When was the "Golden Age" of Stock Eliminator

[vic guilmino]

i started in 1960 with a 58 pontiac
1962 thru 1976
when you had to put a roll bar

[treessavoy]

Originally Posted by vic guilmino

i started in 1960 with a 58 pontiac
1962 thru 1976
when you had to put a roll bar

Vic,

I've got a 58 Chieftian with 3-2's, auto, and posi; 28k original miles...just like new!

[Robert Swartz]

Originally Posted by treessavoy

Mid-'60's through mid-'70's...you could build a competitive car cheaply, drive it to the track and win with it. Rules were simple, cars were simple, racing was fun and you didn't have to mortgage the house to buy the next super trick gadget in order to be competitive.

I remember a typical weekend at Atco, teere would be 300 cars and you might have 20 cars in your class and it wasn't a special meet...just the regular weekly turnout.

And NO fuel cars! Super Stock and the Gasser's were the "Pro's" at the time.

Mid 70's. I ran with the Meek Brothers. They ran a 72 Pinto, converted to a 71, think we changed the front bumper. There was nothing "trick" in that car, just alot of hard work. Trickest part were the 4:88 rearend gears out of some kind of jeep? Modified the housing to get it to fit. We got from it Tom Reider. They set NHRA and a couple IHRA records with that car.

Robert Swartz

[RJ]

Originally Posted by X-TECH MAN

Before 1985 when NHRA changed the valve spring and cam rule. After that time frame its been higher RPM's, larger heads (porting and hiding it), Shubeck type (expensive) lifters, allowed replacement parts that never came on the car...ie, intake manifolds, alum. heads, wheelie bars, fuel cells, water pump drives, and on and on.

Amen

[vic guilmino]

treessavoy
what state do you live in
i would like to see the car

[Mark Lewis]

70,'s when I started, built a record holding 61 chevy,v/sa.Had a total of 1600.00 in it and that included the paint job. Can't buy a tranny for that now.I guess adjusted for inflation that would be 30,000 now,lol.

[chris3racing]

Neil, you stated that very well. Those were the days of drag racing. The stockers and later super stockers. You drove, flat towed, remember the old tow bars, or hauled on an open trailer. Your tools and slicks in the back of an old pick-up, probably a 6 cylinder, and off to the races. Cars were classed, an all the cars, sometimes as many a 15 or 20 in some classes, ran with the class winner in the stock eliminator. When Super Stock came along and match racing began, we would race at a different track 3 or 4 days a week. The stockers were there in force, the gassers were there and the specators were jammed in the stands and along the fences, notice I didn't say guard rails.

I will never forget a conversation, at a reunion some years ago, myself, Bobby Warren, Ronnie Sox and Hubert Platt were discussing this very topic. Ronnie made the comment that with all the money involved to be in drag racing and the big transports, motorhomes and special equipment, the racers today do not have the fun we had getting to the races, being in the pits with friends and spectators, sleeping on the ground, eating bologna sandwiches and racing the way it was done in those days.

And yes, I will agree with who ever posted that those days are gone; however, one of the most popular posting on a popular mopar site, is the stories being told by the owners and builders of a very famous car, about those days.

[bill dedman]

I guess you had to have been there, but the most exciting part of being a drag racing enthuisast, whether you raced or just watched (I did both), was the period from 1955 through 1968, I think.

That's a long time, but the excitement was ongoing all during that period BECAUSE, it was a time when the so-called "horsepower wars" were going on, and every year, the manufacturers upped the ante with new and more powerful cars, cuminating in the limited-production specialized race cars like the Z-11 Bow Ties in '63, Ford Thunderbolts in '64 and the Mopar Hemi Darts and Barracudas in '68.

For example, just look at what hapened to one car, Chevrolet, with regard to their most powerful models from 1955 'till the front office shuth them down in mid-1963.... something that didn't happen at Ford or Chrysler, by-the-way.

Maximum horsepower from Chevys,as I remember it... so, I may have a few glitches and need some help, but here's what I remember:

1955 195 hp Corvette motor "Power Pack" with a better cam.
1956 225 hp 2 X 4bbls (240, according to NHRA, with dealer-installed "Duntov" cam)
1957 283 hp F.I.
1958 315 hp 348 with 3-twos
1959 335 hp 348 with 3 twos; better cam?
1960 350 hp 348 with whatever...
1961 360 hp 409cid 1 4 bbl
1962 409 hp 409cid 2 4bbls
1963 425 hp 409cid, OR 430 hp Z-11 (409 motor bored to 427 with hi-rise heads and intake)

Then, the bottom fell out of performance at G.M.

But, all through those years, Chrysler and Ford had pretty much matched the Chevy horsepower escalation, and Ford continued the battle with the '64 T-Bolt, while Mopar introduced the Hemi in mid-'64 after a succession of "Stage" 413 and 426 "wedge" motors for S/S.

Not a whole lot going on at Chevy or Pontiac during '65 (the GTO was a huge hit with a big block in an intermediate body in '64, spawning the 396-inch, Z-16 Chevelle and later 442 Olds cars, with Ford countering with the medium riser 427 Fairlanes in '66 and '67. Mopar had some 383 and 440 Darts, etc., but was a weak player in the street wars. Made up for it on the drag strip, though...

Then, in '68 Ma Mopar dropped the "H"- BOMB and created the limited-production, be-all/end-all, Darts and Barracudas with the competition Hemi for what was then, SS/B. Later, when nobody ever built anything faster, NHRA moved them to SS/A... and finally to a class all their own: SS/AH... The final chapter of the horsepower wars; the culmination of thirteen years of engineering one-upmanship by the factory guys, for OUR benefit! And, what a show it was!!!!

So, on a yearly basis, for many years, when the new models arrived, it was the same kind of uproar that has currently attended the advent of the new CJ Mustangs and Drag-Pack Challengers.... EVERY YEAR!!! Year after year...

It was ongoing excitement brought to us by Detroit, when Detroit was healthy!

Of course, this created a "can't wait to see it run!!!" attitude that generated a lot of new race cars when the next season rolled around. There were so many '57 Chevys running around on the streets with Traction Masters (a kind of dumbed-down Cal Trac) and Atlas Bucrons (a butyl-rubber tire that had bite like a slick), you'd have though they were optional equipment on those cars, from the factory!!!

The variety of powerplants made it especially interesting to watch the Stockers; for example, when a '57 Chevy pulled to the line, if you couldn't read the class lettering on the window (in shoe polish), you didn't know whether you were watching an inline six with 140 horsepower, a two barrel 265 (170 hp?); a two barrel 283 (185 hp); a power pack 283 with a 4 bbl and dual exhausts (220 hp); a twin 4bbl motor with hydraulic OR solid lifters (245 or 270 hp); or either of two different fuel injection motors, one with hydraulic lifters, the other with solids (250 or 283 hp). Pontiacs were equally as likely to have various induction system, camshafts, and varied horsepower ratings. Even Cadillacs had multiple carburetion (dual 4's, then 3-twos) for many years...

And, it changed, EVERY YEAR!!! Always more power than the year before. How much faster will the top offering be??? It was non-stop excitement for about twelve or thirteen years!!!

I feel extremely fortunate to not only have lived through that era, but to have worked on the Stocker tech line at a drag strip for most of those years, so I got to see under ALL THOSE HOODS!!! LOL!!

Yes!!!!!

I was 17 in 1955, when the "Mickey Mouse" (rocker arm moniker) Chevy hit the street with solid lifters in all the stick shift cars. Even the 2-bbls motors would run 6,000 rpm with ease, a feat unheard of back then from anything but a pure racing engine! That started the horsepower race that provided so many exciting drag racing thrills for the next so many years.

So, my contention is that the period from 1955 through 1968 was the "golden era of drag racing" because of the almost non-stop proliferation of cars that went quicker, year-after-year, and the racing it generated.

During that period of time, Top Fuel Dragsters also increased their performance from the 160's to the mid 200's.... They weren't sitting on their laurels, either, but I was too busy watching the Stockers to pay much attention to those guys who got their horsepower out of a barrel.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!!!!

Bill

[Bob Don]

Some of you old guys may remember things like buying several heads at the junkyard and flowing them all to see which may have had the best casting (acid porting? Unheard of). Testing a big box full of STOCK valve springs to find some that came in the top of the pressure spec. I would like to think that the golden years were when I was running in the late 70's and early 80's. When I was torn down on a protest, Ken Barrett said he was actually surprised at how legal my car was! These were the years that stock pretty much meant stock - and it was fun!

[Bobby Zlatkin]

Wow, good post Bill. I also lived those exciting years but would take them through 1971. Sometime around that time the cover of Super Stock & Drag Ilistrated Magazine showed a funeral and the title of the artical was "The Muscle Car is Dead". I didn't take that too seriously at the time, but boy how that was true.