My dad used to drag race back in the late '60's early '70's. I don't know the specifics of what class he was supposed to be in. But anyway...he was running an an all aluminum big block 427 in his firebird which wasn't allowed for his class (only cast iron allowed) but he had it painted chevy orange and never mentioned it. He kept squeezing by tech and kicking ass all the way. One night this inspector decided to stick a magnet to the block. "AH HA! I caught you!" After a little cussing and name calling dad loads it on the trailer and hauls it home. That week he got the idea to pull the motor and spray paint the block again with steel/iron filings in the paint. Went back the next week. Same inspector comes over and says, "Wha ya cheating bastard....you're back again trying to pull the same sh...(as he sticks the magnet to the block and it stays this time).....uh....huh?"
We used a set of chet herbert roller lifters that guide through the oil gallies in a flat tappet cam class even cut a grove in the top of the lifter for the snap ring to look like a hydraulic lifter.
Also in a stock flywheel class removed the ring gear drilled the flywheel to lighten and put the ring gear back on.
We used to mix our own fuel we would get a additive from a guy in NJ called liquid balls im not kidding everytime it came it was in a different container up around 20 percent it would burn a piston..
We had a big block 467cid rule i had a custom big bore short stroke motor that burned a crank so we installed a standard crank and had aprox 540 inches
Well I did hook up with this . . . Oh you ment stories about cars. I don't recall who it was but back during the cam wars or whatever the popular name is today one of the fellas running a '33 Willys used the spare tire mounted in place and filled with concrete for a traction advantage. The Ol' Man was pitting for a fella running Modified Sports Car way back when and there was a vette that kept winning. The vette didn't sound right. The Ol' man would protest and pay to pull a head but the fella kept pulling the same head. He finally payed enough to pull both heads. One bank was overbored. It must have been a balancers nightmare, but it gave them an edge.
I found this thread because I was looking for new ways to cheat. My mini stock has a fully adjustable suspension because I ground the weld off the macpherson strut brackets and now I can raise and lower the ride height. On another car we mix and match the top hat over the strut because a lot of them are different heights, so you can play with the weights that way. Pretty much undetectable. Also helps to use a car no one else has because the tech guys have no idea what is stock. They can't know everything. I found this thread looking for a way to change the size label on a drive tire so I can add stagger. Rules say 4 same size tires, but I will figure it out. I'm open to suggestions....
You can change the OD of the tire by running them on a different width rim. Say they're meant to run on a 6" wheel, so you run the insides on 7" wheels and the outsides of 5" wheels. The wider wheel will make the inside tire run with a slightly smaller OD, and the narrower wheel will make the outside tire run with a slightly larger OD. We used to switch from an 8" to a 7" wide wheel on the RR of our modified when we needed more stagger than the tires would give us. Also, look for bias ply tires that you can shave the tread on, then take and inflate the holy hell out of the outsides and let them set for a day or two like that. They'll stretch a little bit, and stay bigger around even when you reduce the pressure to race on them. The race tires we ran would stretch upwards of an inch in circumference if you left them at 40 psi for the entire week before the race. They didn't seem to go back down in size much afterwards either, but street tires might. If they do shrink back to their original size, it'll take some time. You ought to be able to get at least one night's racing out of them before they shrink much to speak of. Another nice side benefit of bias ply tires is that they can be found in much softer tread compounds than your standard passenger radial. 10k mile bias tires will be much softer than 60k mile radials. Just something to ponder on.
This is the first thread on hamb that I have read from beginning to end, and I am completely floored at all of the great stories and innovative tricks that have been created all in the name of speed. Keep it up guys i'm takn' notes!!!
Why does that not suprise me that your on here,probably looking for more stories like the time we went racing in "new mexico" and Shaun set you out a bit and helped you on the go!!!! Nailed that launch too
A local drag racer here in Victoria used to run flat 9s at Calder, all day, every day. Never broke out, never blew up, flat 9s each time. It turned out he was in the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) and flew a BlackHawk chopper over the dragstrip and digitally mapped the surface of the track. Transferred that info into the computer in the car, thus it knew when to back off for bumps, go hard on the flat bits, etc. Prick!
Best thread ever! Once upon a time we had a street racer with two 58? (I think) Corvettes. Identical mild customs, they were, except for the engines. One, a 283 and the other sporting a hot 409. He's set up a race to start just past his house, swap cars and whup your a** then swap back to collect his money. Hoods were never opened. Reportely he owns the cars to this day, never have they both been seen together.
Any more stories? I just read this entire thread! Great stuff.. Im surprised no one has mentioned Fred Lorenzen's Yellow Banana yet.
most of my 'racing' stories are from the back streets. a Dodge Polara with a huge small block{Chrysler} in it with big block wagon spring in front & air shocks that holes drilled in em,that thing would left the front & slam the rear as the weight would transfer,made plenty of chevy guys cry when we open the hood & see a dirty old 318 never looked twice at the water filled spare tire..
Not drag or nascar, but sometimes you gotta start them early. My younger cousin raced quarter midgets and I used to help out my uncle every now and then. He would always watch the race with a couple of heavy wrenches in his hand "just in case something broke". While pushing the car across the scales, somehow the heavy wrenches made it into the car. I guess he had to put them somewhere to help push.
Guess I'm a scoundrel. I've always enjoyed a good cheat. I've learned a lot from it both mine and others................
Growing up, I was always told that cheaters never win!!.......But found out later that cheaters always win....
Garlits staggered the front wheels on his rails to cut lower ET's. Did it for a long time before folks figured it out. Smokey placed a basket ball in his BIG fuel cell with a little connecter underneath passed fuel volume test with ball inflated then after, let the air out. Time for another check slip under car with a small bottle of compressed air in a second legal tank again.
we had a guy at our circle track in nj that put the magnets and pickup from an old cruise control on his driveshaft and drove people nuts. he had many cheating parts on the car but everyone looked at this instead and scratched their heads. i was not even hooked to anything just put there to throw the lookers off track.
Back in the 60's ,my friend, Dave Reid, ran a D/Gas 57 Chevy convert named "Motivation" He ran a "Moon" tank off the front like most of the gassers of the day We were at Pence's Dragstrip (Ohio) when he got caught draining water out of his "Stock" 57 Chevy gas tank ' OOps... Seems he should have ran C/ Gas' the extra weight put him down a class He was banned for the whole season I was running N/Stock with a 1965 Merc Comet Convert I slipped a Hipo 271 HP motor in the car I ran a 2 barrel intake (with stock air cleaner) as soon as I went thru inspection, I would swap the carb for a modified 600 cfm Holly I ran 3 different tracks...never got caught
Theres more than a few stories here about nitrous and prostock racing, right thru the gliddens and jerry echman(?) - problem with all of that is nitrous was not 'illegal' in prostock racing at that time! It was a general agreement amongst nhra and the prostock teams not to run nitrous. It was after echmans' incident that a rule went into the book. I have rule books going back many years. There might be a rule about prop, i know that prop was a favorite of bob glidden and he admitted to experementing with it. Back in the early days of msd we used to watch a competitor make a pass and we'd have a friend parked midway in a truck and we'd hail him on the c.b. that everybody used to talk back and forth with. He'd answer and trigger is 'side band' (thats what it was called, is was like an amplifier) just when the competitor was closest to him and it would kill the msd ignition! I swear to christ! You could hear that box popping and banging all the way back to the starting line. It took msd a while but they finally got around to shielding the box, i know of more than a few of those old boxes went into the trash because of that. But then you didn't hear this from me ok?
Back in Peoria, IL, and long before the Peoria strip was named Boondocks Drag Strip, a friend of mine ran his '56 Chevy with 283 4v in a low gas class. He had a spare tire that was filled with gravel, which was just enough to allow him to make his weight into a lower gas class where he was highly competitive, at least so long as he left his spare in the pits. As far as I know, he never got caught.
In the late 1970's Richard Mash from the Taylorsville NC area had a Nascar Darlington Dash Vega with Dean Combs driving that ran roughshod over everyone for quite a few years in a row. The inspectors wanted to curb the costs so they outlawed the multiple disc clutches which were real small diameter.. Next race out Dean stomped everyone yet again & the inspectors made him drop the tranny. As soon as they saw the small clutch cover Rich was told to load up...he was illegal. Rich told them to look closer, there was only 1 disc installed not multiple discs. As Rich told it the head inspector said something to the effect of "Boys, you got us again"
Way before Petty and Smokey there was a Flathead Ford racer who had used Ford tractor valves in his engine- they looked stock as they had the cast ford logo but were 1/8 inch larger. Wish I could remember more of the details...Jim
The Jalopy Journal
