Hey guys and gals, let's keep the racing stories going for the youth out there. Now I know some of you think NY had the fast cars and others think Detroit had the fast cars but in reality everyone should know that the racing capitol of the WORLD probably had the fastest cars and that would be INDY! We all love our home state and that's understandable and I'm sure there were some very fast cars everywhere but the topic is: Sharing your memories with those that will follow in our footsteps, those that will buy our cars when we are too old to yank a strong second gear, and continue the hobby of owning these great muscle cars of the 60's and 70's.

So, as the young folks have requested, let's share some more of our stories because it is quite obvious that they enjoy them, and I do too.

One youngster requested that we share some of our "loosing" stories but like a failed marriage we somehow don't seem to remember the bad side, like loosing. However, I don't think everyone won all of the time so if you can share some of the times when a "bowtie" or a "blue oval" smoked you, it's okay, Dr. Phil will help you in your distress.

Thank you all for taking the time to share your past with our youth. Memories are what make us smile.

Now, we need some more stories weather you won or lost.

How about the time I ran a big Pontiac with my brand new '71 Sebring 318 auto. He beat me twice in 2 blocks at the stop lights. I had the Sebring for about a week after I traded in my Mustang.

Okay, here is one of my loosing stories. In 1967 I had a black '62 Dodge Dart which had a 361 and auto tranny and if you read the "what did you take to the prom thread" you read that I got my girlfriend pregnant in that car but that's a different story. One of my school buddies had a '64 Plymouth Sports Fury Convert., very pretty car and he was running a 383 auto. I had just rebuilt the engine, milling the heads (yeh, that added a lot of H.P.)and putting a new AVS Carter on. He challenged me to a race and as every 17 year old "racer" knows....I wasn't about to back down. So we headed to one of our favorite racing strips, a new blacktop road in front of the Kroger warehouse on the near eastside of Indy. Late at night, no traffic and two "seasoned racers" ready to lay it on the line. We lined up, fender to fender, had the infamous countdown...3..2...1 and we both stabbed it at the same time. I think I got out just a little but he was starting to press me, as my index finger was ready to push second ( dash mounted push buttons)I noticed my oil pressure was dropping so I shut down. Bill came back and asked what was wrong and I told him I was loosing oil pressure but let's try it again. Same thing happened. As I was winding out in first the oil pressure was starting to drop so I shut it down again. What in the world was going on? After all I was a 17 year old engine builder with many, many years of experience in building these mighty Mopar engines, yeh right. I just couldn't figure it out then it hit me. When I put the engine together I filled the crankcase with straight 10W oil, not 10W30, just straight 10W oil. No wonder the pressure was dropping like a rock. I didn't tell Bill what I had done as I could tell his 383 was going to put my 361 in the loosing catagory so I just played dumb and never raced him again.

Incidentally, my new carb was stolen just a couple of nights after that race. I wonder who took it?

Losing story? Got one of those, too. I had just gotten my license & my Dad let me "fix" up his '62 Plymouth wagon. The poor thing--it was my first attempt at "body work" and suspension mods & such & to say I screwed it up is an understatement. With the traditional shackles waaaay too high , Thrush mufflers & all, it was, quite honestly, an abortion.
Anyway I'm heading over to Connecting in it & this white Catalina pulls alongside. He starts playing with me, so I drop it down a gear & start bouncing the front-end. All of a sudden I hear this roar like a cross between a Cessna & an over-revved John Deere & he's gone---I couldn't have caught him if my wreck had a JATO unit on it. I pull up alongside of him at the next light and what do I see? A small emblem on the front fender that simply reads "SD421" . The driver looks at me & grins & with the traffic light now green, I sheepishly turn off the access road we're on & head straight for home. I deserved that "spanking" but I never squared off with someone again without at least SOME intel. on their car........

NOTHING compared to the street-action in the Detroit and metro areas ... NOT EVEN CLOSE.

No doubt, Detroit had to have some REAL serious cars there---who wouldn't expect it?
I think the NYC "thing" wasn't that it was any better or worse than other places, just different. With the amount of roadways, and how they inter-connected & the character of some of the guys there it was as much a freak show as it was a race.

I grew up and still live in Seymour,IN. and this place was a hotbed for cruising and street racing for decades,the cops have put a stop to it now,but our most famous son John Melloncamp even wrote a song about it years ago called Chestnut Street Incident.Back in the day I owned a white 65 Coronet 500 with a mild 440,AT with a convertor and etc. There had been a red 69 big block Camaro coming from a nearby town and taking peoples money several weekends straight and my freinds and I decided we were going to put a stop to this.We issued a challenge to him one night for the next Saturday night on a old road outside of town we called Weasners dragway (weasners lived in the only house on the road). My freinds and I spent the whole week on the Coronet and come Saturday I showed up with 489 gears,slicks and open headers,much to my surprise the Camaro was waiting on me as was 250 to 300 bystanders,it seems everyone had heard about the big race.We do our burnouts and line up,the flag drops and the Camaro was history,I think I beat him by 6 or 7 car lenghths,but as we crossed the line redlights appear from the side road,a state cop had obviously heard about our race too,knowing I couldn't out run the big Mopar cop car with 489's I pulled over but the Camaro ran and he went after him,luckily I knew a local farmer and was able to put the dodge in his barn and catch a ride to town as cops were searching the area.The Camaro got caught and no one ratted me out,man I miss the good old days!

Did any one reading or posting on this grow up in the St.Louis, Mo. area & ever hear of or wittness the Hall St. street racing. There is a story of the owner of a "Bad Fish" taking the title of a mid 60's BB vette, not the first Pinks show I'm sure. I do know there were a lot of street races in & around the StL area on both sides of the river, this is from a little 1st hand experience.

Broadway or off Broadway.
Economics vs Ego-nomics.
When you have big Money and big front stage egos on the cutting block with no time to chitty chat yack about it, it commands a pedigree of some of the fastest cars out there. The likes of hot Stockers, Pro-stockers, and even rails with the shoots opening right there on the street.

Now granted, Detroit had all the combos bleeding out onto the streets instantly right off the assembly line which would call out that all Muscle being produced was christened on their Blvd's foremost and around the clock. Recreational yes,
Business, probably not for at least for the first few fertile years.

The quest for the crown may lay on who was/is more hungry and for what.
Or maybe there is no crown at all, just two different entities co-surviving and reviving themselves, not to mention many other cities that caught the bug.
Recreational feather in the hat supremacy, or cold hard cash in the hand.

I rarely ventured outside of Queens & when I did it was often simply as a spectator. I think the best races in NYC in terms of serious cars & big money was in Brooklyn or near JFK Airport. Of course most any area you'd find guys racing for hundreds & at times thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the side-bets, but to be privy to that stuff you had to know someone. for the older NYers a friend owned "Competition Speed", a shop in Jamaica, Queens and his shop alone supported 3 street racers I knew of, to say nothing of helping out customers like myself. I spent all my free time there either listening to stories, getting the latest info or simply advice from Larry on what I should be doing. Sadly guys & shops like that are long gone.

Now moving on to Speed shops since this thread is open to many sub-subjects, LOL "Manhattan Speed" in lower Manhattan had some pretty hairy stuff spilling out onto the streets.
I know what you are talking when you mention 150th and other such haunts as "The Hutch" and or "The Connecting" for Big Green. Talk about current day Green conscious, we were Green way before it was hip. LOL.
Participated in someway or another in those high $$$$takes runs at the tail end of its act.

"Manhattan Speed" ? If you're familiar with them, do you anything about their S/S HemiDart? It's kind of a long story & unrelated to this topic, but I'm REAL curious about it.......

You mean the S&K Speed S/S Hemi Dart?
I know that Manhattan was into Fords and Bowties.
They had a side oiler in the basement.
Unless I missed some thing in their stories. I actually saw the Fords and the Chevies.

Ok kiddies. Gather around Grandpa Kidd and listen to this story! OK seriously, due to nature of this thread, I'll tell ya a true story that happened 36 years ago. I was 17 when I ordered a new TX9 71 Cuda (you do the math calculating my age!). Not having much money, I ordered the baseline model with only a few options. The upgrades were 3.91 rear gears, an AM/FM stereo and a ralley dash. No road/ralley wheels, no console for the pistol grip; manual steering, brakes and windows. The base engine was an N code 383. The car cost $3,579.00. I forget what the breakdown was on the few options that were ordered. The car was ordered in Oct of 1970 and arrived at Ridgewood Plymouth (in Queens NY) in November. I picked it up at night and was it ever mean looking under the dealer lights! I drove that car every chance I could.

The 70’s were a great time to own a musclecar. Almost every guy I knew had one. We'd work on them in yards, single car garages and out in the streets. Every car had some mods; at least headers, intakes and carbs. No one went in for pretty looks. Nice rims were as far as cosmetics went. At night we'd cruise the boulevards looking for girls, cars to race and places to eat (but not in that order). At selected meeting places the heavy hitters (as today) were the blown cars, hemis and of course the ever popular tunnel rammed cars. Some that immediately come to mind were a rat powered GTO, a 800 hp race fuel burning Camaro and one badass Max wedge Fury. Names like Dino the Greek, Vinny from Atlantic Speed and the boys from S&k Speed were some of the heavy hitters I remember. There was only one Hemi powered car that we would see on a frequent basis and this was in NYC! They were rare even back then! Street racing happened every weekend at Connecting highway or Crossbay Blvd. It usually occurred after midnight. On the Connecting hwy, we had cars block the lanes at the start and finish so the racing could go on uninterrupted. Much cash was exchanged at this place. The blvd racing was just between two measured points. I raced a 70 Chevelle there, in what would be my closest and maybe last street race. I beat him by a side marker length. Afterward, winners, losers and followers would all go to a pizza joint and BS. They were great times. One of my favorite memories was raising some money to buy gas as I was running on fumes. We scraped up 75 cents and stopped at a Sunoco. It got us a little over 2 gallons of 260 (about 104 octane) and we were on our way again!
With all the money I was putting into go fast parts, I became nervous about theft. My theft deterrent? I pulled the Holley carb off the motor at night and brought it into my apartment with me! I got used to the stench of gasoline pretty quickly! My best score happened by fate. I was at a stop light one day and up next to me pulls another Cuda. The car itself was in rough shape, but it had a shaker hood with a piece of flat aluminum stock covering the hole where the shaker bubble should have been! His 70 was black as was mine, and I immediately got the idea of a swap. I rolled down the passenger window and asked if he was interested. Well, he was as crazy as I was and we went back to my place and switched hoods in the driveway! My next mission was to get all the related shaker parts to make the changeover complete. I went to S&W Dodge and got all the parts (baseplate, adaptor ring, bubble, grills, gaskets and cables) for a whopping $175.00. Life was good!

I know that there was one over at Ebbets Field Dodge where a friend of mines Brother worked as the performance manager. That car ended up in either "Speed Wind" shop in Long Island or S&K Speed. One of them was campaigned on the street for sure. My memory banks are bankrupt at the moment.

My 73 340 duster. I was stationed @ Vandenburg AFB, Ca, and got a 90 day TDY to Whiteman AFB, MO. Just arrived in the area and had not checked in yet. Was driving DD rd from Warrensburg to Whiteman AFB, which is a "hilly" 10 mile long road. Following another (slower) car to the back gate of the base, then a loud, white Camaro comes up on my rear, and tries to pass, but way too much traffic and too many hills. this went on for about 10 minutes.

Finally we get to one spot, long down hill, where you can see over 1 mile or so up the road and he flies around me. Well, I drop 2 gears and pull out right behind him, pull along side of him, make a big production of grabbing another gear and wind it out, pulling way ahead. Then grab 4th and pulled back in the right hand lane and let off. Brought it back down to almost 60 all the rest of the way there. He never passed me just stayed real close. Got on base and pulled into a parking lot by billeting, him still following. He pulled right behind me, so I got out, thinking "there's gonna be a fight."

First words out of his mouth were "What the h*ll you got IN that thing?" Well of course being a wise guy, I said "Slant 6, stock" and had to laugh. Then I pointed to the stripes and large 340 on the rear quarter of it .

Before I'd left California, I changed out the pumpkin in the 8.75 and had a open 2.94 for the trip in it. While I was in Missouri, I put in my 3.55's back in, and had a blast! K.C.I.R.& Noland Rd. = 1 hour away. Turns out, that was the best base I was stationed @ in 20 years. Good times, Nice area, Nice folks! Actually got stationed there for 3 years after that.

Is 1981 close enough??? San Jose CA
We would cruise the El Camino in SunnyVale and then hit Ringwood Ave for the real action.
Industrial area, no other traffic,
1/4 mile between roads.
The cops never showed up

When ready one car would signal and the christmas tree would light. OK we use a car parked on the grass just up the street-no lights, parking lights, headlights GO!!!. I never lost...my buddy Dave would get out of the car ahead of time to get into the crowd to bet on me. He said the crowd used to go wild when we flew by as there would be flames coming out of my short exhaust system and the car would be screaming. I can't say if the flames were real but the car really ran quick back then...My girlfreind of the time used to insist on going for the ride-she was about
100 lbs soaking wet-So I used to call her my handicap...She promised to pay if we lost.


I still have the same pos car today