[ponyakr]

i must now give credit where the credit is due. thru all these wins (which was almost every race that 1st 2 years) that were flagged, i cannot take any of the credit. all i did was pop the clutch & row thru the gears. the ole goat did the work. & it wasn't because i hopped it up with cheater parts. i assure you it was stone stock, just as delivered from the factory. i had driven it about 61,000 miles when i took it off the street to race. at the time the only work ever done on it was a new timing set. & that was the results of an engineering blunder at pontiac. i don't hear much about it anymore, so some of you may not even be aware of it. the smart engineers at pontiac decided to use nylon(plastic) teeth on the cam sprocket to make the engine run quieter. yes, even on the ram air motors. they were almost guaranteed to strip off by 50,000 miles. mine did about 40k. today there would be a recall & gm would be forced to change 'em out. i had no more problems with it after that. when i got ready to race, i installed a new clutch & pressure plate & raced the motor stone stock & unmolested all of '73 & '74. i guess thats 1 reason they were so popular back then, they were bad to the bone right from the factory. but with only a few exceptions, you could'nt just go to the dealer(at least in our neck of the woods) & buy a goat off the lot & hope for much performance. except for the judge, the dealers would order their cars loaded out with air, power everything, standard engine & pitiful gears like 3.08 or 3.23. & it got worse in the mid '70's. how about 2.41 & 2.56 ta's. no thrill there. i guess thats why so many people just wrote 'em off as cars that looked good but were real slow. i could have gotten 4.33 gears in my goat, but i knew it would be a daily driver, so i compromised with a 3.90. it would have been quicker with the 4.33's, but as it turned out,it didn't really need the extra help.