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... 

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


"FREE SAMPLE"

I think the Sunoco highest octane was 102 or 105 something like that. Had a friend with a BSA motorcycle that was running it. Mechanic told him not too as it was too much octane. I don't know exactly what happened but it only took a couple weeks for the BSA engine to let go. 

Y's guys rule!
Looking for McCullouch VS57 brackets and parts. Also looking for 28 Chrysler series 72 parts. And early Hemi parts.

MoonShadow, 292 w/McCulloch, 28 Chrysler Roadster, 354 Hemi)
Manchester, New Hampshire

In Florida we bought Sunoco 260 100 octane gas.  Loved the smell of that stuff. 

Hello  In my high school years (early 60s) brand X guys were buying fueler cams and stuffing them into stock 265s and 283s But Y-bocks guys, we went to local Ford dealer and bought "special"  cams (think they were under 20 dollars) and stuffed them in stock 272,292 with same results. I had a .60 over 292, 5/8 domed Jahns pistons, g-heads mallory dist. tube headers, "special cam" in a two door 55 that was perfect. After probably 10 light duty trans I got hold of a tin top 4 speed. Put a dana 44 with gears from a stude pickup 4.88 and build some thunder bolt lift bars. Back then Standard oil had pump gas over 100 octane it was pink. Could out run most all with same cubic inchs, until high HP 409 396 427 413 became available. It was a fun time, still stuck there.  Bill  Oregon

When we were young and stupid we did all kinds of things that could have easily killed us. The fact that we are all here is pure luck.  On Saturdays we would gather at one of our houses and work on cars.  My house had a large oak tree that we used to pull engines.  My father somehow tolerated this.  At least he knew where we were. Sometimes we would swap engines around just for fun. We weren't rich.  We all worked jobs and you could buy a good running engine for $50 bucks back then. We mostly drove '55 to '57 Fords as they were plentiful and cheap.

My buddy that bought the '61 Galaxie with the HiPo 390 was a union electrician.  In the sixties construction workers made more money than most anyone I knew.   On Saturday, we decided we should put a 3.0 gear in his Galaxie and find out how fast it would go flat out.  Keep in mind we were running bias ply tires with lots of miles on them.  That night after the gear swap we rode out west of town to Highway 27 where you could run for miles without any traffic. He opened his dumps and off we went.  His car had a T-10 and I can still remember the sound of that engine as we went through the gears.  We easily got up to 100 with pedal left.  He held the pedal to the floor for at least 10 minutes.  I don't know how fast we went because I was too scarred to look at the speedometer.  If anything had happened we would have gone out in a blaze of glory.  Later in life I built cars that ran much faster, but none scared me more than that night.

Only being born in 65  made my younger years of fast cars around the Smokey and the Bandit age.   However,  1st ride in a  y powered  vehicle,  1956 Ford tandem axle truck tractor pulling a lowboy with an excavator on it.    332   5speed with a 3 speed auxiliary.   The operator dug all the basements in my neighborhood.   He put my bike up on the trailer and drove me home.   You could hear that truck long before he went by school in the warm weather with the windows open.      So  loading heavy and yanking it down the road's always been more my bag.    !st y block owned,   1964 F250 4X4 with a 292 and  T98 4 speed.  My brother bought it for $1 and restored it.  Then I bought it from him.   Sold it to buy a semi when I moved.    My current y block,   my 60 F350.   I'll have had it 10yrs in March 2019.   

A high school friend bought a 55 sedan that was supposed to be an old police car. Very plain jane 4 door but with a 4barrell V8. No power anything and radio delete and 3 speed column shift with overdrive. It ran like stink and beat pretty well all comers. Of course there were a few modified cars about that were extra fast for the time but the regular street cars had very little chance. He loved to put down all the scrubs he could find. Over time it developed a roll in the idle that made it sound really tough. We kept up the street racing and winning for a number of weeks but the idle finally seemed too out of whack. One weekend we gathered at his house with a guy that had at least done a real tune up once. Tune up didn't cure it so he pulled the valve covers. The cause of the miss became obvious when we spotted one missing and one bent pushrod. I swear that old Ford was burning up the locals on 7 cylinders! A trip to the junk yard for some pushrods and all was back to normal. All we noticed was the nice quiet little rumble in the exhaust and I swear the car got faster. May have been suffering bent pushrods when he bought it.




Y's guys rule!
Looking for McCullouch VS57 brackets and parts. Also looking for 28 Chrysler series 72 parts. And early Hemi parts.

MoonShadow, 292 w/McCulloch, 28 Chrysler Roadster, 354 Hemi)
Manchester, New Hampshire

John.  I'm trying to imagine what your '56 sounded like at anything close to 100 mph in overdrive with 4.55 gears in the rear end!  BUZZZZZZZ? 


NoShortcuts
a.k.a. Charlie Brown
near Syracuse, New York

Back in about '62 I was driving a '56 two door post with a +.060 312, a somewhat clone of a 260 horse dual quad engine.  It had 4.55 gears in a wagon Dana rear and a T-85 OD.  It was my daily driver, and it got 22 MPG twice on trips to and from Rockford Illinois from Selma Indiana.  On one trip home from Rockford, on a divided 4 lane in northern Indiana, a '56 Buick Century pulled beside me, kept accelerating and decelerating, trying to goad me into a race.  He pulled in front of me, and I stayed right behind him.  We got over 100mph on my speedometer (actual speed???), and he seemed to quit gaining speed, so I pulled out and PASSED him.  I had not been using full throttle to stay behind him.  Anyway, he turned off at the next intersection.  Boy did I used to be STUPID!  But maybe I still am.

John - "The Hoosier Hurricane"