stock and super stock racing
 

Years ago a friend ran ss in the old AHRA. My question is do you face all of the cars in your specific class (such as Q/S) first in a heads up no dial in first one to the finish wins? Then fall in with the other classes and dial in with them in a handicap race? If you happen to be the only car in your class such as(F/S) you would win your class and win a wally for winning your class? I hope I didn't confuse anyone with this rather long question. Thanks to all for the help.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

No you only run against your class in class runoff 's for the winner in your class and the wally, but i like the format that you have disclose run everybody in your class first then ladder you up....cool.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

That is how races were run in the 60's early 70". I you were racing H/S, H/Stock, you had a national record to run off of, probably set by Bobby Warren. All cars in H/S run against each other for the class win. After all classes were run then Stock Eliminator is called and the winner of each class runs. The cars were run as they pulled into the staging lane. If you were running against a D/S your national record was probably lower than his therefore, you got a head start.

We did not run off a number selected by any means other that how fast the fast car in the class would run at an event. You went faster than the national record, published in the National Dragster Magazine, he could, on your next run match that et or speed and you were the new national record holder an next race all H/S, in eliminator were put in the system with that et.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

and what was WRONG with that?

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Records at sea level East or West coast tracks, Air density on Saturday night eliminations of -400 ft. THEN try to race on those records at Air Density 2400-3000 feet in the mid west. Not ALL records were set at the same tracks so Some weak non competed classes versus Hot Dog classes where Record Runs were the Goal...
One positive thing was no break out racing, and always was a goal to go FASTER not slow down....

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

I remember just running your class and maybe getting a trophy and that was it. We didn't have wallys and there was a flagman for a starter. If you wanted to run for money you had to have a street tire and run street elinator for $25.00.
Course that was a long time ago.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

A major flaw in using National Records for handicapping cars was that, after awhile, it became apparent to the people who raced a lot, that if they re-set the record, they were shooting themselves in the foot, as it would chip away at their handicap (dial-in) number, so racers who were aware of this would "protect" their record (not lower it) 'til after awhile, National Records became a joke, because so many of them were "protected," and not nearly as quick as they needed to be.

It was called "sandbagging," and still is....

That's one of the reasons the index system was created.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Other than CLASS, there was break-out racing Dick. You could not go more than .10 secs under during eliminations. It may have seemed like no break-out racing to some, because not many could even run close to their class records at the time. It was a very advantageous system for me with my '50 Olds in the military in Texas in 1969. I won 17 of 19 races and runner-uped the other two (broke). One amber Pro-tree by the way at Temple Academy Dragway (Little River). Neatest little track around. Do they still run there?

Jerry

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

When the eliminators were run off records there was a 1/10 breakout allowed.
Except for the final then it was get to the stripe first.

And BTW there were no quickest loser qualifiers. You won class or you went home.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

[QUOTE=art leong;

And BTW there were no quickest loser qualifiers. You won class or you went home.[/QUOTE]

Thats when drag racing was real racing......not the over price bracket crap going on today and YES I towed a long distance to places like Gainesville and Bowling Green Ky. along with a few others and lost in the class run offs or a class final and had to watch or head home to improve my performance. I admired the class winners and NHRA did a good job at tear downs back in the day. Not this 1000 foot shut off s$$t thats being done today. Class winners only in the eliminator style of racing would make the AHFS work a lot better and faster.(Blown Fords anyone?). Wont happen though......Its all about $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ from entries. My 2 1/2 cents.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Jerry
I guess you were stationed at Fort Hood. I have to agree Little River is one of the Neatest tracks in Tx. Who would have thought the pecan sap from the trees would make such good traction compound. And yes Jerry they still race there every weekend.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Sorry to jack the thread a little bit. But out of all the divisionals and national event I have been at with friends running stock or super stock, there are a few things I have never bothered to figure out. Do you or did you used to get points or money for qualifying 1 at a div or nat event? Are class run offs just at national events? Are Class run offs related to the actual eliminator at each race, or separate from? Are class run offs ran at every national? What do you get for winning class run offs? Wally? Money? Also are you able to switch classes thru out the season, like go up or down a weight class? Do you just specify which class you are running when you feel out your tech card at each race?

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

and lets add one more item, in the final if the winner was below his record that was a new record.....

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Thanks Alan,

Glad to hear it's still a dragstrip. I wonder if they still graze cattle there during the week. That made for some interesting pit spots.

Jerry

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

That is how it was done before all the dumbing down, soft indexes, all run, too stinking many classes, etc.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

While everyone is waxing how great the old days were let's look at the truth. It was simple...the guy that had the most money to put in their class car was the winner, if you couldn't run below or at the class record there was no reason for you to even go to the track unless you just liked to watch. Those of us that still went knew we were going to be out the first round if we ran into one of these guys.
If no killer cars were in your class you still had to run off the record when you went into stock eliminator, so you weren't going to win no matter what.....and that's why the change to index racing...to give more people a chance to race.

JimR

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Alan/Jerry,

I was stationed at Ft. Hood and raced at Temple in '76 thru '78, it's the best kept secret in the drag racing world. I remember everyone trying to get there early enough to get one of the under tree parking places. I raced a guy in a SS chevy 2 who couldn't drive with his boot on so when it came time to race he raced barefoot!
Good times.

JimR

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Jerry,
I was at Ft. Hood for awhile the summer of 1962, and they ran primitive drag races beside the loading ramps at the "railhead." They were all pretty much street cars; the quickest car I ever saw there, was a red, 1938 Willys 4-door sedan, with a GMC-blown Buick nailhead B/GS car. I believe he ran 13.30's.... not very fast, but pure excitement for a bunch of race-starved G.I.'s.

They had a flagman and a guy with a pair of binoculars and a stopwatch. The guy with the stopwatch sat on the finish line and watched the start with the binoculars....

Chrondek, it wasn't.... lol!!! But, it was LOTS of fun!!!

No classes at all; quickest car there won ALL the entry fee money....

Were they still doing that when you got to Ft. Hood????

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Drag racing got complicated quickly, but got a lot MORE complicated in 1963, with the introduction of the Christmas Tree, and its handicapped-start capabilities.

The ensuing years saw many changes, some good, some bad, but sometimes I wonder if the direction that NHRA drag racing has taken (for Stockers) is a good thing...

There was a time when you took your car to the strip and raced for a trophy.... period.

In 1956, for example, there was A, B, C, and D Stock, In '57, I think they added E Stock (could be a year "off.") Sticks and automatics were not separated.

The classification process worked with so few classes, because the horsepower spectrum was so small; the very fastest cars in 1956 had around 300 horsepower; the slowest were in the 90-horsepower range.

So, you had only about 210 horsepower separating the slowest Stockers from the fastest. Separating them with 4 or 5 classes made for some fairly equitable "class" racing.

In 1956, There might be 7 or 8 cars in A Stock (dual-quad Chevies, Fords, Pontiacs, and Dodges,) with the occasional Chrysler 300, or Cadillac El Dorado (both of which sported dual quads, in '56.)

B Stock might have 12-14 cars, and might be made up of primarily, single 4bbl 317 cid., Pontiacs, Power Pack 265 Chevies, "Ford Interceptors" (312-powered sedans), and an occasional '56 Olds 88.

C Stock was usually the most populous class, with lots of 2bbl 265 Chevys, 272 cid '56 Fords, and an assortment of oddball V8 Studebakers, Mercury 292's and some '53-'54 Oldsmobiles. Maybe 15-18 cars in that class.

D Stock was not as popular, but was made up of some interesting cars, such as 232 cid, early V8, 2-bbl, Studebakers, '49-'51 Oldsmobiles, Hudson Hornets with 1 carb, and 2-bbl, '52 OHV Lincolns (with Hydramatics(!).

E Stock was the refuge of the inline, six-cylinder Chevies, GMC pickups, Ford Flatheads, and a whole bevy of nondescript Nashes, really early Buicks (1938?) with "compound carburetion," and most foreign cars of the day (of which, there were very few.) It was a crapshoot, as far as how many would show up to race... maybe 10....

You got 3 or 4 time trials, and would heed the call to the lanes for YOUR CLASS, after noon, or, thereabouts.

The classes were run off, one class at a time, hot-lapping, until a winner in that class was determined. Then, the next higher class had its eliminations. They were all run this way; hot-laps until the survivor was deemed the class champion.

They ran some competition Dragsters, Gassers, motorcycles, and Altereds between the autonomous class runs.... usually saving the "TOP ELIMINATOR" runs for the last runs of the day.

There was NO "Stock Eliminator." Just 5 class winners, with a nice trophy in the back seat of each. No cash payouts.

There were also, no $5,000.00, acid-ported cylinder heads, $$$$$ Headers, disguised, expensive, aluminum driveshafts, data loggers, $900.00 "blueprinted" carburetors, nor expen$ive drag slicks on these cars. They were required to run the tires they were equipped with, OEM.

When the racing program was over, the announcer invited any spectator who wanted to, to bring their car to the line for a free time trial, or to grudge race the car of their choice... multiple times, if so desired.

Lots of those folks got their first taste of competition there, and came back the next month as a competitor!!!

It was so simple...

Is what we have, today, better???

You decide...

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Very few "pro built" engines, about zero "pro built" cars. Anybody could bolt on slapper bars and 90/10 shocks. 95% of the fast cars were owner built. Until Stahl & Moroso came along, (they later split up and became Stahl & Associates, and Moroso) there was no place to buy trick parts. Jere Stahl had some of the coolest stuff I had seen at the time. Most everybody made things themselves. Most guys did their own engine back then. Some still do. Yeah, many slow guys cried it was all money, just like they do today. Not many of us had any back then. The "rich" guys had open trailers, the rest of us used tow bars.

That last sentance is what I meant about dumbing it down. You don't have to know anything or work very hard to be able run the inexes we have now. Unless you have a heads up it's just bracket racing. That's sad. Used to be performance based, no longer.

And before christmas trees, we did indeed run eliminators. A 25' per class head start, with a 250' max. My 225 hp 2X4 265" '56 Chevy got the same 250' head start, or spot, from D/S through A/S. Only race car I ever had that made money.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Ed thats the way I remember it. It wasn't all controled by money. Most of it was hard work and a consideral amount of smarts. I feel it was a lot better and way more fun. It was real drag racing. But the low brow whiners won and here we are. Now we have $70k stockers and people are avoiding heads-up runs. Maybe we could start running all same classed cars against each other in eliminations. That make the factoring come in faster and start to make it a performance class again.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Ed is right; eventually, they did run handicapped-start, "eliminators" using handicaps based on head-start distances, but that didn't come along until a little later, and I THINK it was an AHRA thing; I never saw that type of handicapping at an NHRA strip, and I was at the NHRA Nationals in '57, '58, '61 and '62 (all, pre-Christmas Tree.) The strip I wokked as a Tech at (Des Moines Dragway) was using the "distance/head start" handicap system when I started working there, in 1965, but switched to an elapsed-time handicap, the next year. It was an AHRA strip until 1966.

The time frame I made reference to when there were no "Stock Eliminators" (at least, that I knew about) were 1955-1959... just Class winners.

When they started combining classes for a cash prize was when things started to get complicated, and there's been no letup, since...

During that time-frame, they did have three "eliminators" for modified cars; Top, Middle, and Little Eliminators, but again, there were no handicaps; an A car ran a C car, heads-up...
They opined that if you wanted to win the Eliminator money ($75, $50, and $25), you should build an "A" car... LOL!

How's that for simplicity... duh........

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

You would be ashamed to admit to someone that you didnt build your own car & engine too.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Amen...

Thanks for bringing back this long forgotten fact.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

They hadicapped cars here in Tulsa (NHRA) at the old North Air Port track. Yes, we had to stop to let private planes take off and land. I started in 1959/1960. The year before I graduated high school.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

I have underwear older than you. May be wearing some right now.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

I started racing when Ed was 11....

I sure haven't made much progress, given the time-frame...

Oh well....

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Ed,

I didn't say anything about "pro built" I only pointed out that when I raced at Atco in '63 or so, those of us that worked at gas stations couldn't be competitive due to the money. I raced in stock and SS at that time and watched guy after guy have to sell their car because some guy that had more money build a killer car and knock the record out of the park!

JimR

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

They were still racing on Sundays down by the loading docks when I was there in '77 but had up graded to lights and a tree but they had disbanded the Army Racing Team...I raced with some of those guys at Temple. I had a high 11 second Max Wedge and was the fastest car there.

JimR

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

There was no "Army Racing Team," when I was there, in '62. Lots of fun, though, and not an NHRA decal in sight...

Wonder if that's still going on at "The Railhead"?????????

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

I fairly young and just now getting a point in my life where I can think about getting a car and racing. I was excited to learn about Stock and Super Stock where the fastest best built car still wins. But that is not the case. From what I understand, unless your at nationals most of what you do is just bracket racing. This is disappointing. It seems like with all the classes out there now they could have one setup for just heads racing stock cars. It would be nice if they just used the class indexes to determine the head start and it was first to finish plus the reaction times. I understand there is a huge advantage for those who spend a lot of money, but if you just want to race and have a chance with a slower car just do bracket racing. Theres my young and dumb opinion take it what its worth.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

RPM42.....They had the type of first to the finish line racing back in the mid 70's you mentioned and it was the same 3 or 4 cars winning all of the time. The entries dropped of to almost nothing (less income for NHRA) so they changed it back to bracket racing except for class run offs and the ocasional heads up race if they couldnt find a class to hide in to avoid it.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

In the very early '70's the Army created the Army Racing team which was headed by a Lt. and the cars were driven by enlisted men. I believe the cars were their own but competition money and parts were furnished by the Army and sponsors. They raced in various classes and ran the NHRA circuit. It ended in '74 or '75....not sure on the exact dates. The team was stationed at Ft.Hood.

JimR

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

The Lt. drove the SS/PA 55 Chevy 4 door. I talked to him quite a bit back then but I cant remember his name for sure. Nice guy for an Army officer.....LOL. Did he drive a 71 454 Corvette C or D/SA in the 80's??? Glass Slipper???? Im thinking maybe his name was Lt Ham??? Or was it someone else???

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

X-Tech Man I can see your point now. It would suck if every weekend the same cars won.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

The car is the Norman Bernard:"Go Army"1955 Chevy 4 dr SS/PA which became the Berry Rachlin Buffalo Flash/LA Flash car which I ran from the 1982 Winternationals to the 1983 Winternationals. Picture is from the 1982 World Finals OCIR.

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Terry,

You're right. It was Lt. Frank Ham. He actually got a dragstrip started on the Ft. Hood warehouse road shortly after I left Ft. Hood. I had tried earlier, but I guess Spec 5 didn't have the pull that Lieutenant did. They only ran it a couple of years.

Jerry

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

It wasn't like that in the northwest. You had guys you just as soon not have to face but there was a lot of ways to lose back then(Breakage). Today you have the Fauls,Langs Waldos(back then to)Fletchers,Biondos I would just as soon avoid. They don't always have the fastest cars in their class but are great drivers and they do win a large portion of the races. Does that make sense at all?

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

I don't remember his name but he did move to the Corvette and I think he did pretty well for a few years.

JimR

Re: stock and super stock racing
 

Jerry Ryan was right about Frank Ham, he raced a Corvette back in the early eighties.