[Evan Smith]

Jim,

Glenn and his partneer Henry Kunz run one of the baddest G/SA 350 Novas in the country, with a carburetor and a 'glide. Henry, Bruce Noland, Steve Ficcaci, myslef and a few others have been tightly packed in Jr. Stock. At times I've had the fastest car and at times it has been the other guys, all on an 11.0-lb. break.

Glenn and Bruce have been 10.70s and can run with my Ford all day long. Ficcaci isn't far behind, neither are a few 340 Mopars, such as Dusty Lowel and Mark Dickerson. Fact is, Bernie is right, EFI is not magic, the air goes in and we have to tune the fuel and the timing curves just like anyone with a carburetor. Of course a fuel injector will atomize fuel very efficiently, but most throttle bodies are small compared to some of the carburetors. Anyone with a carburetor can purcahse a MSD 7 ignition and have a tunable timing map and even do cylinder-to-cylinder timing. One could easily argue that EFI is better for all-around performance and drivability (cold-start, fuel economy, etc.), but most drag cars operate in a small rpm window where EFI and carburetion is actually quite equal. I've dyno tested many engines with EFI vs carburetor and they always seem to be close. And like Bernie stated, there is a lot more that can go wrong with an EFI car.

Most EFI engines are better because of improved manifold and cylinder head port design. But what is NHRA to do, give everyone their own class so everyone in our PC world can have a trophy? My car has EFI, but is 20 years old so i'd hardly call it state of the art. If the car came from Detroit it should not be segregated. Had segregation not occured years ago the problem cars would have straightened themselves out much quicker. Carbureted cars have had many new parts become legal such as the intake for the 396 that most guys are picking up .08 to a tenth with. How is an EFI car supposed to combat that? I'm not picking on Chevy guys, I love the original muscle cars and know full well that they need superseded parts to keep going. If anyone thinks that the superseded parts aren't better than original then get off the drugs. Let me add that engines from the Big 3 are only going to get better. The technology will improve and the cars will go fast. Let them run and let the AHFS sort it out. If new technology is better then go in that direction.

Let's get real, this is Class racing. There is no way to make thousands of combinations 100% equal, however, the more heads-up runs that occur, the more the AHFS system will work. There will be less babysiting of combinations and less sandbagging. All we need to do is count every run to prevent the sandbagging.

Evan