L. A. Street Racing Archive late 70's to ?

Mid to late eighty's was my street racing era. 67 Nova of several colors. Said 6T7nova on the plate. Small tire car that held it's own in it's day.

I had the plesure of riding in Bottle Bob's black Vette..I think I was the only one willing to go for rides in it..lol.

Infact I was the last person to ride in the Vette with Bob at LACR before Groucho burned it to the ground. (I know it wasn't your falt...lol) That SOB hit hard out of the gate with Frankin Squeeze. I think it went hi 9's low 10's with a rocker arm completely off. 7cyl. Crazy!

 

welcome Gary, I remember your Nova very well.

 

Thanks Gasser. I didn't know about this site until hotrodbob told me about it today.

 

Who could that of been?

 

Gary:

I didn't remember your license plate, in fact I had to confirm your identity with Groucho in E-mail. I do recall your Nova now. It was way faster than it looked and seemed to get faster from week to week.

Heh, about the rocker thing. Yeah, if at the track and I burned a valve or holed a piston right after I got there (these WERE testicle sessions), I'd sometimes take the rocker arms & push rods out for that cylinder and do some passes on 7 cylinders. I mean jeeze, I didn't want the track rental fee and the tow of 50 miles to go for nothing, eh.

Dropping one cylinder really hurt the power though, I think all I could get was mid to high 10's out of it. It varied due to whatever new idea or jet size I was testing out.

I think some of that test pass memory is coming back. Weren't you the one that was getting excited because you saw flames looking through the hood scoop at the top end? And were looking around for the fire extinguisher? I think I told you the flames always went out by the return road turn.

Although that didn't happen on Groucho's pass, since after his pogo start he wasn't going fast enough to put the flames out. A slight miscalculation on my part that resulted in quite the dramatic meltdown.

The moral to this story is: Don't remove the spark plug to try and remove some pumping looses, if you're going to run on 7 cylinders.

 

The faster & faster part I learned from you...more Juice
Or maybe alittle more peddle.

It was quite the sleeper Elliott & I made alot of money with that car.

Actually that pass, it was the insulation coming from the fire wall that was on fire. Either way it was a sad day at the track. I still tell people about the car...frankin squeeze and hard it hit at the track. On the street you had to roll it out alittle before you hit it but at the track... I thought I was going out the back window..lol

 

Gary:

Yeah, it was the LOOKS of your Nova that got the races. It was the same with my brown Vette, it looked pretty ratty so people just automatically assumed that it would run ratty. I got over 300 races with that car throughout the years.

I think Groucho's got a video of the Black Vette's demise.

Now that you've found the HAMB you might want to check out the Street Race Stories thread, if you haven't. Read it slow, there are not all that many stories. Although, I'll add that this isn't primarily a street race board, it's more for '32 Fords, roadsters and such. They barely tolerate me, probably because I don't post very often. I had a thread I started called "Street Race Contract" canceled after the first post.

 

LOL...You always had away with words. I'll check it out.

 

Thanks...I just spent about 3 hours reading that thread. Some good memories!

 

That was me looking around for the fire extinguisher and worried about the flames. I exited the car in the pits, leaving it on the passenger seat. It did me no good on the next pass, as the car burst into flames rapidly. The pogo start, I still maintain, was because you wanted to witness a wheelie and disconnected (or had me disconnect) the front shocks.. PS-didn't you get a DVD from me of the car's demise? Volume 2 shoulda been Booboo's response to the carnage

 

Groucho:

Heh, no I didn't remove the shocks. I took the shocks off of the brown Vette once to see if it might make a difference. But since it was a 4 speed car it made the car hard to control at the shifts. What do they call it - Camber change jounce?

But even *IF* the shocks had been taken off of the Black Vette, it probably wouldn't have pogo'ed. It should have lifted and stayed lifted since it was an automatic car. It had to have most of the power cut to bring the front down. Which throwing you back (and off the horn button) would have done.

Yeah, I've got the DVD. Thanks. I just don't have a way of copying it right now. Cat's paw in tape flap of my VCR caught something and broke it off, so I threw it out.

 

I know for certain, you did at least mention removing the shocks @ LACR on the black Vette. And true, the horn button was not my favorite

 

Awesome thread. Both of my uncles were street racing in burbank in the 60s. One of them had a green 57 chevy w/ a 283 and the other a blue 67 chevelle. The one w/ the 57 chevy owned/ran Rich's Performance on grismer (now a sevan gas station) in burbank. Just curious if anyone knew him as he always talks about being one of the fastest cars in burbank back then.

 

What are their names?

 

I remember when that happened. You called me to bring you spark plugs. I drove my Suzuki 1100E down there. While you were fiddling with the plugs, I saw the top plate had bowed. As you limped home, I got a race with another bike.

 

Great thread. Made me think of when the Brotherhood from OC would meet up at Brookhurst and La Palma and fill the Alpha Beta(?) parking lot. Get a race, wait 'till after midnight and head for Nabisco, La Palma or Bond. Remember ducking in the fields when the cops would block off Nabisco and hope they didn't start towing. Ran The County on Wednesday nights and the occasional brackets on Saturday. Stopped when Willie opened Terminal Island.
Who owned the rear engine A100 pickup?

 

Rick:

Yeah, you were a real helpful bud back in the day. Actually, I always felt kind of guilty. Your stuff always ran and ran, my stuff was always breaking since I was obsessed with pushing the envelop. Often beyond resonable limits. I think the engine longevity of my faster cars was rated in minutes when on the squeeze.

Let me make a slight correction of my original story as bits of memory come filtering back in. The "hood" didn't lift at the sides when it backfired, (I must have been confusing it with other backfires in other Vettes), since the whole front end with fenders was the "hood" on '84 Vettes. I believe that was the time that the whole front end was blown off it's latches (pivoting at the front hinges), lucky I was going fast enough for the air flow to slam it back down.

 

Tom McMullen owned a rear engine A100. it was black with white hot flames . is that the one you are talking about?

 

Hey Bob, remember that race on Sepulveda and San Fernando Mission with the brown vette. You hit the "juice" and a big flame shot out the hood and over the windshield. The sidepipes looked like you hit the afterburners with flames shooting out the sides. I forget who you were racing, but the vette held together.

 

I think so....... always came in on a trailer and parked next to John.

 

Rick:

Heh, there was a time period of a few weeks where I was having problems with spark scatter with my MSD. Where the brown Vette would backfire (carb & exhaust), at every shift, under power it was fine. I was buying Holley power valves by the gross. Changed them after every race.

I got a clear distributor cap and put a timing light on top of the distributor cap while the engine was running and moved the clip from cylinder to cylinder. You could see the spark wasn't just jumping to the cylinder is was supposed to, but jumping all over the place in there.

Engines are often hardest to fire at idle, when I revved the engine the spark scatter went away.

I believe I solved it by either getting an HEI distributor, or one of those large diameter MSD caps.

 

Everytime i stroll across one of these street racing threads i'm up reading till the wee' hours of the morning because it's just so fascinating reading the stories of the 'big dogs' in the heyday (sp?) of racing. History.

My only contribution to this thread is that although things don't happen exactly they way they once did, there are still plenty of runs going down in a fairly safe and orderly fashion on the summer weekends here in the cold north.

 

I see what I can find out.

 

Did you ever end up seeing your old car Tark?

 

This thread brings back alot of memories from back in the day'
I will have to dig out my old pics from street racing around the SF Valley circa 1980-1991. I also have pics from street racer days at LACR from the 80's and a bit of old video.

 

I'd LOVE to see that stuff. There wasn't a lot of picture taking back then. Not like today, with everyone having camera phones

 

Some of my old rides from the Westchester Bob's Days !

My High School 64 Impala cruiser

My High School 64 396 4 speed Chevelle (high 12 sec. car)

My Mom & Dads 67 Cougar (original owner)

64 Nova (old Lywood car)

 

I heard a story from my grandpa about a blue 67 chevy malibu 2 door hardtop with a 427 and a 4speed. the guy moved to california in the early 70's and i was wondering if anybody raced it, watched it race or heard about it. He called it fist full of dollars and i would like to hear more stories about it.

 

Btt

 

Come On, lets bring this POST back