In 1963, more horsepower and less weight are the rule,
everybody’s got a lightweight car with aluminum this and fiberglass that. Everyone was terrified of the Z-11 427
Chevys, well except for Dick Brannan and his 63 lightweight Galaxie and the
Ramchargers and their 63 Max Wedge Dodges.
Both cars won national events and held records. Pontiac had a
lightweight car that they drilled holes in the frame and support structure and
used aluminum exhaust manifolds that would melt if you ran the cars too
long. Ford also has another trick up its
sleeve, Tasca Ford, a Rhode Island dealer, took a page from Pontiac’s book and
stuffed a 427 Galaxie motor into a lightweight Fairlane. So we have some A F/X Tempests and a Fairlane
and a slew of Mopars.
In 1964 Ford commits to the cause by building 11 427 High Riser
powered Fairlanes called “Thunderbolts” and sold them to selected racers.
Mercury did the same with some Comets. Chevy focused on NASCAR and Pontiac faded
from drag racing. Chrysler, on the other
hand, unleashed hell in the form of the mighty Hemi. The 2% rule shows up in
64, the wheelbase is allowed to be altered by 2% to allow for “manufacturing
variances”. Some Chrysler guys moved
their rear axle forward 3/8
ths of an inch to help in weight transfer.
Up to this point things have been mostly about more
horsepower, bigger motors, and lighter weight.
One of the problems that everyone encounters is traction, how to get the
power to the ground. There are several
limiting factors: tires, weak transmissions, wheel hop, and weight
transfer. Tire technology was barely out
of the recap era, when you could have your street tires “capped” with stickier
rubber that didn’t have any tread. Drag
slicks were in their infancy and you could only get so much tire in the wheel
well anyway. Transmissions were developing
at a rapid pace, 3 speeds evolved to four to give more bottom end grunt and
automatic transmissions were getting better.
Chrysler cracked the code on the automatics with its “Dial-a-Win”
push button transmission.
Ford
practically told the Thunderbolt drivers to use aluminum Borg-Warner T-10 4
speeds so they wouldn’t have to put its super heavy cast iron boat anchor Lincoln
“Cruise-O-Matic” up against the super strong lightweight aluminum 727 trans the
Chryslers had. Wheel hop is when the
tires try to get traction and then lose traction intermittently and very
quickly, it causes the tires to “hop” or jump causing the car to shake
violently which leads to broken parts.
By 1964 almost every car had traction bars or a pinion snubber to solve
the problem. Traction bars allowed the
axle to move up and down but not twist under acceleration, they were usually
just long square bars attached to the axle and then to the frame with a way to
pivot up and down. A pinion snubber was
favored by Chrysler cars and is simply a rubber knob sticking up from the top
of the axle housing at the center that does not allow the axle to twist
forward. Both designs have advantages and disadvantages. The last problem was weight transfer, or
getting as much weight over the rear axle as possible. One trick was to put a large truck battery in
the trunk to put more weight in the back, another was the “Cowboy Rake”. The cowboy rake is where the front of the car
sits higher than the rear and was very common in the early days. The idea was that since this was the natural
motion of the car as it accelerates, it would help to get it in that position
early, helping the weight to shift to the rear for traction. Racers also used lighter springs from 6
cylinder cars and worn out shocks inn an effort to aid weight transfer. You could also move the motor back in the
chassis, which would move the center of gravity towards the rear, but that was
illegal. So if you can’t move the motor
back, what if you moved the wheels forward?
By doing that you have effectively moved the motor back in relation to
the chassis. This is where the 2% rule
come in, the Ramchargers moved the rear axle an inch forward on their ’63 car
with great success and later in ’64 they moved the front wheels forward 3 inches
and the rears 4 inches.
This is all
headed in one direction – altering the wheel base to get traction so all of the
motor’s power gets to the ground. Chrysler
strikes first.
More to come, until then, keep modeling!
"Rat Fink" Ron
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