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My Memories of Y Blocks

Posted By Florida_Phil 6 Years Ago
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Lord Gaga
Posted 6 Years Ago
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Supercharged

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Yup, don't know what it was about Sunoco 260, but it did sure smell good.Laugh


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Florida_Phil
Posted 6 Years Ago
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Lots of great memories.  Back in my late teens and early 20s I used to practically live at the local cruise hang out.  In Miami, it was the Pizza Palace restaurants.  It was exactly like in the movie American Graffiti.  Hot rodders would come from all over South Florida cruising between each one.  In those days you could cruise from Miami Beach to Ft. Lauderdale in an hour.  Muscle cars and hot rods were everywhere.   One minute you would see a fuel injected Corvette and the next a GTO or a home built racer.   Lots of the kids were hoodlums in training.  We just loved cars and going fast. 

In the late sixties the cops had a hard time running down the University of Miami kids in their Jaguars, so they had a couple of special pursuit vehicles. The cops who drove those cars were hot rodders as well.   I remember one of those cars was an ugly four door brown Plymouth with a street Hemi.  A friend of mine had a 413 dual quad Dodge.  He wrecked the car and put the engine in an old Ford Sedan.  My future wife and I rode in that car and it was quite a thrill.

Around midnight we would all ride out of town to a 1/4 mile we had lined off across the highway.  Black, white, rich or poor, it didn't matter to us as long as you were fast.  A friend of mine from school built a 1957 Ford Custom with a gasser style straight front axle. His Mom used to drive it to the grocery store, which always cracked us up.  I don't know how she could see with the front end jackup up like that.

The kings of the street drags back then were two guys named Murphy and Burkhart.  Murphy was a mechanic and Burkhart owned a construction company.  At first they built a 1963 Falcon called the Giant Killer.  It had  a Cobra spec 289 and was unbelievably quick. Later they built a 1964 Falcon with a 427 side-oiler and a straight front axle.   When that wasn't fast enough, they built a 65 Mustang gasser with a blown 427 out of an offshore racing boat.  All of these cars were street driven.  The Mustang gasser flipped in the eyes killing the driver at Miami Dragway.  Murphy and Burkhart moved to roundy round racing after that.

I could write three books about my adventures with this group.   Something was always happening.  Some good and some bad.  Today, the neighborhood where we lived is around Dolphin's Stadium.   The old drag strip is a shopping mall and the traffic rarely moves over 25 miles and hour.  Wish I could go back for a day...  Tongue


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