What was the chemical that Waltrip supposedly coated the inside of his cars intake with to qualify back in his first year with T#y#t@?
In the 80's I worked at a speed shop that built ASA and ALLPRO circle track cars. There where stories of 80 pound rolls of duct take and 100 pound helmets that where left in the car when they where weighed at the track.
Lightened flywheels where not allowed either, so Smokey pressed off the starter ring and drilled holes from the outside edge all the way to the center , then pressed the ring gear back on. The flywheel looked stock .
It is fairly common that you hear of Nascar teams throwing stuff out of the car during a race so a Yellow flag will be thrown for debris on the track. I have wondered if any of the teams have used electromagnets to hold "debris" under the car until it is needed??? Not exactly race related but "back in the day" California had roadside equipment and smog checks... this was in the 1970's when the smog equipment was fairly simple. My future brother-in-laws Jensen Healey had a system that cycled the engine blow-by back into the intake as its "smog equipment". This smog equipment made the car difficult to tune and made the engine run like S**t... But he was afraid to take it off because of the roadside checks done by the CHP. So, I got a 12 volt solenoid with a black crinkled paint coil body from work and located it in the valley between the dual overhead cams with their black crinkled painted valve covers. The smog circuit tubing was cut and the solenoid was inserted between the two ends. I wired the solenoid to the wiring circuit that lit the light that told you that the parking brake was set. So, set the parking brake (like at a road side check) and the solenoid was activated and the smog circuit worked as the factory intended. Release the parking brake to drive away from the roadside check and the solenoid closed, the circuit was blocked allowing the engine to run fine. He never did get caught with that set up and had forgotten we had installed it until a couple of years ago. The roadside checks have been gone for years.
The bottle was in his oil pan. It exploded in the pits damaged a lot of stuff. A person or two got injured. He and Bill Orndorff (the owner) were fined big time and banned from competition for life.
I wasn't there nor do I have any firsthand knowledge of that incident, but I've done my share of rule bending and here's what I think happened: certain fuel additives such as Klotz Nitro are designed with the cheater in mind and cannot be detected with specific-gravity fuel tests. But they don't seem to stay mixed for long and if you simply fire the engine up in the garage and don't get it to operating temp, a gel forms in areas like the intake manifold and ports. What I remember reading is that the inspectors removed the carb during tech inspection and saw the gel-like residue, which ordinary gas doesn't do. Then they tested it and found out what it was, but as per NASCAR usual, they don't want to embarrass anybody's sponsor so the specifics weren't released.
wasnt Alderman the one that had the hidden nitrous bottle in the battery and ran it through tha battery cables ???
Here's one I got from another thread on the H.A.M.B. (Auto Racing 1894 -1944) Not exactly cheating, but a beautiful example of finding a loophole in the rules. Seems the class was restricted to 4-cylinder engines, with a maximun allowable bore size. So this designer (in 1906) simply increased the STROKE....to a point where it created forward visibility problems for the driver!! (Post #6104) This cracked me up! The more things change, the more they stay the same. The designer must have been an early ancestor of Roger Penske! ;o)
Early 90s Pro Stock every one was sprayin' it. The Gliddens bailed cause they were next to be singled out. They (Pro Stock teams)were turnin' anything and everything into nitrous tanks, rollcages, bottom half of oil pans and hiding the plumbing in the block. They didn't need big set ups just a hundred horse or so and a 5 lb bottles worth anything bigger was too hard to hide.
We had a guy here in NZ who was running a SBC in a 4x4 Jeep in the '70's, he finally got rid of the front drive axle and replaced it with a straight tube one, he also added a blower. Tech told him he had to run a roll bar 'cause he was starting to run too quick, he turned up at the next meet with a neat looking 4 pointer but tech smelled a rat and drilled an inspection hole to discover it was exhaust tubing, he was told to "go away" and fix it. He hit the area with a ball-pein hammer, filled the dent with lead, re-painted the bar, re-drilled the hole and hey presto instant heavy wall, Ran like it for years. Scotty.
I dont know if it was smokey or junior johnson, but one of the stories my dad told told me was about how nascar always suspected the car was too low, but it always tech'd ok. Finally, the inspector got so pissed he shoved one of the crew as he was walking away. The guy fell over and almost broke his ankle. They had been driving the car up on the pit crews steel toes for the tech inspections, and driving away an inch lower every time.
NASCAR brought in a rule, limiting compression ratio. Sounded pretty straight forward. Until Larry Widmer built a motor that used oil pressure to change the compression ratio. It checked fine just turning the motor over, but at speed, the ratio went much higher.
Here is one I've seen firsthand. The 65 Fairlane factory drag car we are restoring had a stock appearing rear seat. When we went to take it out we discovered it was nothing more than a fiberglass shell with the seat cover glued on.
It works to this day..untill the tech guys get smart and check ride heights after the race. Used to use wedges and a a small wire hooked to the tie ride turn hard both ways and out came the wedges. Took NASCAR lots of year to figure it out.
Is the Fairlane with the fiberglass rear seat the same one my retired Ford engineer friend told me about? The back part of the top was bashed down, then filled with lead, finished, and painted. This was a well known D/S car from Michigan. John
ME CHEAT? WHY I NEVER..... The MG TD Mk II had an XPAG engine bored through the water jackets, with two and a half liter Riley sleeves stuffed in. With a 4.55 rear end, it turn over 95 mph down the back straight at Riverside. Pretty good for a car that is about as aerodynamic as a gallion under full sail. Oh! to be that skinny again. That's me on the right, in 1959 The other little bomb just goes 'cause the driver's boot has too much lead in it. Same driver, 50 years apart
Old Dawg, what color is that Plymouth behind you, my Grandparents had one in those years, I still have it, at the time it was black, that may have shown up in that picture though.
I think it was Plymouth grey, green or blue. Either way, it was a stock color. the car in the photo was owned by the little fellow on the left. He used it solely as a tow vehicle for the Black MG A behind the Plymouth.
Sneaky Pete Robinson did something similar...he built a vacuum system the same way and had rubber strips creating a box under his digger chassis, the higher the rpm's, the harder the chassis sucked down towards the track...he also tried to implement jackstands for FED starts, spin the tires up and when the light turns green the car drops off the stands and launches with tires blazing...he was kicked out of many tracks simply for trying to be innovative within the "lack" of rules...nothing wrong with thinking outside the box ...
Just spent a bunch of time reading this thread front to back. Another Smokey story... Showed up at Daytona qualifying with the front fenders all pulled down around the tires, nice and close. Everybody started screaming that it wasn't legal OR safe..would cut the tires down and wreck everybody. Smoke says nothing in the rules about how close they could be (was general practice to leave some room to allow for some rubbin'). Big Bill says thats so and the car qualifies right up front. Day of the race it shows up with the fenders cut out just like everybody else. Again the squawking and hollerin'. Smokey says hey, I just did what you asked. Rules don't say you can't have them opened up either!
In '85 I was crew chiefin' on a dirt roundy-rounder, they called 'em Super Stocks, sometimes called late models, whatever, tube frame, sheet aluminum body, single alcohol carb. So we raced with some buds, and their car owner, Ron, built the cars, ours was their last years' car that won the championship at Petaluma, and Ron had built them a new car. So one night I get thinkin' and take a couple big towels, lay them on both sides of the intake, fill them with ice cubes, fold 'em over, and tie-wire them down tight. Also had an extra air cleaner lid, and everybody ran a tall air cleaner sticking out of the hood, so I filled up another towel, laid it on top of the first lid, laid the second lid on top of the towel, and ran a strip of duct tape around the whole thing, and put one of those external filter socks over it. Just as I'm putting the hood on, Ron walks up- sees the towels, what's that for?? So I tell him the carb's leaking, and those are to soak up the methanol Sends him off, you can't do that, it'll catch fire, yeah, go away, it'll be OK. So he's shaking his head, telling everybody how stupid that is, yada yada. So our guy qualifies third, comes in and says wow, really strong, buzzing the tires- so we put the biggest set of rears we have with the same stagger on the back, check the ice, lots left, and head out for the four-lap Trophy Dash- and won, beating Ron's new car for the first time. Sucker went like a bottle rocket for the four laps, ice was just about gone when it came in. By then my guys were laughing their butts off and ratted me out, so Ron's got me in a bear hug shaking me up and down, yelling about low-life cheating drag racers After a while he started laughing too, and let me go After that I had a ball pretending to do stuff to the car, and he'd stare at the part I'd been "working on" trying to find what I'd done. I took a little coil of fuel line and duct-taped it to the top of the fuel cell one night, not connected to anything, and he stared at it for a half hour, muttering
I owned one of Penske's '69 Camaro's that we bought from him in 1970 and raced for several years. It had a vinyl roof when we got it. One of the purchase stipulations was that we had to run the car with the vinyl roof on it for at least two seasons. We didn't figure out why until the car got crashed about halfway through the 1970 season and we needed to untangle the front end. Long story short, we got a new radiator support from the dealer and bolted everything back together after the rest of the repairs, and the front sheet metal wouldn't go back on the car. After a lot of frustration, we called Reading (Penske's shop) and talked (with someone who shall remain nameless as he still crews for them) about what was going on. His first question was whether we had anyone who knew how to hammer weld. A 2" horzontal section out of the radiator support later, it matched the 2" wedge section out of the front fenders and inner fenderliners. Two one inch vertical sections later, the support let all the fenders come in contact with the narrowed hood and grille and bumper (all with factory numbers on them!) and everything bolted up just like factory. While evryone was looking at the vinyl top, nobody noticed all the other tweaks on the car, and they were literally everywhere. These were the days of factory TransAM and nobody liked to lose. We learned a lot from that car over the years, and won a lot with it too. Penske has always been known for the unfair advantage, no matter where he competes.
Remember years ago when working in a mostly drag oriented engine shop, one of the writers from a real prominent sporty car magazine (may have been Road and Track) came in with a Pinto head, had it milled a quarter inch etc. etc. They thought no body knew who they were....Turned out it was for a "Reader's Challenge" race for strictly stock autos, and when it finally came to pass their car was wicked fast, they gave themselves lots of ink, but it overheated in some form of Karmatic revenge. Never respected that guy much after that.
UK Touring cars in the late 70s.....the Rover SD1, 215ci all alloy V8 kicking the arses of everything else, engines had to be pretty close to stock....at post race checks showed it had Volvo stamped on the rockers.......it read rover when they pulled of the rocker cover!!UK Rallying...again in the late 70s, Group N meant factory stock, no race parts, no spares carried by the teams but if required an official would go to the nearest main dealer to get the parts.......a complete stock of race parts would be moved around the county in factory stock boxes by most of the factroy teams and deposited at the main dealer with a "service agent!" to issue the parts!!
I know of a fellow who does some extra grinding on all of his valve guides, he also runs about 20% nitro in his oil. The heavy lead acid battery was carefully slit apart in the top, all the internals were gutted and in went a very light lithium ion battery and sealed back up. In the road racing car he wanted a little more camber with the mandatory stock suspension, off went the stock bushings and in went custom eccentric ones.
The Jalopy Journal
