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Back at a vintage road race and the ears still work

Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2017 7:21 pm
by PackardV8
Haven't been to a vintage road race for some years and things have certainly changed. As we've gotten older, those racers dying off aren't being replaced, so the vintage orgs have relaxed the rules to attract more participants. Pretty much anything which looks a few years old can run. Tech is only concerned with safety and what formally was required to be period-correct, is "whatever."

The sights and sounds were a time-travel-trip from when I played with many of the sporty stuff when it was new. I listened and from the shift RPMs decided it was obvious which racers wanted to have his engine last for years and who had enough money to want to win by any means necessary.

There were late-'60s big block 'Vettes with the side headers which brought back a memory of first hearing that distinctive BBC 454" exhaust note coming down the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans in 1969.Image


Totally different sounds were Factory Five Cobra replicars with Coyote crate engines. Then, several Mustangs/Falcons/Cobras with SBFs which sounded very familiar; it was even possible to be pretty sure which were 302" and which were 347"s. Then there was one really fast FoMoCo with a totally different exhaust note and the only one there shifting above 9,000 RPMs. I noted the owner never opened the hood when anyone was around. At lunch break today, I was walking behind his transporter when I saw the shadow of the hood being raised. Through the crack of the back door of the transporter, I caught a glance of what I'm pretty sure was a current generation Ford FR9 NASCAR engine. Any idea what Yates gets for one of these?

Re: Back at a vintage road race and the ears still work

Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2017 9:45 pm
by hoffman900
Vintage has been pretty much like that forever.

For the vintage SCCA BP/ Trans Am cars, they're real 302s (well, 310ci). They have to run iron heads, Edelbrock dual-plane intakes, etc. Internals are free and the best have large base circle roller cams, tons of Spintron development, Elston exhausts, etc. Bill C on here is involved with some of the best in that world.

For the Trans Am stuff from the 80s and 90s, they're running current technology NASCAR engines. Ernie Elliott does a lot of the Fords and Mopars. You can lease or buy a FR9 or a R07 from Roush-Yates, ECR, etc. Not cheap, but a bargain from a performance standard. If you tried developing an oddball combination to that level, you'd be in 100x what those engines cost.

Re: Back at a vintage road race and the ears still work

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2017 10:38 am
by PackardV8
hoffman900 wrote:For the vintage SCCA BP/ Trans Am cars, they're real 302s (well, 310ci). They have to run iron heads, Edelbrock dual-plane intakes, etc.
Yes, I remember it well and when those cars were new, I wasted some of my best years eating cast iron dust and trying to make horsepower with that stuff. Today, any kid with a checkbook and a Summit catalog can make a bunch more SBF horsepower than the best Shelby race engine ever did, drive it on the street and it won't blow up like so many of the Shelby race engines did.
they're running current technology NASCAR engines. Ernie Elliott does a lot of the Fords and Mopars. You can lease or buy a FR9 or a R07 from Roush-Yates, ECR, etc. Not cheap, but a bargain from a performance standard.
Agree completely. If one just wants to go fast and have fun, the NASCAR engine is the bargain deal. Just listening to the exhaust notes, the RPMs and the speeds, fifty years of SBF progress was very evident.

Re: Back at a vintage road race and the ears still work

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2017 6:46 pm
by hoffman900
PackardV8 wrote:
hoffman900 wrote:For the vintage SCCA BP/ Trans Am cars, they're real 302s (well, 310ci). They have to run iron heads, Edelbrock dual-plane intakes, etc.
Yes, I remember it well and when those cars were new, I wasted some of my best years eating cast iron dust and trying to make horsepower with that stuff. Today, any kid with a checkbook and a Summit catalog can make a bunch more SBF horsepower than the best Shelby race engine ever did, drive it on the street and it won't blow up like so many of the Shelby race engines did.
A friend of mine was a 2x Div Champion, lap record holder, and 2nd place in 1970 in SCCA B-Production in a 289 Cobra. He had Airflow Research doing the heads, Harvey designing the cams, and they did a lot of dyno testing on the exhaust and found 30hp over what Holman Moody built. Made just a hair over 350bhp at the time (the intake manifold and the carburetor were the big bottlenecks).

Today, in SVRA competition, a legal 310ci B-Prod motor is making just a hair over 600bhp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAZXMXuBbrM&t=61s