Inliners International Forums General Discussion Bench racing 67 El Camino for NHRA

I have a 67 El Camino I am building to run in NHRA's V/Stock class. I will be building a 230 for it and have a Doug Nash 4 speed to put behind it. Tom Langdon and Tom Lowe have both helped out with advice. I bought the body in Rio Rancho New Mexico and had it shipped up to Michigan.

Good luck with your project. What is the class record and power/weight on V/S? A friend of mine, Harry Doolittle, used to run a Maverick in V/SA class long ago. It was one trick car.

Is a clutchless five-speed legal?

The record for V/Stock is 14.75, the index is 15.25. 22 lbs. per hp, so for 140 hp it needs to weigh 3080 lbs, plus 170 lbs for the driver, for a total of 3250. A friend of mine has a Nova with a 230 and Powerglide that has run a best of 14.51. No, a clutchless 5 speed isn't legal.

It looks like you will probably need about 175 hp at the rear wheel for record setting performances. A daunting task with a 1V, but do-able.

I've done some 396 B/Stock stuff before, its tough to work within the confines of the rules thats for sure. Doing a head is going to be the biggest challenge since you can't do any porting or removing of any material inside of the ports or chambers at all and must use stock size valves.

What you will need is a seat/throat cutter made to look stock cuts & angles but flow better than stock.

MBHD

They make them, but with a 1.72" valve and the bolt bosses still having to remain in the head, its only going to flow so much. That's where you get about 20 intake valves and flow test each one hunting for a 1 cfm gain just to have an advantage. That's what Stock Eliminator has become today.

I once flow tested a pallet of about fifty heads just to find the two that flowed the best. The ironic part of the whole exercise is that one of the heads that came on the engine was the best.

Dick O'Brien (head of Harley's racing department) once said that the best performing head castings didn't flow test any better than average, and that he was convinced that the very best went to some privateer racer who "went at them with a post hole augur" and ruined them.