Tulsa results

In my humble opinion:
Pushing the edges of the rules is what the game is about.
Pushing the NATURE of the rules is what makes folks upset.

We started an HA/GR car here in Cincinati under the existing rules to have FUN. With our flathead Merc I expect we will get throughly trounced by Bubba and those guys with their wild 6-bangers. I accept that.

Getting whooped by a guy in an auto trans who never misses a shift or a guy running a Holly 750 that takes the tuning issues out of the equation isn't what the game is about to me.

My PERSONAL expectations were that there would be a great time in getting this old stuff to work and stand up to the pounding a season of racing will give out. I exp-ected to run into guys with neat gear stashed away that brought it out for the joy of seeing it run again.

Glenn

 

Glenn, lets me and you set up a run at the drags and you can probably trounce me.
I built mine per the rules to run with guys that did the same thing. Sure, I am competitive, but rules were made to be followed. I know I will not have the fastest car there, but I am still going to be there to have fun. This is what this class is supposed to be, FUN.
Once you take one down the track, regardless how fast it is, have some fun.
Mine performed like crap this last weekend, but I had fun just running it down the track. The ET's were bad enough, I will not tell you.
One little hint, 60' times were in the 4-5 second range, I can probably run 60' faster than that.

 

Build a car by the ha/gr rules and it is an ha/gr car. If your car is not built to these rules and you post about it in an ha/gr forum, don't be surprised if you take a little shit over it.

That being said, this same topic seems to come up every 6 months or so. Give it a rest. build what you want and have fun with it when and where ever you can.

 

On the subject of " era specific" the Holley web site shows the history of their carburetors. Their first modular carburetor (the 4150 series) came out in 1957 as standard equipment on the 1957 Ford Thunderbird. The 650 Holley I am running on The Outlaw is a model 4150. If that ain't era specific enough for you guys I'm going to run it anyway. Our engine doesn't know or care what carb we're running as long as it mixes air and gas in the right ratio.

The track owner in Tulsa loves our cars because they have created spectator interest and he is in the "entertainment" business. The paying spectators don't know or care what carbs or tranny's we are running, they just like seeing the "old Style" cars drag race heads up.

 

Sure am glad this has no more legs than mere speculation. I do enjoy the "what if"s though.

Glenn's "great time in getting this old stuff to work" nails it for me.
It's the essence of my rather long winded soliloquy as well as pretty much the opinion of the rest of our team.

As yet I've heard no reason beyond "I don' wanna hafta shift or mess with an old carb" to change the class as it stands. But that's exactly the point of the class, having the fun of doing it the way it was done before those advances hit the track. Even the "modern" slant is still just an under square inline six. It's only true novelty was a long ram production intake, old news to the racing community of the time.

No one has yet addressed another eventuality of incrementally modernizing the class, that of keeping the cost down. The class is very near the roughly 12 second safety equipment break of most sanctioning bodies. The other side of that break is expensive (double loop cages with certs, tig only, full fire suits, etc.) for center steer cars. If we hope to keep it cheap and still maintain the possibility of getting it recognized we have no choice but to keep it above 12. Slush pumps, modern style carbs, etc. are no help there.

Honestly, if Geezerspeed just HAD to see anything pissed in, we'd go for an age change first. Our team would far prefer to do the work of pulling the slant and rebuilding with a '50s set-up rather than keep the slant and go to a Torqueflite (and I have two on the shelf, damn good trans. '62 push button in my daily).

Mostly we want it to just hold still so we can we have some fun.


Crap, I need to work on terse, missed two posts while composing.

 

As Old6rodder put it quite well, "As yet I've heard no reason beyond "I don' wanna hafta shift or mess with an old carb" to change the class as it stands. But that's exactly the point of the class, having the fun of doing it the way it was done before those advances hit the track."

That sort of sums up my feelings on the matter. To me the HA/GR class is about racing and rodding "how it used to be", and sure, if the guys back then had the option of using our modern stuff to go faster, they would have jumped at the chance.......But the didn't and made the best of what technology was available and did quite well.

Even though there were some dual four barrel set ups running on the street, the carbs of choice were the good old Strombergs, and thats why there were lots of cars running them.

I'm not saying that we have to limit the class to Stromberg 97s or 84s, there are other good vintage carbs out there, but even if they made variants of the current Holley and Carter four barrels, before '62 they really don't fit in the spirit of the class. Hell, what's wrong with a GMC 6 running 5 Strombergs on a log. Somewhere in the archives I have pictures of that setup.

Personally, I'm planning on a home made long ram log on my Dodge Flathead 6, with multiple vintage carbs and being creative in the way it used to be.