[Jeff Niceswanger]

In high school I had a 1969 RS Z-28 that John and I had put a crate motor 427/425 L-72 in. Terry Lynn, who was the parts manager at Bowman Chevrolet told us to "Put this in" before we fired it. He handed us a L-88 Camshaft. He said if we bring back the old L-72 shaft he would just trade us even up. A set of 4.88's, Hooker 2 1/4 inch Hooker Headers, Hayes Aluminum Flywheel, Lakewood traction bars and set of 9 inch white dot #8 Firestone 500 slicks and ..... 11.88 @ 116 driving it back and forth to National Trail Raceway on weekends. That set the hook for life.

The class racing part. Blame Joey Wilkes! A few years later we purchased the Green GT Car that Huntzberry now owns. The new pretty blue and black one.

We mentioned to Joey Wilkes that I would like to try SS. We had the car, but running SST. Joey said " We have extras engines ! Try one of ours..". Joey and I worked out a deal, 2000 dollars for four races. I told my brother John about it and he says "what happens if you blow it up". I told John that Joey said not to worry about it,. John wants no part of that... until he hears it for himself, so we head over to Joeys (we both live in the same town). John ask him about it, and Joeys answer was " I've seen him race several times". If its gonna blow up, its gonna blow up on whoever's driving, whether its me or him.. So I'll eat it." So that afternoon we're putting a new SS engine (a 993) in our car. Our first time out was a points race at Quaker City. On the second pass, the rods come flying out of the 993. Joey was about four or five pair behind me, so he was aware the downtime at the track being "from the new guy". Cell phones were just becoming commonplace, and Raymond was sitting in the stands.(Joeys Dad). He called Joey and ask "How bad did Jeff just blow up our motor"? . Joey tells him "how the heck do I know, I'm strapped in the car!" . I'm still at the bottom end, with a huge puddle of oil under the car. My brother shows up, and while looking over the holes in the pan says " Well little brother, your Superstock career was short lived huh?". We were discussing what Joey was going to say, as 2000 didn't even start to cover the damage that I just caused. Joey makes pass, pulls over behind us in the shutdown area, and while walking up and witnessing the oil under the car chuckles "Did that junk Rossler Transmission take a ***** on you! "? LOL. I answered nope.. He says, "Well your gonna be busy tonight". I assumed that he wanted his motor back, and this deal was over. I knew he had a crane in his rig, so I figured we would just pull the broken engine out and head home. To my utter surprise, Joey says " We will have to put my spare in (a 624). He says, its about 15 hundredths faster than that 993... I bout fell over.....So did John. That was 20 years ago, and that weekend had a lot to do with our addictiveness of this class.