Quote:
Originally Posted by Billy Nees
Ya know, I can agree with everything that you've said here Ponko. I may not relate to it but I can see your points.
Story-telling time, I got a phone call from a Racer on Friday. He wanted to know if I had any Dime Rocket P.O.S. stuff laying around that he could use or throw together to run this year. Now this Racer has some VERY fast stuff of his own but he doesn't want to run his own stuff because it's "too fast" and he doesn't want to slow it down. He also likes working and tuning his stuff to try and make it faster and now he can't. He wants a P.O.S. that he can tinker with and go as fast as possible without having to worry about it.
Here's the point of this story, the Racer is pushing 80 years old! How long does he plan on racing and who or why is he trying to "save" his combo? He has legitimately worked and spent what it took to get his stuff to this point only to be afraid to go too fast. WHY? IMHO, he should be out enjoying every bit of the fruits of his labor while he still can.
|
Boom!! This right here!! I have been watching this thread waiting for the right moment to chime in. After talking to Daren Poole-Adams (who drives a slow 302 COPO hahahaaha) I’ve been thinking again.
I came from racing heads up NMRA and NMCA. It was a lot of work to stay top of the heap because others were working as hard or harder than I was. Really very gratifying that we were able to hang with some great racers. I had many friends that ran NHRA Stock and Super Stock. I had grown used to a .400 Pro tree and heads up racing. Like Biily’s buddy here I enjoy working on and improving the performance of my race car. After driving a bunch of Daren’s COPO’s I decided to take the plunge and build my own Stocker.
I had several racers tell me to scour the guide sheets for fast combinations. They also said look at combinations that no one else wants to run. Stick cars, Fords or Mopar’s have less racers and some fast combinations.
Any late 60’s to early 70’s Chevy product had a ton of racers and the indexes have been beat up.
I settled on a 2010 to 2014 Cobra-Jet platform. Jesse Kershaw had done a great job getting a lot of combinations in the guide for that platform. I had attended many races watching the racers with these combinations and how they qualified at Indy without an AHFS in place.
I really like the COPO’s but it was a big up front cost for me. The COPOO’s that were raced were getting hit on their index’s within a year of their release. You would need to spend big $$$ to hang with the fast guys.
I went with a stick shifter 4 valve Ford Coyote Combination . I chose a slower combination (2012 302/ 325HP) to get my car sorted out for the first year. That turned into 2 years. After George went -1.21 under at Vegas we are now at 336HP. I was planning on jumping to the 2013 302/350HP combination so that made the decision easy. Now the problem is that that combination is softer than the 325 now 336 deal. I had to slow my car down to try to preserve the index.
Looking at what Mike Fuller and Charlie Downing have done I will run mostly in Super Stock this year. I might be slow there but I can work on my performance without having to slow the car down.
There will always be racers to work harder, spend more money and or time to be fast. With the value of some of the older cars it might be more cost effective to change combinations.
Robin