Why did we race a Stocker? A short story to share

[Glenn Hayes]

I just wanted to share a story from a few years back, from our family to yours this holiday season.


Why we love Class Racing:
On a early fall Wednesday night at Kansas City International Drag way, my wife, 3 sons and I arrive in our old ’74 Chevy Dually with our ’74 Corvette I/SA in tow on our open trailer to doing some testing. There were about 20 Stock and Super Stock cars there that night doing the same.
I made a run with a recent carb adjustment and was pleased with the results. So as we rolled through staging lanes for our 2nd time trial, as were ready to go to the water box, I see we are paired up with a Black ’55 Chevy (which turns out to be with a 454, tunnel ram, 4 speed, big slicks, cage,) nice looking car and sure sounded really good too. I roll up and slip the Turbo 200 into 2nd gear a do my burnout and roll right to the pre-stage beam. I sit there and wait while I can still hear him boiling the tires and then roll by. He backs up, does a couple of hard dry hops and then finally stages. I roll in, take the engine to 2600 rpm and when I see the last yellow I nail it. The car always leaves with the front tires around 2’ in the air, so at 5200 rpm I click 2nd, then at 5800 I click high gear. There is a slight chill in the air, so I’m thinking… if I had a portable coffee maker in here, I’d start a cup of coffee! I then crossed the finish stripe and then the ’55 Chevy blows by. I roll up to the timing shack, get my slip and motor on back to the trailer.
As I shut the car off and open the door, Jennifer and the boys are right there with big happy smiles and Jennifer says “You spanked him”!
I smiled and said, “Honey, its just time testing runs”. As I crawl out of the car I hear from behind me, “HEY”! I turn and this BIG guy carrying a helmet comes up to me and blurts out “What you got under the hood of that thing”?
I calmly reply “A stock 350”.
He says “NO WAY, SHOW ME WHATS UNDER THERE” ….. So I pop the hood and open it. The look on his face was classic disbelief; he looked and looked and looked, stood up and said “You’ve got Nitrous”.
I again calmly said, “No, sorry, stock class cars are not allowed to use anything like that, our cars have to be factory stock, but we can have headers! I then began to explain to him what stock class was and about, but he kept interrupting me ….” There’s NO WAY this car is stock, it’s just to fast for that to be true, you’ve got nitrous hidden in there.
So once again I calmly said, “Tell ya what, if you can find anything that even looks like nitrous on this car, I’ll give it to you, right here, right now.”
He stood there, just glaring at the car, looked inside, got on the ground and looked, and looked and looked, finally after a few minutes he turns to me and says “That thing is just crazy, I just don’t get it” , then turned a walked away.
I turned to Jennifer and the boys, we all smiled at each other and then had a family group hug. Then my oldest Son Cody (Rest in Peace Son) said “Dad, let’s go do it again”, to which I said, “Let’s Go”!
As I grabbed my helmet, Jennifer walked up to me and said, “Did you even look at your time slip”? I said “No, I forgot all about it”…. She shows it to me, His ’55 Chevy-12.52, our Stocker -11.80 … that put another big grin on my face.

We had another group hug and off to the staging lanes we went.

For us, building and racing our stocker was a family affair that we loved to do because it kept us all together.
God Bless you all and Merry Christmas!
Glenn, Jennifer, Cody (R.I.P. Son), Casey and Cort

[69camz28]

Good Story, Sir. May you old these and other fond memories of your son close to your heart this holiday season.

Jeff

[art leong]

Good story. I've had similar experiences, when they look for the turbo. They trace the headers, then look under the car. Then they ask where it is. And I tell them "it's in the tow vehicle" LOL
Had a couple on here going for it too. LOL

[impstocker]

I would guess we all have that story somewhere. I remember testing my 68 Impala at Island Dragway, ran a 11.90, a few fellas came over to look at the car and commented if it was a 454 big block in the car. I told them no, just a oval port 396, then they see the Quadrajet and iron intake and heads, then you tell them, :"oh yea, stock lift cam with .398 lift" I use to MPH pretty good too_ 117.11 best

we could probaly fool a lot of the contestants on the "Pass Time" show, except for that guy from Texas Chassis_ he would know.

Will Lamprecht
65 Impala in progress-using above 396-325 motor

[Rose Racing]

Originally Posted by impstocker

I would guess we all have that story somewhere. I remember testing my 68 Impala at Island Dragway, ran a 11.90, a few fellas came over to look at the car and commented if it was a 454 big block in the car. I told them no, just a oval port 396, then they see the Quadrajet and iron intake and heads, then you tell them, :"oh yea, stock lift cam with .398 lift" I use to MPH pretty good too_ 117.11 best

we could probaly fool a lot of the contestants on the "Pass Time" show, except for that guy from Texas Chassis_ he would know.

Will Lamprecht
65 Impala in progress-using above 396-325 motor

naaa hes terrible at class cars he only knows power adder cars I remember the vegas episode with a bunch of class cars he sucked lol

[Larry Hill]

The question we get " How do you get the car to do that? "

[XSTOCKER]

2 young hopefull racers looking at our stocker...."If this car runs 11's......your's will run 9's easy".

[Jim Kaekel]

Originally Posted by XSTOCKER

2 young hopefull racers looking at our stocker...."If this car runs 11's......your's will run 9's easy".

Good one!!!!

[older racer]

hi, you're right, other racers don't understand about stockers!!! going back to vegas pass time race, the expert missed about every class car time wise. he guessed the 57 chevy with 525 hp,/283would run 9.88, it was 11.0. it was a blast to watch. overheard was when pond made a pass in his 425/427, muttered 425 horse my ##s. lol.

[Lou Jeffery]

Great story! When we explain why a Stocker runs so well. We explain that although the rules are limiting what parts you can run this keeps you from making bad decisions on parts that actually hurt your performance. Like 1000 cfm carbs, over 2" primary tubes, crazy size heads etc.