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crate78
01-03-07, 10:47 PM
Are there any fellow stock car racers on the board?

I ran late model modifieds for twelve years, and then a cousin of mine (who once drove a super modified) and I owned a winged sprint car for several years. My cousin is now building modified midgets professionally.

I did OK as a driver, but I leaned more to being a builder, owner, and crew chief. I was having back problems about then and I had a hangup that if I got into a serious wreck on the track I might screw my back up worse than it already was. Surgery ultimately fixed it.

Anyone else out there?

crate

Sgt Leprechaun
01-04-07, 05:37 AM
No, can't say that I do, or have, but folks like you who can do this kinda thing (I can't nail two pieces of wood together...the wife is the 'handy' one in the house) always impress the hell out of me. I just never had the 'knack' for this kinda thing...Dad was a professional body shop man for Ford Motor Company for over 40 years...the 'fixit' gene must have skipped me...

Isn't this a rather expensive sport to do? How did you get started?

Ironrider
01-04-07, 05:40 AM
Well....I own a 'bomber' division car...76 Charger 360 inch "y" block, 750 Holley, turns a 21 second lap time on 1/2 mile track. We carry the number 733.That's the hull number for the USS Nevada (...

drumcorpssnare
01-04-07, 08:12 AM
crate78- I drove a Wissota Modified at Thunder Speedway in Gillette, WY for one year, in 1994. Small block Chevy alcohol burner, 2-speed, w/ Ford rear-end. I partnered with another guy, never finished well, and got out due to the cost. Only won a heat...once. Loved the excitement though. Ended up being the track steward for the next two seasons. As a kid, I used to spend every Saturday night at the famed "Oswego Speedway"..."Home of the Supermodifieds." Based on my understanding of how the Caruso family ran Oswego's track, and my over-all sense of 'fair-play', I was offered the track steward position. Loved it. Was able to help implement a lot of positive changes at the Gillette track in my two years there.
drumcorpssnare:usmc:

crate78
01-04-07, 09:19 AM
I got out of late models because of the cost factor compared to how much money you could make. It just didn't add up anymore.

Then my cousin and I were instrumental in starting a sprint car show. We started out with a bunch of old cross leaf sprint cars, wrote the rules to keep costs down, and went out to have fun without worrying about making money. The show caught on, the crowds picked up bigtime, sponsors kicked in, and within a couple of years there were $30,000 engines running, and those of us who started the show and didn't feel like investing that much to stay competitive said to heck with it.

The rules we ran under with our late models were simple. Stock sheet metal within the last five model years, (wheel cutouts OK), engine same make as sheet metal, wheelbase commesurate with sheet metal, and the front spark plug no farther back than two inches behind a line across the upper ball joints. We all ran quick-change rear ends, although it wasn't required. Beyond that, it was pretty much "run watcha brung".

The rules pretty much made Camaros standard equipment, although there were some Mustangs and Firebirds running. I built a Plymouth Duster off the Chrysler kit car blueprints for a guy. I also built a number of Camaros and sold them. I built them from scratch. They started out as a standard length of 2"X4" rectangular tubing laying on the floor of my shop.

Maybe more later. I gotta get to work.

crate

kydevildogmark
01-04-07, 12:29 PM
Hey crate 78 raced karts when i was younger and that started it all. I love everything to do with racing and would probably gice my left arm to drive a racecar. A friend of mine that i work with here in Ky races karts so it was natural that we would be friends. He wants to move up to sprints being that he is from indiana. Of course i want late models. But we both are absolutely engulfed in racing and wouldn't change for the world. I would love to just love to sit down and pick your brain about racing.:marine:

crate78
01-05-07, 09:01 AM
I was always into chassis. It's simple enough to build a 350 Chevy engine that will put out 500 to 550 horsepower. The trick is getting it around the track as fast as you can.

I have a book somewhere that goes through a full page and a half of mathematical computations to pick one spring for one corner of the car. The Camaros I built were almost completely fabricated by hand, with the exception of using Olds 98 lower "A" arms and spindles, and a heavily modified Camaro sub frame from the firewall forward. From the firewall back, it was all fabricated from scratch. I pioneered a two point, coil spring rear suspension on the Camaros that got a better bite coming off the corners.

I always worked for simplicity and dependability. My theory was always that you don't need a car that's spectacular one night and laid up the next. All you need is a good old workhorse that will hang in there and run with the top half dozen cars show after show.

I better get to work. If I get started on this, I'll be here all day.

crate

kydevildogmark
01-05-07, 09:38 AM
I agree I would rather have a car that is consistently in the top 5 then a car that is wild one week and mild the next.Did you run the ford 9 bolt rearend in it? Most people in street stock run around 358 . THe big thing now for the late model is a 383 or a 409 i think.

crate78
01-05-07, 01:44 PM
We ran aftermarket quick change rear ends, usually with a final ratio of somewhere around 5:2 to 6:0. (I forget the exact numbers off hand) Sometimes you change gears several times during one show. If you're in an early heat race on a sloppy track, you can run a fairly "tall" ratio to cut down on wheel spin, then if you're in the trophy dash you can go way deep on gears and really turn it on for a half dozen laps. For the feature, you can go somewhere in between, depending on track conditions.

And from one track to another. I never felt comfortable turning a 350 Chevy engine over about 7500 rpm, so whatever track we were running I usually geared for the feature so we'd peak at 7500 at the end of the straights. I had a whole notebook full of stored data to draw on. A lot of guys ran big block engines, but I never did. As I said I was into chassis' and that extra 200 pounds in the front of the car makes quite a difference in handling. We beat an awful lot of big blocks fair and square with a 350.

Gotta run. Maybe more later,

crate

drumcorpssnare
01-05-07, 02:16 PM
crate78- I was never much into the technical part of racing. I just strapped in, put my right foot to the floor, and turned left!
But I remember talking to an engineer from Chevrolet years ago about small block vs. big block. In a nut-shell here's what he told me. The small block was developed to carry a heavy work load at low to med. RPM's. It's an engine you can "lug down" without hurting it too much. The big block was designed to run like a "raped ape." Lighter load, but wide open throttle. Lug a big block too much, and it will fail...soon.
I know that virtually everybody runs a big block at Oswego Speedway. A small block would be lapped and the end of "lap 1."
You mentioned a cousin who used to race "Supers." When and where did he race? We had one show up in WY when I was track steward. The guy asked if he could run against the modifieds. I polled all the Mod. drivers, and they said, "Bring it on!" I told 'em all, "You'll be s o r r y..." Sure enough, this guy and his "Super" absolutely smoked the field! These Modified drivers stood around afterwords, scratchin' their heads, wonderin'..."What the heck just happened?" LOL

My racing partner used to tell me, "Run that puppy like a scalded dog! Just try to keep it 'tire-side' down!"

drumcorpssnare:usmc:

kydevildogmark
01-05-07, 03:54 PM
If your toe aint tickling the block then you ain't running her hard enough. I big block is nice to have for extra uuummmpphhhh but if you can't get it to the ground then you can't go anywhere

crate78
01-05-07, 06:37 PM
Must have been one Chevrolet engineer's opinion. My experience leaned toward the opposite. Seemed like my buddies who were running big blocks had them torn down every couple of weeks, and there were several times we ran a small block the entire season without doing much more than changing oil and setting the tappets every couple of weeks.

I'm not trashing big blocks. Quite the opposite. The 454 Chevy is my all time favorite engine. Along the way, I had several crew cab duallies with 454's in them and I found out the 454 is like a diesel farm tractor. You have to work it to keep it healthy. That's why they had limited success in passenger cars. In a passenger car, you could never legally run them as hard as they needed to be run.

Way, way back when, a track at Hastings, Nebraska had a 307 cubic inch limit. Most of the Chevy guys ran 283's. I took a 283 block, bored it .0125, and put 327 pistons in it. It figured out to 301.44 cubic inches. We'd turn that little screamer 8,000 rpm and it loved it. Several years later, Chevy did basically the same thing by putting a 283 crank in a 327 block, only they called it a 302. They didn't like me in Hastings.

Hastings was one of the tracks where my cousin ran his modified. He still has a four column picture off the sports page of the Hastings newspaper. He's in his modified with the car in mid air, nose down, with another car going through under him. When you run open wheel, sooner or later your're going to get in some flight time.

More later.

crate

kydevildogmark
01-08-07, 02:38 PM
You put a big block on a slick track with a small block and you are gonna see a race. Don't get me wrong big block full of torque but you put the cranking to a small block. and it will do the job