Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

Bought a quadrajet from carb builder x and I was told to buy from carb builder y. X was slower front half and Y was slower in back half. Same ET.
Take the rubber seal off where hood meets firewall. Found out it wasn't legal. Put seal on and it went faster.
Had square lipped seal on brake calipers. Put the round type seal on and have less drag. No ET gain.
I quit at 8 converters for one motor combo.
Monte has more frontal area then Camaro so you need more gear. Went from 5.67 to 5.86 nothing gained but a couple more RPM's at finish line.

Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

Snake oil, fancy plugs and wires and yes those damn converter things:rolleyes: Best advice always came from grumpy old grey haired guys :eek: Great topic

Kevin

Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

So from anybody in the pits? :O

Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

I've learned just as much from what doesn't work as from what does work. If you don't try things you don't advance.

Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

That's the best post in this thread!

Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

Exactly!

Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

Recommendation from a highly respected manufacturer, for an uncontrollable "square" intake cam lobe. Then further recommendation for "glass-like" tool steel retainers. Then further recommendation for beehive springs with smaller "glass-like" tool steel retainers.
A yes, these recommendations have kept my car in pieces for years !

Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

hi, I noticed mention concerning rings earlier, also the" trick of the week camshaft" . seen lots of those, lol

Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

Best advice always came from grumpy old grey haired guys

Wait - what- you have to have hair?

Give up Rusty just finish bolting it together and go!

hahaha

Re: Most expensive, least helpful and useless advice
 

This is somewhat of a variation on your question but over the years I've learned a lot about what you can get away with by looking at various things on race cars that have been in my shop that I never thought would have worked, usually things that I thought were way too flimsy to survive. An example was an 8 second full bodied car that had 1310 ujoints, a 3" alum driveshafts and a 10 bolt Chevy rearend, all with a ton of runs and no significant breakage. I think what happens in a lot of cases is a bracket car that progressively gets faster and lightweight parts don't get upgraded. Nice to learn lessons from someone elses torture testing.

That being said, I have a boatload of 'good idea' parts in the corner that didn't pan out. As most class racers have exhausted the easy performance improvement ideas, it comes down to a certain amount of educated trial and error. Someone once told me that at this point, if you get $1 worth of performance for every $3 spent, you're doing pretty good.

Jim Caughlin
SS 6019