There is a photo thats been recently posted of a 55 Chevy thats got a defined push going on. Maybe you seasoned guys would care to go look at it and give your best guess on what to do to this car----Now mind you this is in the early 60's now and money is tight, parts are old school and you want to race.
What would you do or how would you drive this car. THe car is #91 and it was uploaded by Tim Bruner.
Well, assuming the push is not driver induced, air pressure could be changed...decrease the right front and left rear, and increase the left front and right rear, if necessary. Don't cost anything to do that. 60's-era chassis, heavily hinged on super-heavy springs everywhere. But especially the right front....and they would go an additional step and run a real small LF tire/wheel increasing the pushing (cross weight) even more. A larger LF wheel could be added........I realize the concept ofstaggernot generally known in the '60's (unless you were Ralph Earnhardt) but stagger changes and springs would have helped. And neither cost much.........but are incredibly effective. The caster/camber could also be fiddled with (but you'd need to be Ralph Earnhardt again). Excess RF camber, another popular '60's idea causes pushing, entering a turn, simply because there's less of the tire's footprint on the track. Lot of simple, cheap changes could be made...even back in the day.
A lot of drivers did not know the secrets of some of the great drivers back in the day--given that thought a driver would hunt on the track where the best groove is then back up and start learning how far he can go before he is in to deep and it steps out on him--alas he just learnt something--what if i just induce this stepout early in the turn and apply power to catch the flow.. isnt that called a drift ????
reminds me of a story my friends dad told me. when he was racing at heidelburg speedway one night he backed the lr
into the wall bending the frame. he did necessary repairs and took it out for the feature.said it was the fastest and handled the best it ever had. seems he unintentionally found the amount of lead the lr wanted..said he never bothered
to have the frame straightened
I tried the drag slicks and even grooved them your way but did they ever wear out quick. A retread place in Macon put 2 molds together and started making a tire that worked real good on red clay when wet. As it dried you moved up chasing the moisture. Then a retread co in south ga put a tire out that was good on the sandier tracks so then we had something that was usable. The pavement tires were around but I never could get them to hook up. Some others used them but I drove a coupe for a farmer out of Pinhurst Ga and he had pavement tires on it. the motor screamed all the time because of the lack of traction. Heck I was sideways most of the time working it in the soft stuff hunting grip. If a track ever hardened up it would fly. I moved over to drive for Wayne Dawson the next year and someone stuffed the coupe in the wall totaling it. We juggled tires around till things worked----Somebody put a name to what we were doing later on (called it stagger).
When we built a car it was put in a twist before any bars were put in it,now they jig one --piece of cake now they say. but our cars didnt look like the left rear was going to run up under the car when the power was applied.
Billy, what I know about making a race car handle would fit on your small fingernail. What interests me in your post is the reference to the tire varieties/brands. When I first started watching NASCAR modifieds at Richmond's Southside Speedway asphalt in 1964 everybody ran M&H Racemasters. In the early 70s at the Wilson County Speedway dirt layout, everybody was still on M&H Racemasters. I recall we were paying $90 each for the M&Hs we were using on our '55 Chevy Sportsman in 1973. $360 for 4 tires and 1st place purse was $300 ($600 for Late Models). The first time I saw any tire other than M&H at the local track was when Southside began running Late Model Sportsman and some Goodyears showed up. Later, the track promoter and owner of the Sonny Hutchins #01 LMS, Emanuel Zervakis (The Golden Greek) became the area Firestone distributor and there was a fierce battle between Firestone & Goodyear in NASCAR LMS on the Virginia NASCAR tracks. The worst experience I remember with tires was in 1985 or 1986 when Dave Fuge brought a 7-Eleven sponsored T-bird from Washington State to Florida for Derrike Cope to drive at New Smyrnain the "World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing" during February Speedweeks. Dave had a contract with McCreary and I think every other car at New Smyrna was on Hoosiers. It was so cold we kept all the 55 gallon drums in the infield blazing to try to stay warm that week. The car looked beautiful and won an award for best looking Late Model. Unfortunately the McCreary tires had absolutely no grip at night when it was 35 degrees and that car looked just awful on the track against those Hoosiers. I realize that M&H had a drag racing origin, but whenever I hear M&H, my mind pictures a pack of fuel injected NASCAR Modifieds in the 60s. Seems like Earnhardt may have been on Towel City tires when he smoked the field at Wilson in 1977 in Robert Gee's Camaro in the Southern Late Model 200.
