Seems as the TRD engines are lacking in some good old southern home made racing components. Think of how the flat head was hopped up. Thats what them boys need. A Jr Johnson or Leonard Woods touch. Boy they would be impossible to touch if Smokey were there.
But I bet there are several that say different ----- are you one?
Here's what I say at the risk of being fined for knocking the product.... with the detuned Toyotas, the Pocono race today was one of the most boring I've seen in ages. I think back to Earnhardt driving for Bud Moore in '82 - '83. Bud couldn't keep valve springs in his Ford motors under Dale. He'd beg Dale to momentarily burp (lift) and breathe the engine at Daytona and Talladega going into the corners. Dale wouldn't do that. He just wanted out of the Ford and back in a GM product.
31 DNFs for Dale in 1982-1983 wirth Ford, mostly engine failure, valve spring related.
Here's what Bud had to say about Earnhardt and the Ford valve springs:
"And Dale Earnhardt is the best to ever sit behind the wheel, in my opinion. The only thing was we had a 300-mile engine, that's about all it would take, and Earnhardt was pretty hard on equipment. I know this, if we'd had some good valve springs and valve trains we'd have won 10 or 12 races those years. And we probably would have won the championship too. If we had the valve springs and valve trains we have today, we'd probably have won more than that."
Smokey would probably have the problem solved by now. It would be highly illegal, but NASCAR would let him run for the sake of the show until something better could be found. Other than that, I think Toyota won't be stuck the whole season like Bud Moore was; they'll be good before the chase.
Toyota doesn't have much experience with fast cars. Nearly all of their campaigns since 1968 have failed. The bright spot for them is NASCAR, and they'll hammer on this in order to remain in the bright spot. They got lots of money for engineers, and the top brass will be fully behind it. Flatheads and small blocks were production engines and they had thousands of people hopping them up over dozens of years. To the best of my knowledge, Toyota has never built a V8 except for this race engine. You'd be screwed too if you had to rely on Michael Waltrip for half your program.
