OK i'll chime in ... My first roadrunner ( B5 blue and white top ) 383 four speed 391 gears ... When I got the car it came with a 383 two barrel motor in the engine bay and another 383 block with a set of heads in the trunk ... I rebuilt the 383 that was in the trunk , it had some flat tops with valve pockets ... I didn't know at that time why it had valve pockets in the pistons .. The heads looked pretty good so I used them ... Turned out they were 67 GTX closed chamber heads .. The short block in the trunk had a Isky cam in it so I left it in place , I added a 10 10 milling crank kit and tossed to all together .. Hell did that 383 run !!! It had a Edlebrock intake DP4B ( duel plane ) and what looked like a old 780 Holley .. One night I went to blooming Grove to race a guy that had a 427 four speed and 411 gears 69 El Camino that was told to me was one of the fastest cars around ..The Roadrunner laid that 427 to waste .. Those guys swore I had a hemi so I had to open the hood and show them.. At the time I had not clue why it ran so well , but years later building nothing but mopars I found out why ... Those flat top where only 15 thou below deck and with the closed chamber 67 440 heads the car must have had at least 11.5.1 compression .. The cam specs were 296 504 Hyd lift ...Paired with a set of long tube hooker headers made a killer combo ... I didn't plan it and sure didn't know what the hell I was doing , it just worked out and I got very lucky ..
I cannot think of much that I did to improve racing. I have witnessed a lot of things though. When Dale Lake (headaches 67or 68 camaro), Jack Harris (Drifter camaro), Gene Grace (55 200 series), Ricky Flores ( 57 bel air) and Butch Warren (harley I think it was a knuckle head) all had a hot rod shop in the Dr.Pepper building on 1st and Beaton in Corsicana I was 14/15 years old. I watched Dale build a 396 out of junk parts. I am saying used pistons, bearings, used crank and even used head gaskets. I was thinking there is no way this is going to run. He cranked that thing up, it did not smoke, miss or knock. I could not believe it. He put it in the Headaches car went to 7 points and ran a high 7 second 1/8 mile. That was incredible, I could not ever make that work for me. I guess if you know what you are doing it does not take all new and expensive parts to make something run.
Jim/Andy,
This would be a good time for you guys to open up the conversation about the Chevy II. I wonder If how cheap we can get in the 10s with it?
Yes, this is the same Nova. I've been pushing to call it the "Tetanus Shot-Rod" but not sure if that'll stick or not. Would love to see it become a forum "pet project" if you will. Donny's got a lot of plates spinnin' right now so we're putting it on the slow simmer for a little bit. But not too long! It's a car whose time has come! LOL!
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