[transam1972]

Happy New Years P.Y.!!! & friends! May God Bless America and PONTIAC!!!!

[Jack Peters]

Just as a reminder of the potential of the 455HO that with an 066 cam it still mph'd @ 104 and with a missed gear and floated the valves between 1 & 2 it still mph'd at over 99 in the T-37. Sure with it would have had the correct cam and a good working tach. Might have done better but 4 speeds are not the easiest to launch. 3;55's. Completely stock with an unturned 10K miles on it. Just drove to the strip after driving down from AK to Freemont, CA.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by SD455DJ

When the event was catching on in popularity 12 years ago or so, we had cars that were blatently cheating (14:1 compression, stroker motors, light weight tranny internals, etc.) that we DQ'd them for teh next event. The F.A.S.T. race was born shortly thereafter.
Dennis

I remember some of this back then. I was a little skeptical of a few of those cars runnng. Glad to see you guys enforce the rules. That group that branched off started their own events and actually have quite a few of them throughout the year at various venues, calling it F.A.S.T. that I touched on earlier in this thread, along with Factory Stock class that is ran much like your Pure Stock event.
So 2 different entities so to speak doing similar things.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by SD455DJ

I'm calling you out...plan on bringing it to this years event and be the first RAIII Formula 400 and make history! Seriously, we would love to see you and the car there. Where do you hail from anyway?

Post some pics of your car, we'd all love to see it.

Dennis

I'll check the dates and see what we can do I know I'm scheduled to at least make one trip to pull the truck and trailer out there in March this year already. I hail from Arizona now.
I had a picture of the car at an event earlier in this thread somewhere, was an old glossy that I scanned. They seem to disappear from photobucket after a couple days however. I'll see if I can post one back in here again.

[DJ455HO]

Originally Posted by SD455DJ

Chris, Dan's T-37 (Canyon Copper w/ white painted top) has the original motor in it that is 8.4:1 compression, original 068 cam and lifters, a re-ring (std. bore) and new bearings (years ago) with the original 3.55 gears and he has run as quick as 12.87 @ 107 mph shifting at 4800 rpm. Like his gold T-37, it weighs 3675 lbs with driver and a 1/2 tank of fuel.

I think you should nail the 12's with that gear change, certainly with a little more compression.

Dennis

It's been too long since I've been active on this board, and this is the right thread to pull me back in! This is a great topic to discuss, but one that will never be decided. My brother and I have debated this since we were juveniles with our own cars! The RAIV has superior top end, while the 455 HO shines down low. When it gets right down to it, stock from the factory, I think it's a draw.

Just to correct what my brother said about my CC T-37, the engine is 30-over, and the compression is an actual 8.1 to 1. I rebuilt the engine in late 1984, preparing for the very first muscle car race at the 1985 Buick GS Nationals in Bowling Green, KY. The trans has a shift kit, but the shifts aren't brutal. The exhaust system was probably the biggest power adder with 2.5" mandrel pipes from Torque Technologies, X-pipe, and (old tech) Walker Hemi Super Turbo mufflers. The 12.87 ET is its best so far, and that was in optimal conditions (both weather and track). I would guess with better mufflers, the car could go marginally faster.

The gold T-37 (cloned HO car) was built to take advantage of the Pure Stock rules. I didn't want to push the compression to the max allowed of 9.9, shooting for 9.5 so that the engine would perform fine on premium unleaded. The actual compression came in at 9.4 on the Whistler. It has touched the 12.40s, but usually settles into the 12.50s. Oh, I don't use hop stop bars on any of my cars!

Glad to be back with my fellow PY buddies!

Dan

[Jack Peters]

Dan,
Welcome back. Have a lot of pic's of your car at the Muscle Car drags back in the late 80's. Always have had a great time visiting with you. Also enjoyed the ''pole barn'' collection at your place and visiting with Scott while there. Gotta make another trip to MI. Happy New Year.

And I agree. The debate will never end. But it is a great discussion as it brings out of the woodwork all of those who have or have had these cars and what they ran, especially back in the day.

[SD455DJ]

I forgot to mention that the repop Firestone Wide Ovals & Goodyear Polyglas GT's are made with a slightly softer compound and do hook up much better that modern radial tires, so that improves 60' times and et's. We find that if you pump the rears up to 35 - 40 lbs that increases the footprint and along with 45 lbs of air up front keeps the rolling resistance to a minimum.

Also, we allow mandral bent 2-1/2" exhaust systems with X-pipes and high flow mufflers, so that can reduce et's by up to .3 -.4 seconds. These return the best results on the large cube and/or high reving engines. The cars must have the mufflers in there factory locations, so cars equipped from the factory with single over-the-rear axle transverse mufflers must run that type. If you show up with true duals on your F-body and it is your first time at the race, we give you a one year grace period, so if you want to race next year, you'll have to change to the correct system.

Pypes has a fantastic mandral bent 2-1/2" system with or without X-pipe with the Race Pro transverse muffler that flows very well and sounds great, not too loud until you get into it. Granted, they usually require a little finesse to intall, but it is well worth it for the price and performance gain.

All these minor changes combined can really knock alot of time off your et and one of the reasons we are seeing cars run better than back in the day.

Dennis

[smaman]

Thanks for that info Dennis- it's interesting to know how much the pipes exhaust cuts off E.Ts. Any estimate of what the tires cut off? I should take a picture of the stock exhaust on mine. We should have a differentiation between pure stock and as delivered.

[Formulajones]

Dennis is right on the money. I also run the Pypes transverse setup on my bird. When I switched from the stock Walker system that was 2 1/4" and upgraded to the mandrel 2 1/2" system my car picked up a solid 3 tenths and a little more than ~3 mph with no other changes at all.

['ol Pinion head]

Originally Posted by Formulajones

Dennis is right on the money. I also run the Pypes transverse setup on my bird. When I switched from the stock Walker system that was 2 1/4" and upgraded to the mandrel 2 1/2" system my car picked up a solid 3 tenths and a little more than ~3 mph with no other changes at all.

And Jones, if you would have had the day one original corked up '70-72 stock muffler system, what do you think the car would have picked up? .5, .6?

Have been buying Walker Dynomax mufflers for 20 years, all of them have been noted for higher flow than stock, that's why have bought them.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by 'ol Pinion head

And Jones, if you would have had the day one original corked up '70-72 stock muffler system, what do you think the car would have picked up? .5, .6?

Have been buying Walker Dynomax mufflers for 20 years, all of them have been noted for higher flow than stock, that's why have bought them.

My appologies, I said Walker. I had that on the brain when Dennis mentioned their mufflers as I use them on another car here. I meant to say I had a Gardner system on the firebird, which is about as close to the original as it gets.
Back then, I switched to a Flowmaster transverse Force II kit as that was (if I remember correctly) all that was commercially available at the time which still used a factory transverse style setup. It was 2 1/2" mandrel bent and used an "H" pipe. This system is where I found another 3 tenths in the car.
A few years ago Pypes came out with their own 2 1/2" mandrel system, made of stainless, and uses an "X" pipe. I also liked the design of this muffler a little better with inlet/outlets in more of a stock location.
So I bought this system and installed it in place of the old flowmaster kit, curious to see if it had any further gain over what I had. If so I think it would be marginal at best, but I agree with Dennis, it's a very nice system, fits excellent and sounds fantastic. Very mellow and nice for cruising, yet will make a little noise when on the go pedal.
I haven't raced the car since having this system so can't report any feedback on possible gains.

Edit: Ol' Pinion, just to add, knowing these old Flowmaster kits have had a reputation of being restrictive (so people say nowadays, I don't know for sure) it's possible that the .5 or .6 gain you asked might have been possible if I had a better system available to me at the time. I'd love to run the car again with this Pypes system and see if that would be true. I have all the runs with the car over the years well documented with DA numbers to keep accurate records of any tweaks I found usefull, so even today I could run the car and look back to see if it was worth anything.

[Formulabruce]

Walker made some factory GM exhaust systems

[Norwood]

Originally Posted by SD455DJ

Hey Mike,

Your bringing the GT-37 this year, right? It's been in enough magazines already, so it's time to beat on it like it was meant to.

Dennis

Dennis,

He's coming and I'm coming with him to tune the car......With this combination of driver and tuner we should get it into the 15 second range...LOL

[Judge273]

Hey, we improved by a second already!

[transam1972]

I have been watching the Warner Brothers movie McQ...exactly how much differance is this engine compared to the 455 H.O.?...even without the Super Duty, this car hauls!!?...supertune?....thoughts...