[ponyakr]

With our stocker days behind us we made new plans. The early Bird was still running good so TJ said she wouldn't mind driving that car on the street. So I pulled the tranny and put her a 4-spd in it, some Thrush Hedder Muffs and swapped the 4.56 posi for a 3.23 1-wheeler. It made a nice street car. I guess some folks didn't understand what all the racing decals were about and it was purty loud! But she only got 1 $25 ticket for loud pipes. It was fun for a couple of years, til it got hit. But most of the parts lived to race again. And TJ moved on to a '73 455 4-spd TA for a street ride. It seems that the desire to go faster comes to all who race. I was no exception. Our local track ran a class I think was called Street Modified. They used the stock specs for wt. limits, then you divide your wt. by your cubic inches to determine the class. Of course this favors the small-cube, hi rpm Chevy. I had no business in that class, but the brackets were still a year away, so I decided to give it a shot. I had a '68 ragtop Bird, which could be heavier than a hardtop, so I got to work on it. Found a good used roller from an SS racer and took my block and stuff to a new machine shop in a nearby city. Huge mistake! They had a top fuel car, so they HAD to know what they were doing - right? WRONG! The roller motor made it almost thru 3 passes and the 350 blew up just backing out of the shop. Listen very carefully! Never have machine work done by anyone who has little or no experience working on Pontiac stuff!