I had heard about the Stephens RA II GTO. It is one that appears to be missing and had the endura delete bumper. Kind of strange the Firebird and GTO were both in D/S class. I thought the stock classes were based on factory horsepower and weight breaks? I guess you could add weight to the Firebird to run in a different class.
I wish I had heard the owners story about the car. But again I was just collecting information on RA II engines. I could see running a RA II in early 69 before the RA IV were available. Maybe they wanted to see if the RA II was equivalent to the RA IV with porting and RA IV intake? They shared the same 041 camshaft but RA II used 1.5 rockers. If you ported the heads to match the RA IV intake and ran 1.65 rockers it should be equivalent to the RA IV. Possibly looking to get an "advantage' running a RA II with factory HP rating of 366 vs RA IV with 370 HP rating? I would have to research the NHRA class designations during that period. Porting was not allowed but racers tried all kinds of things to bend the rules. I saw a RA II block with full 9792506 and C118 date code at Norwalk last year. Someone had acid washed the block code. I suspect a racer did that to pass it off as a "stock" 400.
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