I've had a lot ov fun in my life, i'm still having a lot ov fun, but nothing, not even the thing i'm currently devoting my life to, can touch street racing for sheer electrifying excitement. We'd LIVE for that weekend to roll 'round so we could cruise down to the flats and hang out. Rain on weekends was heartbreaking. I'd give up what i'm doing in a heartbeat and build a car in a month if street racing would only start up again here. As it is the car i'm putting back together now will see some, even if i have to personally be the first guy on the line and start it, just some good friends messin' around out on the flats... but even if it got going like it was a few years ago it just wouldn't be the same.
I wasn't even racing at the time. I had a stock EV2 71 Fury III 2dr with a tired 383 2bbl and hardly enough money to buy gas to get down and watch the races, let alone actually build something and run. Cool car, but it would have been lucky to run a 17. Otherwise i'd drive the hearse down there, many would remember that parked on the starting line.
This was only a few years ago, say in a 5-7 year span in the late 90's early 2000's, but it was no less exciting. We'd have upwards ov 50 cars a night racing on Fridays and Saturdays, out on some parallel road out ov town. Cars would come out from as far as Vancouver to play. The best part, as in the other stories here, was seeing what crazy [Edited by Moparts - Family Friendly Site - Keep it clean] people put together to race. This is primarily Chevyland, with a strong Ford contingent, but there were some cool Mopars out there running hard as well.
We had a bone stock looking 72 340 4spd Demon, pure F.A.S.T. material, though this was long before that started (with a driver just as tricky as the car...), my buddies absolutely wretched looking 'puke-green' Maverick with his own 'junk' 289 that everyone swore was bottled (it wasn't), a numbers 68 Hemi Super Bee 4spd car, with only a cam, headers and slicks for mods doing the most GLORIOUS 7000+ RPM burnouts EVER seen at the races (remember, this is not the 70,s, this is in the late 90's). The Bee only stopped coming out because after a couple years this guy had every idiot in a 5.0L coming out 'to kill the hemi' and got a little sick ov it. They'd brag if they won, though his was pretty god damn close to stock. There was a tight looking lil 69 340 Dart (bottled) that left the line harder than even the 10 second cars down there (and it was only running 11's), my boss' skanky looking 38 Chev truck with the (sadly) ubiquitous BC street-races SB Chev and a bottle in the bed, a half-crazed religious freak named 'Moses' with a 2ft long beard who was actually the leader ov his own small cult always had his scary (read: sketchy) as hell 4x4 Blazer with a 410+ SBC running in 4x4 on FOUR slicks (went as fast as 9's on STOCK diffs... hahahaha) with NOS (the latter two were the most violent starters i've ever seen, i had to start them cause nobody else in their right mind would, both 10 second trucks), a beat-to-[Edited by Moparts - Family Friendly Site - Keep it clean] looking late 70's Chev 3/4 ton farm truck sleeper with 'A-plates' and hay in the back running fast (even with its 300lb + driver), a SUPER rare 68 396/375HP SD Beaumont (1 ov 2 or 4, i forget) that had been street raced and HARD since the day it was bought new by its equally infamous owner, an 11 second 65 Impala with a big block and Jericho trans, a 9 second 'Yenko' Nova, numerous other big and small block Novas running almost as quick, and later on a nutty 70's Vette with a nuttier 363 and a LOT ov nitrous running mid-9's just to name a few. That Vette also raced nearer to the city and used to take on the fastest big-bore crotch-rockets and always won. He was pretty much the only car that showed up on a hook. This wasn't a quarter ov the cool stuff that showed up, i forget the rest.
SBChevies were everywhere, mostly in G-bodies and S-10's, and only slightly more common than 5.0L Mustangs. There were some crazy 5.0L sleepers, including one that NO savvy spotter would guess could run what it did. His was a bone-stock 5.0L 5spd with only slicks (mounted on the shoulder when he got there, like many others) and a bottle that ran 11's. He'd drop the clutch at 5000 and pull the fronts i dont know how many times... never hurt the thing in 3 years. We had guys building cars to run 9's in street trim at the time it all got shut down. Remember, this is not Detroit, this is BC... no money up here. Most ov this stuff was a step up from the junkyard. Even the 9 and 10 second stuff was usually pretty sketchy.
There was little to no traffic on that road after 9, and we would hit the spot around 11. We had a perfect 1/4 marked off with reflective posts at the finish. EVERYONE but the starter stayed behind the starting line, so no one got hurt. The race would not start till this happened. You could tell who won from a 1/4 mile away in the dark by seeing which post disappeared first. Racing could go on till the next morning, sometimes till people just got bored or ran out ov gas. Heh... while i wouldn't call it the safest road to race on (NO traffic or even side roads, but some serious 20ft deep "hick ditches" on either side as some city guy once mentioned), we were pretty well self-policed and never had an incident. That uber-rare 10 second SD Beaumont once lost it shifting 3rd and had both rear tires swing deep into the ditch at speed (heh... and i mean speed...) but the madman saved it and still almost won the race. He NEVER lifted. There was only two ways into that road and at night we could see headlights coming over 3 miles away... LOTS ov time to shut everything off and enjoy our little 'midnight car-club meetings'. Cops rarely gave us grief. Only when it got so big after a few years and we had well over 300 people watching and cars lined up parked for half a mile on both sides ov the road (behind the line) did they start getting upset. Then there were a few completely unrelated incidents in the city with stupid [Edited by Moparts - Family Friendly Site - Keep it clean] rat-racing through downtown Vancouver in their daddy-bought imports and Porsches plowing pedestrians down, the media got involved, blew it ALLLL way out ov proportion, and suddenly we were ALL 'killers'... and the cops hassled and threatened everyone with seizures and jail till it broke up.
This was all just a few years ago, and there was still a surprising amount ov musclecars down there, even some really rare iron, all running. I can only imagine being in Detroit or NYC in the 70s'...
