Thought patterns ...

ShootingArts said:
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
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The real problem with small block Mopars is the valvetrain. They have kittywhumpass pushrod/rocker arm angles and suffer a lot of valvetrain issues at high RPM.
 
fastone371 said:
The real problem with small block Mopars is the valvetrain. They have kittywhumpass pushrod/rocker arm angles and suffer a lot of valvetrain issues at high RPM.
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Pretty much all the small blocks had valve train issues, the mopars in particular. Ford had them too, not as bad. Chevrolet had issues but they also had more things available to fix them. Used to fit something called a jo-mar stud girdle on the Chevies. Totally different units but they made one for small blocks and large blocks.

I put timing gears on top and bottom, no chain. With a little offset bushing which went over the pin aligning the cam gear it was possible to time the cam gear off of the crank gear. By being able to adjust the entire valve timing assembly in one place it was possible to time an engine for low end torque or high end screaming or a moderate setting in between.

In the big block Chevy line up I favored the 427, the NASCAR mystery motor from the early sixties. They released it on the street after a year or two, first shrinking it down to "just" 396CI. Just the way things worked out I spent most of my big block time with 454's. I don't exactly like 454's from a technical standpoint but no question that they can be built to run and hold together.

I planned to build a Ford Pinto with a big block Chevy in it, kind of a superspeedway Modified, modified enough to be street legal. A big big block, maybe 508 or bigger, a rock crusher Muncie, and a superspeedway quick change, Halliburton, Winters, or whatever can hold up to that kind of horsepower.

I also leaned towards a dual engine street rod to top 1000CI when I was younger. Have it set up where I could time the engines to run as one which should have a wicked thump, or 180 degrees off from each other which should make it purr like a luxury vehicle of old. It would be running as a sixteen cylinder where with the two engines firing together it would seem to be a monster V8.

Just a few ideas for a Sunday afternoon grocery getter or something to cruise the park!

Hu
 
i think i wrote before, as i was at great meadows speedway when don garlits first broke the 200 mph mark.
and i think 8 seconds. the next week or so i was at long island speedway and he did it again a little faster.

he kept breaking records all the way up to 300 mph. i was gone by then. on the road.
 
maha said:
i think i wrote before, as i was at great meadows speedway when don garlits first broke the 200 mph mark.
and i think 8 seconds. the next week or so i was at long island speedway and he did it again a little faster.

he kept breaking records all the way up to 300 mph. i was gone by then. on the road.
Click to expand...

I wasn't as interested in drag racing after the NHRA had a big rules shake up and made a hobby class car out of my pro car but I used to go out pretty regularly to see Big Daddy and a few more. Don was credited with being the leader of the rear engine rail movement after a clutch explosion took a big chunk of a foot off.

A friend usually ran sprint cars on dirt. He decided to build a rail in the sixties. Shorter than many, stiffer too. Still front engine at the time.

That stiff chassis came way up in the air then twisted from torque. Barrel rolled, just started spinning sideways. Sheer luck he didn't kill his driver but the driver did stay in the hospital a few months. Best I recall that was the one and only rail Mickey built. He misjudged how much engineering went into a rail. A sprint car was made out of tubing, a rail job was, he figured they were about the same!

Hu
 
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