1970's Street Machines

[whitetop]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: DW31S</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I'm diggin' the Yellow '70 442 W-30 conv. on the magazine cover. If that is/was a real car what's that worth today. I've seen sticks sell north of $200,000.00 recently with numbers and docs. </div></div>

A classmate in HS in the late 70's had blue/white top 70'71 'vert with the fiberglass hood. Original paint car he bought from the original owner. He put Cragars on it and ran it to death and literally beat the crap out of it.. what a shame. Never knew what finally happened to it.

Where all the fiberglass twin scooped cars w-30's??

[daverd]

I've got one of those fiberglass twin scooped cars in my
Garage.... [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/smile.gif[/img] the factory hoods fiberglass were made for Oldsmobile
By Owens Corning ....

[Hemicolt]

Pulled this off the site.

[DW31S]

Whitetop--- No. That hood could be an option on non-W-30 cars.

Daverd---No teasing allowed---tell us more about what is in your garage.

[RichSchmidt]

My 73 Firebird has been a street race car since the early 80's. I bought it in 1994 after years of abuse,and kept on abusing it. I don't have any pics of it from back in he day,but I have some ones from the last few years,and the car definatly still has the back in the day vibe. Runs 10's with a mild pump gas 427 BBC and 9's with a little spray. I took it apart in 2010 to redo it and haven't gotten it back together.

Back around 2006





Around 2008





Yes,it is a functional street AND strip car,going rounds in Super Pro,even in the bracket finals. A real well worn battle ax.

[RichSchmidt]

Maybe this inspired me. A Motion shop technician built this one for himself.

[RichSchmidt]

This is my 73 Camaro back about 3 years after I bought it. I wont tell you what year it was taken,just remember that I bought it when I was a junior in high school,and am 42 now. So if you don't want to know that it isn't a 70's pic,do do the math. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/smile.gif[/img]

[Mk IV Muscle]

I remember seeing some pics of your 'Bird when it was blue with the Pro Stock scoop and without. Wasn't it a high 8-second ride back then?

[RichSchmidt]

No,never ran faster then mid 9's,but that was with raw motor gears (4.88's or 4.56's) and a 250 shot. I was almost on the 8000 rpm chip on the big end. I had a 400 hp kit on it,but never tuned it past 250. I would have needed 4.33's or 4.10's to step up past that. The cam at the time was a Crane flat tappet that nosed over at about 6900rpm on motor,and probably shouldnt have been going past about 6600 on the spray.

When I went 9.60's and 70's with the car I had a pair of bowl blended 990 iron heads on it that had a crack between 2 of the valves and lost the exhaust seal. I may have been running on 7 and a half cylinders then. I built the car to run NMCA/NSCA Easy Street which required iron heads,flat tappet cam,plate system,850 carb,8.5# per cube on stock suspention and 11.5&quot; wide DOT tires. At 439 cubes I had to weigh about 3700#,I was 3650 when I ran on the nitrous back then. The combo was the wrong one,as the class highly favored small engines,and in particular small block Fords which worked better within the rules. When one of the small block Fords started running 8.50's it was just insane to think that even my car on a big kit running 8.80's would stand a chance. I decided that maybe drag radial class would be better and the rules were stock oem part number heads and block,3400# for big block,and a single plate system with #4 feed line. That class stepped up real fast,I think I could have done well,but there were issues with the rules. I decided to replace my heads with a set of GMPP L-88 replacement aluminum heads because they are the NHRA legal replacement head for the 074 factory head. My opinion is that they allowed 188 and 990 iron heads as replacement for the old factory installed rectangular iron heads,even though they never technically came on a production car,so why not the L-88 Version. I got an informal nod from one of the tech guys,but after buying and porting the heads,they decided that the heads I had were actually made for GM by Edelbrock,and were made of superior casting material and cores,and were therefore too superior to the original heads to be considered factory replacemnt. Their logic was right,but it still pissed me off. The heads were basically cast in the same molds as the Edelbrock Victor or RPM heads with just a GM part number,and were left rough cast so the ports were the same size as the factory L-88's. They have enough material to port out to the size of a monstor 375cc head just like the Edelbrocks,so since head porting was allowed,it these heads would allow me to port to way beyond what the original L-88 heads could go,vs what the 990 and 188 iron heads which truly could only be ported as far as the factory originals that they were replacing. I wasnt about to spend any money on crack prone 074 heads,or on iron heads that weighed a ton. I just threw in the towel,put a Dominator on the car,took the nitrous off and went electronics class bracket racing as a 10 second car.

Interesting fact,the aluminum heads hit the domes on my SRP pistons,and my SRP pistons are actually for a 496 but I am running them in a 439 with .250&quot; longer rods,so the domes are a little too small for a 439 anyway,so I layed back the chambers in the heads and the compression dropped to 11.2:1. I blew the bottom end up after almost 700 runs with zero maintence(threw 2 H-beam Manley rods),and decided to reuse 6 of the pistons with a new block and crank and rods since the old combo ran so good,I tried a bigger flat tappet cam,and it wiped out before I got the engine broken in,so a friend of mine who raced and built engines for pro stock back in the early 70's had an old GM flat tappet cam from back then laying on the shelf,and gave it to me to try. It was a variation of the old L-88 cam with only .560&quot; lift. I changed the oil and stabbed the new cam in and the car ran 10.49@128 on motor at 3425# with the stock GM cam and pump gas compression(I run race gas for consistency though). This combo is very mild,and is less radical then a real L-88. The engine is so mild mannered it is like driving an every day production car only it makes 600hp. I plan on milling the heads to get it to 12:1 and stabbing a little bigger cam in it with a tunnel ram and 2 660's when I drop it into the 2800# vintage pro stock 70 Camaro that I am restoring and figure that if it doesnt certify I will need to tune it down to run slower then 10.0.

[RichSchmidt]

You probably saw a pic when it looked like it did back in it's &quot;race car&quot; days. I hung fiberglass doors and front clip on it with lexan windows,and an iron headed small block with 10.5:1 and a mediocre solid roller cam. It weighed about 2900# with me in it,and ran mid 11's. To be fair though,I had a super duper nitrous convertor in it(and no nitrous),and I would later find that the nitrous convertor was way wrong for this combo. I used the same convertor in the car with my big block,and it ran 12.0's(3600#'s though) the first time out with a very dead 1.70 60 foot just like the small block(not spinning though). I did make a few tune up changes to the engine,but nothing drastic,but I swapped out the 5000 stall nitrous convertor for a 5000 stall super stock type unit,and went 6 tenths faster. The small block not only would have probably went 10.90 and a 1.48 60 foot with the better convertor,but probably needed more convertor too. The small block should have been running 10.60's at 2900#,but never got there.

Not a 70's style street car,but it was driven on the street. Notice the low style Camaro spoiler. That was inspired by me seeing the rat bird article above.
circa 1996/97



Or this,when it had a a 355 with ported camel hump heads,flat tappet cam,th-350 with 3500 stall,weighed 3400# and had 4.10's in it,and ran 12.0 on motor,only hitting 3rd as the car approached the stripes. I swapped in 5.13's,and hit my rpm at the stripes and the car went a tenth slower,go figure.It had no roll bar,full stock interior,power brakes,loud stereo,and drove to the track

Circa 1994/95



Or like this when I first put the big block in it circa 2001