 |
Craig's 2000 Review
Once again, spring came with great anticipation in the year 2000. I had barely missed my goal of running in the 11s in street trim the previous fall and I was rearing to go when the tracks opened in March. My last runs in 1999 held lots of promise. The Victor Jr. intake had yielded nice gains, but poor traction due to the weather kept me out of the 11s. So I took to the strip in late March with only a few changes. I had added the CalTrac bars and 4 of 6pts of a roll bar kit.
I raced first in 2000 at Lake Cumberland Dragway, which is known to be slower than Beech Bend. But the car was running strong and turning in good times for the track conditions (very very green with little prep).
I finally made it to Bowling Green to race at Beech Bend in April. I knew this was the day. The first run was so close. 12.0 as I recall. Before the second run, the car started loading up very badly in the staging lanes and died after the burnout. Luckily the battery was strong enough to get it fired up and a few revs cleared it out. It left very hard and picked up the left front tire and inch or so! Unfortunately, about 15-20' off the line, it stumbled very badly, but picked back up to run a 12.2. That certainly would have been an 11 second pass. Back in the pits, I swapped carbs. Off came the 800 double pumper and on went the Barry Grant vacuum secondary carb. The third run was clean. No air under the tires, though. The secondaries were coming in a bit late (it had been a while since I had run that carb and it wasn't tuned for the Victor Jr. intake). As it crossed the stripe, I noticed the tach was just a tad higher than usual. Had it run a tad faster? Yes! 11.976@111.67! WooHoo!!! Finally! I was so excited. Luckily no one was around to hear my joyous blathering :-) Back in the pits, I got back to business. It was time to speed up those secondaries. But where were my springs? Dang, left them at home. By this time, all the 5.0 pilots had showed up and the lanes were packed with Pony meat. Mmmm...I smell dinner! After a terribly long wait, which included a scary off track excursion by a biker (he was fine), I got lined up against a very fast looking and sounding race only Stang. The driver had been eyeing me in the lanes and seemed to think he was going to whip a Chevy. I figured he had the upper hand, so I was dead set on treeing him. He did his Pro Stock burnout impression and I did my normal 5 seconds at 5000 rpm in 2nd gear. When the lights dropped, I knew I had him on the tree. I kept expecting him to pull around me on the top end, but I never saw him! As I eased out of the gas past the finish line, he came past me. I thought maybe he had broken and I couldn't see him (it was dark at this time), but no, I had just spanked him! Well, maybe not a big spanking, but 11.98 to his 12.27. As I drove by his pits, I could help but give the 383 a short blurb. I'm sure he appreciated it!
I had been having urges to go 10s all spring. Yeah, I know, I was barely in the 11s, but this drag racing thing is a disease you know. So the week after I ran in the 11s, I pulled out the 383 and sold the Dart II heads and custom matched Reed cam. The goal was to get the motor back together by mid-June for the 2nd Annual Nova Listserv Gathering.
Due to the incompetence of some people at Doug Herbert Performance, the motor didn't come back together as planned. For some reason, this moron didn't think my money was good enough, I guess. Here I was trying to drop $2500 and he wouldn't enter the order. He even lied to me more than once. I ended up chewing him and his boss out and vowing to never do business with them again.
So the back up plan for G2K went into effect. The trusty original 307 that I had pulled out of my car in the early 90s came out of storage. I put the Victor Jr., full roller rockers and my 1 3/4" headers on it. You make do with what you have, even if it is a mismatch. I even left the 4800 stall and 4.56 gears in it. I knew I would need all the mechanical advantage I could find to help the little mouse push this heavy brick down the track. As it turns out, the setup really ran well. Better than the 307 had ever run as a matter of fact. It went 14.35@93 at G2K, which was good enough to best a 454 powered Impala (you know who you are!).
The rest of the season was spent bracket racing with the 307 and collecting even more parts for the 383. I didn't get any wins, but I went some rounds. The highlight of my bracket racing was my perfect run, which was the first ever at Lake Cumberland Dragway. Click on the timeslip to check out the full sized version. I'm car 8351. 9.380 on a 9.38 dial-in and a .500 light. You can't do better than that! I'll probably never do it again.
In September, one of the car clubs that I'm in went to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for the Fall Grand Run. If you can get to either the Spring or Fall Grand Run, Shades of the Past or any of the other big weekends, you won't be sorry. More cars than you can shake a stick at (country boy comment), cool cruising, lovely scenery and good friends. What more could you ask for. The Nova handled the stop-n-go traffic just fine and 150 miles at 4000 rpm on the interstate was no sweat. Who says 4.56 gears aren't streetable? Only the weenies!
I ended up the year by driving the Nova in the Christmas parade again. I had fought a loading up problem the year before, so I wanted to give the '73 a chance to redeem itself while the mild 307 was under the hood. It did its job admirably, but will be retired from parade action. The new 383 combo is going to be streetable, but idling for an hour is not a good idea with big solid roller cams. From now on, I'll drive the '63 Chevy II Convertible that my wife just bought.
All in all, it was a good year. I certainly wish I had gotten the 383 back together in time for G2K, but I had a blast playing around with the 307. The 383 will be ready to rumble in February (if all goes as planned) and 2001 should produce some 10-second timeslips in street trim. Dang, this is going to be fun!
To those of you that made it through my blabbering, thanks. To those that didn't, well you aren't reading this anyway, so... ;-)
Craig Watson
12-27-00
Copyright © 2008 Bruce Johnson and Craig Watson
