Event Coverage Your First Dragstrip Pass

My first pass was in my brother's '62 Impala hardtop, 327, T-10, and 4.11 Positraction in 1968 while I was a senior in high school. The pass was at world famous Temple-Acacemy Dragway. Back then we didn't get time slips, so I have no
idea how quick it was.....but it definitely got me hooked!

 

Too funny!

 

lived 5 miles from Fremont Drag Strip my whole life. had a GTO Judge and a 70 Z/28 in the late 70's early 80's, but the only car I've ever took down the track was my 73 Datsun pickup. 17.70 @77mph. shifted at 7,000 RPM.

I wish I could be 18 again and have a do-over.

 

1949 Arlington,Wa.
Brand new strip we just spent a couple weeks clearing debris off the taxiway they let us race on. No return road in those days. They bunched the cars at the far end and ran them back in groups.
It was my first run on a drag strip and I was the second one to try it out.
I also had second fast time of the day.(98 mph) Top speed clocks only in those early days.
The car was a chopped 32 5 window with a 315 ci flathead on av gas.
That day, we ran till it was almost dark and the airport manager told us to go home.
I ran a lot of road races on that airport in later years.

 

It was 1962 at a newly opened dragstrip between a corn field and a pasture full of cows in rural north Iowa. Mick had his '31 model A and I had my '55 Pontiac htp. with a just installed '57 347 and a 3 speed std and dumps welded to the exhaust pipes opened and a set of recapped snow tires on the rear for "traction". Heart pounding and knee shaking for my first ever time trial. My "competition" that first time trial run was a 51 Chevy B gasser. The street stop light went from red to yellow to green and I jumped on it so fast and hard that everybody thought I had something under the hood that was gonna beat that gasser. Not, it was just super hyped up reactions. But I looked good for about 150 feet. I don't 'member how Mick did but he did look good!

 

First time for me was at Twin Cities Strip in Odesa/Tampa Fla in 1973.
'70 340 Duster bone stock 340,3 spd,3.23 open rear 98,000 miles (all run hard)

First run I had taken off the clutch fan....excess drag you know!!!
Got hot, stalled on line and when I got it started ,was so pissed,I smoked the right tire almost the whole quarter for a mid 17's time.

Cooled the car and reinstalled the fan and ran high 14's rest of the night with a best of 14.70.... I couldn't believe I beat a lot of Road Runners,I thought they were hot!

Last drag strip pass with the car was a few months later...14.90 & when I tore it down the following week,I found a broken ring had scored one cyl.I reinstalled the head,and drove it for a week trying to sell it before deciding to tear down and re-build.
I found it had a spun bearing and four broken rings with one ring broke into 1/4" pieces and some pieces turned sideways in the land....still was running strong!!!

 

Was at Conn Dragway on my Bike 900 kaw z1 dont remember times but raced my brother on his 750 honda if finals He beat me and got a trophy he still rubs in my face some 30 plus years later ( he got like 4 seconds head start and i didnt red light as he went down track )

 

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<!-- message -->this is my first pass in my A at Reynolds ga silver dollar raceway, runwhatyoubrung last month,met some great hambers and also won the hard luck trophy because I blew my intake gasket.......12.13 104 mph, spun off the line and hit the rev limiter in 1st and 2nd.......priceless.... worth every hour and dollar spent.......





http://youtu.be/1KVtB1QX0Dk
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First pass at Island Dragway in 1969 in my 55 Chevy. 283 cu in and a three on the tree. Open rear,I was 17 had to change the date of my license on the tech car (someone told me how to do it) You had to be 18 to race in Jersey. Ran in the 17 second range. Actually had a grudge match with a 15 second 55 Chevy Jr Stocker that my buddy told the owner I would beat him. He smoked me but I was there for the fun. I made a lot of passes that night.

 

Some time back in the early 90's at Bonneville Raceway in Salt Lake City. 1964 Elcamino with a targetmaster 350 scavenged from a derelict Nova, saginaw 4 speed trans and "highway" gears. The engine had Edelbrock Performer intake/cam/carb but still ran the cast iron stock manifolds. I don't remember the exact times but it was somewhere in the mid to high 15's.

David

 

Grew up drag racing on the back roads of rural west Texas in the 60's. When I was 14 I had a 55 Stude Champion. Slower than sin. Had to pick on a buddy and his 59 Rambler American to have a close race. After I graduated from high school and went to work in a machine shop building engines I finally worked my way up to a 62 Impala, pulled the 283 out an put a hot 409 in it. Raced everything in town in those days. Way more fun than the drag strip but much less safe. Lived about 5 miles from the Lubbock TX drags strip for about 15 years. Was there most weekends for a good while. Most fun I ever had with my clothes on.

 

Same strip (Fontana was my hometown) in '67. Christmas tree was in place and we raced "brackets". My Bug (yeah, I know) was pared up with a T bucket. I left on the last amber, about 4 minutes before the T bucket, and speed shifted my way to the far end of that endless quarter mile. The T was coming on fast but fearing breakout I let off the gas near the finish. He blew by me at Warp 10. Wasn't till I got back to the pits found out I won! Same day saw another first timer stand a T straight up. Throttle went over center. After it slammed down he re-fired the engine and took off. Two events I remember over 50 years ago.

 

Still remember it pretty well. The year was 1971 and I had been watching others do it for about a dozen years.Did a smokey 7K burnout (street tires) and a couple of dry hops at about 3K. Knew the staging routine well, but was a bit nervous and slow doing it. Launched at about 5K and was spinning so hard I had to short shift second gear to get any forward motion. The engine layed down big time in third gear and backfired all the way to the finish line. This was a time trial run, and the A/G Willys in the other lane ran a 9 something turning on the win light when I was at about half track. My timeslip read a yucky 16.21 Back in the pits I discovered the throttle linkage had pulled out the front two carb mounting bolts that wern't tightened down good resulting in a huge vacuum leak. Tightened down the carb bolts, opened the headers, and mounted some borrowed slicks. Presto, a 2 second drop on the next pass! Car was my daily driven 64 Comet with a warmed up 302, 4 speed, and 4.11 rear gears. Hooked me so bad, I lived at the dragstrip every weekend for the next 9 or 10 years.

--- Steve ---

 

I bought a single seat belt from B&B auto parts in Renton WA and bolted it in my 55 Buick Special so I could take it to the Puyallup Drag strip (1966) on Saturday night as a couple of friends were taking their cars. Everything went pretty good during tech until the tech guy spotted the 4 barrel carb on my 55 Buick Special 4 door hard top that should have had the small engine and two barrel in it. I got bumped up a class and ended up getting my doors blown off by a guy in the same stock class that was running right on the national record while I was way off the record. It was after i got back from Viet Nam and was stationed at Fort Hood Texas that I raced on a strip again and that one was Little River where I won two rounds in G stock and then got blown away by a 62 Chevy wagon running a 409 with a 4 speed and a back quarter window full of win stickers from NHRA national events.

 

The fall of 1997 I took my 400 sbc powered 65 Buick skylark to Byron Dragway (Rockford Dragway originally) I ran a 13.95 on street tires, only because that track has always been real sticky. I've been hooked ever since.

MELTDOWN DRAGS
JULY 19-20 2014

 

1980, Wichita Int'l Raceway. I'd put together a '67 Chevy II 2-dr sedan with a 350 engine, Powerglide, and a 4.10 12 bolt rearend. Ran a mid-12 second e.t. That was a rush!

 

Here is a picture of my first time down, September 2008 Great Lakes Dragaway, in my Fiat. Yes my first pass ever was in this crazy little car! I have not been the same since.

 

never got around to driving a car down the drag strip until my 60th birthday. My wife gave me a Doug Foley Drag Racing School 3 pass ticket. Here is the final and only full pass I made...................clean shorts were a requirement after this pass...9:84 @127.7mph

 

late bloomer, didn't make my first pass until I was in my 30's
at Bremerton Raceway,
took my 4,000 pound '67 C10 daily driver to a 13.26 at just over 100 mph
no, you never forget

 

First pass in a car to speak of was my dad's 1966 Fairlane.
428 shaved heads 600 solid 4spd. Toploader


I was 16 I think the car went an 11.85. When I got back to the trailer I was trembling so bad my mom was laughing hysterically. It was the biggest adrenalin rush I had ever experienced. To this day I have never done a single drug because of that moment (it could never be matched).
The best part was my grandfather looked over at my dad and said, "Looks like you lost your ride, he can ROW those gears better than you!" I hadn't looked at the slip yet but that was the best pass in the car with that combo.

 

My first pass was in the early 80's at Byron Dragstrip in mom and dad's LTD wagon. What the hell ..... it had a 351 in it after all. I don't remember the time or speed but it was a thrill. The exciting part was the next day when mom took the car out and came back telling my dad it was making a "funny" noise. After he popped the hood and found the aircleaner lid upside down, he found the fresh bottle of white shoe polish in the back seat. It's a funny story some 30+ years later but I have never seen him that mad since.

 

My first trip down the 1320 was in 1999 in a '73 Dodge Dart Swinger in Douglas, WY. I was 20 years old. Pathetic I tell ya. It had a healthy 318 but 2.76 gears. Turned a 14 something. Cracked a valvestem from overrevving the over cammed little mopar that later turned catastrophic. Drove all the way back to Rapid City, SD before I found that out. Needless to say the quest was on to go faster. My heart still pounds like it did the first trip up to the burnout box everytime I go. Matter of fact on our way to the HAMB drags this year I started thinking about staging up and my heart started racing.

 

I remember that car. Do you still have it!

 

My first pass was in 1962 at Minnesota Dragways. They still had a flag man doing the starts. I was riding a Harley-Davidson 165 two stroke single. ET was 24.96 and MPH was 49.99. Believe it or not this was a strip record in that class and got me my first Drag racing trophy. Thus began a lifelong addiction.

 

GV Gordon has it down in Oklahoma. He has run it s few times since then at the HAMB drags. Carl made him put a rollbar in it.

 

My first legitimate drag race was just this past Saturday, October 5th 2013. The sun was warm beating down with little to no breeze. A beautiful view of the ocean off to my left only blocked by the sight of another flathead powered Model-A roadster. A scantly dressed girl holding a flag gave us directions. Both of our motors revving, the flag dropped and we were off. Sand flying who knows how many feet behind us, we both fought for grip. Once the biasply Firestones got their bite it was no holds barred wide open flathead Ford power screaming to the other end of a measured 1/8 mile stretch of beach at Wildwood, New Jersey. The checkerd pylons kept growing closer as I slouched lower and lower to duck out of the wind, all the while pushing the throttle pedal deeper and deeper into the wooden floorboard. Across the line only inches behind the other car at what seemed like an extremely high rate of speed. Let off the gas and coast to a stop, through a drainage ditch and into a sun-bathing area, dodging women in bikinis! Turn around and head back to the starting line with a HUGE smile on my face! More fun then should be allowed!

-Zach

 

Joey! Glad you managed to work Pon-Tanic into the story, I love that car! (and the name)
My first pass was in my Roadster at the HAMB Drags in 2008. It had a original 65 289 straight out of a junkyard Galaxie, 2.79:1 gears and tires I had to air up twice a day. This was also the first time I (or anyone) had driven the car. The farthest I had driven it up until I put it in the burnout box was from the trailer to the staging lanes. I guess I figured it would be far too slow to be dangerous and we had gone over the car before hand. Anyway, I ran a blistering 15.0 @ 101 without getting into 3rd gear and we made 6 runs that day, the best being a 14.6 somehow. I could have made more passes but as I discovered later, the engine had a thick coating of dried sludge from sitting in a bone yard for 10 years and chunks of it were breaking off and clogging the oil filter. I would make 2 runs, change the filter and repeat. Good times!

 

1978 - Lynden Hill 1/8 mile my old Humber powered by a 265 smallblock with a powerglide - I lost

 

I love your honesty!

My first pass was at Fremont in 1985... riding shotgun in my brother's '66 Mustang.

I think we ran mid 15's at 90mph or so.

The first time I piloted a car down the drag strip was at Sacramento Raceway... in my mom's brand new '87 Thunderbird. v8, it ran in the high 16's in the 80mph range. I went one round at a bracket night... and still have the token they gave to the winners so you could get back in line and run again.

I love drag racing.

Sam

 

My 1st pass mid 70's @ the famed Irwindale. A 61 Falcon, jacked up, straight axle, Olds/Pont rear, roller SBC, and clutch turbo. Not knowing shit about burnouts and launch techniques, I think it went low 13's. May as well have been a fuel car....it was THAT exciting.