Old drag racing class letters and numbers???

Anyone know what the old drag cl***ification numbers were? I put some numbers on my car that an old drag racer said my cl*** would probably have been. The letters/numbers are C/A 283. The guy said it would probably be a 283ci cl*** but what does the C/A stand for? And what would be any other cl***es? Just curious, thanks!

 

C/A was C cl*** in altered division, the 283 more than likely would have been choosen by the cars owner and doesn't necessarily mean anything other than a number. Although it could have meant he had a 283 in it.

 

accually I think the number does mean something. It did mean he had a 283 and I think the cl***es were divided into cubic inches versus weight.
I have an origional B altered drag truck . It has 264 on the door for the early nailhead. But later after cl***es changed It didnt matter and the truck now has a 401.
A= altered G= g*** The top letter stands for the cl***. A was a faster cl*** than B and so on.
None of this could be true but I think im close. If not ,someone will say so im sure. Hope I helped.

 

I ran in the late 50s and early 60s. My cl*** was C/A or B/A depending on how much weight I had in it. The A was for Alt which was much like the Altered roadsters they run now, except Altered then was for coups and sedans. Roadsters ran in Roadster cl***. The number was owners choice and different for each car. The letters and numbers being used today by the SCTA/BNI are just about the same as the early days of drag racing.

 

generally speaking, and there are variations depending on the sanctioning body C is for the engine (power or CID)to weight ratio. A is for altered, which usually means altered wheel base. 2 is for the division or region, while 83 is the driver number. in the alphabet soup that drag racing has used over the years A is the highest power to the lightest weight, as you proceed through the alphabet the power would go down and the weight would go up, sometimes both. In the event that you would see AA/A, that would indicate a blown big engine lightweight altered. I worked for a guy around 1990 that ran a C/EA car. It was a 88 olds cutlas ciera that had a shorter than stock wheelbase, converted to RWD powered by a 304 CID buick headed SBC with a single 750 holley and a powerglide. The E in the cl*** designation stood for "econo". The biggest limitation in the "econo" cl***es was the single 750 holley and the automatic trans. "econo" long since lost the meaning of economy as this was a $50K car powered by a $30K engine. If you really want to see an alphabet soup car designation look at any of the Land Speed Record rule books.

 

I guess it changes with what you think of as the old days. About 50 years ago for me. Attached my Altered drag car from '59-64. The C leter is a cubic inches to weight deal. Also my Altered salt car from '78 to '86. The ** meant Blown Vintage inline or flathead V8. Now they give the flathead Ford guys their own cl*** so they won't tear up so much. There were no divisions when I was drag racing. You had stock cl***. Ment pretty much stock. Then gas coup/ Street roadster. Ment not stock but fenders, headlites, all the street stuff, then Altered coup for gas burning cars/Fuel coup for the same cars on pop. Also Roadster/ Hot Roadster for ******* cars. Next was Comp coup and Modified roadster all fuel cl***es and almost dragsters. Then the diggers themselves.

 

from what I have seen the basic alphabet soup has not changed much from the early days of drag racing to today, although the cars certainly have. LSR cl*** designations are completely different animal.

 

If I remember right "C/A" was a coupe or sedan with max 25% of wheel base engine set back and 8 pounds or more naturally aspirated,per every cubic inch of engine displacement. Blowers moved you up one cl***.

 

Could be. I don't remember the cl*** breaks. It was a 260 inch '53 Dodge and I think it was around 1900 pounds with the weight in. Maybe that was without the weight and we went to 2080 to make cl***. Been a long time. Wish I had the car back

 

Don't for get things like SS/A (Super Stock Automatic). Gas cl***es that were like A/G (A Gas) A/GS (A Gas Supercharged) and a bunch of other designations. Actually made sense toyugh.

 

SS/A is Super Stock A cl***. SS/AA would be Super Stock A Automatic.
Gas cl***es were variously: A/G, thru H/G?, A/GS thru C/GS, AA/G Thru CC/G, and AA/GS Thru CC/GS. Seems Supercharged was designated at variuos times as an added S on the end, a double letter AA, BB, CC and for a time a double letter AA , BB, CC, AND an S on the end. Kept changing and got confusing.
Whatever, NHRA dumped my favorite cl***, Gas Coupe /Sedan, along with Fuel Altereds, and the Modified Production cl***es. I don't care much for today's drag racing. TV coverage has ruined it. I've allways wondered how popular TV Drag Racing might have been if it had been televised during the G***er Wars.

 

So now that you have all these answers from different eras. Which time frame were you looking at? The answer above mentions Modified Production and that's 66 and later. After around that time cl***es got really crazy and racing started changing to what it is today. Which in my oldtimers opinion isn't really racing. Racing back then was "balls to the wall first guy to the finish line wins" non of this ******** of "hey you went too fast so you lose"

 

Phat Rat, I hear what you're saying about going too fast, but face it, bracket racing saved the sport of drag racing. How could you compete with a home built car against a big dollar sponsored car in the same cl*** back then ? That's why a lot of racers bailed from the sport back because of the disparity.

 

There is a great article about this on Byrons G***er Madness, on the left side of the page go to "A Brief History of the G***er Cl***es"

http://g***ermadness.com/

A old Drag Race historian pal of mine, Dave Crain, once told me the numbers (especially the first number) had more to do with regon.
Hope this helps

 

A friend/co-worker for many years has stayed in racing the whole time. He runs a so-called stocker. Always has to worry about going to fast in order not to be factored to a higher horsepower. He's held both ends of his cl*** record many times over the years and is not big money sponsored, he does it on his own. As I said before there was no such thing as going to fast and losing. To me going faster than the other guy is what racing is about, not who has guessed the closest for his dial in. An example is my grandson who runs a jr dragster, couple of weeks ago he lost by .007 of a second. The car slowed down just a hair (.020) that night from what it had been doing so he lost because he broke out and they didn't figure on that much difference when doing the dial in.

 

First letter is capacity to weight (in the "hot" cl***es) and power (factory advertised or sanctioning body adjusted)to weight in Stock and Super Stock. Of course in super stock they put the category designation first to confuse things (SS/B, SS/I etc)
After the slash is category: /D = dragster
/MR = modified roadster
/C = comp (dragster style ch***is with coupe or roadster body
/A = altered
/G = gas
/MP = modified production etc
/FX = factory experimental
Double letters before the slash generally indicate supercharged in the hot cl***es. BB/D,BB/G, CC/A etc
In the early days of the g***ers the supercharged cars were cl***sed the same as unblown with an S after the basic designation. A/GS etc.
What determines the base cl***ing can be complicated but dragster is obvious, altered is 25% engine set back max, gas is 10% engine set back, two seats and basic street equipement (lights , fenders etc). Modified production is basically a stock or super stock style car with a bigger engine than what came with the car.
FX was the beginning of funny car with highly modified super stock cars (originally created by the factories but built in small volume and thus not legal for super stock)

Roo

 

Phat Rat-Kind of a long tow for you but the SCTA will never say you went to fast.

 

Ok so for my coupe I guess C/A 283 would work fine for the era I'm goin for I guess. It seems from what you guys are saying that C/A, C meaning it wasnt all that crazy fast, and A meaning it was in the coupe, sedan cl***? And the 283 is pretty accurate. I worked at Gateway International Raceway for 3 years but all the cl***es are different now. Just tryin to get it right. Thanks for all the feedback, this is great! RichFox thanks for the pics man those are great!

 

IIRC in the gas and upper cl***es if it had double letters before the cl*** designation ( AA/GD AA/FD .,AA/G ) the double letter meant supercharged followed by the cl*** gas dragster fuel dragster g***er the first letters were weight divided by cubes

 

It's pretty easy to find old NHRA rulebooks online. Cl***ifications changed over the years. Find a rulebook from the era you want to represent and it will answer your questions.

 

Local fella raced his '32 at Great Bend KS in 1955, X on the window was 4 banger cl***, so I'm told.

 

That's why they scaled each entry, weight v/s cubic inch displacement put you in your cl***.

I bought an old 48 ford coupe, it had a aluminum cracked and rewelded sbc to early ford transmission adapter bell housing, also when removing the rear seat found two heavy steel ingots under there
Thinking the bell housing had a lot of abuse when it was raced in the past and driver may have removed the weights after the scale, to gain a little edge

 

Maybe not sometimes weight helps!

When building a race car you build in so the complete car is under the minimum weight.

That way you can add weight where you want it.

For drag cars as a general rule it is to the rear with more weight on the left rear to counter act the effects of torque trying to lift the left rear off the ground.


Oval track dirt cars generally want the weight to the right rear.

Asphalt cars tend to want more nose weight.

I have scales the minimum weight for our cl*** is 2,400 LBS with driver.

I very aware of weights as I was building the car it still needs the crank, fluids, and interior tin but as it sits it is between 1700 and 1,800 LBS!

Which means I can put the weights where I want to aid in handling.



Race car weight!

 

Decipher this one

 

A Altered? From the early 60's car in the background, my wild guess is a 394 Olds bored to over 400 Cu In.

 

In the early 60's a blower jumped you up one cl*** in the Altered division. We had some locals brothers who ran B/A with a 471 on a 259" Studebaker in a 32 Ford coupe. They won a lot of races here locally.

 

My dads car

 

Hello,

Our first try at racing in the Gas Coupe/Sedan Cl***es put us in B/Gas. It had a 283 motor and 6 Strombergs with no added weight in the rear, other than water in the stock gas tank. We knew we were not going to used the stock gas tank, but an interior Moon Aluminum Tank inside of the cab. So, we filled up the stock tank with water for added rear weight.

When the tech guy inspected our first try at the gas cl*** rules, he put on a number and B/G on the driver’s window. The numbers were all on everyone’s driver’s side window so it could be seen by the tower timing folks and announcer. Also, the return road timing slip person who handed out the timing slips as the compe***ors came by the orange timing tower, down stairs. No need to get out, the guy just had the timing slips in his box and everyone got theirs.

The difficult time and longer wait time at the compe***ion for stock car cl***es was when they went to the 4 across lanes variety of eliminations. Everyone got a timing slip and each car had to wait for the tower attendant to hand the correct slip out, according to the numbers.

But, the Gas Coupe Cl*** raced only one vs one in the eliminations, as did all of the other cl***es, except the stock sports car cl***es. Although, there were some days that were extremely crowded and we did see a couple of races in the Gas Coupe cl*** with 4 racers.

Jnaki

We started in B/Gas, then we added some strategic weights welded in place and moved to C/Gas.

But, now we wanted to go faster and quicker in the Willys Coupe. So, a complete teardown to the bare bones block to be taken to Reath Automotive for a larger bore to go to 292 c.i. Then we got one of the first 671 blower drives from Isky-Gilmer Company, plus all blower spec parts and now, that put us in solid B/Gas Cl***.

At the time, there was no B/GS for supercharged as the cars were all running about the same time and speeds. But, my brother wanted to add some weight over the rear axle inside of the trunk and welded in several, thick solid metal plates, not bolted in place. So, that was ok with the tech inspectors for ch***is support. Now, we were recl***ified into the C/Gas cl*** as we had a 292 c.i. SBC motor and the coupe weighted more to move us into that cl***.

We almost set the national record for C/G cl***. But, as things move along, the B/GS cl***es were not designated until around late 1965 early 66 the numbers and letters changed from B/G to B/GS if you had a supercharger. That gave the non supercharged racers equal grounds during compe***ions.

Note :

The odd thing was that any cars driving into the local Bixby Knolls drive in with white shoe polish lettering showing a cl*** at Lion’s Dragstrip was interesting. If it was on the p***enger side, it was fake. At the drags, they only put it on the windows of the driver’s side. That is so the spotters up in the tower could see and designate who won or lost. If they lost, the lettering was wiped off when the cars approached the tower on the return road. They still got a timing slip, though.

If it was on the driver’s side, a trophy should have been with the car to show the winner in that cl***. If there was no trophy, then the lettering, too, was fake. What folks would not do for notoriety in their hot rods on a Saturday night.

Note 2:
We all chuckled if a hot rod sedan came rolling into the drive-in restaurant parking lot with a number written on the p***enger side. Most of the hot rod coupes and sedans were all parked in the back row looking toward the drive-through lane and main restaurant. No one put them on the right side window in our area... YRMV

 

I was referring to the Holbrook Bros, who ran a 4 wd center later on.