It was close. There was a club racer at the track with a Z06 and he could hold off Tim most of the time, but if Tim was in front he could also hold off that Z06. Both cars were around 3400 lbs with driver and both had a hair over 500 hp. Tim's Valiant would hit 160 mph on the front straight so he could pass most cars.
160mph at PIR (Portland, Or) with the Festival Turns (now turns 1,2,3) in place? That's an impressive number. It's not bad even without turns 1/2/3 in operation.
Yes, with the festival turns in place. Car had big brakes. We fitted it with redrilled Viper brakes originally and then switched to a Baer 6P setup later on. Bottom picture is Tim coming thru the Festival Turns at PIR.
Yeah the engine in Tim's car was a 427 inch SB with fully ported Edelbrock heads. It had a small cam and a small carb since it was a street driver with 2.94 rear gears. It made more torque and more hp than a Viper engine so that was good, but it wasn't at its potential. His car really needed a 5 speed transmission. With a 5 speed he could've gone with deeper rear gears and we could've put a bigger cam and carb on it and moved the power curve up a bunch. It was just super hard coming up with a combination that would pull 160 mph on the top and still be able to drive to work.
No, they were what Hughes called a Stage 3 port. I think it was before they started doing the "big mouth" head or else we would've gone that way.
The guy who owns that car lives in the area. The car is complete but I don't think it has run in many, many years. It just sits in the garage. I tried to get him to get it fired up and on a trailer so we could take it to PIR for a club day. I think it would be wild to see that thing out running laps. But he just never wanted to spend the time to get it going again.
If you look in the background you can see an original MW race car. I think it is an aluminum front end car but I'm not positive. It has been a few years since I took these pictures.
It was a 340 reproduction block. We had to a lot of machine work on the block. I had to custom build a set of fixtures so we could hold the block in a vertical mill. Machining the block became a project within the project.
Last I heard Tim's Valiant was in the Reno area but that was a few years back. The owner was on Moparts and he contacted me a couple of times with questions but I haven't heard from him now for a few years. That car was too stiff for me. Tim and I would take it to lunch and I'd be sea sick by the time we got to where we were going!
The Shoney car could be sold. It has been several years since I last talked to the guy who owned it when I took these pictures. He retired and I moved so we just don't see each other anymore.
