First street race? ......(ages ago,of course!).

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Abodybomber

Abodybomber

Breaking street machines , since 1983.....:)
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September,83. Was a furd guy(I know).... 69 Cougar. 250 horse,351 Windsor. A nasty idling,63 Nova ,idling beside me. He wants to run ,stoplights. The dork(me),hole shots him. Put two cars on him (dumb ***). Of course ,the cops triggered me(lol!). Any stories to share?......
 
Funny you mentioned this....I got into a little street brawl with a late 70's Camaro while driving the Valiant tonight! We were crusing side by side at 35 MPH for a few blocks, both waiting for the other to go first lol....I noticed he had a roll cage and his car sounded mean for a Chevy...then, he downshifted into low and I slammed it down into 3rd and away we went! We were side by side for a little bit but the 340 wound out and I had a fender on him, then shifted into 4th and the tires broke loose, but still had him...then, ahead of us was a state trooper so we both let off....lol....haven't done that in a long time :D
 
I had a 66 Cuda 273 Commando with 4 speed and I worked with a guy who had a 65 Mustang 289 fastback with a three speed. He had spent a ton on the engine, solid lifter cam, 2X4 barrels, and some other stuff. I had recurved the distributor and my buddy had tweeked the carb a little bit, on the 273 and that was it. I had also changed out the rear, but can't remember what gears.

We lined em up out in front of the service station where we worked, which was the other main street in town. It was a two lane street, and I had the left lane. We were running them through the gears and I had about a half a fender on him, (I always wondered if the 4 speed gave me a gearing advantage over his three speed). All of a sudden, I see a car headed toward me head on. I was too stubborn (and stupid) to let off and he finally did. I pulled into the right lane just in time, but still practically ran the other car onto the sidewalk.

Turns out the other car was the girl I had just started dating. I had some splainin to do.
 
My 1964 Mercury Monterey -vs- a 1962 Galaxie 500 XL . Long story short , mine had the S-22 Mercury Marauder interceptor . Don't know what he had . Blew him away on Quincy Memorial Bridge to the tune of well over 125 MPH . He didn't have a chance .
 
Cool thread bomber! It's getting a little late here, and I have a few stories, but my first street races were sad at best. Early 1975, and i'm in my Mom's 63' Chevy II with a 194 six & PG, against my bud in a 1973 Nova with a 250 six & T-350 that he drove for a local pharmacy delivering prescriptions. He worked the evening shift and every time we ran across each other......it was on, LOL. I beat him 9 out of ten times by a 1/2 to a full car length. We had a blast doing it, even though they were 18sec cars at best. :D

I'll try and post a few more grown up stories tomorrow.....Good night guys!
 
Sometime in 1981.....73 340 Rallye Charger (me) 70 SS 396 Chevelle. 350 horse car I think. Anyway. I won then and every other time thereafter. I never liked the guy anyway. He was a bully and a butthole. But I still won. lol
 
Well, it wasn't my first, but was fairly early on..........with my high 12 second car.

Backround: Late 76' early 77' I saw a Mustang II a dozen or so times just regularly cruising the streets. I never did get close to it, but it had some large rear tires, possibly mini tubbed. I asked around many times at the local hangouts, and the only responses I got were, that thing is "bad fast". Rumor I suppose? Nobody really knew anything. A while later I ran across a guy that told me it had a big build 289 and 4.88 gears. His advice was, leave him alone...lol.

A Few months later: There was a fairly fresh 4 lane concrete highway in the area that had a traffic light and a little over a mile stretch of dead straight road without any cross streets. Several groups of us would go there on occasion and park on the shoulder before the light and just jump out and play, using the light as our tree.

One night, a dozen or so of us went there and I was called out by a couple different guys, and made quick work of them. No biggie, we all new what the outcome was gonna be. There was no money involved, just having some fun. Well, after I made the double u turns from the last race and got back in line, I noticed a dark colored Camaro I hadn't seen before. Turned out to be a 396 car and he called me out. I beat him by about 5 cars, but I had to push it a little more then normal. It was a good running car and he gave me a nice thumbs up on the slowdown, cool.

So now a go back after that and what showed up at the back of the line.....You guessed it.....Mustang II. He eyeballed me for about 5 mins. and then came up and said lets go. I tried asking a few questions with no real response, guy had a serious tude! Finally i just said, you're right, lets do it.

So we both jumped out as the light turned red and he tried to do a quick burnout. I thought hummm, what am I in for....lol. So, green light, we left together and by the top of my first I had about a half car on him. By the top of 2nd, it was approaching 3 cars and pretty much stayed there thru out. The funny thing to this long winded story was, I decided I wasn't letting off til he did. I looked down and was at 6600 r's in high gear with my 4.10's, and well past a quarter mile. So I jumped out of it and he went flying by trailing some pretty heavy smoke. I did my U-turn and went back and he just kept going.

When I got back to the other guys, they were LOL. They told me that he was putting out a huge shower of sparks from both mufflers on the top end. I started thinking about it and if I was at 6600, he had to be well over 7k with 4.88's. Pieces of valve, piston tops, who knows. :D

None of us ever saw that car again though.........
 
I grew up in a VERY small town, so "our stuff" was typically 283's, "light" 327s, etc. The "big players" in town until I joined the navy in fall of 68 were a 68 327 Camaro with "gears," and a buddy's Chev SB powered 48 Ford pu. A (now deceased) friend bought a 55 Chev built by a guy here in Coeur d Alene, was a record holder for some time over at Deer Park. 409 powered, ran gas. Really nice, clean car.



I got to go for a ride in that thing, Bobby had gotten tired of the locked 488s and had stuck a 308 or 336 rear (Chev rear). Muncie 220 low, the damn thing would do about 60 in first with those high gears. I remember that at the top of 3rd, the homebrew scoop was pounding so much air into the hood, it was bouncing off the cowling. You could see the engine down there.

All this with the horrid brakes of a 55, bias tires, and a little narrow 2 lane highway.

The local car dealer had taken an El Camino in trade that handily had a 365 hp 327. The son of the owner got "Dad" out of town for the weekend, and he proceeded to swap his 283 for the mill in that Camino. I have no idea how they dealt with no rear transmission mount on the 3 speed, because the 4 spd gearbox in the Camino went into that 55!!!

Don, who owned the Chev powered 48, was so poor that for a short while he just chained up the Cheaters and drove in the snow!!

I busted the spiders in one rear, so we "installed" a weld-a-traction, LOL I didn't have much money, but could always come up "with a 3 speed." I could swap the 3 speed in my 57 in about 15 minutes. When I joined the Navy, I had 12 busted 1st - reverse sliders in the trunk of the parts car

One of the local guys, Jim or Dave Yount (spelling) built a nasty 57 Cheve 327 crossram setup ran in /MP

My "good days" came after I bought the '70. One day I was somewhere S of Long Beach, early afternoon, and just "hit one of those times" when there was little traffic. A guy in a blue 70 GTX comes on the freeway, and the playin' was on. I was in the left lane, he in the right. We'd get around a group of cars, some clear road, and it was 50-140 and back. I could JUST keep ahead of him. Karieseaeast if some cop'd a seen us............................

One evening I got into it with some guy on I-5 N N of San Diego. Was very little traffic. I had the landing lights fired up, and damn near forgot about the "border checkpoint" at San Clemente? San Onofre? Anyhow, I came thundering up the road, and my buddy is like, "you ....better...slow.....down...."

Before I left town for the Navy, one of the guys got ahold of a 67 GTX. Got a NICE big fat ticket one night on "Cedar st" racing a BB Camaro. The cops in that town knew everybody, and "drinking coffee" was just an excuse to perform "informal interviews" of the general pubic to find out what was goin' on. Yup. They were waitin. In an alley. behind a bar. Yep. That's the alley
 

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i raced my best friends older sister in her intrepid, i was in the stock 65 plymouth with the trusty slant and three on the tree...

i think its pretty obvious that i lost lol... it was fun though and i had that tree adjusted for smooth speed shifts!
 
Here ya go, Timmy.

1963...

It happened on the strip where the road is wide
Two cool shorts standin' side by side
Yeah, my fuel injected Stingray and a 413
Were revvin' up our engines and it sounds real mean

Tach it up, tach it up
Buddy gonna shut you down

Declinin' numbers at an even rate
At the count of one we both accelerate
My Stingray's light the slicks are startin' to spin
But the 413's really diggen in

Gotta be cool now power shift here we go

Superstock Dodge is winding out in low
But my fuel injected Stingray's really startin' to go
To get the traction I'm ridin' the clutch
My pressure plate's burnin' that machine's too much

Pedal's to the floor hear the dual quads drink
And now the 413's lead is startin to shrink
He's hot with ram induction but it's understood
I got a fuel injected engine sittin' under my hood

Shut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down

There was never a claimed winner to this race. ;)











:poke:
 
My dad had a 57 Vette with the 283/283 hp with factory dual quads. I was about 8 and we were living in Miss. A guy rolled up beside us one day in a Chevy, I don't remember which model and said, "hey old man do you want to run that thing." My dad never said a word and when the light changed the Vette leapt out about two car lengths and left the guy in the dust. I was at that point hopelessly hooked.
 
back in 85 i had a 68 road runner 383 hipo well the car was not pretty but it was fast won most of my races. i think the only thing that really ever beat was the gas gauge. open that thing up was to see if you could top out the speedo before you ran out of gas. but back then gas was .75 cents a gallon
 
rlevs said:
back in 85 i had a 68 road runner 383 hipo well the car was not pretty but it was fast won most of my races. i think the only thing that really ever beat was the gas gauge. open that thing up was to see if you could top out the speedo before you ran out of gas. but back then gas was .75 cents a gallon
Click to expand...

I had a 68 Hemi RR (bought it new), but back then gas was 34¢ per gallon.

btw, a full tank on a 68 RR was less than $10.00, and that was 102 Octane Sunoco 260.
 
Here's a couple of 'oldie' stories for y'all, both from the very early '70s and both based on Whittier Blvd. here in SoCal:

Background for anyone who doesn't know, Whittier Blvd. and Bob's Big Boy in Whittier, CA, was one of the hot spots of weekend cruising back in the '60s and '70s - on par with Van Nuys Blvd. in Burbank and much better than Harvey's in Downey (lowriders cruised Harvey's). Any given Friday or Saturday night you could find anything from kids in mommy's grocery-getter to stock musclecars to almost full-on race cars out cruising. It was like a rolling car show but with lumpy cams and loud exhausts.
Great time to grow up in SoCal. At the time I was driving a '69 Dart Swinger 340 that I'd bought from the original owner in November '69 - he'd joined the Navy and his parents wouldn't keep up the payments for him.

Late one afternoon I was on my way home but was stopped at a red light when a new Chevelle SS396 pulls up alongside and gave me a slight rev. We both left at the green and I pulled him by about half a car since the Dart was lighter than the Chevelle and the 340 was such a quick winder. At the next light he pulls up and shouts over, "What do have in there?"
I answered back, "Just a small block." You should have seen his jaw drop.

Another evening, my 'ex' and I had been down to Whittier Blvd. cruising and decided to head back to our apartment. We were just heading into an industrial area west of the cruising area and, just as I'm pulling away from a red light, up alongside rolls a mid-60s Chevelle. We both rolled even with each other checking each other out when he suddenly jumps on it. I did the same and blew him away. I saw his headlights turn to the left and we turned right and headed home.
About four blocks later a Whittier black'n'white pulls up behind me and hits me with his red lights. I pull over and park, having no idea why he pulled me over. He walks up to my window and tells me to just sit still. About five minutes later the Chevelle pulls up to the curb with another black'n'white behind him. I got ticketed for "speed contest". The only thing we could figure was they had a chopper up in the air, saw us, and directed the cops to both of us. The area we'd raced in was dark without a lot of street lights so it would have been easy to follow both of our headlights after we split in different directions.

Boy, was that a fun time. There was some really heavy street action with Big Willie and the International Brotherhood of Street Racers meeting at York Field in south Whittier but I was never involved in any of that - way too rich for my meager income back then - other than going down there and looking at the cars.
 
Awesome stories! Don't remember my first lol but had a good one yesterday. I went to a car show in Portland OR and there was what looked like a 70 340 duster. I decided to talk to the guy since we both had dusters there. First it wasn't a real 340 car, it had 70-71 tail lights but he said it was a 72, had a 73 dual scoop and 72 340 call out on the hood. Looked like a brand new restoration with a decent built motor. Well he was rude and didn't seem to know crap about Mopar. On the way home guess who is next to me on the free way. I looked over and tapped the throttle. He punched it so I dropped it in second a gunned it my self. He never had a chance lol . I walked past him before I got to third gear. My daily driver stomped his fancy show car. I figured if he didn't know that his car was miss matched years he probably didn't know how to build a Mopar motor. Looks like I was right lol just wish it was for pinks I could have made that car correct again and gave the fiancée one heck of a birthday present.
 
Back in 1978 I had a 73 340 4 speed Challenger. Pulled up to a light and a GTO with a 455 4 speed pulled up beside me. The light went green and we both hammered our cars. half way across the light we both spotted a cop sitting in traffic on the other side of the light. I turned left at the next street and the GTO followed me. We found an arena not far away and parked behind it. We sat there talking for about 30 minutes then left. The girl that was in the passenger side of the GTO works at my doctor's office to this day and her husband still has the GTO. Would have liked to see how I would have done against the GTO!!
 
Mine was 1975, 2 weeks after getting my 55 Chevy painted. I was sitting at a red light at 1 o'clock in the morning and a Corvair painted like the american flag pulls up next to me and motions to me to race. I look over and he has a small block chevy in the back seat. We take off and stay side by side thru the gears and just when I start pulling away my hood comes off. I didn't hit anything but did piss my pants.
 
My first ever race in my Duster siting at a redlight 02 trans am pulls up we chat for a second and we stomp it at green this is about 2 weeks after the engine swap I havent really stomped the gas on the duster yet I pull on the trans am and we still going I look down at the speedo and holy S&^* I start to slow down I was moving pretty fast to say the least.



This story was a lose but should have one in the Duster

Was drive about 55 a late 70s camaro run up beside me and revs it up well be both dump the clutch at about 35mph now and he flys off while speedo is climbing and the rpms are climbing but my car is fishtailing and bald 295 tires burning so i would have had him.
 
Cant say I ever been in a true street race. But just yesterday me and my dad were driving down to see grandpa. Was on a two lane each way road not far at all from the Ontario airport. Out of the blue my dad said "this is where we used to drag race back in the day". Said there was not any thing or any one around back then and they had the road all to them selves.


Used to race his 350 Camaro that he had put a turbo on. Only lost two times. Once to a Corvette with NOS and another time to a full time race car that some one had trailed out one time.

Wish I could remember the name of the road.
 
About 1968, he had a huffy, I had my Schwinn... I pedaled him badly!
 
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