Found an old pic of my '69 Camaro

[fintstone]

Hemi heads maybe?

[rfuerst911sc]

It was 1974 and I cruised by the local Chevy dealer . Spotted a white Camaro convertible with orange stripes . It really grabbed my attention . So I stopped to look at it and a salesman came out to chat .

It had a hugger interior ( I think ) and a V8 with aftermarket headers and a 4 speed . Not sure what year the car was but I think a 68 or 69 . Being 16 years old when I asked if I could drive it I was shot down 👎 .

No problem I drove home in my car and asked my mom hey you wanna go for a ride ? 😁 Returned to the dealership and was granted a test drive . My mom had no clue what a beast of a car we were taking out. With the top down we had a blast and I remember chirping the tires in the first three gears .

Didn't buy it I was way out of my league but wow what a car . Would love to own it today .

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by fintstone

Hemi heads maybe?

Fint for the win!

Yup, hemi heads for the small block Chevy. Made "at home, in his spare time". He made no more than a couple, maybe three sets (supposedly). He was employed by Chevy at the time as some "head of performance development" or something like that, but it's said that he made these in his own shop.

Interestingly, they are sand castings, not billet as we see in this modern age of CNC machining. So he had masters made around which the sand could be packed. I'm not sure anyone knows what happened to them. Imagine if someone made these today - should be easy to do, with the afore mentioned CNC technology available.

These were said to make darn near 500 hp on the 302. Not bad for the late 1960's.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

The cross ram 302 was indeed meant for Trans Am racing. Interestingly, though, when I see old Trans Am cars at vintage races, they all seem to be running single four barrel carbs. Here are a few from our local races many years ago. You can kind of see in the Sam Posey Challenger that it's a single four barrel, and it's really obvious in the Jerry Grant (ex Penske) AMX


Here is an interesting one (not my photo). Small block Chevy fans will immediately recognize that something is afoot. Smokey ran this motor for a short time, can't remember which year, but it finally got banned. Not "production based". See if you can figure out why...

I'm going to guess that a large single 4bbl is simpler (more reliable) and makes enough/as much power as a more complex setup with two 4bbls would.

Interesting heads!

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by masraum

I'm going to guess that a large single 4bbl is simpler (more reliable) and makes enough/as much power as a more complex setup with two 4bbls would.

Interesting heads!

MOPAR ran an even more complex setup in their "Six Pack", three two barrel carbs. I think Pontiac beat them to the punch with their early 389 Tri-Power, and Chevy used it on the L88 427. Interestingly, MOPAR did not sell a 302 powered anything, their homologation car had a 340 Six Pack in it, the T/A Challenger and the AAR 'Cuda. They had to de-stroke it to make the 5.0 liter limit.



I'm pretty sure that you are right with regards to both simplicity and power. Modern single four barrel setups flow very, very well (thanks, NASCAR), and provide all of the CFM's a high revving 302 would ever need.

The dead giveaway on Smokey's hemi heads is the exhaust port spacing. Rather than the two center ports on each side being virtually siamesed, they are evenly spaced, like on a big block, or on a Chrysler Hemi.

[LJ851]

My first car right after I bought it.





And the car I picked up this year.





I paid 5X the amount of the first car for the second one !

[herr_oberst]

This car belongs to one of my oldest friends. He's owned it since high school, it was born Garnet Blue, repainted to a Dusk Blue at some point and most recently a complete rotisserie respray to Garnet Red. Completely street legal, but mostly a drag car. I don't recall what his best time down the 1/4 mile is but it's fast and quick.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

MOPAR ran an even more complex setup in their "Six Pack", three two barrel carbs. I think Pontiac beat them to the punch with their early 389 Tri-Power, and Chevy used it on the L88 427. Interestingly, MOPAR did not sell a 302 powered anything, their homologation car had a 340 Six Pack in it, the T/A Challenger and the AAR 'Cuda. They had to de-stroke it to make the 5.0 liter limit.



I'm pretty sure that you are right with regards to both simplicity and power. Modern single four barrel setups flow very, very well (thanks, NASCAR), and provide all of the CFM's a high revving 302 would ever need.

The dead giveaway on Smokey's hemi heads is the exhaust port spacing. Rather than the two center ports on each side being virtually siamesed, they are evenly spaced, like on a big block, or on a Chrysler Hemi.

Yep, I'm aware of the Mopar 6 pack. And the "Tri-Power" GTOs are pretty legendary. My dad knew a guy that had a 427/435 '67 'vette with 3x2. They did take it to the strip. I remember my dad talking to me about tuning the carbs to get the best 1/4 runs when I was a kid. Chevy also put 3x2 on the 348 (predecessor of the 409). I think they went to 2x4 on the 409hp/409.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

This car belongs to one of my oldest friends. He's owned it since high school, it was born Garnet Blue, repainted to a Dusk Blue at some point and most recently a complete rotisserie respray to Garnet Red. Completely street legal, but mostly a drag car. I don't recall what his best time down the 1/4 mile is but it's fast and quick.

Very cool. Those big aluminum 572's are the schizz. I love the fact that someone makes the fender badge "572" that looks just like the original "350" and such. Subtle badass...

[herr_oberst]

You have a good eye for detail Jeff, but that badge is actually airbrush art. I'm sure someone makes the chrome badges, but I like his solution even better.

Here's a pic of the interior. As you can tell by the Lenco sticks, it's an old build. He's working on a Vega (with a Monza clip) ex-Pro Stock car that'll use a Liberty shifter, or whatever is trick by the time he gets it done. (It's a long build. We're all getting older and a little slower).

[Jeff Higgins]

Ah - fooled me, I thought it was one of the metal badges I've seen on other cars. I like this one better too...

Gotta love the old Lenco boxes! I had a chance to drive a buddy's old Pro Stock Vega in the early 1980's, when I was still racing my Super Bee. That was so cool - one stick per gear. What a lot of guys probably don't know is that they were actually two speed boxes, and we just "stacked" them end to end to add ratios.

The AA/FC I've mentioned here a couple of times alternately ran one (just one) as a low gear - high gear setup, and a straight through high gear only. Pretty versatile, tough little tranny. Cool to see someone still running one. I'm admittedly a bit out of touch - do modern Pro Stocks still run them? I know the fuel cars are all high gear only these days.

[herr_oberst]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

do modern Pro Stocks still run them? I know the fuel cars are all high gear only these days.

Liberty or G-Force is the tranny to use these days... Clutchless, sequential shifting, you just pull back a single lever to shift through the gears.

(Lencos are a pain in the ass on the street!)

[Shaun @ Tru6]

This pic is from a guy who wanted to buy my Trans Am wheels but then his wife wouldn't let him. He races the car out in CA.

[RANDY P]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

This car belongs to one of my oldest friends. He's owned it since high school, it was born Garnet Blue, repainted to a Dusk Blue at some point and most recently a complete rotisserie respray to Garnet Red. Completely street legal, but mostly a drag car. I don't recall what his best time down the 1/4 mile is but it's fast and quick.

I can feel my mullet grow when I look at that thing. Bad ass car

rjp

[Maltese Falcon]

Smokey was a master of the "Mouse" engine...those are def not LT series heads!¡ Bill Jenkins "Grumpy" was a quick one too.

[Jeff Higgins]

The difference between Smokey and Grumpy was that Smokey won on a level playing field. They both cheated, of course, but Smokey was far more creative.

Grumpy only started winning in Pro Stock when he took advantage of a major rules change in the NHRA. Before he built his first small block Vega, running his oddball 331ci motor, the NHRA had the same weight rules for all makes and engines in Pro Stock. Seven pounds per cubic inch of displacement. Under those rules, the Hemi cars were unbeatable. Sox and Martin, Dick Landy, the Motown Missile, etc.

Then the NHRA changed the weight rules. Hemis remained at seven pounds per cubic inch. Big block Chevy "Rat" motors and Ford "Semi Hemi" motors were allowed 6.75 pounds per cubic inch. Wedge motors, like the small block Chevy, were allowed only 6.50 pounds per cubic inch. A huge, unfair disparity that soon lead to the dominance of cars like Grumpy's short wheelbase Vegas.

"Dyno" Don Nicholson tried a bit different approach, accepting the weight penalty (6.75 pounds per cubic inch) to run the canted valve ("semi Hemi") 351 Cleveland based motor in his Pinto. Gapp and Rousch (the same Jack Rousch of NASCAR success) did the same, but eventually discovered the advantage of the long wheelbase, and switched to a four door Maverick, of all things (affectionately known as the "taxicab").

The other thing Grumpy did, for the first time ever, was order a "body in white", an unfinished basic welded "tub", from Chevy. Everyone else was still buying complete cars from dealerships and converting them to Pro Stock cars. Grumpy essentially built a tube frame race car inside of an empty Vega shell. Much like BMW tried to do in GT racing 20 years ago, with their purpose built M3 tube frame race car built inside a welded up tub, which got banned pretty much before it was even allowed to race as a "GT" class car. Full-on factory effort, but Grumpy had done this 30 years earlier, in his own damn shop in Pennsylvania.

In contrast to ALMS and IMSA, NHRA was desperate to break the stranglehold that MOPAR had on Pro Stock. NASCAR did the same, by the way, by introducing different sized restrictor plates for the various motor designs, with Hemis getting the smallest, of course. So they let Grumpy get away with his tube frame race car inside of a Vega shell. Smokey, on the other hand, never caught a break from either USAC nor NASCAR, so he had to be far more creative in his cheating.

In the end, both were major players in a very "golden age" of American motorsport. There was still enough "wiggle room" to cheat at the highest level, and both did so unabashedly. One was relentlessly dogged by the organizations with which he competed, one was more or less encouraged. I loved watching both.

[speeder]

Didn't Grumpy win with a Camaro and maybe another Chevy earlier in the '60s, though? Before the Vegas? He was an amazing engine builder, (as was Smokey and Keith Black), those were some great times in drag racing.

And 3 deuce engines are great when set-up right. I had friends with 440 6-packs as well as one with a AAR 'cuda back in the early '70s, they were great on the street because they could baby-foot them and get okay gas mileage using only the center 2-barrel if they kept the revs low. as soon as you passed about 2500 rpm, though, it was party time and of course very hard for a red-blooded young guy to show any restraint.

[Jeff Higgins]

Oh, absolutely - Grumpy won with a bunch of other cars before he went into Pro Stock. He ran both Cameros and Chevelles in classes like SS/B, SS/C and the like. The SS/B Camero ran a 396. If he ran a 427, he would have been in SS/A, facing the Hemi cars of the same cast of characters. So, he avoided that by running the smaller motors in the lower classes. SS/A was absolutely dominated by the Hemi Cudas and Darts in those days, so no one even tried with anything else.

Everyone ran Super Stock, which theoretically had classes all the way down to SS/Z. Where any given car was placed was dependent upon the manufacturers' claimed horsepower and weight, with the lightest and most powerful in SS/A, which was effectively the precursor to Pro Stock. Super Stock ran (still runs) a handicap system based upon each classes' national record. During eliminations, it's like bracket racing, but using the class record as the handicap. If you run faster than the class record, you are disqualified. In the final, however, you start on the handicap, but you can break the class record and establish a new one.

It's a real game that they play. The idea has always been to find a class with a "soft" class record. It makes it easier to get through eliminations if your car can beat the record. You should see the wailing and gnashing of teeth, however, when two cars with "soft" records line up for a final. I had seen guys bury their class record by two or three tenths, thereby rendering useless every other car in their class, and raising the ire of those cars' owners. Essentially, the trick was to have a car that you could put many different motors into, and move classes as required. That's what Grumpy and everyone else did.

Pro Stock, in contrast, was straight "heads up" racing, with no handicap. Everyone was in the same class. It started out with SS/A cars that were now allowed to swap cams, port heads, increase compression, run any intake, etc. There was no "Pro Stock" class until late in the 1960's, maybe even early 1970's.

It was thought that with "open" cams, intake, and heads that the Chevy Rat and Ford Semi-Hemis could compete with the MOPARS, where they had not been able to do so in SS/A. It only took a few years to figure out that simply wan't going to happen. The Hemis, on a level playing field, continued to dominate. So, enter the weight breaks for everything else. That's the only way Grumpy was able to win with his Vegas.