[ponyakr]

i got on this site cause i'm a pontiac freak & i wanted to share in all the good info. but when i added my well intentioned 2 cents worth, i got some flack. several seem to want to know just who i am, what i've ever done & why i think i have a right to give any info to people who allready know more than me. if your not interested please just move on to another thread. i harbor no ill will towards anyone! if i have offended anyone in any way i apologize. please forgive! it is not my intention to badmouth or disrespect anyone in any way. i did not come on here to bare my soul-- but i guess inquiring minds want to know, so here goes, this is my story. i'm posting this on the street thread cause thats where my story begins. the 1960's & 70's was a great time to be young & alive in this country. almost magical. when i think back on it i say "wow that was great". then at times i think " did that really happen?" then i go to a car show & see all the old muscle cars & remember when these old cars used to prowl the streets. on a friday or saturday nite it was like a parade of every kind of muscle car there was. i remember the 1st goat in our town- red '64 3x2 4sp. it was love at 1st site-- it was the greatest thing i'd ever seen! i bought the 45rpm record " lil gto" & played it over & over every day til my family was sick of it. from that time on it was never a ? of if, but when i'd own my very own gto! more to come.

[ponyakr]

for the 1965 model year pontiac put out some pr posters of the new gto. there were several colors & poses. i heard about it & ordered a whole set. they were beautiful! i hung them on the walls of my room. sometimes i would just stand in front of them & stare at each one. sometimes when i went to bed i'd leave the lite on & stare at them til i went to sleep. then an area pontiac dealer started runnin gto ads with big tigers in different poses. i collected e'm all. it wasn't long til my room was wallpapered with goats. i had many dreams of driving a '65 4sp goat up the road from my house. i vowed that my 1st car would be a gto. but at that time the best i could do was borrow my dads gmc pick-up & go to town to watch the parade. & what a parade it was--'65 gto 3x2 4sp lite blue,'66 gto 3x2 4sp black, bb chevelles, camaros, '68 bird 400 4sp red, mopars of every type- even a hemi-charger, mustangs & other fords, 442's-- round & round the loop they went, barkin the tires when the law wasn't lookin. what a show! & i parked in the bowling alley parking lot right next to the highway so i'd have a front row seat. we'd listen to elvis, the beach boys, jan & dean & all the good rock & roll groups on the am radio til a car with loud pipes came through. then we'd listen as they slowly loped around the parking lot & back onto the highway. we always hoped they'd burn some rubber & grab some gears. they usually would if they new their fans were watching. yah it was great & i was there-- it really happened- i'm a witness.

[ponyakr]

fast forward now to 1969. i'm in college now & working at a pizza joint all the hours i can. i decided the time had come. its time for my gto! so i looked around & found a clean '65 4sp lite blue- $1500. my boss was a good man & liked to help the college kids when he could. i told him what i wanted to do & he gave me some good advice. he asked " your not going to leave me are you?" well i liked the job & i loved pizza (we could eat all we wanted every day--i did) so i wasn't planing to quit. he said "why don't you buy a new car instead of that used one?" he reasoned that the notes wouldn't be much higher cause they'd finance it longer & i'd have a new car instead of a used 1 that might have problems. god bless "Mr. Joe". i took his advice & went straight to the pontic dealer. they had a new judge on display. i'd read some about 'em so i said that's what i want. but i said " i aint gonna drive around in no haloween orange car even if it is a goat. what other colors can i get?" he went inside & asked his boss & said that was the only color availabe at that time. i said "well can i get the same motor & ram air stuff in a regular gto in a different color?" the answer was yes so we dug into the options list & built my 1st & only new car. silver with black interior, ra3, 4sp, 3.90 gears, hood tach, fm radio, no air, manual steering. $3400 + change. notes $125 a month including ins. yah this was really happening. soon i'd be driving my very own gto! (ps) T.J. reminded me to be sure & tell ya'll i also ordered it with a bench seat so she could sit in the middle & shift. it worked out great. i'd mash the clutch & she'd snatch the gears.

[Keith Seymore]

Where are you from (geographically)?

K

[ponyakr]

about 6 weeks later i was driving down the 4 lane main drag just passed the pontiac place when i saw a car hauler with a load of pontiacs headed to the pontiac dealer. i spotted it imediately. there it was in the middle of the bottom row. My GTO! i made a u-turn as soon as i could, followed the truck & watched 'em unload the cars. i was like a kid at christmas & santa had brought me the car of my dreams! i talked to a salesman who told me they'd have to check it out in the shop before i could leave with it, so we finished up the paper work & soon there is was. he handed me the keys & i jumped in & drove off down the 4 lane. it was perfect, everything felt just right, like it was made just for me. i only made 2 changes-- a hurst t-handle & the widest tires i could find for the back- i think they were h-70's. the wider stuff like n-50's weren't around yet. i'd usually go back to our little home town at least one day of the week-end to be part of the muscle car parade. i'd watched 'em do it for years so i new just what to do-- lope slowly through the bowling alley parking lot, then pull out onto the 4-lane keeping a sharp eye out for the law. if the coast was clear i'd pop the clutch & bark the tires,then get some 2nd gear rubber, then ease it into 4th & lope slowly up the hill passed the dairy queen. it was a great time to be alive & i'm glad i got to be a part of it!

[ponyakr]

fast forward again to 1973. i'd been to the local drag strip & i just knew i had to do that. so i learned all i could about it, put in a new clutch & flywheel, got some m&h racemasters(hard street tires- slicks weren't legal yet), had some downpipes made for the ra3 manifolds(they stepped up to 3" tubes & looked like headers from the bottom) & i was ready to race! i'd seen that lots of guys used tow bars to get their cars to the track so when i took the goat off the street i bought an old "68 cadilac(it was huge) to use for a tow car. it had a 472 motor & plenty of room in the trunk for jack,tires,tools & stuff. i had a good hitch installed, bought a good tow bar, had brackets welded to the frame rails & i was ready to go. i still remember those butterflies i'd get every time we'd get close to the track-- pre-race jitters i guess you'd say. it was similar to what i felt before a big basketball game but bigger,better, this was something really special --its something i'll never forget! at the track i jacked'er up, put the m&h tires on, warmed it up then headed for the staging lanes. they put me in d-stock. i thought "i'll probably have to run some bb chevelles, but thats allright, i've beat em before i can do it again." it only took 1 pass rowin through the gears & i knew this is what i was born to do ! gotta go for now

[ponyakr]

i am interested in the heads & rear. as for the '68--i don't think that's any of the cars TJ raced--but stranger things have happened--i suppose its possible that i owned at least a part or 2 thats on it--i had quite a few.

[The Boss]

Too bad you didn't spend the extra $389.00 for the RA IV - only an extra $11/month over 36 months.

Cool story, keep it coming.

BTW, welcome to the board.

[ponyakr]

i live in the bayou country of north la 10 miles north of dugdemona bayou near beautiful caney lake -- former home of 14lb record bass my first season of racing was loads of fun. i learned a lot & got some good experience. our home track was running stock,ss & street modified. there was no such thing as bracket racing. that brings up a ? for some of you older guys. do you remember what year et bracket racing started in your area? i wonder if it might have started sooner in some parts of the country then took a while to filter down to little podunk tracks like ours. or was it something nhra came up with & it started all over the country at the same time? i ran d stock & won my class almost every week. they gave a trophy for class win & a bigger 1 for overall win. i soon had a room full of trophies. we finally had so many trophies we talked the track owners into giving us $5 instead of a trophy. later T.J. sold several to a neighbor so he could brag to his girlfriends. we ran off track records, so i set mine so low nobody else in my class could touch it. it was even lower than the c stock record held by a stage 1 455 buick. i ran some on an airport runway-- no lites, just a flagman. spots were given as so many feet head start. the short ones were marked off. they guessed at the long ones. a pinto won several races so they put a bounty on him. his spot was 410ft (estimated of course) on me. i beat him & we never saw him again. when an airplane wanted to land we stopped the race & when he was out of the way we'd fire'em back up.

[ponyakr]

1974 was purty much more of the same til late in the season when T.J. surprised me by saying " if i'm gonna be here anyway i mite a well race too". well that was fine with me. but she could'nt see over the dash or reach the pedals in the ole goat so we decided on a '68 bird. we found a clean body on a lot in a nearby town. it was a 350 2bl with problems. but the price was rite $350. aah those were the days! i pulled the motor out of the goat, bought a junkyard th400 for $100 & stuck it all in the bird. the rear was a 1 wheeler probably a 2.73 or 3.08. our local junkyard had 1 he said was a 4.11 posi $150. he was rite about the posi but it was 3.23. oh well there have been liars in all generations. that shows just how little i knew at that time. i had no idea how to tell a gear ratio & absolutely nobody to tell or teach me any thing -- i was on my own. the whole process was a learning experience. but i was eager to learn, i had already tasted the thrill of victory & wasn't about to quit now! the car was under geared & had a stock converter so it was over a second slower than the goat. but it got T.J. started & she got some of those beginner mistakes behind her. '75 would be a different year.

[ponyakr]

i got an nhra rule book & started asking ? this time i asked the rite people & got the rite answers. got a sheet from nhra with all the legal specs for our cars. found a machine shop that had built pontiac class racer motors. found out about stall converters( i'd never even heard of a stall converter) bought a 9" converter(vitar was a big name at that time) bought us a lunati cheater cam. then i made another dummy mistake. the rule said pontiac oem cast pistons only. but gm was out til they could run off another batch, so i just bought a set from napa. big mistake. i was told later that the only cast piston at the time nearly as good as gm was sterling brand. of course i'd never heard that name. anyway the machine shop got it together before the season started so i stuffed it in the bird & got it runnin. it was time to race so we just shot it with primer and loaded it up. They made headers legal that year and we found a used set of Hookers for it. They also made 9" slicks legal so we bought a new set. When we made it to the track we really didn't know what to expect. But the converter, cam, gears and slicks seemed to be the right combo. She won the first four races with no problem and the first two at another track. Then the problems started.

[ponyakr]

TJ won the 5th race in a row, but by now the non-Pontiac competitors (all of em) were tired of getting beat by a Pontiac and to add insult to injury, it was a female driver. Thru the years we saw em fume and cuss and sling wrenches and gravel while loading on the trailer after a whuupin' from TJ's early bird. (The hi-dollar Chevy boys were the worst) It finally got so bad we started staying away from our local track if there was a race anywhere else close. Anyhow, back to this 5th race, we were protested. My feeling was "Tear it down if you want to." I knew the only thing that wasn't legal was the napa pistons and I figured since the tech guys were all Chevy boys they'd have no idea what a Pont. piston looked like. I guess they knew that, so instead they just put it on the scales. I assumed it weighed what the book said it was supposed to, since it wasn't stripped down at all. You see how little I knew? If i'd had anybody to help me they'da said "Hey man, you better weigh it, you may have to add some weight." So they said it was a few lbs. lite and disqualified us. Well, all the guys seemed very happy about that. But they knew that she had beat them far enough that a few lbs. wouldn't have made any difference. Experience can be a good teacher, but no fun sometimes.

[ponyakr]

I put a spare tire in the trunk and and made sure the tank was a least half full so if they weighed us it woulnd't be lite. And just as I thought, it didn't slow down a bit. At the 6th race she was well on her way to another win. She was running a Mopar - a Demon or Duster, I think. She had run him several times that year, he wasn't even close. I watched her leave the line, looked good, and no red, so I started back to the trailer. Then I heard somebody say she lost. I was thinking "Something must have broke." But she made it back to the trailer and when she got out of the car she had a sad look on her face and holding her head down she said, "I'm sorry! I forgot to release the parking brake." To keep it from rolling backwards at the end of the staging lanes she would mash the parking brake then release it when it was her turn to race. But this time she forgot. She said "It was close though, I almost won anyway." We've had many a good laff about that thru the years. Sometimes after that I would think to ask her if she had released it, but she never did that again. Pontiac finally got another batch of pistons in so I took everything to the machine shop and soon had the old Goat back on the track. It was doing ok, but then the napa pistons gave up in the Bird.

[ponyakr]

in '67 a boy that had dated my sister got out from his hitch in the navy & came back home to our little town. he soon began teaching some of us younger guys many of the vices he had learned in the navy. he & i struck up a good acquaintance & as we shared things about our lives, he found out that i liked musclecars. he got a job at our local paper mill & soon had enuff for the down payment on his 1st new car. i probably had some influence on his choice. of course we know that my choice would be a gto. but with no dealer in town, he figured it would be better to buy local so he could get quick repairs if needed. so 1 day a car showed up at our local chevy dealer. it was a gold '68 ss396, 4sp, manual steering, no air. & it had a 1-wheeler rear end. why did dealers order musclecars without posi--some of these options only cost a few measly bucks back then. i guess they did it so they could sell just a little cheaper than their comp. anyway, he took me down to the dealer to show me this car & asked me what i thought. so i gave him my opinion. a few days later i seem to remember being on a load of hay for some reason. as i looked down i watched him pull down our driveway with that gold paint sparkling in the sun. he said "jump in lets go for a ride". he got in the right side & put me under the wheel. by now i'd driven sticks for over 10 years, so i knew just what to do. we eased out onto the hiway & headed for town to join the musclecar parade, already in progress. no, it wasn't the car of my dreams, but in it i could now be part of the musclecar parade, instead of just watching it from my dads pickup in the bowling alley parking lot. he bought amoco white gas from our local american station. it was the highest octane gas available in our town. so, all the musclecars used it. it was also the highest priced gas at a whopping 39 cents. some guys would buy cheap gas at rose oil if they were planning a big drinkin nite with no street racin involved. they could save an amazing 10 cents per gal or more. wow!

[ponyakr]

well my new runnin buddy, whom i'll refer to as jay, took his ss to a neighbor, who was a good welder, & had a set of straight thu mufflers installed. it wasn't near as fast as some of the other cars in town, but now looked & sounded just as good as any of 'em. so we'd "ride with pride" as we paraded thru town. now this was the new "thrill of my life". & it was extremely exciting to me. well, 1 day jay came over & picked me up 1 day to go make a few loops on a sunday afternoon. now by this time i finally had a girlfriend. she was actually jays neighbor. so, on the way to town i told jay to stop by her house so i could tell her where i was going & that i'd come over to see her after we made a few loops. but when she heard the news she decided that she should go with us. but, hey, this was a guy thang. i told her i'd only be gone a couple of hours, then i'd be back to see her. well, she thru a fit & used some words i didn't think she even knew. lookin back, i don't blame her i'da been mad too. but this new found musclecar thang had a grip on me. it was just about the strongest emotional attachment to something i had ever experienced. so, i made a choice. i chose the musclecar scene over the girlfriend. i remember thinking, "am i crazy, what am i doing?" now this girl was beautiful & smart--much smarter than me & she had never treated me bad. so at that time i'm sure a lot of people thought i was crazy. but, we made the brake, & the rest, as they say, is history. now i didn't take this lightly, cause this was the only person outside my family that i'd ever gotten close to. after this we finally did get back on speakin terms. she even later went on a water ski trip with me & T.J. & my friend from hi school with the '64 389 cat. she went on to finish college & became very sucessful in her field, eventually teaching others in the medical field in some large cities. she now gets to travel the world. to me she's sorta like a celebrity or a big sports star that you used to know before they were famous. i'm proud of her acomplishments & glad to say that i knew her back before she was famous. i just remembered this, the last time i talked to her was on the phone. she'd found out that i had a clean '66 gto, and was interested in it. her & her husband bought it & took it back to the big city.

[ponyakr]

now i was a free man. jay & i could ride the roads & make loops as single, unattached young studs(we thought). we'd ride the backroads, sippin on tasty beverages & listening to country music on the 8-track tape player. our favorite was hank williams greatest hits. sometimes thats the only tape we'd listen to all night. it would go round & round(we wore out several) & after we got a little buzz goin, we'd sing every word right along with ole hank. stuff like: Your Cheatin Heart, Jambalaya, Hey Good Lookin & even I Saw The Light. "i gotta hot rod ford & a 2 dollar bill & i know a spot right over the hill, there's soda pop & the dancin's free, so if you wanna have fun come along with me. hey hey, good lookin, what'cha got cookin? how'sa bout cookin somethin up with me". some of you mite be sayin, yuk! how could you listen to that junk? hey, we were both from the country & grew up on farms. i'll tell ya whats "yuk", all this filthy talkin rap & hip hop & the hard rock screamin thats goin on! well, movin rite along. now after we got all jacked up sangin with hank, we'd put on our black cowboy hats & cruise back into town "makin the scene". so during 1 of these scenes T.J. was cruisin in her mom's olds 98 (they were huge back then) & spotted us. now she was a cowgirl, you know, rode horses & everything. so when she saw these 2 dudes in a musclecar & with cowboy hats on, it got her attention. she's made a joke about it ever since. she says "boy those cowboy hats'll git them women". she asked around to find out more about us. i remember seeing her drivin around in that big ole tank & she was so short it looked like she could hardly see over the dash. & she wore these funny lookin little glasses. so i never gave her much thought. then 1 day i saw her get out of the car & without her glasses. my mouth probably hung open as i gawked. she wasn't very tall but she had the most beautiful long straight hair i had ever seen. i was smitten! i remember thinkin "whoa, that little girl is beautiful". well, to shorten this a bit i'll just say, we got together & began to have an occasional date. i could tell that this little girl was special. on our 1st date, we went to see "the sound of music". she dropped her glasses & we could'nt find them in the dark, so we just laughed & disturbed everybody & ate popcorn & had a good time. but, i'd learned from my previous experience to keep the macho musclecar thang seperate & let her know that it was important to me, so she'd give me my space. well she probably didn't like it very much, but she did it any way. God bless T.J. for "hangin in there".

[6704gto]

story is very interesting.just waiting on the next installment

[TheSilverBuick]

It's the internet, ya gotta have thick skin!

Great history!

[ponyakr]

back about '77 or so there was this kid, who we thought to be very immature, named kenny. he sorta started hangin around all the time. he seemed very excited about being around all our "hot rod" stuff at the shop( by now known as the Speed Barn). he was a senior in high school as i recall. his ride was a little white chevette 4cyl stick, probably his moms car. one sunday he found out we were racing at haynesville so he came on up in the chevette. any street cars who wished could pay their $5 entry fee & make all the time trials there was time for. it was run what you brung. there was every kind of pitiful street car you could name. well, they called the street cars up for tt & there was a mad dash to the staging lanes. it reminds me of the recent mad dash to get a pair of rereleased air jordans. we were busy cooling down & gettin ready for our next tt. the street cars were lined up nose to tail. i don't remember who spotted it 1st, but 1 of us pointed to the staging lanes & said somthing like "check it out". there about halfway back in the lanes was this narrow white column of smoke going straight up into the air maybe 30' high. we looked closer & saw that the smoke was coming from the right rear of kenny's chevette. you couldn't even here the engine noise, but somehow he had figured out how to do a 1 wheel burnout without moving the car foreward. wouldn't his mom be proud? we had already coined the phrase, so we applied it here. look, kenny,s " putin on a show for the spectators". we could see he loved it & was doing all he could to be part of it. he finished school that may, so 1 day when he showed up, i said " you obviously love racin, so why don't you come on out here & help me do some wrenchin & this winter we'll rig you up a car. i'll learn 'ya everything i know about it & next year you can go with us & do some real racin ". well as expected he thought that was a good idea, so the gig was on!

[ponyakr]

by now all around the shop it was a bird sanctuary. a real bone yard of 1st & 2nd gen birds. when asked what kind of car he'd like to race, kenny said he wanted 1 like T.J. drove. well, that was fine with me, so we looked over the yard & selected the cleanest '68 body we could find & pulled it into the shop. by now i was an old hand at this so i told kenny where to start stripin out all the unnessesary stuff & he went to work. i pulled the 455 out of the goat & bolted it up to a th400(which the former owner assured me had a hd intermediate sprag, but as we soon found out, he lied) & we used a stock 13" converter. this is the same 455 i got when i pulled it & put a 400 in a friends '70 goat. it was still stone stock & by the end of 3 years of racing we figured it had been to well over 100 races & approaching 1000 passes. and at its last race it was still running 12.50's as smooth as a sewing machine. anyhow we got it together & i showed kenny how to handle the 2 car rig. then i bought a new '78 1 ton & put ramps on the back, built another 455 for the goat & we were soon ready for a 3-car team race season. & what a season it was. it turned out to be our best season ever. during the '78-'79 seasons we went to nearly 100 races in 4 different states. kenny drove our 2-car rig thousands of miles. he later drove log trucks & i've often wondered if, while he was pullin a load of logs, he ever thought back on those good ole days when he pulled 2 pontiacs to the races every weekend.