Drag Race School

Hey, welcome to the horsepower shop.

How do you like my latest toy? Now, this is a 69 Chevelle Pro street car with an LS six under the hood and some fat rubber out back. In fact, you know, it's a lot like that. 69. No,

that we've been building to go drag racing.

Now, my partners Mike and Joe and the Nova on their way back from Darlington, South Carolina where Mike and the Nova had a date with Destiny and a character that's probably better known as the drill sergeant of drag racing. Check this out

as we neared our destination at Mike's rendezvous with a drag racing champ turned teacher.

Memories flashed through my mind back in 1997.

And that's when I was a student out to earn a license and a super car dragster.

What a thrill

and what an experience learning from the legendary drill sergeant of drag racing. Boy Hill.

If you don't drive a car

run in your mouth

in the car trying to drive, you can't drive and here you are chewing gum.

When you backed off, you took your finger off the line lock, you scrubbed the front tires. If you keep that up, you'll blow the front tires out.

Yeah,

he's strict and he enforces a lot of discipline which is necessary to drive these race cars.

And, uh, it's a great time. I felt like, you know, they had the best school around. There was more attention to detail we expect in the experience here.

So, if I can drive that car,

ok.

You think you can, uh, I hope I can

think race is something you guys could do together, Jessi,

sir,

the fleet of class cars are well maintained

and range from a junior dragster to a Proto

Mustang.

And fortunately, Roy's got some experienced patient staff members to help us get started.

We're gonna bring you up. You're gonna do a series of burnouts.

Once you get that, we're gonna bring you up and stage the car.

You're gonna do a series of launches as you look down the track. Does anybody see where the groove is?

All the way back?

All right. 1st, 2nd, neutral

reverse

pump the gas. Give me two quarter pumps.

I bring it.

Uh, I'll, I'll speak with them the way they need to be spoke to

and we'll get their heads out of their butts and, uh,

make it all come together.

So, what's dad gonna do today? I don't know. I guess it'd be my turn in a minute.

Glenn is going for a pro stock license, which was Roy's class during his long successful N hr a career. So if you think the drill sergeant is gonna go easy on this student,

you better go sit in the corner.

You just burnt the clutch out of it again. You're not getting your foot off the clutch, you're leaving the line lock on.

Give me a car, give me a truck or something. Put the boy back in the truck.

I decided to go for my license in a super comp door car.

And after a few burnouts and quick launches,

I was ready for an eight mile pass,

but was I ready for Roy? Who is?

All right. Set your trans brain to go wide open. It's all yours.

All right, you come off the throttle, went back down on the throttle. You do not do that here in my school. That's how you turn a car upside down.

All right, let's see. You do it again, another eight mile wide opening.

How about keep it in the groove this time? Keep it in the groove. Bringing up our battle.

You're way out of the groove. Why do you not stop the car?

You just run right on by me for some reason why? No. Let's go. First gear forward, straight forward,

straight forward, easy, easy.

All right.

Set your trans brake. Go wide open. It's all yours.

I hope he, he does TV, shows better than he listens and drives a race car, but we'll make a race car driver out of it. Mike, just bear with us, buddy. We'll get you squared away.

You don't like listening too good. Do you?

You know TV? Showed anybody.

Listen,

I,

I guarantee you do one. That'd be it for me.

I asked you to do the burn out and keep the car in the groove. You kept driving to the right and running right by me. If you'd stop,

the tires are in motion, all you gotta do is roll up the stage. Now you gotta put it in reverse and change rotation of the tre the reaction times are very important

while you're here at T dad.

Yeah, but I get fed up with it.

What's he like when he's not off the road?

He's real nice.

Need somebody with air gauge

one.

He got a little anxious and he red lighted on us, but he did ran a real good speed. 71.78 which is really good for

junior dragster.

496. We've got speed

100 and 4113. He's coming around, he's getting there.

Uh, he shut it off a little early. He got to playing with the steering wheel, moving it around

cars spinning with him. We're gonna bring the air pressure down,

tie the car down a little bit,

but he's getting there.

It was good. It was good. We went, uh,

went about 8 62 100 and 45 miles an hour. It felt good and now we can put the horsepower TV, Mike in it

and see if he can drive a race car.

He's looking down at the front tires, he's looking down at the very front end, the scoop. He's not looking at the other end and he drives it to the left.

Bring him back.

He ain't going on until he does it right. Take a deep breath.

Roll into the second beam. We're going eight mile.

It's all yours.

You know, you have to bring it up above Idol, son. You're gonna burn up everything I own. If you don't start listening, cut the switch off, cut it off.

It's all yours.

Well, you almost got the eight mile. You was on and off the throttle very wide. When you come off of it.

I

pretty much figured out that I'm, I'm not a driver. I just, you know, I've never felt comfortable in the car and I thought I would come here and see if it would, you know, see if doing it the right way would, you know, be the best way for me? And

I'm not, not a driver. I'm more of a crew person or crew chief or whatever. I like being mechanically inclined and working on the cars and

helping out

good job, buddy. Bring it on back.

Yes.

You know, when you get your hands out of their, but they can go ahead and drive a car sometimes

this time he ran his et was a little bit slower.

But he ran 100 and 41.39 which is a good time and he's got his super comp license.

So,

congratulations to him,

man. I recommend that to anybody that wants to go fast and get chewed out a little bit by Sergeant Roy. I had a great time and we went pretty fast.

So people have dreams. You can get anything in life. I think if you want it bad enough

while getting Mike is Super Cup license was our main mission at Darlington. We also brought the Nova to take it through Roy Hill's race car dial in program

and it didn't take Roy long to point out a big problem. No fender panels here

and the air comes in around the bumper and the fender and the grill and call it a turbulence and it pulls the fuel out of the carburetor.

It don't send the fuel down in the motor.

You fire that. Go ahead. Yeah, I love fire

it up. A

he

pops

frank it. Yep.

Selling the, the carburetor off would make a big difference.

Put your plate on it where when you shut the hood down

you got foam around it and when you take air in it goes down in the carburetor

the way it is now

the turbulence is pulling the fuel out of the carburetor and makes the motor go lean. Makes the engine run lean,

good advice.

Well, let's go run it and see what it does.

Roy was right about the turbulence. That popping sound is the result of fuel getting pulled right out of the carburetor

as the car build up speed of 90 100 mile an hour.

Um,

it started wandering with me out there

and I very easily backed out of it and slowed the car down, but that's mainly the front end, the steering of it.

Well, we go out there and we take some measurements of the car and make sure that it's square to the rear end

and then we would uh adjust the towing on the car

and uh check the caster camera on the car and make sure that uh it is uh lined up properly for a drag race application.

It's not every day you get a professional race car builder like Ron caps to fine tune your ride.

He and his sidekick, Tim also tweaked the rear suspension and use scales under all four wheels to even out the load.

Of course, their work changed the Nova's ride height. So some grinding was required to keep the rear fender from rubbing.

Soon, Roy was ready to take it down the track for another patch.

It wanders a lot, the air gets under it and picks up the front end and it tries to do that. So you have to

be right on top of the steering wheel,

uh

but it drives pretty good.

So after loading up the Nova, we headed back home to the horsepower shop

with some homework ahead of us

and three days behind us with the legendary drill sergeant of drag racing.

Hey, welcome home, Mike. Congratulations on getting your license. By the way,

I already got the message on those inner fender panels and the carb pan that we need to build for the Nova. And I think I've got just what the sarge ordered.

Now, we're gonna start with the inner fender panel. So I've already picked up some 32 thousands of aluminum here.

And the first step is this cardboard template.

Once we determine the exact location of the panel on each side, we can cut the template to the right length

and the rough shape of what we need,

then we can slip the template inside here

or something like that

and market for the cuts that we need to make,

then determine where your bands need to be.

Then you can make your final cuts to the template

and test fit it in place.

Hey, we're looking pretty good in here except that we need a little more clearance

right here around the line lock.

Now, I'm gonna trim that out and then we'll test fit it once again. But keep in mind you may have to do this several times

before you finally get it right.

Once you finalize your template,

you can transfer the pattern

to the sheet metal,

then you can trim it out

and bend it at the marks

there.

I do it.

Now, we've been using a sheet metal break that we have here in the shop to get this job done. But

if you don't have a piece of equipment like this, well, you can still get the job done by checking in the Yellow Pages. Make sure you look for an air conditioning shop that specializes in sheet metal ducting.

Now, if you don't have access to one of those companies though, you can still get the job done. If you just clamp this sheet metal and a piece of angle iron to the bench, shape it up by hand

with the panels properly formed,

we can secure them in place

with some sheet metal screws.

As you'll recall, the serge also said we need to seal the carb to the hood so we can take advantage of the cool dense air coming in that hood cow.

So I just made another template

so we can fab up a base pan and that will seal to the underside of this hood,

the front and rear trim lines.

All right. Now, let's see how wide we need to make that pan

looks like the scoop here measures

well, 26 inches. So

I'll come out 13 inches from the center of this hole here

plus another inch for a stiffening flange and another inch to attach a seal.

Once you're happy with the template, you can cut it out,

transfer it to the aluminum

and again, cut it out,

then make three bins on each side for the flanges.

Now that we got the shape of our pan, we can place it on the carb,

remove one of the front wheels

and close the hood. Now, I'm gonna take the tape inside the wheel. Well, here and make some measurements between the pan and the front of our hood cow.

Now, we know how much foam to add around the edges to give us a good seal.

Now, you can get this fairly dense foam at your local home improvement store and

I kind of like this stuff with the adhesive already attached to one side.

You'll need to add several layers before you trim it to match the contour of the hood.

All right, let's see what we got

looks pretty good

and to keep it in place, I even

fed up this retainer that boats right to the center of the car.

Well, that ought to make the old drill sergeant happy and it ought to keep the air under the hood under control as well.

And if we're a little bit lucky, it might even keep Mike from having to clean those latrines at that drag racing school.

Here's a really cool way to dress up the dash in your classic Chevy

Ken's

classic has these really cool molded composite instrument clusters for most Camaros, Nova Ss

and even trucks. Now, you can get them with a brushed aluminum finish like this or carbon fiber plus, they're also available with burled wood or black. Now, you can load them with a variety of auto meter gauges and here's a really cool feature. Each kit includes a wiring harness and the sending units you need to

plug right into your factory harness. Now, the bear unit started just over $100 and, well, the complete kits are just under five. Hey, what happens when you have a race muffler and take it to the street? Well, you got one of Flow Master's new Delta Flow super forties. Now, they're made out of the same five by 10 case as the race muffler, but give you less interior sound while still maintaining that famous Flowmaster rumble.

Plus they even outflow the popular two chamber for more horsepower.

Now they're available in two and a quarter, 2.5 and three inch sizes in all offsets and the price shouldn't offset your wallet either at just at 100 bucks. Here's how you can offset the ravages of heat in your late model transmission, whether it's an automatic or manual B and M makes these synthetic loops for both that employ high pressure protection, anti

foaming and thermal stability. The result is you're gonna get quicker shifts, better fuel mileage and even longer service life.

You know, it's too bad that B and M doesn't make something we can pour inside of you. Very funny. Listen, I got an issue with you, Mike gets a new racing license this weekend

you got a new toy to play with. I think next time it ought to be something for my mustang.

I got just a thing. How about a tow truck? Not funny.

Well, I'm not joking about this. Next week. We've got a killer show coming at you. So we'll see you then

let's go for a, riding a real car. Give me the key. No, man. Get in there.