Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Biebel
Modified was great but lets talk about the bad side....costs and breakage. Everytime something new came out you had to have it. Driveline breakage was pretty bad and engine breakage could also put you out of action quickly. We raced a car out of our shop in C/SM. I recall one run at Maple Grove where we broke the clutch, fixed it in a hurry and the car wouldn't move after replacing the clutch. The trans was also broken and the rear had damage as well we later found out. Folded the splines on some axles........took the motor out and apart practically after every race to puff it up. Other guys that had machine work done at our shop had all the same stories. I recall one guy built his own engine for D/MP and he was a very competetive car.....the engine blew up on T/K's dyno and that ended that racers drive to continue. Another guy was the class winner from the E-Town SummerNationals and won pretty regularly with it. He blew his engine and sold the car.....My friend bought it to replace his Camaro.....becasue the Novas were better? When we went to pick it up an exhaust valve head fell out of one of the headers.....The guy said....."so thats where that went!" The costs were too high for the average guy to keep up with. I loved the category but I saw a ton of breakage, Only the top guys had all the best stuff to try and limit that breakage.....
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As much fun as this thread is. Rich, you're dead on. These cars were alot of fun but, honestly, they took buckets full of money to run back in their day. We can wax poetic but if you were resurrect this kind of a class today! Short of getting some of the stimulus money, I just don't know many people that could field one of these cars.
What made many of them really neat, they weren't terribly sophsticated. They did have killer motors with 4 (and later 5) speed transmissions. Many of the E-F-G (both MP & Gas) cars were heavy, as others have said, very breakage prone. The chassis weren't trick by todays standards. Short of having the springs moved inward, most stockers today are more trick than the average modified car was 30 years ago. I was around some of the local cars in the early 70's and they were downright crude.
Have to admit, when I was a pup, modified was a helluva show.
Robert Swartz