Originally Posted by GarysZ24
Thanks for the thread Ron, and I can relate to alot of what I read so far with regards to cost, going against the norm combo wise, and even the consistency part being a challenge (on occasion), although I've had many races where my car was consistent, without breaking my bank account. However, I did not have a soft index in the beginning with my Cavalier. I'm not sure who ran my engine/tranny combo prior to the mid-90's (when I started racing my car), but being factored at 150hp, when my oem hp was 120 was outrageous! Only in '99 was my car able to run better than my index. My car was originally factored to run BF/SA, and the Bandimere Speedway altitude adjusted index of 16.44 was only beaten once (in '99 at the Mopar Mile High Nationals), I ran a 16.42, and a 16.449 with the car enroute to a rnd three loss). My car was factored alongside turbo 2.2 Chrysler products, that clearly had a performance advantage over my mfi 2.8V6! I didn't get hp taken off until around 2002, when it dropped to 140hp. I didn't run the number then either, and kept asking them to remove more hp, and NHRA did to I believe 130? I ran with that until they redid the class structure for fwd cars, and then the ahfs must've answered my prayers, because after the 2008 Arizona Nat's, I was dropped again to my current 125 hp. However, now I have a new delima in that Mickey Thompson stopped making the 20x8x14 and the 20x6x14 slicks, so now I'll have to race with bigger tires, which may offer some new challenges...I wish I lived close to either Billy Nees, or to Woodro Josey (even Craig Railsback at Blower Drive Systems, since he's another ace with understanding the Accel Calmap engine management system).
If I didn't run this car, I now wish I would've raced a '90 Pylmouth Acclaim I once had because that car was consistent...so much that I went five rounds at an import race Bandimere Speedway had back in July y2k. Had I not had so much time and over $8k invested in the Cavalier, I would've switch to racing that car because Mopar parts could've helped me get that car to race the now EF/S index, and it would've been easier to work on and tune...perhaps more consistent than my decently predictable Cavalier. I bet Stan Kopetjka is glad he runs a Mopar fwd 4banger, and heck, even Rob Seibeneck with his US Nats multi-round winning Ford Tempo, as well.
As for my car, it will run consistent, it's different, and when the driver gets his act together, it'll be up there with Stan's car, Michael Beards car, and Rob's car. I sure love being the tortoise in stock races, and so does my wallet!!!
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01-06-2013, 09:27 PM
Re: Why did you build your "slow" stock eliminator car?
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