Took my 77 to Island Dragway on Sunday for one of their 4 or 5 annual Nostalgia bracket races. I was in bracket N3, for dial ins between 12.00 and 13.99.The weather was sunny, very warm and humid, with the DA at around 3000. So my car was running 12.6s, as usual in these conditions.
I ran my 2 time shots, prior to eliminations, 12.58 and 12.65. I wasn't too happy with the .07 spread between those two but my reaction times were good, .039 and .028 so I felt fairly confident of winning a round or 2.
Eleven cars showed up for round 1, so it would be a 4 round race. Surprisingly, after the first round only 4 came back for round 2. So that made it a 3 round race.

My time slips (right lane each run, car 311) for my 2nd time shot, TS, and the 3 rounds of eliminations are below. My opponents in rounds 1 and 2 both redlighted. The first round was a heads up race with both of us dialed 12.63. The other guy is a good racer and I was surprised by his foul but I would have been hard to beat on that run with and .051 light and .01 over my dial.
Round 2, against a 13.50 dial in, I stayed with my 12.63 dial. So 9 tenths is a pretty big spot, plus his horrendous .346 red light made him leave so early that I was able to relax on my light. My 12.57 ET was surprisingly low so I wasn't sure what to dial for the final. I decided to go with a 12.61, against an eighties type Monte Carlo, dialed 12.19.
So we both left green in the final and he closed the gap quickly but didn't pull ahead and I was able to hit the brakes at the stripe to tighten up the gap. I almost over did that as you can see by the MOV (margin of victory) being only .0184 seconds. Our reaction times were close, but we both couldn't really run our dial ins.
I was happy to see my win light at the end of that run.

 

Damn that looks fun....congrats.....

Jebby

 

Wow. Impressive times, BK. Nice job!

 

 

BK - what engine/transmission set up are you running currently? If you have a thread explaining your setup (HP/TQ, etc etc), you can just point me to that.

 

Are those street slicks.....i could get 108 mph out of my 68 327 but i was spinning tires all the way down the track....that was a good motor

 

Yeah these events are great. The racing is good and nobody is an *******. Next one is in September, with better DA.

Check my signature info below. I never had the engine / car dynoed. Using weight to 1/4 mile speed calculators shows about 380hp at the crank. Not alot but the car really works. I have run 12.18 at Island and 12.15 at Englishtown RIP.


Back tires are Mickey Thompson drag radials. 275 / 60 /15. At 108 you should run at least 12.5. (I know you have the whole big block project ongoing.)

 

Nice 60fts
what rpm do you launch at?

 

Thanks.
I hold it with the foot brake at 1500 on the line. Converter stall is 3K rpm.
In cooler weather my 60 fts are in the low 1.7s.

 

You've had that thing dialed in for years! Congratulations on the car AND the great driving!

JIM

 

Have you modified your differential or half shafts?

 

The half shafts are basically stock replacements from Fort Wayne Driveline. They sell them with the Spicer U joints installed, Original drive shaft, with Spicer joints. I keep an eye on this stuff and change the joints every 6 or 7 years, but I've never had a problem.
As for the diff. when I first started racing this car, about 12 years ago, I had the original diff rebuilt by Bairs Corvettes and the gears changed to 3.73 from the stock 3.08 (half second drop in ET at that point). They used steel clutches and in the rebuild.
That worked fine, running a few 12.1s and abouit 250 total runs until the posi showed signs of slipping during burnouts on the drag radials. I took the diff out and disassembled it and the clutch faces were fairly worn. Based on info I see here from Gary R, I put new cap screws on the bearing caps, I ground off the sharp edges on the big openings in the carrier (removing a small crack in the process), got new steel clutches and got ARP ring gear bolts and used Loctite on them. He also recommended US Gear ring and pinions. I think I got the last set of 3.73s from Summit. I didn't tune the posi however. In fact, I used heavier plates and springs on the spiders. My brother in law assembled all this. He runs a machine shop and has plenty of experience. This set up is working fine.

 

I'd like to go to the September round. My 88 is the only car I have that's old enough. I haven't been to Island since the grand re opening in 2013 and I ran my Honda CBR.

 

Yeah, your 88 is old enough. Next nostalgia race is Sept. 10.

 

I'll be there tomorrow.

Edit
I checked the schedule and it's been moved to next week. I'll still be there tomorrow anyway. I already took the day off work. Test and tune tomorrow instead.

 

Congrats on another great win. I somehow missed this thread till now.

Now that Atco is closed, Island is the only game in town. Hope to see you again at one of the upcoming nostalgia races. I'm glad I'm not going to run in your class.

 

Thanks Carl.
Yeah Atco closing was bad news for sure.
The next Nostalgia race at Island is rescheduled to Sunday 9/17.

 

95% chance of rain tomorrow.