The Walmart Effect

Well, years ago i moved my hobby shop to 1/2 of a 4 bay heavy truck garage. I had the office, the bathroom, a storage room, and a 30x50 open floor. My neighbors were there already, and had two smaller bays. And no bathroom...So I got to see a lot of them. Over several years, I learned a lot. One raced Super Gas once in a blue moon with a 500" FE ina Fox mustang. The other ran Stock Eliminator running in classes from D to M. He held NHRA national records for 5 classes at one point. He also happens to be one of the most honest guys you'll ever meet. To the point of saying he "gave up" a little power just to make sure the tech inspector had a little room for error when inspecting his engine. I ended up doing the repairs on the SE guy's daily driver, and we spent many nights talking about heads and stock port designs. He now has a nice house, and an SF600 bench in the garage. But more than heads, I learned about dialing in the bellhousing, chassis set up (he ran a 4sp), fuel system tesing and requirements, wiring hints (the other guy there still wires race cars on the side), reading slicks, keeping a log book, you name it. He needed one pass and his weather station and the tune was spot on. In fact, he trailered my car to the track for me the very first time I raced. Now just so you dont think he's the automotive messiah, he got a Mustang from Ford (yes, ford gave him a '96 mustang cobra test mule body) and he went to Super Stock. The first time he went to test, he broke both his Jericho 4sps, plus one he borrowed from a friend at the track. With the big tires and race suspension, you cant dump a tight clutch at 6800 and expect not to break things...lol. It's an all new learing curve. I guess that was where I was going here. We hear only a fragment of each car's story. I'm always willing to believe as long as the science says it could happen. But it takes a certain type of person to get the sciencing done and have the result look better than it "should".