long boring story about two kids in the 70s

[grumpyvette]

It’s the small things that add up!


This is a long boring story but it may help some of you gentlemen, if only to bring back a few memories, (all this was done back in the mid 70s)

I was talking to one of the OLDER guys I hang out with about cars we used to own, and the discussion came around to two camaros that LARRY (a friendly rival) and I used to own, now LARRY hung out with a different group than I did but we saw each other at the track constantly and had some of the same friends ,he had a 375hp 396 in his 1968 camaro and I had an almost identical 375 hp 396 in my 1969 camaro, weight was within a few lbs and both had 4.11 posi rear gears and a 4 speed manual transmissions.
We purchased the cars within days of each other and it took only hours before we wanted to see whos car was the fastest, and being evenly matched at least on paper, ¦a trip to the track showed LARRYS was faster by 0.120
Now LARRY wanted to stay faster so he installed a L88 cam, and hooker headers, LARRY, never bothered to check clearances, but surprisingly he got away with the cam swap, now this was of course the start of a competition between us.
I did not at the time have the $$$$ to pay for similar equipment /modifications, but not wanting to be slower than LARRY, I pulled my heads and personally ported the heads and intake, which consisted mostly of removing casting flash, and smoothing and blending, port walls, and smoothing and polishing the combustion chamber edges and narrowing the area in the ports supporting the valve guides. then having a 5 angle valve job, and having the heads milled .010 and better valve springs installed clearanced for a .650 lift, and added a 1 inch tall 4 hole carb spacer
Net result
LARRY was now 0 .35 faster in the ¼ mile

Now I had access to a welder and good SKILLED friends who could weld and I had a 9 qt baffled oil pan made following directions in a stock car magazine article, and a custom windage tray/screen installed,(lots of fit and try with cardboard mock ups before actually building the pan helped here and luckily cost me next to ZIP)
Net result
LARRY was now still 0 .35 faster in the 1/4 mile
I then had a set of custom traction bars made up and installed, and air shocks, and moved the battery to the trunk.
Net result
LARRY was now still 0 .15 faster in the 1/4 mile
LARRY decided I was getting too close to his ¼ mile times, and pulled the L88 cam and installed the ZL1 cam, which, because LARRY never bothered to check clearances, or in this case change lifters,he promptly had several lobes go bad on the new cam mostly due to spring bind issues that he failed to understand or check.
LARRY was now running really badly in the ¼.
LARRY thought he had blown up his engine and traded it plus some money for a 454 from a salvage yard from a nearly new corvette wreck,(sneaky S.O.B. told everyone it was his 396 rebuilt) and re-installed his rectangle port intake and L88 cam on the oval port engine, but then, at the track he was very surprised to find his camaro was actually slightly slower than before???
Even back then I knew that the cam needed to match the engine compression
Now Id been wheeling and dealing, doing odd jobs and working overtime and swapping parts with my friends and finally had the cash necessary to have the local machine shop install a 4.25 inch stroke crank, (one of the very first Id even heard of let alone seen) in a 427 4 bolt block, Id gotten in a parts swap deal, bored .030 oversize with 13.7:1 pistons installed in my car using my previously ported heads and a set of headers, frame link bars, and a 6 point cage, light fiberglass hood, plus I had a custom 3" exhaust that had two glass pack mufflers bolted directly to the header collectors and exited just in front of the rear tires and FOLLOWING LARRYS,(sneaky S.O.B.s LEAD,) I told everyone it was MY 396 ID had rebuilt)yeah I spent money on tubing the rear wheel wells and slicks, Larry bought much smaller slicks and used the stock wheel wells, and yeah Im skipping lots of the small mods in this brief story.
(Remember this was when SUNOCO 260 HIGH octane gas was like 39 cents a GALLON and available almost everywhere
LARRY swapped to the tri-power intake that came on the corvette, figuring it was the mis-matched intake ports that were the major problem, with his engine combo, and installed the L88 cam again
I installed CRANE CAMS VERSION of a ZL1 cam AFTER talking to CRANE about my combo, and having the machine shop cut 0.120 extra clearance in the pop-up pistons I needed to maintain a 0.100 on both intake and exhaust and swapping to aftermarket long slot roller rockers That I was told were MANDATORY (this was B.S.) but not bad advice
Result my 1969 camaro was now almost 1.5 seconds faster in the ¼ than Larrys due to his lack of traction and lower power, and keep in mind we were BOTH doing lots of other mods I did not mention, like better ignitions ETC.
And I was LOVING the results
keep in mind a NEW 454 crate engine cost something like $1400 back then and I was only making about $130 a week back then, and I did not post the 1/4 mile times because by todays standards we were real slow, but keep in mind the PRO STOCK cars were just barely into the 9s then and we got into the very low 11s to high mid tens

BTW

http://www.survivalmotorsports.com/Chev ... Cams2.html

has a very good selection of flat tappet big block cams that closely duplicate the factory and some popular aftermarket cams at excellent prices

Part Number SS4242
(makes a good hot muscle car cam in many combos)

Part Number SS4264= L88 cam O.E. #3928911
(want that lumpy idle in a 11:1 cpr manual trans 454)

Part Number SS4265= ZL1 cam O.E. #3959180
(KILLER IN A HIGH CPR 496 stroker, matched to the right combo)

 

[Friar-Tuck]

Excellent Grump!
We will be waiting for your full memoirs.
Look out Smokey, you may have sold a bunch of Best dam garage in town..

GrumpyVette,
The Story of an All American Hotrodder...

Tuck\o/

 

[joegagan]

great story, grumpy, not the least bit boring ( unless you count the cylinder boring)

i have a very similar story, happened between 87 and 90 , different time, similar results.

i was a huge GM fan as my grandpa worked at the chevy plant in janesville wisconsin for many years. when the horsepower wars started heating up again in the mid to late 80s there was no way i would ever consider a mustang, had to be a firebird or camaro all the way. but in 87, the average 5 litre mustang came equipped with a 5 speed and weighed on average 400 -500 pounds less than the average iroc or TA, which GM saddled with automatics 9 to 1 due to customer demand, higher profit margin and less warranty costs with no burned clutches in the warranty period.

well, i knew the way around this dilemma: for 87, pontiac rejoined the budget hot muscle game with the re-introduction of the formula package, priced similar to a stripper 5 litre mustang. i shopped salesmen til i found one who was actually excited about special ordering me a lightweight firebird with the 305 tpi and 5speed, first year for manual tpi cars.

the only other options were ws6 susp, which required limited slip and rear discs. two tone delete, stereo, and no a/c rounded out the package.
the car cost 12,700 out the door which was easily 4 to 6 k less than the irocs and T/As were going for that year.
after ordering, the 6 week wait was excruciating. early march of 87 brought the phone call that the car had arrived, i called off the rest of the work day!

it was fast, agile and gave a good race to many a stock mustang and camaro. but of course after my first try at the drags i wanted more. and the modded mustangs were starting to get much faster.
being a broke young father at the time, my buddies dave and john convinced me that for a couple hundred bucks we could port the stock heads/ exh manifolds, raise the compression ratio with thinner head gaskets, bump the lift a little with 1.6 rockers, homemade aircleaner ducting along with some mickey thompson sticky street drag tires, my qtr mile times dropped a full second.
my mustang buddies were spending tons of money on tunnel rams with the wrong cams, blowing stuff up with nitrous, other silly mods that were not carefully matched.

dave john and i spent more time researching and learning sometimes than we did wrencihing, the naysayers called me 'mr charts and graphs' as they laughed at me. but the laughing stopped on race day.

the car later went through a full teardown and rebuild , eventually reaching low 12s NA on mostly stock (but ported) tpi stuff, pretty wild for '93. now, 21 years later it still races every weekend as an SCCA racer, it has been a race car all its life thanks to my ordering a special lightweight car. i will post the 355 buildup in a later thread to illustrate what the early days of modding TPI were like for those of us in new mexico and arizona.
thanks grumpy.