Recipes for speed aren't always exact or set in stone....Their general guidelines!

My recent post about recipes for speed stirred up the usual spittingly hysterical maniacs, because I didn't include their car or said their car wasn't as fast as they think it is. The horsepower and power to weight ratios I listed are general guidelines. I guess some of these people didn't read the part about extra mechanical advantage-i.e. a 4-speed or 4.11 gears or a high-stall speed torque converter. When I said you needed 400+ hp to run in the 12s I was assuming we were talking about the typical 3,500-4,000 lb musclecar-i.e. Chevelle, GTO, Road Runner / Charger, or Camaro / Firebird, or 'Cuda / Challenger. Like I said I know a guy that got kicked off the track on the first run-he had a small-block Chevy in a Datsun 240Z. This combo makes an amazing drag racer-the independent rear suspension really bites hard, and the motor being slightly set back helps weight transfer. And the car only weighs about 2,300 lbs. A 350 Chevy V8 only weighs about 75 lbs more than the big Nissan inline 6-so the handling of the car isn't adversely affected. He had a mild cam and an Edelbrock Performer intake-so he had maybe 325 hp. But in a 2,300 lb car with 4.09:1 gears it ripped off a blistering 11.90 second pass. And he didn't have a driveshaft safety loop or a roll cage which this track required for any car running 12 flat or less. Some tracks have lowered this to 11.50-but that's the rule. Think about this-that's like having 650 hp in a 4,600 lb car-i.e. a GMPP 572 in a '67 Impala SS. That would run high 11s pretty easily, right?  I know guys with 340 Dusters that eat the lunch of big-block cars, and I know a guy that has a 289 '62 Falcon with a 4-speed and 4.56:1 gears that kicks ass-he only has maybe 300 hp-but the car weighs about 2,600 lbs and has 4.56:1 gears! His only friend who can give him a race is a guy with a '65 Nova with a 327 and a 4-speed and 4.11s.  Like I talked about the guy that put the LS Motor in the Chevelle-his only ran 13s-with street tires, a stock converter and 3.55 gears. He was pissed that it didn't run 11s like Hot Rod's Chevelle-that had an 8-point cage, wrinklewall slicks, a 4.44:1 axle ratio, and a 5,000 rpm converter!  Think that'll make a difference?  I've mentioned it before but I had a buddy in high school who had a 440 Six-Pack Super Bee. He was always spewing about how his car could run 12s. He assumed this because of an Old Car Life road test where Chrysler engineers had Pro Stock Drag racing champion Ronnie Sox piloting a dyno-tuned "Protoype" Road Runner with a 4-speed, 10 inch slicks, and 4.30 gears to a string of 13.0s and 13.10s with the best being a 12.88. He was shocked when his car with street tires, 3.23:1 gears and an automatic ran something like a 14.10 at our local track. When I tried to explain that he didn't have Ronnie Sox's lightning reaction time at the tree, and that the slicks and 4.30 gears made quite a difference, regardless of who was driving, he didn't want to hear it. He was doubly shocked when my warmed-over 4-speed, 4.33:1 geared RAIII Judge beat him in a drag race, and my dad's Tri-Power 421 Catalina 2+2 with 3.90:1 gears  gave him a helluva run up to 90 mph. He couldn't grasp the concept of mechanical advantage-his stock converter stalled about 2,100 rpm, and the big 440 still lit the G70-15 Goodyear Polyglas G/T tires up like they were on fire. I had a posi and soft-compound M/T N50X15 tires on the rear, and Lakewood traction bars. After heating the tires-I could rev to 3,500-4,000 rpm and drop the clutch hard. The GTO would rip off the line with just enough wheelspin to get engine up on it's torque curve and the car moving with alarcity. Trust me, if a Ram Air III Judge with 4.33:1 gears jumps you two or three car lengths off the line-your not getting it back. Ask the Hemi Charger driver, the 427 / 390 hp Corvette driver, and the 429SCJ Torino Cobra driver- all of whom I beat at our local track. A friend of mine had a 350 in a Chevy LUV pickup that was lightning-fast, and another guy had a Gremlin with a 401 in it that was a rocket. It's not always about raw power-gearing, traction, weight transfer all make a difference-you should have seen that short-wheelbase Gremlin, or that Chevy-engined 240Z rocket out of the hole!!  The rule of thumb - "If you think your car can run 12s but you've never been to the drags, then your probably in the mid-13s" is usually dead-on. People don't know-or forget that 1/10 of a second equals one car length. So if your buddy's car runs 13.60s and you beat him by 3 car lengths-your running 13.30s-not twelve-anything. Got it?  I've said it before-but I'll say it again-very few people had Hemi 'Cudas, LS6 Chevelles, Boss 429s, etc-most fond "Musclecar Memories" are from base models-383 Road Runners, 396 Chevelles, 389 GTOs, etc- tales of pulling the front wheels and third-gear rubber seem silly when someone pulls out a yellowed, dog-eared copy of Hot Rod or Car and Driver and we find the machine in question ran in the 14.50s. There's more to speed than just horsepower-that's all I'm saying. Mastermind