New Prostock Mustang (3 Viewers)

[none]

A lot of people complain about the cars all looking the same. Round blobs. The cars on the road could be described the same....................

 

[Ramjet]

Yes - But would rather have a “Pro Stock” car with 60 Cadillac Fins (Tail Lights) and a 54 Buick grill. Those shapes make the street cars get better mileage and less wind resistance at 70 MPH so it has to help at 3 times that speed. I learned something with my Streamliner. With some small vortex generators the only thing I could hear was a little drive line noise and the internal engine noise - mostly the gear drive which was about 14/16 inches behind my head. That was @ 323 MPH.

 

[Cliff]

I was astonished a few years ago that a Japanese built streamliner, with an itty bitty 660 CC engine out of a Honda kei car, ran around 240 MPH. I think the car came up to your knee cap, but man that thing went thru the air. You know they must have used a computer simulation to get that shape.

 

[FreddieCougar]

I think the factory stock cars should satisfy your thirst. They are exactly what you're describing, no? And they are fast.

Thanks, Randy, I see your point. They are seriously cool. I'll have to pay more attention to them, I guess, and see if I can get excited about them. You know when our parents said "there's no good music any more, it's all crap"? That's how I feel, I think! Love Comp, love the mountain motor pro stocks.....but I'm hung up on the new stuff not being what I want it to be. And that's my problem and nobody else's

 

[Ray]

Speaking of Pro Stock. My son is here right now going through my albums, looking for something new (old)
to listen to. He says dad did you see this car run and I said no, it was a Eastern Seaboard car, I don't
think it ever came West. But I did see the band in 1978 or 79.
From Canada it's Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush great band and Frank is a fine guitar player. This album
is from 1980. Did anyone see the car run? Good looking Dodge Omni

View attachment 11913

View attachment 11914

View attachment 11915

View attachment 11916

These pictures of Frank Marino's car were at my shop in Montreal in 1979. The shop was called Race Engine Specialties. I lit the torch in the picture at least 25 times for the photographer. Good times, but lack of funding doomed the project. -Ray Barton

 

[Gone Dead Train]

These pictures of Frank Marino's car were at my shop in Montreal in 1979. The shop was called Race Engine Specialties. I lit the torch in the picture at least 25 times for the photographer. Good times, but lack of funding doomed the project. -Ray Barton

Thanks for the insight Ray. Very Cool

 

[Randy]

A lot of people complain about the cars all looking the same. Round blobs. The cars on the road could be described the same....................

Ha! I posted this on Facebook a couple months ago.

 

[T.Smith]

I've said this so many times, but why the obsession with "stock appearing" race cars, especially in classes that are very, very fast? When I see a modern FC, it looks like a land based missile, and it is. When I see a PS car, I see an engineering marvel that looks badass. We have classes for cars that look real close to production cars, and are scary fast, such as the FSS cars. When Pro Stock started over FIFTY years ago, they really were street cars with slicks and hood scoops (I'm exaggerating but you get it), what we have now is a result of progress. And as far as what's under the hood, given the parameters that Pro Stock engines must follow, things evolve to an optimum design. So, I don't get hung up on the all GM thing, I do however think having different body types is good for the class. Just my pre-coffee 2 cents, LOL.

The Corvette C5R, C6R & C7R race program is one of the reasons I own a Corvette today.

 

[Ramjet]

I was astonished a few years ago that a Japanese built streamliner, with an itty bitty 660 CC engine out of a Honda kei car, ran around 240 MPH. I think the car came up to your knee cap, but man that thing went thru the air. You know they must have used a computer simulation to get that shape.

Actually after computer designed models are run in a small wind tunnel now to get close and then the whole cars (not just Streamliners) spend a lot of time refining things in the wind tunnel. This is not like the "Old Days" (Dragsters - F/C - P/S Included) when you could build your own stuff and put dabs of grease & charcoal on the skin and see which way it streaked. Most Bonnivelle cars were 3 to 4 inches off the ground up untill the early 70's. A guy named Don DeBring who was a design engineer at Lockheed in Burbank built a skinny streamliner and put a basically stock Fiat engine in it for the F or G class and moved the record up over 100 MPH. When we built mine I decided that the air underneath could be eliminated by making it a "Ground Effects" car. Most cars back then weighed a lot. Some had 1" steel plates for a floor and every thing heavy were weighing up to 4000/5000 Lbs or more. Lots of drive line problems. Ours was a .065" 4130 chassis except for the roll cage and came in under 2000 lbs with no broken drive line components. It is also only 18"/24" wide with a Monostrut "Wing" on it that can change down force with a single wedge on the mounting strut. The air (surface tension) on the body as well as that under the car becomes more and more important as the speed increases (Lumps and bumps are a problem - they make the air turbuent). I am willing to bet that the difference in speeds that the Pro Stock car models are able to run is directly related to the numbers they have from the Wind Tunnel. There is a reason they pull the 'chute so it comes out starting before the finish line changing turbulence. Think about redirecting the air under a P/S motorcycle changing the speed 4 MPH and having to get approval just to modify the bike underneath and then multiply it by the area difference of a P/S - T/F or F/C that you can't even see with the naked eye. Nobody licks their finger and sticks their arm up in the air to tune for air any more.