If You Want To Win, Use A Turbo.
By Douglas R. Glad
photographer: Douglas R. Glad
That Reagan guy called it trickle-down economics. In political rhetoric, it's about feeding an industry resources and taking advantage of the natural tendency of ideas and hardware to spread from the industry guys down to the man on the street. In Car Craft terms, it means watching the racer who blows things up for the sake of winning and adapting his trial-and-error knowledge to the street machine. Since the racer is going to push as hard as he can, he is also going to find inventive ways to use the latest technology. So you can look at the Car Craft Magazine Street Race class as kind of an R&D facility for your street machine. Pay attention, you are going to learn something.
Street Race was developed in connection with Car Craft for stock-appearing vehicles running DOT-legal street slicks or drag-radial tires. Participants are allowed EFI or carbureted engines that are nitrous equipped, supercharged, or turbocharged. Small-blocks are allowed a maximum of 415 ci and big-block engines up to 490 inches. Each car starts with a base weight determined by the size of the engine, the type of power-adder, and the type of tire used. For example, a turbocharged car must be limited to 360 inches and weigh at least 3,300 pounds. If you want to add an intercooler, add 100 pounds, if you want to run an aftermarket fuel-injection controller, you must add 50 pounds. You also can take off 100 pounds for running DOT drag radials to even it out.
Racers are required to use mufflers and can't alter the bodies aside from adding better hoods, and the engines need to run on gasoline. Nitrous guys can only use a single-plate system for carbs or a single-nozzle for injection; no foggers or timers are allowed, and you have to run approved aftermarket cylinder heads. Sound like a street machine? Stick shifts are allowed as long as you pull the handle yourself, but most of the guys are running some version of the Powerglide. So anyone who can bolt on a set of heads and throw a shifter can enter the field that is a mix of turbos, nitrous, and supercharged small-blocks.
What all this means is currently, the ultimate combination for a drag-racing street machine is something like Tim Meagher's '81 Mustang that runs 9.10s all day long with a 357-inch small-block and a turbocharger. He's the '06 NMCA Street Race Points Champion. Check out this sick combo he used to dominate the class.
The Rules
Points and weight penalties conspire to keep things on the level in the Street Race class. The NMCA drops two races from the points average, so it's OK if you can't make every race. The association also adds 20 pounds to the total weight of the winner before the next event, and the weight is cumulative, so fast guys can get pretty fat and slow by the end of the season. The weights are reset for the next year. To join the fun visit fasteststreetcar.com or call 714/444-2426.
The Competition
The other guy who could have taken the crown was Larry Hourcle in his Vortech supercharged '88 Mustang. All he had to do was set the track record, qualify No. 1, and win every round. Unfortunately, the small-block dropped a valve in an early round and put him on the trailer