The 340 was a good engine. Light, made a lot of horsepower. The bad side of that was that sidewalls on the block broke easily. In the early seventies there was an optional cam you could get in some models. I think it might have been the Plymouth version of the Dart a friend had. Four barrel, optional CAM. He thought he could outrun a raggedy looking old Mustang, he was wrong!
Chrysler had a kit car program about that time too. Buy the car in any state of completion from bare chassis to put the radiator cap on best I recall. This was a NASCAR legal circle track car.
Pete Hamilton came to the Pepsi two or three hundred at Jackson Mississippi with the demo car. It still had a passenger seat in it! He was running close to the front but not leading. I think he went out with engine trouble, almost certain he went out early. We were having our own issues and it was 120 degrees six feet in the air in the pits! The kit cars ran good but they weren't winning. At least not consistently or in the bigger events. Might not have been mechanical faults though.
Our car had issues the day before and we had caught almost no sleep, don't remember if I got in a shower! I would put a leg on either side of the inside pit wall and tell somebody to wake me up in 35 laps or a wreck. I was going over the wall with the right front best I recall. We could run about forty laps most runs after that it was mostly fumes and imagination!
We ended up down eight laps from the problems the first day. We made up two laps on the track, two in the pits which I was pretty proud of. Pete's crew there, Richard Petty's, a few more of the crews I watched most Sundays. Some big names driving but some crews were supporting a member of the crew driving that event.
One of the funnier things, Bob, a man from Michigan lost his engine with no spare. A long drive home so he managed to buy an engine off of Freddy Fryer best I recall. The big laugh was that Freddy had to show him where the leaker valve was for testing. Seemed Freddy was running a 302 and toting a 377 spare!
More sidetracking, when I went off with my own team it was about the time crew chiefs changed too. They painted a new sign on the hood, 302CI Sometimes
I asked the crew chief, "Clay, how many times a week are y'all changing engines?" "Two, sometimes three times a week!" We did have the car set up to change an engine in under forty minutes. Jr Johnson was changing an engine in 20 minutes.
Bending the rules was part of circle tracking. Oddly enough I never broke the rules with my own car although I bent them pretty badly! Other cars I worked on, the only rule was don't get caught! I have to admit imageneering was fun!
Hu
