SouthernBoy

Throwing your body into the shift is what makes a speed shift, or a power shift, work and also what helps to win races. It's just the way it's done. And yes, you are correct. You could very well (and probably would) break the shifter and the linkage, which was exactly one of my points. I left out some things to keep it simple but I can include them if needed. The shifter in our TL's is not the right shape or length to lend itself to very fast shifts. It would need to be a bit longer and a lot stronger, with a shake that comports to drag racing. It is a very nice piece, but it is not designed to take this kind of abuse. And neither is the linkage. For some more info on this topic, do a little research on Ronnie Sox. He was perhaps the best of the best in shifting manual drag machines and it is he who I modeled my own technique after. I used to love watching him run down the quarter mile.

As for your comments about bang shifting, once again you are right there about asking for trouble. I don't know where the term came from but I know it was understood in the 60's. I knew someone who was setting up a GTO (65 or 66.. I don't remember which) who had the transmission apart on his work bench. Of course, it was a Muncie, but I don't know which one. Anyway, he was removing every other "tooth" in the blocker rings in order to facilitate bang shifting when racing. The purpose is to eliminate any loss through the clutch. The danger is failing to force the dog teeth to insert, thereby over revving the engine or damaging the transmission.

BEAR-AvHistory

This was pretty common for drag strip only cars untill the Lenco transmission came into common usage.

bruce.augenstein@comcast.

Y'know, I have to disagree here - sort of. The last time I got into serious powershifting, it was in a '93 LT-1 six-speed Vette, and I was on a Mission From God to extract every last hundredth out of this seriously quick (at the time), completely stock machine.

Reasoning that speed was the actual issue in powershifting (as opposed to power), I concentrated on just dabbing the clutch while moving the lever as fast as possible, without shoulder action. The result was that a lot of folks in the stands thought the car was an automatic, because of the speed of the shifts without obvious chassis movement, and because I wasn't displaying that just-hit-with-a-cattle-prod convulsive activity in the cockpit during shifts.

The car returned a best of 12.97 @ 108.95 while completely stock, right down to 35 psi in the Goodyears. The previous run was a 13.00 @ 108.68, so it was no fluke. I admit that the 12.97 pass was the last of the day, so there was extra urgency involved with each shift in an effort to get my rightful 12.9.

I guess there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Bruce

I hate cars

High 12s and 108mph in a stock LT1 car?

SouthernBoy

I almost never saw this technique used for street machines in the "back then" era of supercars. Just too dangerous for the daily driver. Yes, Lenco trannies make use of a similar method as I understand. They do the bulk of the work for the driver after launch.

SouthernBoy

Clearly you had a setup and found a method that worked for you. My point of reference harkens back to the mid-60's supercars and running down the quarter mile with one of them. I elected to keep my stock Inland Steel shifter in my Chevelle because I found a way to make it work quite nicely for me. At the time, perhaps the most common shifter was the Hurst Competition Four+. I was not fond of it because if the curve leading up to the shifter knob. I just couldn't seem to handle that or the T-bar knobs either. They just felt unnatural to me.

BEAR-AvHistory

I would have thought 13.5 @ 103-105 would be good for an LT-1 6MT. Can't ever remember seeing one in the 12's with street tires & closed exhaust.

BEAR-AvHistory

The HC4 I had in the 67 Vette was straight up with a round shift knob. It was the same height as the stock shifter. The shift rods were about 40% thicker & did not have any bends in them like the stock rods.

My '66 GTO Tri-Power/Ram Air was OEM equipped with the Hurst. It came with factory rods so the standard upgrade was to get the Hurst shift rods.

SouthernBoy

I have to ask you, did you buy your '66 Goat new? I vividly recall those days and I was the original owner of my '66 396/360 L34 Chevelle (I ordered it and it took 4 weeks and 2 days to come in). I almost bought a '65 GTO, but held up when I heard that Chevy was going with their big block in the '66 Chevelle. The '65 Goat was, and remains, one of my favorite machines of all time.

I didn't know that the '66 was available with factory ram air. I do know that the standard engine was a 335 HP 4-barrel copy with the tri-power rated at 360 HP. Remember the Royal Bobcat kit you could order with thinner head gaskets, new jets, blocked heat risers, and new barb linkage? During '66, Royal campaign around a dozen '65 Goats all setup with their kit plus other niceties you could do for B stock. The cars ran in the 12.4's.

Anyway, great to hear from you again about this period.

bruce.augenstein@comcast.

Yup. I called Corvette Engineering (then located in Michigan) and Vette magazine, to see if anybody had ever heard of a completely showroom LT-1 Vette dipping into the 12s.

Nobody had.

The magazine guys had run an LT-1 down to a 13.22 at 107 and change at Atco, and this was part of a "comparison" test against a local guy with a theoretically stock 1970 LT1. The LT1 guy brought an old set of slicks, and ran a 12.92 @ 111 mph - so, old beats new, although the slicks obviously clouded the issue.

As a result of my call, the Vette magazine guys set up another LT1 - LT-1 match, with me this time instead of their test car. The terms were that the guy could bolt his slicks on, but only after two passes against me with street rubber. I showed up at Atco on the selected date, and the magazine guys sent a reporter/photographer, but the LT1 guy never showed.

I went 13.04 @ 108 and change that day.

While in my possession, the car went a composite best of 12.87 @ 109.52, with chip and K & N.

Bruce

bruce.augenstein@comcast.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody else has ever dipped into the 12s with a showroom LT-1.

I therefore have claimed the Intergalactic Record.

Bruce

BEAR-AvHistory

Yes it was bought new for $3,100 & change.

Dark Red with a Black interior. Power brakes, rally wheels, red line tires, Ram Air RPO, 4 speed, no power steering or air conditioning.

The car had the Bobcat kit, delivered on a Grayhound Bus from Royal Oak Pontiac in Micigan, installed after it was broken in.

Still have the Bobcat stickers someplace in my stuff because I never put things like that on the car.

The ram air intake system was a $35 over the counter option in 65 & early in 66. It was a RPO later in the year.

The RPO consisted in addition to the intake system a new cam (more lift & duration) & valve springs which pushed the redline up an extra 500rpm or so.

The pan replaced the bottoms of the three stock air filters & sealed against the underside of the hood scoop with a piece of foam that ran around the edge.

If you got the over the counter version you had to open the hood scoops intakes by cutting them out along with part of one of the under hood support braces.

Main difference between the 65 & 66 ram air intake pan was in 66 the center carb flange was bigger & the same size as the two end carbs. In 65 the center carb had a smaller flange so the pans were not interchangeable.

bruce.augenstein@comcast.

I had a '64 Goat back then, with TriPower, posi and a four-speed. No power equipment. I had also ticked the box for something called a "Ride and Handling Option" - for around fifteen bucks. It consisted of heavier springs and shocks, quicker-ratio manual steering, and sintered iron brake linings with finned drums. Amazing brakes. They required you to really stand on them when cold, but once warmed, they were terrific, and the hotter they got, the better they worked. All those writeups at the time about poor brakes in those GM musclecars just did not apply to that car at all. Purchase price was $2917.

No Ram Air available for the '64s, but they ran pretty well anyway, in my opinion largely because they had the same duration cam (273-289) for both the four barrel and three twos cars, and they were slightly lighter than the '65s and '66s. My car was incorrectly ordered from the factory, and so was delivered with a four barrel. I refused delivery, so they pirated the manifold, carbs and linkage from a car they had on the lot, which was OK with me, since there were no other differences between the cars.

Except the rear gears. The TriPower rear was a 3.55, as opposed to the 3.23 cog that was standard in the four barrel car. I thought long and hard about this, but finally opted for the 3.23s, thinking they'd calm the highway cruising revs, and probably give better mileage.

Running in something called the "Pure Stock" classes, the car typically went 14.2s @ 100 at the track, with a best of 14.12 @ 101.12. My guess is that, equipped with the 3.55 cogs, the Goat would've tickled the 13.9s from time to time, but I can't say I missed those gears at all.

A note on cams: The TriPower cam was a 288-302 bumpstick, and, combined with the better heads on the '65 and '66 cars, it clearly made more power than my '64 did. Using quarter-mile trap speeds as the arbiter of power-to-weight, these cars were typically "faster" than mine was, with trap speeds commonly in the 102 mph range. However, ETs were no better, and typically worse. Something in the 14.3 range was what I thought typical with a good driver and fresh tune. This led me to believe that the cars were missing some low end and mid range torque compared to my car, and on the street, it was even clearer.

From a typical 20 roll, I would simply motor away from a '65 or '66 TriPower car, but out on the highway from, say, 65 or so in third gear, I'd still get the jump, but then they'd start to come on. Given a high enough speed, I'm quite sure they would've driven around me. Fortunately for me, speeds wouldn't typically get that high.

The Ram Air cars with their 301-313 cams exhibited this characteristic even more so than the TrIPower cars, although they were a little quicker at the drags. Something in the 14.1-14.2 range seemed about right, at 103+. I'm guessing that if I had ever tangled with a Ram Air car out on the highway, he would've simply motored away.

Anecdotally, I watched a '66 TriPower Ram Air car running consistent 13.8s at around 104 mph during time trials one day, and when I asked, he said he was stock, but had 3.90s out back with the wide ratio four speed. AHA!

Re the big block Chevelles: For some reason, the oval-port cars never seemed to run that hard. Typically they ran mid 14s in my class, at perhaps 99 mph. Although I'm not an authority on the various combinations, I've been told that the '66 360 HP cars were in fact square-port engines (with a hydraulic cam), which would explain a race I had out on the Garden State Parkway one night with a '66. We went from the traditional 20 MPH, and he was right with me until I sort of squeezed a fender on him in third gear.

Never saw one of those on track, however.

Bruce

PS - From my point of view, the 375 HP 440 Mopars first offered in '67 were the killer cars in pure stock, especially with the Torqueflite trans. Their off-the-line torque was phenomenal.

BEAR-AvHistory

Had the wide ratio 4 speed on the 3:55 posi gear set.

Also had the metallic brakes which were bad news when cold. My garage was on a hill that required a 90 degree turn as soon as you came out the door. Was an adventure in the winter.

Key to running a tri-power car from a roll was gear selection, you needed to be at 3500RPM or greater when you punched it.

My Father had a tri-power (330hp vacuum secondary carbs) automatic '64 Grand Prix that came stock with a 3.08 rear. Tried to talk him into a 3.55 but he commuted on the NJTP & wanted to keep the revs down. Was still very quick for such a big car.

I did talk him into the aluminum wheel, hub & drum set.

BEAR-AvHistory

Found these with a quick look.



Summer 1966 @ Seaside Heights NJ



Spring 1964 @ Fort Dix, NJ. Parents & girl friend who later became my wife down for a visit during basic training

SouthernBoy

Boy does this all bring back memories. When I order my Chevelle, I also ordered the sintered metallic brakes and my car also had no power assist. When I drove it out of the dealer's lot, I nearly ran a red light! The owner's manual suggested that on cold mornings, you should drag them for a short distance to warm them up. Remember what they looked like? They were individual little pads (3 and 5) on the shoes instead of one continuous piece of friction material.

The '66 396/360HP L34 engine was only used that year. It never saw duty again. It had the 660 CFM single feed Holley, 2.09 intakes/1.88 exhausts, and a 4-bolt main crank. It shared the same cam with the 427/390 of that year.

I remember a '64 Goat running at 75-80 and turning consistent 13.08's in '65. The car was white, obviously tri-power I'm sure, and I would imagine he was running 4.33's out back.

SouthernBoy

By the way, here is the text of a little file that I created with info about my Chevelle.

Remember I said I still had the original order form for my Chevelle?
Well I just dug it out of my file cabinet in the basement and here is
the info from it. complete with spelling errors:

Date: 3/30/66
Series #: 13817
Body Type: S Sport

1966 Chevelle $2845.75
Madeira Maroon
Black interior
360 HP Eng 105.35
Special Instrumentation 79.00
4-Speed Tran Close ratio 105.35
Positraction 3.73:1 36.90
AM-FM radio Rear Speak 147.00
Strato Bucket Seat 110.60
Metallic Brakes 36.90
Console 47.40
Tinted Windshield 19.50
Black Vinyl Roof 73.75
Sport Steering Wheel 31.60
Special Suspension 4.75
Traffic Hazard Sw. 11.60
Day Night Mirror 6.00
---------
$3661.45

I hate cars

Very cool info from you two. It's amazing how cheap things were back then. I feel fortunate that we have a lot of the muscle cars in original stock condition around here with tires being the obvious exception. I've had the privilidge of racing some of the unmodded musclecars and it was really neat to see how they ran instead of reading about them in magazines.

bruce.augenstein@comcast.

Now that you mention it, I do in fact remember dragging the brakes all the way down the block on cold mornings, hoping to get the damned thing to halt from maybe 25 mph in less than 200 feet.

I'm guessing that with your combination you'd have been able to take me. I loved the design of those engines, but as mentioned, for some reason the oval-port cars just didn't seem to work well when pure stock. Your car had the square port heads, and was undoubtedly a runner.

Re the 13.0 '64 Goat: I'm quite sure he had more than 4.33s out back. I used to trophy about 60% of the time in my class running 14.2s with the occasional 'teener. Usually, there were 45 or 50 cars entered.

As mentioned, those 440 Mopars were killers, especially when equipped with 65-durometer recaps. Although not in the spirit of pure stock, this was still legal, although you had to have them on all four wheels. When I faced one of these serious guys, I made sure to do the woe is me routine in the staging lanes, lamenting my 3.23s, etc., hoping to make him a little less aggressive on the lights. Then when we'd line up, I'd position the car facing about five degrees right. Doing the math, this gave me about five inches more rollout (right tire still in the beam when left tire has left it), allowing me to leave just before the last yellow. This didn't improve my times any (because getting the car straightened out negated whatever ET gains I got from the launch), but it did allow me to leave earlier, thus sometimes beating quicker cars.

Fun.

Bruce

SouthernBoy

I'm sure the '64 GTO I mentioned had the required headers, but I would have along with gears.. maybe a few other "stock" class goodies. I never ran Pure Stock, but I do remember than class.

I ran 10" Mickey Thompson "street slicks" (they had tread but did put quite a bit of rubber on the road). Those tires were 25 1/2" in diameter which was quite a bit smaller than the stock 7.75x14 tire which were 27 inches tall. The difference gave me the equivalent of a 3.91 rear. Worked very nicely with a 2.20 first gear and 420 lb/ft of torque coming out of the hole.

Holleys also had some simple little tricks available for perhaps another 1/4 second on the clock. The secondaries were vacuum operated with a dashpot on the side of the carb. What we did was insert a small bolt about midway down the secondary throttle arm, clip a coil off the the diaphram (dashpot) spring and/or insert tiny washers in between the top and the body of the dashpot. Then the distributor got lighter advance springs and initial timing was bumped several degrees. The result was immediately opened up secondaries at WOT along with the requisite full advance coming on sooner. And the effect was LIKE RIGHT NOW acceleration.

As for the L34 engine in the '66 Chevelle, as I mentioned, that was the only year Chevy offered the L34 in that state of tune. In '67, they went with a Rochester Quad and 2-bolt mains, and rated the engine at 350 HP to keep the corporate hacks happy. Oh, while my engine did have a cast iron intake, it was of the medium rise variety.

Here's something you probably already know. We look back and talk about the '64 and the '65 GTO, but quess what? There was no such car those two years. It was an option for the Pontiac Tempest LeMans. It wasn't until 1966 that the GTO became a separate model in its own right.

And in 1965, Chevrolet build 201 Chevelle Malibu SS's with a 396/375 engine which they called the Z16. This engine also only saw duty in those cars and was never offer again, but I would bet that it was detuned and became the L34 in 1966. For one thing the Z16 had a hydraulic cam. Now the real monster was the L78 375 HP 1966 solid lifter engine. This was the identical engine which appeared in the '65 1/2 Corvette with the exception of the exhaust manifolds. This engine in the Chevelle was a Hemi killer.

bruce.augenstein@comcast.

My GTO option went for 212 bucks, if memory serves - but I thought the '65s were a separate model.

A friend of mine showed up at my place one day with a brand new 1969 bottom-feeder Nova SS two door sedan - black, with doggy-dish hupcaps. It looked like the parson's car, out on rounds.

Didn't sound that way, though, as it had the RPO mumble-whatever "396 375 HP Engine", with Turbo 400, and little else. The car had been ordered by some local racers (also friends of ours) to campaign with sponsorship from the dealer, but they switched to one of the 427 Camaros when Chevy made them available as CPO cars. My buddy then bought the Nova.

And it was (pardon me) a rat. It went 14.8s at around 96 mph. After carb work, distributor advance weights and springs, a pinion snubber and 4.56 cogs out back, plus Goodyear "Polyglas" F60 15's on Cragars all around, it went 14.4s at about 98. Everybody's scratching their heads. Then, fresh from reading one of those Roger Huntington articles about true salvation regarding your exhaust pipes, I take a look under the Nova, and see a pair of crushed and convoluted 2 1/4" headpipes, leading to a single transverse muffler and 2" tailpipes. Smothering a 396 cubic inch legend with this system was pretty much like trying to pee through your Cross pen, for God sakes. I say so, but the racer types don't think there's more than a couple of tenths there. They thought in terms of either headers big enough to have sunlight hitting the exhaust valves, or something slow. No in between. I convince them to take a shot, so they bolt the front half of the discarded Camaro pipes on the car, and it goes 13.5s.

Hm-m.

Then the car gets the Camaro exhaust manifolds, plus a complete mandrel-bent 2 1/2" dual exhaust front to rear, with Corvair Turbo mufflers, which was the hot tip at the time. With that combination, it would go 13.0s all day long on the Goodyears, at 108 mph. On a really good day, it went a best of 12.79 at just over 111 mph.

That's not so impressive now, but it sure was impressive then. On the street, my friend would race anything - anything at all, as long as it was on street tires with a closed exhaust.

Hell of an engine.

Bruce

SouthernBoy

The 396 was a rather wide engine so in order to gain clearance for the steering box and other components, Chevy used what was loosely referred to as a "log-style" exhaust manifold. Very restrictive. I installed Hooker Headers on mine along with Walter "Mark" series glass packs and I would bet there was at least a 40 HP gain just from that. With the stock Holley carb, manifold vacuum was 21 inches of mercury at idle. When I did the exhaust work, it jumped to 23 inches. Great low end torque and throttle response, but the engine ran out of steam a little past 4000 RPM (not that this would surprise anyone). So once the funds were back in the wallet, a new Holley R3310 780 CFM dual feed found a home on top of my engine. Manifold vacuum then read 20 inches of mercury. I nice little lopey idle, especially when I unbolted the collectors from the exhaust pipe.

I'm surprised the L78 in your friends was so slow. This engine in a Nova with tires should have easily seen the low 13's in box stock condition. It was actually putting out around 430HP at the clutch. The '66 version had the same solid lifter cam as the 427/425 L72 engine, 11:1 compression, high rise aluminum intake, 780 CFM Holley, and the big value heads (2.19 intakes).

Remember Grumpy Bill Jenkins and his '66 Chevy II L79 327/350? It was either the 1966 or 1967 Winternationals that he beat out Jerry Stahl's 426 Hemi Plymouth Satellite for A stock honors. He turned in an 11.32 to do that one.

SouthernBoy

Hey, just so I don't forget, I've really enjoyed reminiscing over by-gone times and great machines with the two of you gents. This is really entertaining and informative. I hope others are enjoying it as well.

Con5179

low 14's at best

ek9hatch

I'm always down for a wednesday or friday evening trip. PM me sometime.

bruce.augenstein@comcast.

NHRA said the '69 Nova 396/375 was identical to the 425 HP unit in the '65 Vette, and the car was so classified - in A/PSA in this case.

Yup, I believe 430 gross HP - but remember, that's SAE Gross, with no air cleaner (except the base for air shaping), open exhaust manifolds, and jetting and timing for best power. I didn't mention it, but when the guys simply dropped the headpipes, the car went 13.0 @ 108 on a hot day. With the Camaro manifolds (2 1/2" exits as opposed to the 2 1/4" exits on the Nova manifolds) plus the mandrel-bent pipes and Corvair mufflers, it ran the same as it did with the open Nova manifolds. That essentially meant it would've gone about the same 12.79 @ 111 on a cool day with good air.

Doing the math, that's around 450 HP, showing that Chevy got the power part about right.

What they didn't get right was the exhaust system, and I think that was because they didn't feel like spending the extra bucks there, figuring most owners were going to mod the system anyway - or at least that may have been the excuse.

In my opinion, Chrysler was the only outfit around back then that routinely spent the exhaust system bucks on their hot combinations.

Bruce