If thats the same GTO Im thinking of (its gotta be) it ran around in primer for years and then they painted it purple and stuffed a wild BBC in it. I saw it run at Sacramento Raceway about 8 or so years ago. It wouldnt hook well, but I remember it dipping into the 9's at close to 145 MPH.
BottleBob, GassersGarage, Groucho, Great job. Sounds like you guys had quite a time. I grew up in a small town so no big time racing. If we did it was on airport road or a place called Beardogs. I always liked going out to Beardogs back then. I went by there about 10 years back to visit relatives and the 1/4 mile was faded but still marked.
I think I remember that 55. I believe it was from Downey. Not a "Valley" car. They only came out a couple times to Winchells (Sepulveda and Plummer). It sat low with slicks on it. Maybe a 10" slick on a 8" rim, just fitting the stock wheelhouse. We beat that car with a yellow Vega that we brought out from a gas station I worked at. A Vega I later bought and later sold to Bottle Bob when I worked for him @ Bottle Works. If I remember, rumor was the 55 had a blower (it'd fit under a tri-5 hood)
OK, I may have told this one. Early 80's I street raced an Anglia. Set back SBC and I drove from the back seat. That fucking thing would hook in the rain! Never lost in that car. I sold it to a squirrelly friend of mine Al Moraldi. Cool dude, but ultra hyper, and some people liked to pick on him. Anyway, he's doubtful as to how fast I said the car was. One night we're at Winchell's, our meet spot for Saturday night street races, and it's PACKED. Al comes over and says Jeff L. wants to race heads up any where, any time in front of everyone. I tell him to take the race. Excited, Al turns away from me all happy to tell Jeff. Gets 2 steps and turns back to me, and accuses me of setting him up as Jeff's a good friend of mine. I said, you're my friend too. Al, big smiles turns away to face Jeff, 2 steps, and he's back to me again. He says, you know Jeff longer. I said, it's my car and I DON'T want it to lose. Al turns away AGAIN to confront Jeff, turns back to me AGAIN, I said don't say a fucking word, I'LL put up the money. Al's GONE, this time to not return and sets the race for a few days later @ Lumber City (Mission and Sepulveda, where a Police Station now resides). Jeff's got an acid dipped 69 Nova w/a real live LS-7. He's having carb trouble on the Nova so Al waits almost 30 minutes for it to get fixed. Now the Anglia has a dead battery. Jeff's pissed, but I remind him Al waited for you. Anyway, I'm at the finish to see the Anglia about 10 lengths ahead of Jeff. Al comes to me and begs me to collect the money. He said Jeff's not gonna be happy
One Saturday night, it's slow, no ones racing. We were at Woodley and Saticoy and I ask if anyone wants to foot race my roomate, Jim G. Now Jim is big, like 300 lbs big. Some skinny guy comes out of the crowd and saids he'll race. I point out that its a race from light pole to light pole and Jim needs a 3 step spot for $20. We mark off 3 steps and line the racers up. Its point, point, hands up, then drop. Jim is off like a light. The skinny dude is beating feet, but never makes up the 3 step lead. Jim wins. If you can imagine a 300 lbs beach ball, with legs moving so fast, they're a blur. I was laughing so hard as I collected the money. Boy, was that kid pissed. Turns out he was some NCCA champion for sprinting. Jim was quick for short burst of speed. Some times, when there was no action, you had to make you own......Bob should have a story or 2 about that.
The return road @ LACR right after I made the last pass in Bottle Bob's 65 Corvette. A horrible end to a great car. Bob asked if I was OK. When I said yes, he fired me. BTW, you're lookin at 3 electric fuel pumps, and two 20lb nitrous bottles feeding/creating this fire. It was INTENSE!
Thats the car. When I first seen it he had it painted orange primer then he painted it purple primer. I know his first name is Mike and he use to work at the Old CP performance in Rhonert Park. I talked to him at the Santa Rosa swao meet last year and he still has the car but the motor was blown up. That car is killer, I have some pictures, I will try and find one.JOKER JASON.
I'll be Darned, "BottledBob"...we use to converse many years ago on AACF newsgroup....looks like you are for real...always wondered about the stories you posted, now that Groucho has vouched for you, I humbly retract any "BS" statements I may have made!
Racing Jack Daniels My buddy and I were cruzin in his 69 Dart GTS (bilt to the hilt) looking for prey. My buddy liked to drink a little and I did my best to keep him under control. There wasn't much action to be had that night so we hit a local party. Normally this would be about the time he'd take to drinking and I'd take over the driving. But the party was being thrown by a good little catholic girl who begged us ruffians to leave. My buddy resumed driving duties. Little did I know that in the ten minutes we were at the party my buddy had, on a bet, guzzled enough hard liquor to kill a moose. We were sitting at a blind intersection at a slight angle waiting for an opportunity to jump out. My buddy was a skinny legged little shit and would hold the heavy clutch in by locking his leg straight and forcing himself against the seat back. He revved the engine as we waited to jump. In a split second I heard the engine rev too high, realized my buddy had just passed out at the wheel, felt my head slap back against the head rest as we headed straight for the island at full pedal. Before I could do anything we were airborn across the opposing three lanes. The car embedded itself into the high curb on the other side of the road. The wheels were folded up, jammed up against the headers, ninety degrees from where they should be and my buddy was soon off to jail.
Gassers Garage: Now THAT was funny, Rick! And for those that haven't figured it out, that fire was my Avatar car melting. The Frankensqueeze '67 Big Block Vette with 16 solenoids plumbed into the Dominator carb'd manifold. And yeah, I remember saying: (And quite loudly) Groucho, *YOU'RE FIRED*. But that was for the benefit of all our buds standing around watching the fiberglass barbecue. Probably right after you put one foot on the melted front wheel and held up your cigarette and said something like "Smoking and driving is dangerous". But I was kidding, I had other street race cars to maintain. Grouch, you ought to get someone to transcribe & edit the burn video and put it on Youtube. Maybe some kind soul will read this and offer to do that for you.
All Steel: Heh, yeah. Good ol' alt.autos.camaro.firebird. Google says I made 4,800+ posts to that group starting back in '97 and petering out around 2001. You mean you questioned MY veracity?? Why I'm wounded and bleeding! What was your handle over there?
Mid 70's in my little town of Shawnee Okla our bad ass cars consisted of stuff like a fairly fast 67 GTO, 70 chevelle big block car, 68 baracuda factory 383 car all of them with cam, intake, headers and carb mods. Actually my brother-in-law at the time had the fastest car in town, a 67 GTX 440 4 speed dana 60, factory radio, heater delete car. One evening a pickup rolls into town pulling a trailer with a mid sixtyish chevy II with a straight axle, tilt frontend, slicks and either a 413 or 426 wedge mopar for power. It seems like this rig was from Colorado and they were looking for the baddest car in town, wanted a money race like a hudred bucks which was a "big" money race to us at that time. Man when they fired that thing to pull it off the trailer I think several guy's pissed themselves, it was bad-to-the-bone! The guy with the cuda agreed to race and he got 10 cars and the go. Hell they could have given him 20 cars and he still would have lost, that chevyII blew by him like he was in reverse! After the pay up the cuda owner asks for a ride in the chevyII, when they return from the pass his nose is bleeding! I don't know if it was from the car leaving so hard or from him being so excited. Well my brother-in-law and everyone else decided to leave that thing alone. If my memory serves me correctly these guys were just traveling around looking for money races just like in the movies. I know after it left town many of the so-called fast cars got some major makeovers, we found out that night what fast really was!
Honestly, I don't remember what I went by, that was way back when I had an AOL account. Maybe, just maybe, you may have recalled me emailing you, and suggesting you write your stories out and send to a movie producer, book writer, etc...? I don't think I actually said "BS"....more like "hmmmnnn...how can he remember it so vividly?"
All Steel: I tend to save E-mails, but that's too far back since I had a hard-disk crash about 5 years ago that wiped everything prior to that point. A number of people have suggested I put the stories in book form, but that's a LOT of work. As far as vivid remembering goes, you're right that most of the memories from 30 years ago are fading fast. But experiencing intense emotion can hold certain memories intact for quite awhile. And getting chased by the police can often qualify as generating intense emotion. And besides, that particular story was written in '88 when things were a lot fresher in my meat RAM. Here's a little tid-bit that might be interesting to some. Dean Stark (who was my opponent in the first street race story of this thread) E-mailed me a few months after it was posted here. Someone that knew him pointed the story out to him. I asked him if the essentials were as he remembered them. He said yes, for the most part. But that it was a '68 (not '69) GTO with the blown Olds motor. He's been out of state for 16 years, and currently has a '77 Suburban (with get this), a blown & injected 496 Big Block. It runs in the low 10's. Pretty darn good for a something as aerodynaic as a barn door, eh. </PRE>
Groucho I remember that race on Satcoy between the Vega & 55 you guys set him out 4 and beat him by at least that. I must say that Vega would hook in a car wash. when you guys raced Pats Duster with it you set him out I think 10 and was by him by the time he hit second gear. Yuo took some of my money that night. Thanks pal
Some great stories.. Bottle Bob/ Groucho back when you were racing hardcore (25 yrs ago), what was considered a fast car on the street (like your white trans am). low 11"s high 10's, low 10's curious..
Boones: That's a good question, and I'm sure there would be as many different perspectives and answers as people responding. Let's see if I can give it a shot from my own point of view. Through the heyday years of street racing, cars did get quicker. But generalizing now, if you had a full body street - street car, on street tires corked up - you would probably have been competative if you were in the mid to bottom 11's. My Trans Am was not a particularly quick car, I estimate it was mid 11's. It didn't hook - too heavy - unmodified suspension - but it would mile-an-hour with the "motor eater" on it. A handful of big dogs were probably in the mid to high 10's. I don't remember any street tired, street driven full body cars being in the 9's. That would take a car with some hellacious mile per hour. The Frankensqueeze Vette ran 9.82 @ 143 on slicks at LACR (that was in the high desert at 2710 feet) they had a correction factor to calculate what your car would run at sea level. For ET I believe it was .97 So a car that ran 11.00 at LACR would theoretically run 11.00 X .97 or 10.67 at sea level. My point being, that a street tire'd car virtually never hooks as good as if it were on slicks, so for that Vette to be in the 9's on street tires it would probably have to be mile-an-houring between 150-160. And need probably 200-250 more horsepower than it had in it's 9.82 configuration. Take those nitrous jets and drill those puppies out, or just take 'em out completly. LOL Now cars with slicks were all over the map. But as a GENERAL rule of thumb, you could figure a car with small slicks would be 6 car lengths quicker than the equivalent car on street tires. A big slick high horsepower car would GENERALLY be about 8-9 cars quicker. And might very well be well into the 9's. I HATED racing cars with slicks when I was on street tires. I aways tried to negoticate going from a roll with any car or bike that would obviously outhook me. Now when I'm talking street tires, I mean GOOD street tires. Caldwell retreaded yellow dots were all the rage for a while, but treaded Hoosiers (for roundy-round racing) worked very well for street hook up. Goodyear had some soft treaded tires for racing that were little known. Some people tried to scam you with grooved slicks, even going to the extent of sanding the original letters off the sidewall of the tire and gluing letters on in their place saying like TA Radials or some such. The lengths some of those dastardly street racers went to. They should be ASHAMED of themselves. Opps - I seem to have fallen into that category myself, never did the glue on letter tire thing though.
We'd won quite a few races with that Vega. Mikey owned it, and we worked together turning wrenches at another friend's gas station over on Coldwater and Moorpark. Mikey never thought the car fast enough to street race. So, I loaned him a nitrous unit I had. I remember a backfire while tuning that singed my eyebrows LATE one night. After trimming with a very dull pair of wire cutters (we had nothing else there), the guys were histerical when I came out of the bathroom. I also remember a white, fiberglass snorkel hood scoop. But, I can't remember him EVER racing that car
I remember back in the mid '70's, most cars at that time were bottom 14 sec cars. Cars like Jill's Maverick, the California Comet, a silver '70 Cuda with a 340 and 4 speed. Real fast cars were generally trailered/flat towed then, like the blue '67 Chevelle (10:40), Simi Valley Duster with a destroked 340 (11:70), etc.....Then there was the oddball Boyd's Vega. Dialed in at Irwindale at 12:00 on a two barrel, however, he challenged a 10:30 Vega heads up on the street and he was corked up on street tires........
late 70's I have a 68 roadrunner 440 4 speed, cam, headers, 411 rear not fast but I thought it was. A friend of mine has a mid sixties chevyII with a fresh built small block 400 de-stroked to 377(why would anybody de-stroke one?) I asked him that a lot. He is always trying to get me to run him but I am hearing this thing and it sounds pretty healthy so I always tell him no. I am planning on taking my car to the dragstrip soon so I strip the interior out of it except the driver seat, put the slicks on, take the tag off and the damn thing hasn't been inspected, at that time Oklahoma required a yearly inspection. So we are all at the local hang out on a Friday night and he and I start talking shit to each other as usual, but tonight I have my slicks on and no interior and I'm thinking I can take his ass tonight so we agree to run out on hiway 270 its late and never any traffic. We both go and get our cars and agree to meet there, when I arrive the whole damn town is there so I park in the middle of the hiway and crawl under the car and start uncorking the headers. I finish the drivers side, throw the header muffler in the back of the car and go to the passenger side and I am ratcheting away when a car pulls up beside my car. I hear somebody say it's the law and I'm like yeah, yeah thats real funny, quit trying to screw with me. I roll and look under the car and I see a little of the bottom of the door on the car that has just pulled up and its got an Oklahoma state trooper decal on it! OH SHIT! So I reverse the ratchet and start tightening bolts. The trooper walks up and kicks my foot and says "something wrong with your car" and I'm trying to think fast and I say yeah damn mufflers were falling off so I'm putting them back on. He says well have one of your friends here move their car and get yours off the hiway, well there were lots of volunteers wanting to move their cars, shit it looked like a gypsy caravan leaving! Anywho I push my car over to the shoulder(didn't want to start it with the one header still open) and Mr. trooper is really eyeing my car now. My buddy goes over to his chevyII and is trying to leave, its also got slicks, no hood and open headers, and Mr. trooper says uh uh, you and this gentleman need to get in my car. I am now trying to add up in my head how much all the fines are going to be, Mr. trooper takes our drivers licenses and he begins to write. He finishes writing and hands both of us a ticket, and then he says, look guys I was young once too and did my fair share of racing but this is MY stretch of hiway so don't ever let me catch you here again. He was really cool about it, he gave both of us tickets for no inspection, which at the time were 35 bucks, damn I felt lucky! Well I look at my ticket and it has my name and my buddy's birthdate, I was 19 at the time and he was 21, so I used that ticket for nearly 2 years to buy booze, I would tell em they took my drivers license and all I have is this ticket, worked every time. And no, we never did get to have the race, he sold his car the next week and so we will never know who would have won, but I still think I could have took him!!!!!
First you wrote COCKED up, now COKED up. So, was he high or sucking a wahoon, or did you mean corked up (mufflers on)?
Pats car was more like a creme color black top it had a white six pak scoop with centerlines on the front & slotted mags in the rear. It was on a odd night on glenoaks
bottlebob, thanks for your insight. I know when i was street racing back in the mid 80's a low 11 sec street car (no slicks) could handle most cars around and high 10's on slicks on the street meant you were top dog 95% of the time. this was up in the Portland/ vancouver area.. so was curious what the So Cal guy were running My worse beating came from a 70's dodge van running a hot 440 sitting just behind the front seats (hidden behind a curtain with ladder bars quiet mufflers and not much else in the interior. Got lucky no money was changing hands on that run.. (he was just looking to embarrass a camaro).. after the run, he got out and almost fell to the ground laugh so hard..
A little story. So about a year ago this cocky little "popped collar" prep pulls to this little hang out these racers and I go to and starts talking shit about all of these hot rods, about how his duramax fox body would beat any of the cars there, no matter how many lengths they had. So this one 25 year old puts up his shop truck 1954 Chevy with a twin 350, looses. Next is a sweet 1965 Ford mustang fastback, looses by feet. Finally the guy I came with pulls up to this kid's mustang in his 1968 Camaro with a crazy ass 454, needless to say, my friend kills this guys mustang with out breaking a sweat. Cops come, and we all peel off, all of us but goody little two shoes fox body. He thought he could get away with it, lost his license and his car. Crappy end to a worse night for him. We all had fun. The reason I bring this up (aside from it being on topic with the thread) is because I thought those guys were crazy, but both bottle bob and groucho sound pretty f-ing crazy, kinda fun.
The Jalopy Journal
