Jimmy Means NASCAR Cheating Stories: UP CLOSE Adjustable Spoiler & Illegal "Slider" Intake Manifold

everybody cheated one way or other back then you know kind of what they looked like back in the day everybody was doing something did you ever do that no but I did do one time this is a Daytona in Chicago that we built got a adjustable Spore really totally illegal we could lean this thing back we had a hydraulic cylinder in the middle right there and we had a hydraulic cylinder hid under the dash with hydraulic lines snuck through the shock where uh and had it where it was headed and we could lean that spoiler back probably take 20 degrees out of it and we never got caught with it but they caught I believe it was Bill Davis's car that ran into a joy which was running but they had hydraulic depth pans and I think they find them 50 Grand man you know the sellers hid in here but got it kind of covered up pretty well where you can't see it oh yeah I could see the the little spring yeah in there it is really hard to see you'd never right you'd never be looking and you couldn't just never they never found that oh but when they found Randy Randy Joy's deal and he finally fifty thousand I said well I can't afford that it was one thing to leave Daytona broke it's another to be leave bankrupted not what a what that's what would happen if I got cough so I took it off what year were you using this I used it a couple years I think my might have been maybe 90 92. now how exactly did this work is that uh is this silicone between the the base of the spoiler and the the deck lid so it can it's flexible well that's just I think I think silicone it then we cut it we couldn't see it but it was and then after we qualify we didn't need it to work so we you know but I think we'd probably cut it Loose with okay yeah but and we put Springs behind behind the bolts you know the Springs kept it up tight for inspection but the hot wreck celery was so strong that you know you could look in the rear mirror going down going down the track and we turned that you know that the cylinder on the dash you just watched it lean back so God I kind of laughed at myself so that's a pretty good trick there yeah it is so where the Springs also kind of a Fail-Safe if you busted lift the hydraulic system busted out or something that the Springs would push it back to normal right right so to let off the pressure on the it was like you know kind of like brakes you know as long as she puts pressure on it yeah I'm just going to lean it back but all we gotta do is to back up had a t-hound but could stick in a hole and it would you know and you put the you know laying it down or you know get the pressure off and it would come back yeah and we have even just use light sprays on a spoiler back in the day and just let the wind the the air over you know the front of the top of the car push it down and that worked too really but it was kind of you know then they didn't have weights that they put on the spoiler and all the uh they didn't you know all they use is a tape measures to check the height and stuff so I had to sign at the time uh Elmo Langley was uh one of the specters which he used to race good guy loved him to death actually and he didn't catch it but all you had to do is blow on it and lean down what kind of hydraulic cylinder was actually hidden inside the trunk where'd you source that from well what the this was under here oh inside you know the one for this thing was behind there but the other so there was two there's two yeah and you just have to Blade them but it was like a clutch cylinder and it would push on because all I could see when you look in there like you built this thing really well like looking in there and I still all I see is I don't remember if the cylinder is still in there and it probably is but like I said hit it really good but all that's it's a slight cylinder and when you you know uh I said when you put that T handle it was mounted before it would move and had a way that would hold the entrance to the cylinder and then when I screwed the T handle in it would push you know the fluid down here and then push it back to here and lay this forward out so what was the fluid pushing on was it pushing on the back of the Springs because all I could see in there was it looks like a valve spring in on a long bolt yeah that's that's where it was so it would have been but it was the the wait where was the actual linkage that was doing the angle changing I couldn't see it I don't know if the cylinder is still in there okay yeah I see a I see the spring on there I don't know if it's still cylinders it should be in there but it's going to be way up here it's in this side all right you can see all kinds of stuff going on there but man if you were looking for something you'd just be like why do you get Blue Springs on your freaking bolts or just you just think it's flexible you can't see you can see a little bit of a plate something welded in here and something right there but then you got this right there it's probably hiding it right well actually this thing has two cylinders in it that's one of them [Music] somewhere in there yeah I could kind of see the the fitting yeah and I got a hit here where you can't see so yeah you you definitely thought about this from sitting here trying to find it and I can't find it you did a really good job yeah it doesn't need to be on a wall or in a museum somewhere well I sold my my Daytona Car you know 93 or 94 I think I quit and uh somebody wanted a car turned case I sold it turned key yeah a couple months later a guy called and said what's the cylinder up under the dash here I said oh that's just something I used to do yeah you can see the the braided line going through there all the way down okay yeah I can see the fitting where it goes into the cylinder now looking at it this way in there I don't know if the people watching this can see it if you can't you just have to take my word for it it's in there your spoiler used to be one piece but then they changed it to two pieces then it was a lot easier to do when it was one cylinder but you just put your you had a slave cylinder and you had a rod and it pushed against the back of the Spore the base of the spoiler the mountains the Mountain Base and if you just lean it back but it's a little more complicated because it had these two cylinders that worked but what other kind of things have you had confiscated that they did catch uh I had a five inch clutch the rule of seven and a quarter uh actually they were looking for it because it was it was uh somebody ratted somebody out that somebody was running five inch clutch and I think they caught caught us at Phoenix and the inspector said we were looking at that little clutch but we didn't think you had one but I had one but they got it showing such as for the decreased rotating weight yeah and then uh Gary and Nelson caught my knit I was working for Bud more and I was a crew chief and and I didn't hide it very well I you know that was showing three ignition boxes and Nelson come by and said when you decide what's two animation boxes you're gonna run so bring me the other one so I went to Parts truck and bought a brand new one took it to him and said that's not the one I saw so bring me the one I saw so it cost but more 10 grand were you uh less cautious about that stuff when it wasn't you that was going to hit the get the fine bye no I never worried about getting caught you know uh because that's what I mean everybody cheated one way or other back then you know you know I don't know if you ever heard of stories but they used to say Daryl Ralph would say on the radio bombs away and then what it was doing he pulled a plug and last shot came running out of the car so everybody was doing something did you ever do that no but I did do one time in Bristol I put water in the right front tire in the inner liner in the tire in the tire but then there was two we ran Twos for you know now they're tubeless but I uh fill that thing up with water uh I think we put over 200 pounds weight on the car and go to inspection legal weight-wise we get on Pit Road I stuck a nail in the tires you know and you can change one tire without penalty without going back through scales and all that so I changed that one tire when I took that tire off it was 200 pounds lighter it helped we ran top 10 all day long never got caught with that either oh when you take 200 pounds off the car I mean it drove like it was a golf cart which is so easy to maneuver because that without that 200 pounds so I was like you were just using that for the you were going through inspection with the heavy tire and then taking it off to race right you weren't using that as some type of ballast no no just okay just to make a car lighter there's stories that uh uh junior had a car at uh uh Wolf's bar that had both right side Wheels banded and full full of lead and then you know and they went through Tech with that legal weight and all that and they going to change them the first caution but it was a long time before we had a caution and but led you know absorbs heat really quick and the right front tire got so hot from from the lead you know the way the brakes temperature that it blew the right front tire and the driver I think it was Terry Labonte Terry got barely got in the wall and uh that called to caution and all that so you know didn't really hurt the car so they come in finally get those tires off and he wins the race how did the car run after you had the cut Tire well believe it or not it messed the front end up a little bit and we need to go back to the shop and check it and see what it did they never saw anybody like you know changing the tire and their guys like throwing us back out trying to pick up this 200 pound Tire the car actually ran better after you crashed I believe it did what's funny about mine is when you took it off the car it looked like the car weight was still on it because it goes the thing weighed to over 200 pounds so but nobody ever uh caught it and at the same time we had a helmet full of lead and my crew chief you know we got the hell went out of the car this is on Pit Road and my crew seat was carrying a helmet back through the trucks and the strap broke I said dadgum and I'm not never doing that again do you still have a lead helmet ah no I don't know what you know uh whatever we did with it I mean you know everybody used to have you know the goggles you know we always raced with a fresh pair of goggles and the you know the goggle box would be on the dash and it would be full of build a lead block so damn you know we even had we had spray containers you know like with WD-40 was or wd-20 sd20 that was a cleaner everybody used and it was lead so and we would stick it into in the vent holes uh in the back window and then when we got through you know Tech and would pull that thing out and if somebody saw you with it it's just a can of cleaner so never got caught with that either did you ever mess around with nitrous no well actually I did but never got it to work I don't know if we didn't have a jetted right to the motor but uh uh you know we never not got it to work and what I did have was a winch in the car one time it was hooked to the rear axle that you could push the winch and then pulled back the car down or you put a winch in the car yeah I've never heard that or anything like that before and had it had it routed you know back to the center the bar behind the seat and we've had pulleys and all that sort of stuff that it could you know wouldn't be bound up and it went through uh when we got it back to the rearing house and we put it through a oil vent the oil housing vent line and you could see it you sit there and push the button the car do it like this you do that on super Speedways yeah yeah you ever get caught with that nope did you know anybody else that had a winch in their car or I never heard anybody with a winch but uh a lot of them had those hydraulic hydraulics in the rear jack screws so I think Ricky Ricky really got caught a title deal with it something like that and actually I I bought a used race car was wrecked from Junior Johnson but when I went to pick it up uh they said wait a few minutes we gotta you gotta take something off of what they were taking off of it was the bracket that held the valve for their deal for that rear jack screws so I mean it you know and it was fun back then trying to do that you know you can't do it now I mean you know it's just like it uh Charlotte Carl long had a motor that was minutely too big and he paid for that motor from a riftable engine filter and then what they do they find it suspended him and charged a fight or 250 000 who can pay that yeah and it wasn't anything he did he didn't even know it was didn't even know so that's why we can't do something today because you know we just can't and the little guy that would make more they would uh make an example out of because it did hurt them you know you uh do that to Gibbs or RCR or whatever then uh that hurts the sport yeah they're not worried about us so and they'll let that pass more than let something like that pass for us I'm still hung up on this winch thing where did you actually have the winch itself in the engine box in the battery box yep did you happen to have an extra big battery box or a smaller battery how did you have a smaller battery but like I said that's 30 something years ago also so I mean that was before the days we could just go to Harbor Freight and get a little winch I don't know how big winches were back then it was it was about to uh that you know my size of a quart a bottle of milk or something and a little longer but I think I still got it on the Shelf back there really yeah you want to go see if it's back there let's see if we can find it this is a stuff we built back in uh oh yeah yes back in uh shoot mid 80s that skirted the Nesco card rules uh NASCAR had a rule that you have to have this diameter hole in the center of the manifold and a one inch block had to go on top of that down into plenum so we figured out and it wasn't you know anything distant that we could make that move and if we go up against the restrictor plate and it's about 50 50 horsepower doing that because it straightened the air up coming through the plate and pulling more as it straightened it up and this is one that we made uh that we had we could pull that up with the carburetor studs but this is the one that that one NASCAR finally figured out what we were doing they made us weld them because they knew what those were slider and there's a car that won two Cup races uh that outrun Davey Allison that had these sliders that weren't legal but they won the race and that's going to catch it but next time to the racetrack which is uh Daytona February they had a disgruntled employee that don't ask her about it then they got caught so was it McClure no uh this is actually McClure I think okay interesting because we did see yeah something too because it ran too well yeah we spent a lot a lot of hours you know on the floor bench and the dyno figuring this and we figured actually I figured this out from the rules that you know it's a if you hold these two guidelines you know this is legal so that's what we did I mean a lot of time on the meal he goes like experimental pieces in there too yeah and that's that's some stuff we worked on this is a another that's a slide and that's kind of what they look like back in the day I don't know if this look where those bolts set screws for something I don't remember we're gonna keep it from sliding up too far when you're testing it uh no and we kind of figured out uh accidentally we had ways to this you know like I said we pulled this up with our Bridge studs but we figured out that the airspeed coming through those holes was so fast that it would push itself up against the plate hmm so we didn't need any kind of tricks let's see like this one you see where this is machined out we had a a rod you know you know angle Rod to go in coming here and stick in the side of this and when we tighten it up it would pull it tighten the carburetor down it would pull this up knit to the plate hmm a lot of time not a lot a lot of time on this stuff who was the back there screwing around with us maybe was it just you yeah or do you have somebody helping you with the experience with yeah you know like McClure had some guy from NASA or something I don't know if you got a guy from NASA in here but somebody yeah it was just me a lot a lot of hours once people started figuring out how to do this how did you catch wind of the trail to go down to do the same thing uh actually I I figured it out way for a lot of people did really we uh we had a test at Talladega I think it was a three-day test and time we got this kind of where we wanted it we we showed up for the last day of testing it was Pontiac paid for a test and we showed up at the test and those guys had already been tested two and a half days I think we got there around 12 and got on the racetrack and man two and a half laps around three miles an hour faster anybody had tested we loaded back up and came home because they worked is that another um that manifold over there it's got this is that spacers welded to it oh yeah it's got the yeah that's the plate slug in it that's one of them [Music] but like I said this was you know we used to having whatever to slide and then this car said no you got to pin on my weldom so did you ever use the plastic Hooter tube things no no that was smart too but back in the day you know uh Bob house and won the one Daytona uh when we first went to a street to play they didn't furnished they didn't furnish their our gaskets you know we could use our own gasket yeah and Bobby's guys made a gasket the right same size is is the plate and put it on top of the plate and even though it was only a 16th thick they radiused the edge of the gasket and what it did it gave the it gave the error direction to go through that hole it's just like I mean you could take a restrictor plate and take a knife and just deburt the edge 25 horsepower so they figured it out and they wanted to date on 500 but it wasn't long for NASCAR all right we're going to furnish the gaskets so we're standing here with Jimmy means in front of his original Race shop and we're gonna go in there and he's gonna show us the evolution of it all the things old picture stories and when did you move into this place too 1982 and it's still is that your old truck too yes when did you start hauling stuff around with that yeah about 78. I feel like I'm in a time machine right now this is awesome but you still do current cars in here too which is even cooler so let's check it out

Channel: Stapleton42

Views: 759,155

Keywords: lsxcalade, escalade, turbo, twin turbo, pfi speed, stapleton42, Mitchell stapleton, 427, lsx, dyno, 2000 hp, street outlaws, bald eagles, 4x4, rowdessy, big turbo, suburban, yukon, denali, 1320video, dale jr, do it for dale, Brent pfi, rmrw, drag week, boost, v8, ls1, esv, boom tube, daytona, Alex bowman, suck it, dale truck, monte carlo, first gen monte, ls swap, pro touring, lsa supercharged, iroc x pipe, dr gas, rippin, vice grip garage, vgg, amc dealership, junkyard, sterling marlin

Id: 68NuniCVmhI

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022