1961-1967 I feel is the best. Lightweight Galaxies, Thunderbolts, AWB Plymouths & Dodges, SOHC Mustangs, Z-11 Impalas, Aluminum front end Max Wedges all built by the factories and most available at your local dealership! Heros like Phil Bonner, Dave Strickler, Ronnie Sox, Dyno Don, Malcom Durham, Hubert Platt, Butch Leal, **** Brannan and Bud Fauble. It was a great era for sure. The largest single day drag race ever took place on August 7, 1965. The Super Stock Nationals at York US 30. It is called the Woodstock of drag racing. Awesome stuff in my book!!!
As much as I like all aspects of drag racing, my favorite is the 60's. That's what I was involved in and grew up with. I started racing at our little 1/8th mile AHRA track in Avilla, IN in about 1965, and raced weekends until 1970. Still follow drag racing, but nothing beats the old stuff. glenn33 www.crartonline.com
Mid 60's (A/FX, G***ers, Super Stocks, EARLY Funny Cars) to EARLY 70's, Fuel Altereds, Funny Cars, and the last of the front engine Dragsters. It got pretty "generic" towards the mid-late 70's but there was still hope. That hope went to ****, but there was hope
Amen Brother!!!!!!!!!!!! also aluminum headers (Do not subject to more than 14 seconds of open throttle or melting will occur)
being a jersery guy from the late 50,s early 60,s thats the era i will always feel was the best 1/16 a mile old brigde with that shape left turn island dragway when the swamp rat broke 200 miles a hour i pited next to don that day when raceway park in englishtown open not a jap- junk in the all place
I like the 63-68 time frame. Down here the big strip was Green Valley Raceway. I was a college student at NTSU. Saw most of the big name dragsters and funnies there many times. Saw my first 200 mph run in a dragster. Saw some favorites go into the gravel some. Saw Paula Murphy race her mustang funny car. Back when they used powdered rosin for traction. Saw Gene Snow the "Snowman" race many times in his dart funny car. Went to a short strip in Mineral Wells on Saturday night to see Big John Mazmaniun go off the end and into the Brazos river because he couldn't stop in time. Good times.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1198&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1106977460 have you other pics or info for this v8 bike? in particular for the transmission to the rear wheel?
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Anybody remember E.J. Potter - "The Michigan Madman"?[/FONT] http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2006/05/08/ej-potter-michigan-madman/ [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT] And a gratuitous Pam shot... [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
If thats E.J. Potter (the Mich. madman) it didn't have a trans. Direct drive with a jack stand of sorts. He would fire it up with the rear wheel off the ground and crew guy would push it off the stand Google his name and you should find pics and stories, I believe there was a Bio. written about him at one time(?)
I bought the book and video years ago, it was pretty interesting. It is still available, but the video is only available on VHS. http://www.teshio.com/michiganmadman_EJPotter.htm
I'm sure I'll be outta the "popular consensus" here, but to me...the 'best' era for drag racing had to be the mid 80s. Think about it....musclecars were cheap and plentifull...ANYONE could afford to buy, build and run a big block Chevelle, Mustang, Charger, etc. Speed parts were still very reasonable, and the drag strips were filled with these cars every weekend...and most of them were DRIVEN there and home! Heck, I was one of the guys doing it then! (In the 60s and 70s, musclecars were new cars...but by the early-mid 80s, they were common used car fodder that could be purchased for a song! My how times have changed!) You also had exciting Pro Stock wars with legends like Frank Iaconio, Lee Shepherd, Bob Glidden and Warren Johnson battling it out week after week to see who would dominate the ranks. Then there were the funny cars! It was the last hurrah for the charismatic funny cars with names like "The Chi-Town Hustler" and "The Blue Max"...before they became shapeless blobs covered in nothing but corporate colors! Garlits and Hill were pushing new boundaries in Top Fuel and Shirley was on a reign of terror there for a while! It was a damned good time to be involved in drag racing. It was fun, exciting and very afforadable. There'll never be another time like that again!
64 Funny Cars! Fox Hunt! Fire Burn Outs! Hydrazine! Picric Acid! Modified Fuel Coupes and Sedans and Roadsters! A drag strip in every town and hamlet! Crazy teams like the Poachers, LA ******, Praying Mantis! Bigger than life personalities like, the Golden Greek, Henry Harrison, Gene Beaver, Gary "the Plume" Gabelich, Gary Cagle, Mickey Thompson, CJ "Pappy" Hart, The Surfers, Jungle Jim Liberman, Wild Willie Borsch, Jim Reath, Mike "the World's Fastest Hippie" Mitchell, Keith Black, Ed Pink, Mooneyham, Fred Larson and last, but not least, Porky the Pirate. Larry Sutton screaming "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday" and, "Be Therrrrrrrre". Late fifties to early seventies. When giants walked a**** us.
I like early 60's to early 70's. In the 60's was lots of innovation, speed parts, cool wheels, multi engine cars, FACTORY backed stuff, AWB cars, G***ers, etc. THEN came Funny Cars, and they went everywhere from flip top Comets, Camaros, Chargers, to E-Type Jaguars (anyone remember the stretch nose XK-E Jag Funny Car called "Snoopy"?). And these Funny Cars RESEMBLED their street versions. Mid 70's brougtht cookie cutter Funny Cars. Three basic bodies covered most the field. Then it all died with the rear engine dragster and COMMER******M! Instead of "Color Me Gone" or "Grumpy's Toy", it was Mattel, Coors, or some **** like that. Other angle-WHAT THE **** does a modern Funny Car look like to you? To me, an army tank. You know, a blob with a rotating gun turret on top. It don't look like a ****ing car
Up to the later 60s when it seemed to change from a paticipant driven "sport" to a sponser driven business.
My vote is for the 60s. When you went to Bakersfield there would be 100 top fuel cars trying to qualify for the 64 spots on Saturday and the 32 spots on Sunday. I lived in Long Beach and I would be on the beach and around 3:00 you could hear the first fuelers making p***es at the Beach, time to go! You could go to the Beach, Orange County, Irwindale all the same weekend and see Top Fuel, Junior Fuel, Fuel Altereds, A Gas Supercharged. It was fantastic. When REDs and slipper clutches started the I stopped going. The Surfers were the BEST!! Rex
Gary Cagle. If you look close,you can see the Binks spray gun & small tank in front of the Hilborn injector.He filled the tank with raw Nitro & pressurized it.If he felt the need for more Fuel during a run,he pulled a lever/cable setup that sprayed straight Nitro into the scoop. This was late 60,early 61 at our house in Pico Rivera.He's wearing his Grant Piston Rings Bonneville 200 MPH Club shirt that he earned in 57.
Attended my first race at E'Town, 1970. My old man was racing in the '50s through the '60s, culminating with an Anglia g***er, non-supercharged. I missed, the '60s but just reading the stories and seeing the innovation makes it clearly the best era, hands down. Much of the momentum and innovation carried through the '70s into the '80s, but by the mid-80's all was lost for the "bucks down" racers. I remember Kenny Bernstein's stupid looking Buick, never looked like a real car. I realize that Funnies were long past resemblance, but if you squinted maybe. Now they all look like ****, and even NASCAR has followed suit with garbage. Front engined dragsters, g***ers, AF/X and early flip top Funnies with no wing ****, Altereds, etc. That's real racing, and the '60s/70s epitomizes that.
50's into the early '60's...racers were built from real cars and car parts, g***ers, altereds, compe***ion coupes and roadsters...many street driven cars still in action, wild variety of engines, wild experimentation with induction systems and such, heads-up racing between different cl*** cars by simply moving the slower one down the strip one length per cl*** difference... Drivers had to react to unpredictable signal from flag man (who was usually a whole circus act on his own) rather than study the actions of the Christmas tree... Stockers were actually stock, within the limits of policing technology, and there were viable places for driveable modified cars. Now...electronics, special built production tube frames, fake body shells to ***ign said tube frame to a particular iden***y, loss of variety of viable engines....
I vote for late 80's when Top Sportsman was really first developing. Little guy racers were experimenting with m***ive amounts of nitrous and running with the "big boys". Outlaw pro stocks running quick 8 programs at little tracks. Nitrous cars entering "best wheelie" contests. Anybody else see Rob Vandergraft drive that fibergl*** 57 chevy? I saw it run at a little 1/8 mile track in Byhalia, MS! at a match race.
SamIam ; do you know who's rail this is I'd like more info on it.I have seen it on other sites but can't seem to find out anything about it .There was a similiar one around here that was Anglia powered.
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