Joe Newbie, 20 Builds a "Stocker"' in 2023

[KennyAnderson]

I LOVED racing with the IHRA back in the Pro Am days and although they were not all that well attended I think they had some really good ideas that go hand in hand with this thread. When my oldest son was getting close to aging out of JR's we found a well worn 93 Z28 and build a pure stocker out of it. It had 168k miles on it and we never even took the motor out. A 12 bolt rear, aftermarket bolt on suspension, wheels and tires, a good converter, and some computer magic and we ran 4 tenths under on our first outing. I had way less than 10k invested in this car and it was a great whip. We could double it in brackets, run stock, and generally beat on it as hard as we wanted. We won several races with it and even won an IHRA Natty race. Best car I ever owned as far as dollars won vs dollars spent. We were planning on converting to a crate motor setup when the I folded up shop.

Fast forward to today we finally sold the Camaro after hurting the motor and now have 2 NHRA legal stockers in the herd. We considered converting the Camaro but decided that combo was beat pretty hard. The crate motor classes would help offsetting entry costs as a newbie could pick up a used ZZ4 or Ford combo from a circle track racer and freshen it up for a reasonable cost. I've had this conversation with many NHRA diehards and they almost stroke out till I walk over to their ride and point out all the aftermarket parts, several ONLY had an intake as the original "stock" parts. Someone mentioned using a COPO or CJ or Dragpak motor but that has many zero's attached to it. Honestly my best advice for Joe Newbie to save his pennies and buy a good used possibly lower class stocker and go have a ball.