Street Racing Stories

[patrick66]

Back in the Spring of 1988, I was at a light with my factory 440 Dart GTS one day. Restored to stock, it was one stout machine! I was in the inside lane when a '68 Camaro pulled up. No hood, hi-rise intake, chrome all over, but three shades of primer on the body. He says "Wanna run 'em?" Sure, why not. The light turns, he pops the clutch and gets about 100 feet or so. There is a HUGE flame coming off his engine, and then silence. He rolls into a church parking lot, on fire, and I followed him in, as I had a fire extinguisher. He gets out of his car and yells "**** you!" over to me as I was ready to assist...OK, fine, **** you, too. Have fun putting that fire out with your shirt, Sport!

 

[ZR9B]

not much...when I had my 70 Cuda 340 4sd I was on 16 mile road and a GTO with a 4 spd pulled next to me...we ran like 3 times and neck n neck all the time. he flags me over and we shake hands...the guy is like 20 years older than me and i was about 20.... he asks do I know you?? I told him my name and he says , you lived on the other side of my fence when you were a kid and my kid kept bugging you so you beat him up....we ended up talking for another 1/2 hour. a 20 year old long hair punk and a 40 something year old guy... he couldn't believe a motor I built kept up with his.

btw he had a 389

 

[33 IMP]

Best impromptu story of my own;
I was daily driving my (mostly!) stock A12 rr, usually with the black rims, but this time I had centerlines on it. It also didn't have the 440 6bbl decals on the hood
Guy pulls up to me at a light, leans over his passenger and says " I'm trying to sell this car, let's go for it"
Normally this kind of stuff doesn't happen with the black ste3lies, but centerlines seemed to bring the squirrels out of the woodwork. I say okay after looking for cops.
(Forgot to mention, he was driving an early 70s Z28)
Light changes , I hold it in first at about 1/2 throttle, just stay even. He gets second and I floor it in first, pull two cars, shift into second (rmvb) pull two more, bark high gear, and he disappears.
He pulls into a side street before we get to the next light.
I wonder if he sold the Z.

 

[33 IMP]

One more. We were cruising somewhere late at night in my friends very warm 440/727/dana60 Duster. Guy in a first gen 350 camaro started playing with us. Andy (driver and owner) finally got tired of it, and simply destroyed him.
He rolled up next to us at the next light, said "what have you got in that thing!?!"
I told him it was a 318. He didn't look pleased.

 

[33 IMP]

Another one.
A friend of mine was a local legend street racer ( crackedback knows him, Boyd G).
He couldn't get a race in the SG Valley anymore, so he drove his 400 sb Vega down to San Diego area.
A guy with a big block tunnel ram camaro said to him (there was NO WAY that camaro had a shot) "I won't put you out more than two cars."
Boyd took him easily for a hundred bucks.
Camaro guy said "you've got a hidden bottle!"
Boyd says, I'll pull the intake right now, for another hundred. If no bottle, you owe me $500 more.....



Seven hundred dollars made the trip to dago worth it

 

[Budnicks]

I wrote a damn book there, check it out

Street Racing Confession(s)

Let's hear about your street racing days (hope they ended years ago). My one experience: Circa Spring of 1972 (I was a Junior) I was driving my parents special order 1971 Road Runner to high school daily (Palma High School-Salinas California). I had already raced the car at Fremont Raceway...

www.forbbodiesonly.com

 

[POMONAMISSEL]

well this is not a love of my racing days , but it opened my eyes wide , one night cruz'n down town we saw a guy we wanted to race go up against a 65 or 66 mustang coupe , the coupe dusted that 69 gtx bad . so we thought lets race the stang to se how we do , then go race the gtx with my beater 69 roadrunner . well we got paired up and the lighyt turned green , we came out of the hole first and had him until the mid intersection . then it was as if he hit a switch and that stang ran away from us . we stop and talked with the guy in the stang some . well i sold that roadrunner , and bought a 70 mustang boss 302 , modified it some and won alot of races , but i built that motor two or three times , fast but no longevity .

 

[POMONAMISSEL]

i must saw i've found out how to make my mopars run hard and fast , without building the motors over and over again . my 70 rt challenger 440 six pack never lost , my 63 sport fury mx car , was a whole lot of fun , we even bet rice rockets , can't wait for the new engine for her . may have to get that challenger out of mothballs storage freshen her up , it's a 4spd and thw lot of fun too . oh and by the way i was building a mopar in the garage while i ran the boss 302 , just wanted everone to know i've been a mopar fan since i started driving . in fact my avatar is the first vehicle i learned to drive .

 

[Budnicks]

My favorite story was actually on pre-race day. It was 1978 and I had just graduated high school. My mom (Dad had passed a few years earlier) left home to finish her course work for her PhD (which she got at age 55!). I lived in her house rent-free, with a buddy of mine, my band practiced in the basement and life was good! One Friday a bunch of us decided to hit the high school drags on Saturday so I got my 68 LeMans ready to go. I uncapped the headers (took off the cherry bombs), added some av-gas, and borrowed a set of wrinkle walls which I mounted on the car, then parked on the street facing the wrong way in front of the house on two bumper jacks holding the slicks off the street. It must have been around 9 PM when I saw blue flashing lights out front. I look out and there's a sheriff cruiser sitting next to my car all lit up. ****! Now I have to explain that I'm not driving it that way and that I'm loading it onto a trailer in the morning to go to the track. I walk out the front door and see the cop in the driver's seat with his shiny green flight jacket with the patch on the shoulder. I make my way down the walk and as I approach the car I recognize the long-haired 'cop' as my buddy Todd that worked at a local service station that did service and tuning for the sheriff's department. He had tuned this car and was out test driving it. The officer had left his jacket in the car so Todd decided to impersonate an officer. So there we are, me standing in the street talking about tomorrow's races when I had a flash of genius. I was a known rebel in the 'hood so I thought I'd enhance my rep. I told Todd to hit the siren then rough me up a bit and throw me in the back seat. He obliged and gave the siren a good blip then jumped out and grabbed me and forced me over the trunk. He reached over, opened the back door and 'threw' me into the back seat. Then he jumped in and SMOKED the tires leaving the scene. 6 houses down the street at the stop sign Todd told me he had to get back to work and let me out of the car (there's no handles in the back seat in case you didn't know). He drove off and I walked home. I never, ever heard any talk of the incident in the neighborhood but I know for a fact that everyone in sight was watching through their windows. Good times!

That's too funny...

My old roommate Jeff B. alias "the beak" (70 'cuda gran coupe)
his dad was the CHP midnight shift Lt. & later the captain
of the local Martinez CHP branch
he did some stuff back then, come over my place, redlight blazing
to make an impression on our car buddies, standing around
that he was a take-no-guff kind of guy...
They figured it out, what was up after a while...
It was fun while it lasted...
We should have been paid by the 'SAG' Screen Actors Guild
for those performances...

 

[ZR9B]

in about 83 I had a 72 satellite I put a 440 4 spd out of a roadrunner ...driving down grosbeck minding my own and a 73 satelite with a 400 sticker on the hood and blacked out windows keeps playing. We race twice win one loose one. So i pull off into a parking lot and sure enough they follow......this grease monkey chic gets out and hugs me...I was her first race and she beat me once...she pops her hood and she has a 72 440 out of a roadrunner it was an automatic .

 

[chargervert]

I used to work the three to eleven shift,and I was driving home from work in my A12 Superbee, 440 Sixpack,4 speed, 4.88 gears. I pull up to a red light and I see a silver brand new Mustang GT with the temporary plate taped in the back window in the lane next to me. As I pulled up next to him,I see he has three of his buddies in the car with him. I don't pay too much attention to them, then he starts reving up his engine like he wants to race,I look over and chuckled thinking, dude you just made a huge mistake and you are about to embarrass yourself and your shiny new Mustang GT in front of your friends, so I bring the Bee up to 3 grand and when the light changes I side step the clutch and I am gone in a cloud of tire smoke,I bang second and in my sideview mirror I see my tire smoke in his headlights as he rapidly fades back,I slam third and more tire smoke as the Mustang is now about 10 car lengths back. I stop at the next light and finally the Mustang rolls up beside me. They wouldn't even look over at me,and took a left and went on their way! I chuckled again thinking, you just picked on the wrong green Dodge! Lol

 

[Rebelrouser]

Did a lot of street racing in the day, 1975 to the early 1980's Had a 70 340 Dart 4-speed. Lived in a small town and we raced a couple miles out of town on Highway Y, about a 2-mile straightaway. Friendly fun, two brothers one had a 340 automatic Duster, and the other brother a 73 360 automatic Duster. The 340 duster I could beat by 1/2 care consistently. The 360 duster it depended on which side of the road I got. That summer almost every Saturday night we would meet up and make a few runs. And of course, all of us made small changes to the car trying to go faster. Really good times a lot of fun. The next summer I put the Dart on the drag strip and have raced ever since something every year.

I guess it was in the late 70's went to a big street race at a place called Sandy Hook outside of Jefferson City Missouri. Long straightaway down by the Missouri river. They used to mix asphalt on a side road parallel to the main road so you had a premade return road and the field next to it had no fence, so you had the pits as well. I was with a buddy 66 Chevelle 396 with a tunnel ram, four speed car. I guess there was 75 cars that day. We had people with CB radios at either end to stop any traffic so it was fairly safe. I noticed a small airplane flying over the area, and about an hour later six highway patrol cars showed up three from each way. And while pissed off they only wrote tickets to the cars that had open headers for noise violations, nobody went to jail.

 

[not so famous bob]

well this is not a love of my racing days , but it opened my eyes wide , one night cruz'n down town we saw a guy we wanted to race go up against a 65 or 66 mustang coupe , the coupe dusted that 69 gtx bad . so we thought lets race the stang to se how we do , then go race the gtx with my beater 69 roadrunner . well we got paired up and the lighyt turned green , we came out of the hole first and had him until the mid intersection . then it was as if he hit a switch and that stang ran away from us . we stop and talked with the guy in the stang some . well i sold that roadrunner , and bought a 70 mustang boss 302 , modified it some and won alot of races , but i built that motor two or three times , fast but no longevity .

gtx was probly spinning ,there were 3 mustangs in our family , wasnt impressed w/ any of them...

 

[POMONAMISSEL]

the boss 302 was 310 ci power band of 4700-8500 rpm , had nothing below 3500 it would cough n die , lol . but it flat out ran from 5k up , 3.9's in the butt turn that speedo to 155 mph and it like fuel stops at 4 mpg . but i'm not owning any fords , well except a 27 turtle deck ford glass bodied mopar drive train , it does run a dodge grille shell