Ford Falcon's Oh Yes,
My mom had a 61 Ford Falcon with the 144 cu six and an automatic in it when I first got my drivers license. It only took me about six months to blow it up, and that was just on the street.
So my dad and I put a 170 Cu in six in it and that was soooo much better, but it only took me about three months to toast that engine, so Dad said, let's go the bone yard and see what we can find..
It was an econoline van with a 289, and we got the engine, tranny, and rear end for about $150 (which I had to work off since I was the one blowing engines..) After a couple of weeks, we had the shock towers cut, the firewall backed up in places, and the whole thing running. We ran stock headers out to two resonators, added some bigger tires on back, and there she was in all here glory. A light green 61 Ford Falcon that looked pretty stock but could smoke em when asked. We named her the Tin Lizzard.
I was put into I/SA at the local track (in 1964) and did a nice job of bringing the trophies home for a few Sundays. Then I was protested... At the time, I told them it wasn't my fault they put me in I/SA, they just did. At that track tech consisted of them asking you what year falcon is that. I said 1961, they said I/SA.. Sounded OK to me. But once they opened the hood, and saw the v8, the said, Oh, now you need to run C/MP.
My first and only run was up against a nasty sounding GTO. I launched, got him out of the hole, and was about at half track, when I heard him go by me.... I am not sure I even saw him, but I sure heard him go by me, and it seemed like forever before I tripped the timer. I did 15.5 or so, and he went about 14 flat. OK enough of C/MP for me....
So I decided to just crew for my buddy who had 1964 mustang convertible that had been run so hard it was super loose, and although it was rated at 210HP with a 4 bbl, his was just one of those engines where everything was just loose enough to make really good horsepower, and just tight enough to stay together. so we won a few races, and had some fun with that car.
But the real point is that Tech was pretty much up to the local tracks and some did a better job of others as to actually determining whether or not you were good in a particular class or not.
And being young and stupid, you didn't ever try to tell them anything, because a number of them would gladly tell you that you were young and stupid...After all, some of them had graduated high school a couple of years before you..
Anyway that is how it was at our local tracks. The good news was that we had three tracks in easy driving distance, so we could decide which one to invade based on how much gas money we had, and how much we really wanted to win that day.
David
The New Hemi Guy
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Body Science