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

[curtis reed]

I'm wondering why VR didn't just help him find some older parts that could probably put him 60 under, a bottle of shoe polish and send him out to have a great time???



I'm just a bracket racer but I love what you guys do. I build my own stuff but only out of necessity to be able to drive. Had I started a lot sooner I might have gotten into S or SS with a close friend of mine who is the type that is perfect for these classes.



Also, shouldn't it be JN not NB?

[Buick6]

I guess I'm also one of the foolish old guys wanting to check one more thing off my bucket list by diving into Stock. I had my sights set on a particular well sorted former record setting car for a long time but it wasn't for sale. When the man decided to sell it, it was more than I could afford. He raced it for a final hurrah and the engine developed a fatal meltdown. He knew I wanted that car and had kept my phone number. He decided to offer it to me at a price I couldn't refuse. I've talked to some old timers who have said they wouldn't race Stock nowdays, but I just gotta do it anyway. I always was too stubborn. But at least I went into it with my eyes wide open. JR Weis

[Greg Reimer 7376]

Hi. Am enjoying this read regarding getting started in Stock Eliminator.
My wife and i went to the 1980 Winternationals on Sunday only. I was not real interested in the pro classes, although it was neat to see Grumpy driving hie Pro Stock Camaro, the Modified cars running in Competition Eliminator, especially the nine second 327 5 speed Corvette or two, the Super Gas cars were still a fairly new deal to NHRA, I believe they had to qualify against a 9.90 index and there was a 64 car field with a bump spot below 10 flat, the wheel standing Super Stock cars, and Stock Eliminator caught my eye. It looked like a reasonable way to get into NHRA class racing, and it was fun seeing Cal Method get to the final in a '61 Chevy wagon with a 283 and a Glide. Many fast Stockers then were in th low 12's,high 11's, and when you consider what we had to work with then it's still pretty amazing. After a few attempts at starting by driving other people's cars, I decided in 1992 to build a car for myself. I had conferred with two friends in this sport about this whole idea,Chuck Norton and Tony Janes, So Cal well known racers if there ever were any, and I decided on a combo that would be user friendly and fast enough to be fun. I bought a roller '68 Chevelle Malibu 2 door hardtop less engine and trans for $500 from a bracket racer in Lancaster and towed it home on my black open trailer behind my 71 El Camino. I put it in the driveway behind the gate and started first removing and tossing out the stuff that needed to go, cleaning, painting,and doing a neat job resembling it. I used a set of OEM front drum brakes, rebuilt the front end, loosened the front end movement, 90/10 shocks and all, put in a manual steering box, sand blasted and repainted the radiator core support and the inner fenders, and right then my paint and body buddy from the San Fernando Valley needed an engine put in his truck. I told him I needed a paint job on my Chevelle, so I dropped off the car at his house and drove the truck home, flat cam and all, and installed a rebuilt 350 long block I had. I had removed the bumpers, grille, headlight trim and all the emblems from the Chevelle, the body was very straight needing almost no body work, so we both got done at about the same time, and his cost for the time and materials equalled the price of the truck engine, so by July of that year, the Chevelle was back on its wheels and rolling. In the meantime, Chuck and I rebuilt the 327, used a Lunati cam, whatever lifters that came with it, a set of #290 heads, a quadrajet intake and a Val Hedworth QJ. I had a set of polished Super Tricks, so on went a set of whatever bias ply tires we had and some Moroso skinny fronts. I had the OEM front seat reupholstered and got some repro door panels and reassembled the car fairly easily, a set of gauges and a Sun tach found their way to the top of the dash with a used B&M shifter and a Holley fuel pump completed this build. I fired the engine, it sounded pretty good,(Stocker cams tended to do that), and we were ready for a test and tune. The car naturally fit J/SA, little weight put it into K, but K didn't require a roll bar and harness like J did, so a little weight got me in K and out there fairly easily. A trip to Palmdale to verify this whole thing was in order. The K index at Palmdale was something like a 13.45 or so, so we had a number to shoot for. First run at Palmdale,late August about three in the afternoon resulted in a 13.09 at 99 or so. That was pretty good, the next run ws a 13.04, then a 13.05 or so, but the electric motor for the water pump failed on the return road, so we quit while we were ahead. I weighed the car and it was around 25 pounds light, so I had a 50 pound steel plate that got bolted to the trunk floor. Both Tony and Chuck were happy with my initial results. The Las Vegas points race came along in late September, so I towed up there, entered the car, fixed a mechanical glitch with the fuel system, and got to the fourth round and won a hundred bucks. Not bad for a newbie project with around $5000 total investment. Tony Janes and I took the car to Palmdale and he drove it at two Stock/Super Stock races, and he went to the fourth round both races and we came home with some $100 bills as well. Pomona came around, the Vegas grade point got me in, the index then was a 12.95, I went 12.67 twice then a 12.62 first round of class where I lost by .06. First round, Bobby De Armond showed me what the top speed of n A car looked like from the other lane. One thing for sure, back then you could still do this stuff and it was affordable. I have since then built four more '68 Chevelles for myself and for Tony, and we had a lot of fun for a lot of years. Go ahead and give this a try, listen to the right people, turn off the BS brigade, and only do what you know will work. Be ready to learn all you can as you go along, it will be a lot of fun.

[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.

[Cglrcng]

Billy,

I have not been on the couch, the last decade plus was spent mentoring high school students in FIRST Robotics, plus the prior 23 yrs was running my own computer repair business and as an IT Tech, and knowing that the only way to return was to fully re-build the car completely to both alleviate the issue that caused me to spend a ton of money out on the NHRA running Div. and Nat. Events full time in 1995 w/ a car with a bug that acted just like I read one of yours may have faced.

I found it recently during my 17 month update project. It was not at all what it appeared to be back in the late 90's, an ECU Rev limit feature, but a simple engineered and design issue having to do with the factory stock gas tank, and the Calif. Required clean air standards (it is a CA car), and has a vapor recovery system on it.

The locked out ECU it took me years to learn, auto triggers the vapor recovery system at about 2 seconds after you go full throttle opening the vapor recovery selenoids and sucks the fumes out of the stock tank through the charcoal cannister. And (though I was looking under hood, and under the passenger side kick panel, the actual problem was found at the other end of the car during the deleting of the stock tank and the addition of a 5 gal. Fuel cell w/required upper and lower bulkheads.

A spiderweb cracked and getting worse with time, caused a huge vacuum leak in a quarter inch by 6" vacuum line, and only after 2 seconds at full throttle, but eventually at about 5,200 RPM in every gear, that started with just 1 pop in 1994 at Vegas about 4' after the finish line, and like I said got worse over time.

When I parked the car, retired from competition in 1997, it was a solution I had to find, and was not going to spend the money to finally machine the block, head, and all the rest until I could either replace the ECU w/an aftermarket stand alone system, or find out what else was causing it.

But, a quarter of a century later, I did find it, and so far, that issue no longer exists, only 3-1/8th mile passes so far, but not a missed heartbeat yet, and instead of 5,200-5,600...same ECU and 7K and still pulling hard I have not found the Rev limiter. And that is with the stock injector, the stock regulator, and a brand new exact match but new throttle body that was found that someone purchased in 1985 and still had in the box unused and found at an estate sale last fall.

The Holley system of course and a switch to laptop tuning is the next logical step of course, but gonna re-debut it to get a baseline on just the head, block rebuild, new Ross Forged flat top replacement bullets and the Total Seal ringsets, balancing, etc., then will work from there.

I now know all the existing wiring, and mechanicals are right and working, and have no issues on either side of the firewall.

Quarter mile passes are next, just working on under load ring seating, and finding those new shift points, and how far under it will now run, once the big issue was finally resolved and taking into account all the improves the much need machining, and real go fast parts added will yield to the go slow sled.

[Mark Yacavone]

Originally Posted by curtis reed

I'm wondering why VR didn't just help him find some older parts that could probably put him 60 under, a bottle of shoe polish and send him out to have a great time???



?

Curtis, In our story, JN, I mean NB ran just about .60 under, with new pistons and solid lifter cam .
.60 under , with and older cam and hydraulic lifters, and used pistons, etc. might have been a challenge.
VR was what I called your average racer...Not afraid to spend money for the good stuff.
Massaging older parts is an art form that very few competitive racers want to do, in 2023.
If NB had lived near BN, he might have saved himself some real money, but he didn't.
;-)
BTW, running .60 under in a RWD car, with a bunch of used parts, isn't as easy as it sounds.

[curtis reed]

Originally Posted by Mark Yacavone

Curtis, In our story, JN, I mean NB ran just about .60 under, with new pistons and solid lifter cam .
.60 under , with and older cam and hydraulic lifters, and used pistons, etc. might have been a challenge.
VR was what I called your average racer...Not afraid to spend money for the good stuff.
Massaging older parts is an art form that very few competitive racers want to do, in 2023.
If NB had lived near BN, he might have saved himself some real money, but he didn't.
;-)
BTW, running .60 under in a RWD car, with a bunch of used parts, isn't as easy as it sounds.

Sorry I wasn't clear Mark. I meant older technology not used parts. Please don't take my comments the wrong way, in no way do I believe that doing that is easy. I was just thinking if VR is anything like me he has new unused parts stuck back that will probably never be used and friends that are the same. Cool thought provoking story though.

[Billy Nees]

Mark, is NB going to be at Indy? ;-)

[Mark Yacavone]

Originally Posted by Billy Nees

Mark, is NB going to be at Indy? ;-)

Doubtful, seeing he can't afford to go to Bako..

[Mike Schwartz]

The rules in Stock barely exist compared to the SCCA road racing rules. I remember reading one tech bulletin explaining that it was illegal to tamper with the alignment nibs on sealed beam headlamps. Apparently, people were cutting them down for the negligibly better aerodynamics, which was a no-no.