[SD455DJ]

My brother just got these old (July 1977) pictures of our first Pontiac drag car from a friend. The friend and Dan flat-towed the Tempest to Thunderbird Raceway (north of Muskegon, MI and closed since 2007) with his dad's '70 Buick Estate wagon (seen in picture #2 with the driver door open) and I believe this one of the first times down the race track with the car. As you can see it was pulled to the track with a tow bar and old NMW tow-hubs!!! It was a true low-buck effort on Dan's and my parts, scrounging what little money we had and trading/bartering for parts here and there. We bought the Tempest Custom for $200 in 1976 (originally a 326/ST300/2.56 10-bolt, manual steering & drum brakes...and not much else) and promptly started converting it to a strip terror (lol!).

We were both in junior college and our parents would have killed us if they knew we were spending our money and time on a race car, so we kept the car behind a friends house in a rougher neighborhood. Funny, nobody ever bothered the car the couple years we had it there as it was kept outside in his non-fenced backyard next to a shady alley. These pictures are before we painted the car racer white and you can see the red primer covering our bondo bodywork.

We found a '68 428 with #16 heads (370 hp) in a local junkyard and did a re-ring (dingleberry ball hone-job) and new bearings, and new Crane 226/226 .506" lift cam with 1.5 rockers with Crane springs. The heads just received a clean-up with the stock valves and we bought some JR D-port headers with 18" collector extensions. We ran the stock intake and Q-jet and threw on a 14" open element air cleaner. We swapped the rear end for a 4.56 geared 12-bolt posi and had a BOP short tail TH400 rebuilt with a shift kit and a used 11" street style convertor that wasn't very effective. The car started out running in the mid 13's at 103 mph and eventually got it down in the mid to low 12's at 106 - 108 mph depending on the weather and track conditions. Our first set of slicks were older Mickey Thompson's 29/10.5 -15's mounted on 15x8 Corvette Wally Wheels. We found some 15x4 Fenton aluminum front wheels as seen. Later on we swapped on a RAIV intake (w/o the crossover) and it didn't make a difference ET-wise. When Dan graduated from college in 1978 ( a year after these pictures were taken) he moved to Portland and had his own place where he kept the car and unveiled it to our parents (who thought that's nice).

I also recall thing it weighed only 3200 to 3300 lbs. since it was 'just' a Tempest, but actually weighed over 3600 lbs. with the driver and a half tank of gas...and we even stripped out/off the non-essentials! We were surprised to say the least and kind of bummed it was a pig.

Sorry for the long story, but thought some of you guys could relate.

Dennis

[Scott65]

Cool story, thanks for sharing.

[Scott Roberts]

Very cool story! I love the old school grass roots racing! That's what it's all based on..

[sdbob]

Thanks nice story. I can relate.

[SD455DJ]

Thanks everyone! I forgot to mention that we shifted at 5800 rpm with the stock rods and cast pistons. The motor was rebuilt later with TRW forged .030+ pistons and reconditioned cast rods with new rod bolts. We replaced the old MT slicks on steel wheels, which were hard as rocks, with real slicks (M&H 29"x9") on 15x8 Centerline wheels, and a better 9" converter (Vitar (?) with 3500 stall). This is when it ran low 12's. I remember hoping for high 11's, but never quite got there...close with 12 teens.

When Dan bought the Hunt Brothers '71 455HO E/SA NHRA stocker, we stripped the Tempest and off to the crusher it went. Looking back, it really wasn't in that bad of shape and should have saved it...who knew...!

Dennis

[SD455DJ]

Here's Dan's E/SA (sometimes F/SA) NHRA T-37 with the 455HO/TH400/4.10 rear. He ran low 11's back in the 80's/90's with the car. He raced at the regional level and the pic with Kathy's Clown is at the 1983 Popular Hot Rodding Nationals at US131 Raceway in Martin, MI (he won the race btw!).

Dennis

[OCMDGTO]

Very cool story and always interesting to hear how people get started in this. Pretty lofty endeavor for a couple of college kids, I remember scraping for change to get a candy bar towards the end of the semesters(but always managed to have beer money somehow).