Drag Racing 101

[Music] yes welcome to wagons of steel it's a party and everyone's invited this week i'm going to talk about drag racing 101 what got me into it and uh maybe a few things i wish i'd known in the beginning and if you're new to the sport or you're interested in it maybe i'll teach you a couple of things you won't have to learn the hard way so with that first things first here's a picture of my old mighty josephine at the top of her game that my friend sarah sent me that's in the shop that we're sitting in right now and there's not even garage doors yet that's my dog dottie there some of you may remember her see all kinds of interesting things about that car that was that was my was it my first yeah josephine was the first car i went racing in and that was the last version of josephine um you can see she's fully lighted up my friend jack had got a vinyl machine this is back in like near 2000 maybe maybe earlier it could be the late 90s i think it is the late 90s and so it's got the wagons of steel lettering on it and chrome i was sponsored by napo vashon auto parts bob's bakery um dimitri's bloody mary seasonings flash photo and uh who else tom matson dodge they used to kick me down some stuff those were the days have you been watching my videos you've seen this this is the mighty josephine today still got the wagon power there a friend of mine told me a long time ago never get rid of your old race cars which i don't know it's kind of cool you know instead of slime green you can still see the slime green paint here a little bit see where the lettering used to be i've learned a lot about racing in this car here she is earlier on in a racing career it's hard to even see from here but this whole front end area of the car the the whole front fenders both sides the car had been jumped pretty extensively and way before i owned it and so it was really beat up and i kind of learned a lot about bodywork and bent it out and you know made it made it look like it was uh made it look better than it actually was but good enough for a race car but it wasn't it wasn't that great so when i had the opportunity to find another front end i i jumped on and i put the front sheet metal on and promptly i didn't lose interest but i um the car was not the big sea bodies like that the giant chryslers and i'm sure the big ford country squires and what would the chevy be the impalas and the giant cars people do race them and they are cool race cars let me tell you but um they're really uncommon and so you're not going to get any off the shelf race car stuff for those without uh it's just you're just not gonna so you had you had to make it yourself which is a good learning experience but i i decided i wanted to get a car that was easier to to race and that was why i stepped up to the the plymouth belvedere which is a a very common platform for drag racing um what makes a good race car is you know we're all in this for fun so a lot of it is you just have to pick whatever turns you on i mean a lot of times it's it'll be you know a car that you loved when you were a kid or um a car that you love now um you know maybe you are into a car club like there's a lot of car club drags where a bunch of people who all have you know ford mustangs or dodge challengers or chevy camaros or they all get together and they you know go to the races on uh car club day and they all race against other car clubs or um there's just basic bracket racing and that's that's broken down into you know it did change it varies from track to track but in general you've got cars that do the quarter mile in 12 seconds and slower is sportsman and then you've got cars that go faster than 12 seconds down to i think nines is pro and then uh 12 seconds and like down into the seventh i believe is super pro and they're allowed to run electronics which means you like typically a sportsman or pro your car the way you launch it is the way you would leave a stop light you know more aggressively obviously you you put one foot on the brake and one foot on the gas and when it's time to leave you stomp the gas and let off the brake and there you go um whereas uh the electronics and super pro when it's time to go you let go of a button or um or there's a button attached to the gas pedal and it and it usually typically it'll be uh attached to uh trans brake which is a a race only function of the transmission which allows you to put the gas pedal all the way to the floor and the car goes nowhere until you let go of the button and then it uh the transmission activates and you're on your way so that's typically i mean unless you come from a racing family and you uh you know these type of cars are around you know for you to use uh you'll start in pro or you know sportsman uh because that yeah the button electronic stuff is something you learned later on um it's a little more complicated i guess so you know picking a car i recommend everyone starts in sportsmen i mean i i i think i had my best year ever in uh local bracket races with a i was talking to somebody about this this morning it was my uh 64 plymouth valiant was the car ronaldo the valiant and he ran 18 second quarter miles and it was because all my faster cars were cooked which is another thing to think about with uh drag racing uh picking a car is um you know speed how fast your car goes i mean it it determines whether i mean if your car is faster than 12 seconds in the quarter mile then you have to be in pro instead of sportsman but in general the difference between an 18 second sportsman car and a 12 second sportsman car is how fast you feel it going the rules are the same and you can win the same amount of money and your likelihood of winning is the same um i mean it's it's you can decide whether you want to be the car that goes faster which typically you do i mean because you're out drag racing because you want to go drag racing which it can be you know usually it's like you want to be fast but news flash the fastest guys are running super pro or in the pro categories and they're way faster and they have way more money and will never be as fast as they are so you kind of have to pick your your plan like how fast do i really want to be going and you know what like if you if i would had settled for running renault of the valiant and 18 sixes i probably overall would have won a bunch more trophies and money than i have in my drag racing career because that car it was so mellow like you didn't have to you didn't break anything ever really i mean it's just as long as you you know change the oil once in a while and make sure there's you know transmission fluid in it and that uh you don't run out of gasoline it's it would always go down the track the same amount of time and that's how you win races if you can cut a light if you if your reaction time is good and you run the number that you wrote on your windshield the chances are very good that you're going to win whether you're running 12 flat or 18.6 so if you can stand running 18 sixes and you can cut a perfect light you're you're the master of your domain once you've picked a car that you like a car that you want to race it's um it's not a good idea to drive it on the street i mean there are lots of people out there who race their daily drivers and drive to the track and you know i lard knows i've raced to my tow vehicle before and um it's not something that i prefer to do uh regular car is um it's not going to be consistent in the way that a race car can be uh race cars are are a drag car is designed to go in a straight line from the you know the starting line to the finish line and do it the same way every time and some you know like a reliable car you know the same thing is true with a race car or a daily driver you want to start up when you turn the key to go to work or go racing um but you don't want to you don't want to worry about the stuff that can happen to your driver happening in your race car i mean it's it's you know does a coke can come out from under the seat and lodge itself under your brake pedal or um did you run out of gas or uh did you wear put wear on your transmission that causes it to function differently than the last time you went racing so i mean you do what you got to do um if you're brand new and you're just learning how to race it's you know it's very unlikely that you're going to win the track championship in the first year anyways the more seat time you get the better so just just roll out and do what you got to do but just know that that the ideal is to bring your race car to the track on a trailer and only use it for racing and uh that's just something to aspire to i mean it rome wasn't built in the day so you're not gonna you know necessarily be able to do it right away i mean i know that i started when i was very very poor and i had to run my car and i mean it was it's i remember driving that mighty druzvin around when she had no back seat and no sound deadening of any kind no headliner and man it was so loud and there's no heater so it's freezing and you could barely see out the windshield in the winter time and it was uh i did what i had to do but i i if you if you're planning plan on on having a car strictly for racing and bringing to the track on a trailer ideally and uh buying a trailer and tow rig all of it's the same if you keep saving up your money and have cash on hand for when you see a good deal you'll save yourself a lot of money i i you know it's as i've heard it said it's true it's very expensive to be poor and this is one of those ways you know i i lord knows how many credit cards i've burned up buying stuff to put race cars together and then you know they're all paid off now it's all well that ends well but the easy way to do it would have been to save up a bunch of money first and then the big decision you have to make when you are getting ready to go racing is do you buy a race car or do you build a race car um a lot of times like when you're in sportsman there really isn't that much you have to do to make your car race ready but if you buy a car that somebody's already been racing then you know it'll pass tech and you know it's theoretically okay as a race car the faster you get the more you have to worry about stuff being worn out and used up i'm not going to go off into stock eliminator stuff this video but um i know that when i when i see people buy and sell stock eliminator cars and usually um or super stock you don't want somebody else's engine you want to you want to build your engine yourself and know what's going on so you're not getting a bunch of junk or used up tired out stuff which i guess could be said for anything in a car i learned this the hard way you need to get the strongest axle assembly that you can um mopars they come with what's known as the eight and three quarter rear end which it's the i can't remember what the name of there's like the there's uh english inventors invented the to the two different types of rear ends one the whole unit drops out that's like what the eight and three quarter is and um the ford nine inch so you could take the you've got your whole gear set you pull the axles out a little bit and then you just put that chunk in there and you can change your gears and it's uh certainly come in handy for me in the past i used to you know it's the it's not the heaviest duty but it's the second from the heaviest duty uh that mopar comes with and it's not enough yeah you blow them up the most inconvenient of times they they skin the teeth off the ring gear the it's uh there's lots of people who tell you it's the best and like you can you can cryogenically treat the ring and pinion gears you know deep freeze them and then they're supposedly harder or whatever which costs hundreds of dollars the center section costs hundreds of dollars if you blow three up a year it cost thousands of dollars which is pretty much what i was up to and finally i started getting the dana 60 which is it's an outside vendor it's a really uh it's the strongest rear end they ever put in a mopar car i think they made dana's 70s and 80s that they put in big diesel trucks but the dana 60 is the go-to it's like the one that came in the four-speed hemi barracudas and the 446-pack road runners and the anything with a four speed and a lot of power they would put the dana in because then it just didn't you know we haven't killed one yet mike and i we're dueling to see who can blow one up first and we haven't done it yet and um so you know the the eight and three quarters maybe a little bit faster i know with like chevy guys they have the 10 bolt and the 12 bolt and the 10 bolt is arguably the the fastest least resistance rear end there is i've heard so like you could theoretically i don't think they've ever checked what kind of rear end i'm running in my car when they inspect me you could theoretically put a 10 bolt rear end in your mopar or your ford or whatever but that'd be insane because one thing about drag racing is you can't win the race if you're sitting on the starting line with the rear end broken it just you're not going anywhere and the guy in the other lane can push his car off the starting line and beat you speaking as a guy who races a car that has an engine that was only available for half of 1964 i have to say if you can pick a common combination pick something that you can always get parts for even if you're racing way out of state in some obscure location you know like chevy 409s buick 401s max wedges 426s you know any other like pontiac 327 with any of the really obscure stuff it's buick 455 anything by oldsmobile you know i love all that stuff i think that stuff is great and i'm it's it's so cool that people are out racing it and you know keeping it keeping it alive but boy it's it's hard there's no there's no chapter on on buick engine since the summit catalog and you know i have to talk to a uh automotive historian to figure out like the part numbers for my max wedge stuff but if you uh race like a fox body mustang with a 5 liter in it there's a whole chapter for you in the summit racing catalog and 350 chevys it's there they practically throw them away so when you're picking your combination if you can you know go with god do it do with what do what you have to do it's up to you but if you can pick a common combination so that it's easier to deal with that aspect you don't need to make stuff hard for yourself if you can avoid it one of my favorite things about drag racing and being at the drag strip is people in general at the drag ship are very friendly and helpful and if you ever have questions you should ask them because most of the time you'll find somebody who can answer them i mean take with a grain of salt there's sometimes people who will purposefully not give you the correct answer and there's some things that people don't want to tell you about especially if you're in stock eliminator or super stock or you know they they they don't want to tell you there's some of their secrets and some people don't want to tell you what kind of cam they're running their car whatever but if you if you're able to be respectful they'll tell you all kinds of stuff about you know what what uh gear ratio works best with a certain type of engine where the porta potties are um uh why you shouldn't eat hot dogs at this particular track and um it's a it's good to ask questions and good to be friendly with your neighbors and um help people out and have people help you out and you know we're all in it to have a good time together super cool to bring kids to the racetrack they really love it and then they they get to learn about cars and friends and responsibility and that you're the cool neighbor you get what you pay for uh some stuff you really shouldn't cut corners on some stuff you can um but some stuff like transmissions uh torque converters clutches uh rear gear assemblies that stuff you really don't want to cut corners on because um it'll break and you will not be able to continue racing it's uh under ideal circumstances you want to be the reason you lost not your equipment be nice to the officials be extra nice to them especially be nice to the person who sits in that that booth that gives you the time slip at the end and uh the person who texts your car and if you see the the the manager the the director any of those guys have to listen to a bunch of crap all day long from people who think that they're superior be nice to them too be nice to all of those those guys and gals because they don't really get paid very much and the nicer you are to them the more they're going to remember you and be nice to you if they have to you know toss a coin to figure out who wins in an argument and once the person is always nice to him and brings him a cup of coffee and says you're doing a great job and the other one's the person is always bitching and moaning you know they're usually gonna go in the direction of the nice person so in your own self-interest and just to be a nice person be good to the people who work at the track remember to have a good time it's uh it's fun that's why you uh you went out don't don't get too carried away with losing and rehashing why you lost and just uh enjoy yourself and uh you can always come back and try it again later just uh you know tighten up your seatbelts and enjoy the company and you know have fun

Channel: Wagons of Steel

Views: 686

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Drag Racing 101, wagons of steel footage, mopar, station wagon, Vashon, Vashon Auto Parts

Id: NTADgqQahiY

Length: 21min 47sec (1307 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021