Ford First "Stocker" Into The Eights

[Ed Wright]

Originally Posted by Alex Denysenko

You just proved my point exactly Ed.
Thank you.
Just goes to show that GM under rated it at least 30 HP.
Ask Monte Howard, or Mike Walter who were very accomplished stocker racers in their own right how they felt about the LT-1 HP when they hit the scene.
GM had their day in the S/SS sun for a long time when they were supplying NHRA with bags of cash and vehicles.

Alex, put an out-of-the-vehicle (or GM replacement crate) LT1 on an engine dyno and you will find it won't make anywhere near it's NHRA rating. It takes a real freak for a stick F body to break 250 hp at the tires. Some of the performance is the car. 101" wheel base and a lot of engine set back. They will hook in a car wash. There is a lot of power hidden in those "stock" aluminiun heads. :-) That's one reason the SS LT1 hasn't gotten more power added in this many years. The SS heads aren't all THAT much better. Can you imagine what a set of SS ported 5.9l DP heads would be?

[Jason]

Originally Posted by D.Johns

...Because of the CJs many of my mustang friends are also looking at getting into racing here(and not just CJs to race but other models)...

Wrong!!!! Your Mustang friends will not be allowed to race their new non-CJ Mustangs in stock or S/S. Thats right, the regular Mustang anyone can buy new at any Ford dealership and be driven on the street is NOT legal to race in stock or S/S. Be sure you warn them to look in the classguide before they start making plans to race any new Mustang other than a CJ.

[Michael Beard]

Originally Posted by RJDUDEK

Q. That 4wide track has a 1% down hill after 1/2 way? True.or False.

What the percentage is, I don't know, but the track is visibly downhill. (look at the brown wall between the stands and the track) When it rained last year, the water ran down the track. (pretty smart, actually!)

[Ed Wright]

As Larry Hill said, fix the bogus HP ratings and nobody will have a problem. Neat cars, just in the wrong classes.

They are the easy button for slow guys or new guy that doesn't know much to suddenly be fast, right? LOL

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by D.Johns

The NHRA website and even ESPN2 actually put something up about it in the middle of all the nitro/pro guys. That is some media attention for Stock Eliminator that some always complain the class lacks. The cars have brought more attention to the sport and new interest in cars being built to compete. I'm building a 2013 CJ to compete I never considered it before the CJs showed up. Because of the CJs many of my mustang friends are also looking at getting into racing here(and not just CJs to race but other models). Like them or not they are here to stay. So stop complaining on the Internet and get to work on your race car. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. If it was easy everyone would do it and you would still have the 5% that would rise to the top. This isn't only true in racing but in life. 95% of the people are just along for the ride.

Yeah. Some media attention. The fans were all gone Friday night, and Saturday night, when Stock was actually on the track. Yeah, it got all of about a minute of TV time, and it might get a couple of sentences, or maybe a couple of paragraphs. That no one who is not already following class racing will ever see. For all we've been told about "media attention" and "good for the class" for four years, we haven't seen squat. And we won't.

Nice that you're such a dedicated class racer that it took a store bought combination with a completely bogus factor to "inspire" you to come compete. Take the easy way out, and brag about being "in the 5%".

Work on our cars? Tell me, how long are we supposed to work, and how much are we supposed to spend? Sounds like you're buying it all done. We spent 3 nights in the shop last week before we left for Charlotte, never mind all winter and thousands of dollars on a fresh updated engine. We're building an new engine for the other car, too. Both traditional combinations, real cars that were sold to the general public to drive on the street. I'll be working on transmissions and headers, as well as putting a fresh engine on the dyno, in the next three weeks. And you want to tell us to work on our cars?

You come back and talk to me about how much work and money should be expended when you take something that has a fairly honest factor and run 1.0 under the index and win class.

By the way, good luck to your "Mustang friends" building cars that are not Cobra Jets. That will work out real well. Considering Ford will not allow anything but a Cobra Jet in the class guide.

[dwydendorf]

Here is another way to think about what NHRA has done by letting the AHFS take care of the new cars. What if in the junior stock era, NHRA had protected the horsepower factors of the 52 Oldsmobiles and 55-57 Chevys to the point where they were still dominant? What if the 60's era muscle cars had not been able to be more comptetive? Do you honestly think that Stock and Super Stock would have progressed to where it was 4 or 5 years ago before the new Challengers and Cobra Jets came on the scene? Of course we all know that there would be an even smaller group of people wanting to watch or race in these classes. Sorry, 68-70 Chevys can't be dominant forever just like it can't be the year 1969 forever. The new cars are progressing into new classes but it may not be happening as fast as some would like. Like it or not, the big egos with the big checkbooks can still qualify at the top and it is not going to change because that is the way it has always been. It takes time,hard work, money and smarts to be the fastest and money can buy the hard work, smarts and time part of it.

[D.Johns]

The earlier cars is what they are looking at that are in the guide. My car will be a ground up car not a turn key car with all work being performed by myself and close friends with shops. I do not have the huge budget that some others have. I've worked for 2 years to become debt free so I could afford to build and go racing debt free because my income would not support loans and racing. The only thing we aren't doing is building the engine that will be farmed out to an engine builder such as Bischoff. A race car is never done. Technology is always growing and everyone's car is getting faster new and old with new technology and new ways of thinking. The modifications that I like to do(personally I'm a supercharged guy) and there wasn't a mustang that was until the 03 Cobra(which is legal). However at the time I wasn't interested in anything but heads-up racing and it's hard to consider stock eliminator heads up. I was considering building an 03-04 cobra up until last year after i started looking at stock eliminator AFTER the CJ was already out. I wasn't interested in the CJ because it was under factored but because that's the type of car I was interested in building. The car caught me because Ford built a car I would have built on my own free will. It qualified for stock eliminator so I started looking at the class and looking at my budget and location. Things just fell into place that way. Ford just built a car that a customer like me wanted to buy. I wouldn't care if they gave it it's own class. In fact personally I think it would be great to let all the new cars duke it out run what you brung heads up! The old cars could be allowed to no problem. I plan on running everything the car fits in to get as much seat time as I can possible afford. Location is the biggest draw for me.
You've got to bring in new blood or else things become stale and dies off after the last generation moves on. The younger guys aren't interested so much into old technology as the newer stuff. I'm 29 I'm not into big blocks or carburetors. I love old cars but in the era Ive grown up in what interest me is fuel injected, forced induction cars. The old cars get my heart pumping no doubt as I love history of the car hobby but interest to build and tinker with I feel at home with the new stuff in my comfort zone.
If you started a petition to move the new cars into their own class in the nhra I'd sign it. As I think it would be awesome to watch the 3 new guys competing. There is always a underlining theme of the ones at the bottom always call foul and demand constant rule changes(which apart from location moaning and groaning from the pushrod guys started my search to race elsewhere). When the modular Mustangs weren't competitive the pushrod guys said "do work son". Then modular engine guys started figuring out how to make power reliably and the pushrod guys didn't want to hear "do work son" but please slap hundreds of pounds on them based off one cars performance at one race, disallow this, allow me that..... I guess it's the norm just doesn't fit my personality style.

[Greg Hill]

I have one question for you guys that think these new cars are so dandy. Why don't the manufacturers race what they sell to the public like they did for the previous 50 years? Why do they have to have crate engines or put together motors out of aftermarket parts? And finally why do they need such bogus horsepower ratings? You all let me have a set of dart or brodix heads, a victor manifold, a roller cam, and rate my motor at 285 and I'll show you how to run 2 seconds under.

The 5.7 hemi is a prime example of how bogus the original hp ratings are. It came out at 305 and now is 404.

[Bill Howell]

Based on the heading that made me open this thread by the thread starter, I would like to offer my congratulations to the first 8 second stocker run.
I am glad I was there to see history made, just like I was there in Texas to see the first 4 second and in Gainesville to see the first 300 mph Top Fuel run.
As a stock racer, I am proud to see this historical accomplishment!!!

[Randall Klein]

Yes, congrats to Fezell, I certainly take my hat off to him, and anyone going all out. However, I am sick of the tired old threads that liken this situation to the 55-57 Chevs being outdated by the '60's muscle cars, and the later injected cars being misfactored, this is a whole 'nother ball game with the factors not even from the same planet....for years I have struggled against the "gifted" 307 Olds, then we had Shaw's Caddy, and now other Caddy's that are underfactored, but they are somewhat in the same zip code...this new blood is parking more cars than adding entrants, and add the yearly sight-of-hand of newer crate motors and the "simple" AHFS will never catch up

Wait until someone plants a bogus crate motor into the GT classes...then a lot of high dollar cars may get parked....$4 tow gas to get blown out for class or heads up....don't think so

Don't blame guys for racing 'em, just quit beating your chests....try a little humble pie for the gift you've been given