It won't last. The old guys like Westly and Gracia who have come back are OLD. (Like me). Not all tracks have a place to perform tear downs either. I had to pass a test back in 1971 from Greg X. to get a job and he still taught me a LOT in the almost 3 years I worked for Div. 1 . Marty Barrett also taught me a lot. Stockers were way different back in the Jr. stock days. Today is a different world. Todays "Stockers" are more modified than yesterdays "Super stockers."
I’ll add that the actual people who lived it (like the ones that have responded on this thread) and guys like Arnie are some of the nicest I’ve meet during my research and enjoyment of studying the early Super Stocks. Arnie was signing any and everything that people brought to him this weekend. Very humble and still ornery. Regards, Randy. Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
When racing associations don't have much tech going on many of the racers don't worry to much about playing by the rules. I have raced at tracks where you knew everything had to be perfect to pass tech and other tracks never did much tech at all and it became very clear to me that if we were going to race there and have any change we had to change the way we were doing business.
Werby, you've pretty much captured the essence of the "cheater" or "rate of lift" camshaft engineering. I would add a mention of a third factor that was traced during teardown, that of "overlap," that range of the camshaft duration during which both the intake valve and exhaust valve on a particular cylinder are closed. Tweaking the closing point of the intake valve results in changes in the dynamic compression ratio and that, in turn, directly affects power levels. Advertised or "static" compression is one thing but dynamic compression is that which the engine sees while in operation. Anyone in need of a reminder of the effect of increasing dynamic compression can experiment with it by accessing any of the online compression calculators (i.e., https://uempistons.com/p-27-compression-ratio-calculator.html), entering the specific dimensions of a given engine and experiment with changing intake closing points to see how the dynamic compression responds to that tweak without changing the static compression level at all. "Overlap" specs were specifically called out for each camshaft. Modern teardowns measure only cam lift. Terry Bell or Travis Miller could probably provide a few comments on the time-consuming task of actually graphing a camshaft lobe and explain why it would move the overall time requirement for completing a teardown into the twilight zone when there are forty or more class winners clogging the "barn" at the close of class eliminations. I would suggest that even hardliners such as Farmer Dismuke, Marty Barrett, Greg X., Terry Bell or any of the other "old hands" at the game were content to merely measure lift, duration, and overlap while overlooking the squared off lobes of a "cheater" cam. It has already been observed that adhering to factory spec valve spring pressures kept something of a lid on the gains. When the duration/overlap/spring pressure rules were erased, the cam wars immediately became more intense. To carry the discussion a little farther, you mentioned the possibility of 1962-66, 283 cam specs being superceded into earlier applications. I simply don't know the answer to that but I am familiar with the practice of superceding parts. It was done regularly by manufacturers as a tool for simplifying their parts catalogs. For example, I bought new head castings for my first NHRA Stocker motor ('57 Corvette, 245 horsepower) directly from Chevrolet in 1970. The casting # was 3884520. Was that head available in 1957? A respected source, <www.mortec.com> suggests that it was only produced from 1960 until 1967 but regardless of that, it was "on the sheet" as a legal casting for a 1957 283 and it was available new when I bought the pair. Was it a better head than earlier casting #3767460? If you correlate larger runner sizes with better performance, then it was a better head. It is likely that not all superceded part numbers were reported as replacements to NHRA. In fact, in 1964, we were bounced during a teardown at the Winternationals because an off-the-shelf, MOPAR replacement camshaft with 308° of duration for a Stage 1 Max Wedge Plymouth had superceded the original camshaft with 300° of duration but NHRA had not been advised of the change. Some manufacturers were more responsive to homologation of superceded parts than others. Did the better Chevrolet camshaft numbers get reported? I would bet that they did. I suspect that guys like Bill Jenkins and Ralph Truppi were out there making phone calls and reminding engineering departments of that process on a regular basis, just as Holman/Moody probably made similar phone calls on behalf of Ford at the same time. Since the 312 Ford disappeared from the manufacturers lineup by around 1960, perhaps the performance emphasis had shifted to the FE platform so, in spite of its robust performance when equipped with a blower, little development effort was devoted to new parts for the Y-block? To conclude this lengthy response to your excellent question I will risk the wrath of the moderators to mention that, eventually the 1965 and '66 versions of the 283 did "walk all over" the earlier shoebox cars but that did not happen until the revamped Stock rules began to be sorted out and performers such as Mark Yacavone, Jerry McClanahan, Cal Method, Cal Queahpoma (RIP), Dennis Oliver and others started flogging the combination. By the way, camshafts are only one of the multiple key essentials to performance. The list goes on and on, as will, I suspect, this discussion. c
Chuck, I one would like to know more about the rule bending and downright cheating that happened in Junior Stock racing back in the day.
IMO I think you are possibly asking the wrong Super Stock owner / driver. Maybe Terry Bell can add more to what he’s already said earlier in this thread (since he was the tech inspector) but Chuck was on legit side I’m sure. Regards, Randy Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
I wasn't implying that Chuck was doing anything questionable, but I bet he knew what a lot of other guys were getting away with or trying to. Anyone is welcome to share their knowledge.
Yeh I wasn’t implying you were. Poor wording on my part and I apologize. Regards, Randy Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
Great post Chuck. you pretty much nailed. it. I think where NHRA screwed up was allowing any spring pressures. If they had a limit on the pressure the same for all brands and engines of say 150 lbs on the seat and 350 lbs open then the hi dollar lifters (Shubeks and others)and aftermarket rods plus allowing solid lifters in place of hyd. lifters and roller rockers would never have been needed. Todays stocker is more like a Super stock . Today they turn the "STOCKER" engines to over 8,000 plus RPMS. I also had a conversation with some NHRA tech guys about the head porting ( grinding )and acid porting back in the late 1980's or early 90's at a PRI show yet NOTHING ever came from it. Easier to tech yes but it opened a huge can of worms and forced some guys to quit due to the expense.
While it's still only 1 page back (pg 509) I wanted to thank Jim for posting the 71 and 72 Indy results. As I come across these old sheets I'm trying to compile the model & engine of each car (and the NHRA factored HP if any!) Here is my guess at 1971 Indy. They are harder to guess when not even the year or make of the car is given so in some classes I list as many as 4 "class winners" - all the same driver, ET, MPH, but several "guesses" at the year, car, and engine. Ugh! ANY MEMORIES HERE MUCH APPRECIATED! I hope my guesses jog a few memories. Regarding "fat" or "cheater" cams Chuck et al, yes I've measured a few (a hundred?) so I know how tedious it is to measure on the ramp. I wonder why NHRA didn't use the cam spec at say .050 lobe or .100 lobe lift? FoMoCo used .100 lobe as a spec as early as the 1958 shop manual, and of course the OEM's had to know the whole curve to grind the cam. It's a lot faster and less error-prone to measure .050 lobe or .100 lobe than to measure "advertised" (which was spec'd differently every time anyway). All old history now of course. Well here are the charts - the PINK entries are GUESSES so please comment if you can. I just saw Jack Roush's restored SS/HA car at his museum so included that picture for fun. (Ok will it was a SuperStock photo so I took it out but it was fun - I had met Jack back in 1974 in his "little" shop, you could smell the Cleveland exhaust port iron being machined away).
I remember racing against this car back in 1965 at Aquasco Speedway in Maryland during a Drag News Jr. Stock meet in the class final. Yeah they outran me by a bunch....LOL. But I STILL had fun back then.
Werbyford: I like the charts. I see you don't post often. Please be careful. Posting the Mustang could get it and the charts deleted.
My spectating started a few years too late. I'd like to have seen this tank make a few passes in person.
OK....Nice and sunny this morning. Had a rough evening yesterday. Thank goodness I have a whole house propane generator as the power was off for quite awhile. The ROUSH 69 convert looks like it has 14 X 32 sized tires in the picture. Any way I remember my friend Jim Morgan from Maryland ran a small 11.5 X 30 M&H slick back in 1969-71 and I don't remember if Dickie Estiveze and Jim tubbed their 69 Mustang convertibles yet as they used a big hammer to clear the 11 X 30 inch slicks side walls. . They ran the 3 "DORSEY GRAY FORD" sponsored 428 CJ's at that time. One was a 1968 lite weight that won the 1968 Winter Nationals when it was owned by Al Joniac. Yes it was the real McCoy as Dickie had the original title sign in Joniac's name and thats where we found the original Ford installed mini tubs so they could fit the 11.5 in tires back in 1968. Dickie now runs a clone of Phil Bonners 1965 Falcon just match racing but without a cammer engine. Just a LARGE 429 type engine with a Lenco trans. 428's were much cheaper back in the day. Dickies convertible was Blue with a C-6 auto Trans and Jims was a top loader 4-speed. Jims was Red. They held the NHRA records for awhile back then. They were the first sets of heads that I ever C.C.ed and performed a legal valve job on back in 1969. Hanging with and helping those guys is what made me want to become a tech official back in the day. I was the guy who informed Greg X. and NHRA of the difference between a standard 428 head and a 428 Canadian head that Ford made 52 pairs (pretty rare)of in 1968 for 50 lite weight S/S lite weight cars. That's 2 extra pair but hard to find today. Most have been blown up. Any CJ lovers should know that the Canadian head had 10 C.C.'s larger intake volumes and be easily spotted by just a plain raised dot next to the spark plug area where the standard head had a full "Clock Face" in the same area. The lite weight ran SS/FA with the Canadian head and lite valves and the dished piston 69 converts ran SS/H and SS/HA with the std. CJ head and heavy valves. . Dickie is recovering from a fall off of a ET sign at Budds Creek Dragway near where I used to live in Maryland. A tree branch broke his fall some what and saved him while working at his business of Universal Metal Products and Jim is still building engines and running his Dyno plus running a fast 69 Shelby 428 AA/SA and A/SA that runs in the 9's. We are getting old but still love drag racing. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Terry: So are you saying in my chart above that bert morgan is really jim morgan and the car was in fact a 68-1/2 428CJ lightweight in SS/FA? (I'm guessing at that car as you can see). TommyD: Thanks for the Glidden pictures. The car LOOKS like a Galaxie, not an XL. The reason is, I'm still not quite sure how all those 427-8v Medium Risers were Factored by NHRA. In the Fairlanes, the 427-8v was factored to about 465hp (from its 425hp rating) as you can see by the classes the cars were in. But, most of them had the glass hood (cold air). Sometimes NHRA factored a car higher for cold air (428cj was 360hp for cold air, but 340hp for flat hood / warm air), and sometimes they didn't. Glidden's car fits class as a Galaxie (3638/425=8.56) with unfactored 425hp, but also fits as an XL (3786/445=8.51) if I use 445hp as a "flat hood 427-8v" factor. It clearly was not factored to 465hp like the Fairlanes or Glidden could not have run in the W/P=8.50 class. Per my notes Glidden ran 11.80 ET at that 1968 World event, pretty quick for a big steel ford. But then the car disappears. Was it rated at 425hp but factored higher by NHRA after that, to match the 465hp Fairlanes? I don't know. The games had already begun by then so the factoring is hard to figure out. In any case, the 65 Gal at 3638lb shipping/NHRA weight, or even the XL at 3786 lb, weren't that heavy. The 1964 Ford LIGHTWEIGHT came in at 3750 lb, about 300 lb lighter than the big fat mass production 1964 Galaxie. In general, Fords were about as heavy as the big Pontiacs, and big eaters. The Ford went on a diet for 1965, but started eating again and by 1968 it was back up to its fat 1964 weight - and then got even heavier. Rambling aside, if anybody can confirm if Glidden's car was a Galaxie 500 or an XL, or the NHRA factoring applied, that would help solve yet another mystery. I love this thread.
No....Jim Morgan never drove the 68 lite wt. that belonged to Dickie Estivez. Jim always drove his Red Convertible as a stick car at first then went to an automatic later(He broke to many top loaders). He did have a Red 69 fastback that he drove with an automatic before I met him sponsored by Dorsey Gray Ford. Before that he had a 68 Dark Green Camaro 396/325 HP with an automatic. This was before the good converters became more available and he used to spin the rear slicks on the starting line while staged. Matt Morgan(Jims son) drove an all white fastback TOP STOCK 69 Mustang in 2001 and beyond that Mike Keener and myself pushed thru to be a full time eliminator in IHRA when Bill Bader owned IHRA.
Glidden and myself became friends back when the Pro Stocks were all small block cars and when IHRA always checked the cubic inches by having the racers pull the head so I could measure the bore and stroke INSIDE the trailers or covered truck carriers. . He trusted me to not tell anything about the bore and stroke combination he used. Jack Rouche always tried to get me to spill the "Beans". We used to BS a lot and I asked him many many years ago about the 65 Ford. .
My question to all of this subject is why! Cheating is cheating, lying is lying. I've always told my kids that I never want to see the family name in the papers for doing something that brings dishonor to our name. Pat
Just a note from the 71 Indy results charts in post 15284..... SS/D was driven by Loren Downing "Pete's Patriot" 69 AMX, from Kearney Nebraska. Owned by Wallace Eugene "Pete" Peterson (1922-2007) Amazing consistent red/white/blue super stocker. (have seen pictures of the car....on this thread on previous posts) Front wheels off the ground on every run, consistently on and under the SS/D record. Ran at many Natl events.........was Div 5 super stock champ. Picture is from Cornhusker Raceway- Omaha about 1970-71 Cornhusker closed when drivers went on strike, about 1972..demanded more money....so owner closed up. It's now an industrial park.....can't tell where the track was anymore
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