In the sixties. Watched Landy's Dodge leave the scales at Irwindale and in the pits we were working on our A/SA Plymouth and watched two guys struggling with one slick off the car. One of our crew went and whispered in the ear of an official. He walked over and stuck his pen in the valve stem. Got sprayed with water. Landy went home that day to add some weight. Street racing my buddy stuck a 475HP Corvette Tri Power engine in his 66 GTO. Painted it Pontiac blue/green. At night all guys saw was the tri power and blue paint. He made a lot of money with that car. Watched it run 12.20 at Lions through the mufflers in 1970. Racing A/SA we knew we had the most power and only lost when something broke or we spun the tires. So when we got beat heads up by another brand we always protested. And always won the protest and the trophy. Then of course NHRA listened to the losing guys and made us add weight until we couldn't win all the time. They told us is was because the fans of the other brands were threatening to quit coming out just to watch their faves get their a** kicked. Sad days. Can't help but wonder what kinds of engines the other makes would have produced if NHRA and NASCAR had just let us win until the others built a better mouse trap. Stupid rules always increase the cheating. Always!
Have a friend from OR ran Fuel funny car, he told me if he won he would side step the clutch at the lights and never had to worry about a tear down as there wasn't much left to look at. Factory picked up the tab.
A dragracer running a stock 58 Pontiac would always win his class. If he was behind near the end..all of a sudden black smoke would roll out the exhaust and the car would move quickly and he would pass and win. All of the 58 Chevy guys would lose to him. They protested...and he always passed inspection. One Sunday, I was not racing and the strip was short on tech guys. They asked me to help tech. So I was assigned the Stock class to tech. While teching this 58 Pontiac, I noticed a rubber hose going to the back of the 4 barrel carb. I traced it back to the windshield washer bottle..that was empty. I said nothing and teched him in. Later, I went over to the Chevy guys and told them to protest again if he won and I would tell the strip guys where to look. He won...they protested. What did we find? Well the Pontiac, from the factory, had a switch on the floor that when you stepped on it, would cycle the windshield wipers and windshield washers. The windshield wiper motor was disconnected so only the washer cycled. He would put nitro in the washer bottle, it squirted through the hose into the back of the carb through a jet into the back two barrells of the carb. Zoom...instant horsepower via nitro and an upper end rush of power to win!! This was in the early 60's
My dad used to run a stock class but I don't remember what class. He said a guy with a small block two barrel ford was beating everyone. It passed tech a few times then one day the tech inspector noticed the carb was loose. He pushed on the front of the carb and it rocked back basically allowing the intake to be wide open. The guy had slotted the carb bolt holes in the rear, the rear bolts were loose, the fronts were two short to reach the intake at all, this allowed the carb would rock back on acceleration and stick like that until he hit the brakes. The fuel bowl was in the front of the carb and he had drilled holes so when the carb rocked back the fuel level was over the holes so it would flow fuel like a carb with a stuck open needle valve. Basically made his 390cfm carb into a 500+cfm
Having owned and crewed different types of race cars for 27 years, I've seen (and done) some really "creative interpretation" of the rules. We had a high school stock car team racing at Mesa Marin, and I threw an old set of Chevy truck center dumps on the engine. The rules specifically said no "Corvette" (2 1/2") center dumps. Everybody went apeshit about the manifolds, so they never noticed the fact that the shocks were rod end Carreras and we had welded the cage, unibody and stub frame all together... We pulled that kind of shit for years. One of the best was the time we showed up at a super race with a nitrous bottle strapped to the roll cage. Now, nitrous was not specifically illegal that year (accidently got left out of the rule book)... Everybody was so pissed when I showed them the rulebook that we never got teched AT ALL... and there was a LOT of "black art" on the car that night. Funny part was the nitrous hose just ran up under the intake and wasn't even hooked to anything; there weren't even nozzles in the injector
Dont know if I posted this before or not. A buddy of mine bought Dyno Dons ex prostock Pinto and put his own 351 Cleveland in it . When they went to put gas in it to start it they took the cap off and poured the gas in. A second or so later gas went every where. It seems that Dyno had a filler neck that went to the bottom of the tank that was full of checking gas. the race gas went in after you unscrewed the whole filler neck. This is why they have inline fuel petcocks to drain the real gas in prostocks now. I apollogize if I posted this before, didnt want to go thru 14 pages to find out
Back in the early 70's I graduated high school at the age of 13, everyone thought I was a genius but in reality I hated school but I was lucky to have 2 older sisters that saved all their school papers and I took all the same classes as they did and it did help that I was a realy good cheater . Everyone was befuddled when I didn't go to college. I realy paid the price later on in life cause I didn't get my drivers license until I was 40. Just couldn't pass that damm writen exam .
We were at a local dirt race and they had a little foot race for the kids. My son had just turned ten, and is a little small for his age. The class break was 5-9, and 10 to 14.... He was super excited to run, and we saw these 14 year olds doing stretches and warming up. I told him to run in the 9 and under class.... He's pretty fast, and won. I was holding my breath when they asked him how old he was, and he remembered to say nine. when he was through I told him that cheating is racing until you get caught, and always run the most cubic inches and claim the least... He got to hold the checkered flag and have his picture taken with the trophy gal... he was so happy. Hehehe...
Open wheel teams had wheels cast in lead to roll the car over the scales, and brake water sprayers that held 10 -20 gallons of water . Let's see ;10 gallons of water =80 lb , 15 lb per wheel =60 lb =140 lb . Not bad on a 1550 lb car!
Looks pretty good today It got pretty bad before they clamped down, there was a pic "back when" of a '66 Gal driven by Curtis Turner or Marvin Panch (CRS) where about 1/3 of the lower headlights was covered by the bumper
My late cousin had turned his street racing Mustang back into a street driving car, I was at his place one day helping him clean the engine compartment and underside of the car when I saw a little loop of copper tubing mounted high in the rear wheelwell. I asked him about it and the story is, while he was racing heads up street classes, they went to Huntsville Alabama for the King of the Mountain street car race, when they get there, the track is not prepped with any VHT and racers are not allowed to use it, but strangely enough, all the locals hooked up just fine. The next race, he added a hidden windshield washer pump and the sprayers, burnout, spray the tires as you roll to the line and hook up. The Mustang won many heads up street car races against many big block cars, he was running a 357ci Cleveland with a huge NOS kit and C4 automatic. All steel car with full interior with mufflers and DOT tires would lift the tires about 2 inches when leaving on the bottle. RIP Chris, wish you were here to tell some of the other stories.
we've got the original LO Stanly 3 carb intake for flathead ford on display at my museum right now. to skirt the rules about a single carb he engineerd two additional ones under the intake in the valley pan--two tiny set screws visble from top. ran like a scalded dog, but the driver in the first race couldn't keep his mouth shut. the upside it it got LO a job at Holman Moody
Guy from my home town had a '55 Pontiac he ran with a SB Chevy. They built it for Modified Production class (back in the '60's) and the first time they went to the track they were in the middle of B/MP and got blow away. Checked the rule book and no ballast allowed, but traction bars were. Next trip they were right at the min weight for C/MP and got close to a national record before the summer was over. Tech didn't like the fact that his traction bars were made from 3/8" steel plate and were somewhat larger than anyone else ranbut they were "legal enough"
In '72 or 73 Dale Inman put a vinyl roof on Richard's Charger .. everyone thought he was gaining by the texture of the vinyl, nobody noticed the 2" he had chopped out of the roof! He claimed it was to match that year's Dodges (free vinyl roof)
My uncle told me about a guy who ran the local dirt track circuit around here. He was running a marine engine (reverse rotation). So while everyone else was lifting there left front wheel and slowing down going around the turns he was digging into the turns and coming out of them way ahead of his competition.
That is well documented in Mark Donohue's book The Unfair Advantage. They dipped the bodies and left them in the tank a bit too long. Not enough time to get new bodies from Chevrolet so the vinyl tops was a quick fix and spread the aerodynamic story. Soon other teams beieving the hype started adding vinyl (and weight) to their cars. One mistake led to 2 advantages for the Penske team.
heard one a long time ago about smokey unick seems that there was a size limit on the fuel tank .he had a regulation size tank but always got 1-2 lapsmore than anybody else.he was finally caught with many extra feet of half inch fuel line snaked allaround the car
In 1960, my neighbor ran a '57 Chevy 210 w/'60 Pontiac, 468 C.I., ran 'A' gas at Fremont. Stiff competition forced him to throw a manhole cover in the trunk for weigh-in. Nobody ever caught him, but didn't anyone wonder about those manhole covers in the pits? I counted 4 one Sunday, leftovers from previous outings.
Was digging around with search and found this thread. Just read the whole thing, way to good to not bump. Any more?...
So what is it. Looks like a fuel injection or something. That site down in the flathead lifter Valley.
I recall reading an article in HRD or TRJ (can't remember which one) about Hugh Tucker's '28 Chevy roadster that before he had the mold made for the fiberglass body he lengthened it something like "2-"3 inches. Another one I read here on the H.A.M.B. I about a '32 ford pickup that ran in the A/A class which was a gas class but he ran on alcohol and made s small reservoir so when the tech inspector drained a little out of the fuel cell he never got caught running alcohol. A few years ago my dad ran a dirt modified, the rules said "No sleeving the lifter bores" but didn't say anything about larger then stock lifters so guys started putting there blocks in a BJH Lifter tru fixture and re boring the holes perfectly straight and using Ford lifters. (in a Chevy block ,and Mopar lifters in a Ford block).
There was a plague of guys trying to get by with thin-walled tubing when we ran Islip. One guy was busted on a visual, he used swing set tubing, all welded nicely but not painted. The tubes were still bright green and yellow. Another guy had a uni-body Mopar that was fast, looked nice. My brother and him had a paint trading history going on and finally my brother had enough, stuffed him in the wall hard. Big wreck and the Mopar folded up like an accordion. The front stub tubing was all .050" wall. Someone else was rumored to have an acid-dipped body. I had gotten into his LR quarter hard and it crumpled like a gum wrapper.
We had this '72 Torino we ran at Islip with someone else driving, I ran the car at Riverhead on another night. With the better driver, the car racked up the wins at Islip and the tech guys were all over it. They failed to miss the doctored up right front suspension relocation. We had mixed up a concoction of black paint, mud and brushed it over everything, really impossible to detect what we did. They puffed us a couple of times, found to be legal. Another night they put the car on the scales after a win. We had weighed it at a local sponsor scrap yard earlier that day and we knew exactly what it weighed. So one of the track officials walks around the car reading off the weight at each corner, he writes it down, my brother was behind him, also writes down the values. They split up, my brother adds up the weight as 3456, close to what the 'yard scale came in at. Minimum weight was 3300 or something like that. The official (of questionable math skills) comes up with 3980. So we were found to be legal and they announce it over the PA. Everyone thought we had a 4000 lb car. They were doing a post-race check one night, 1st 5 cars were impounded. We take the hood off.. aha... the rules were NO Holley 4-bbls and they thought they had us... take a closer look, it's a Holley 2-bbl. On the spot, the rules were changed, NO Holleys period. Next week we came back with a Motorcraft 2-bbl and it was just as fast.
my friend did the cylinder heads on the wayne county dodges. the nitrous bottle was in a fake battery in the trunk. the negative cable was hollow and went to the back of the heads. the heads were drilled front to rear carefully hitting the outside edge of the intake seats. the intake seats had a groove cut all the way around the outside. there were holes going from the groove to just above the valve seat. when the heads came off nothing could be seen. the valves covered it all up. I have one of the seats in the shop. I will look for it and post a pic.
There was a guy we raced with, consummate cheater and rarely got caught. Years later my brother was working at Grumman and it came up that he used to race stock cars. One guy asks, did you know so-and-so? My brother says yes, knew him well. One of the chemists over there came up with a formula for better-than-race-gas for him. They never checked the gas in our class, most of us ran CAM2 or aviation gas.
The Jalopy Journal
