJ]

Wow! Do those bring back a lot of memories…lol! The very first musclecar drag race (called Supercar Showdown) was the one Chuck Green initiated with (Muscle)Car Review magazine that Don Farr covered in 1985. Chuck somehow got mine and Dan’s names and invited us to bring our Pontiacs down to Beech Bend Dragway in Bowling Green, KY in conjunction with the GS Nationals. Dan towed his T-37 on an open trailer and I drove my RAIV Judge down (I didn’t have a truck or trailer) over 500 miles each way. With the original RAIV it ran 14.00 at 102.3 mph and Dan’s T-37 was the quickest car with a 13.47 at 104.5 mph, while the quickest ‘stock’ Buick was John Chamberlain’s ’70 Stage 1 GS at 13.67 at 102 mph.

Chuck Green moved the race to Quaker Dragway in Salem, OH that was closer to where he lived (Kent or Marion, OH?) for 1986 and 87. The ‘musclecar drags’ gained momentum with other magazines after 1987 with MCR’s Musclecar Nationals, National Muscle Car Association (NMCA) and the SuperCar Showdowns scheduled events all around the country. These races morphed to allow bigger sticky tires, aftermarket racing wheels, electric fuel pumps, suspension modifications, etc., that were more “Day-2” in spirit, and definitely moving away from ‘pure stock’. We ‘pure stock’ guys loved the ‘magazine test cars’ of the day where the writers tried to see how quick they could run with just minor timing tweaks and tire pressures. So, in the early 1990’s, Dan and a bunch of like-minded enthusiasts would rent out Milan Dragway (Milan, MI) on an ‘off’ weekend (late summer or early fall) and race our restored stock musclecars to see how quick we could make them run with just tweaks and stock tires.

Dan and Bob Boden sent short write-ups with pictures to Muscle Car Review magazine and Tom Shaw became really interested in helping support and promote the effort. That’s when Dan & Bob officially started the 1st Pure Stock Muscle Car Drag Race (PSMCDR) in 1995 at Mid-Michigan Motorplex in Stanton, MI. I raced when I could, and with Bob’s ‘retirement’ from the race in 2013, Lyndon Hughes and I, joined up with Dan to run and organize the race, effectively ending my racing at the event.

I can't believe that all started almost 38 years ago...lol!

Dennis

[sdbob]

My 74 SD new approx 500 m,at Keystone Raceway just made sure of timing etc 14.2 ,98 mph on the stock Uniroyals. Those tires were slippy.