Welcome to 10″ Wide Racing Videos !!! We featurewheel standing, bumper dragging , 7 & 8 second street car drag racing action !!! Get inside the sport with spectacular starting line footage and even see what it is like to go for a 0-180 mph blast with some of the best drivers in the country with our In-Car Video “ride-a-long’s” !!!
At beginning of last year a bunch of the racers got together and wanted to have a cruise night that would include some of the nastiest 7 & 8 second street cars in the Midwest. Initially it was just a few cars and then it grew and grew until there were over two dozen cars in attendance !!!
7 & 8 second street cars from 5 states came together for a cruise on Friday night to the world famous Gus’s Drive In (East Troy,WI) and then they took their cars to Great Lakes Dragaway on Saturday to prove that they could run the number.
10″ Wide Racing- Extreme Street Cars DVD
Heavy hitters like Steve Morris with his wild 7 second 2,200 hp station wagon, Jim Plimpton with his 7 second T-Bird and over TWO dozen 8 second cars came cruising down Main Street USA and 10″ Wide Racing was there to capture all of the action. Parachutes were so plentiful that someone commented that “they had not seen so much laundry since they were at the coin-op laundromat !!!” It was a great assembly of American made muscle that may never be duplicated.
Our best of 2009 video was released with two DVD’s featuring full coverage of the 7 & 8 second street car cruise to Gus’s Drive-In, action packed drag racing from the legendary Great Lakes Dragaway, Friday Night street car racing at Milan Dragway (including Steve Morris doing a ALL FOUR WHEELS OFF THE GROUND wheel stand…and it still ran 8.20 @ 186 mph…now that is badass!!!)
The TWO 2009 Edition DVD’s begin shipping the week of November 30th, 2009. Order both 2009 DVD’s as a double set and receive FREE USPS shipping (within the US) *Foriegn orders USPS Air Mail is only $5.00 USD (no matter where you live)
10″ Wide Racing feature cars “In the news”
10″ Wide Racer Greg Zoetmulder was in a cool article about stock suspension leaf spring cars ( August issue of RPM Magazine). If you have not subscribed to this magazine you gotta do it soon….there are always great articles on fastest street cars and incredible color photos throughout the mag (100 % full color glossy actually). Visit their web site at http://www.rpm-mag.com/
Pat Spangenberg’s awesome 1966 Biscayne featured in the May Chevy High Performance Magazine
Pat Spangenberg’s Biscayne packs a nasty punch with its 615 ci big block Chevy. Get the 2 stage nitrous system (a fogger & a plate…ouch) flowing and this 2 ton Bowtie rocks !!! The engineering that went into this car is unreal. This is the nicest Biscayne on the planet.
Tony Crisostomo’s nasty 1979 Z/28 featured in the July issue of Chevy High Performance Magazine
Tony has been featured in many 10″ Wide Racing Videos over the years with his 8 second street car. This bad boy has run 8.70’s and sees regular street duty in the suburb’s of Milwaukee. Check out the July issue of CHT for a great feature on this car written by the legandary Ro McGonegal
Metz Performance www.metzperformance.com is featured in Fastest Street Car (FSC) Magazine’s MARCH 2010 issue on page 88. In early testing the Camaro was already run low 7’s shutting it off early.
10″ Wide Drag Racing Videos was featured in the July 2009 issue of Fastest Street Car Magazine !!!
10″ Wide Racing’s club member Bob Kernwein goes 7.74 @ 179 with his new outlaw Mustang…GREAT JOB !!! This new car will get the “A” bullet SBF this year so watch for some even mid sevens. This is one nicely designed race car.
Andy Jensen runs a quater mile in 5.94 seconds with his incredible 1968 Camaro. 10″ Wide Racing did a feature on his 1967 Corvette “Street Car” that ran a best of 6.66 on the spray. The In-Car video that we did back in 2006 is still some of the best ever captured !!!
Pat Spangenberg (owner of Rod & Competition Specialties) is know for the cool street rods that his shop builds. There is a new kind of “street rod” that they started playing with a few years ago when a certain puke green 1966 Impala was added to his corral of cars.
Take a 4,000 Impala with stock suspension and 10” tires, add 540 cubic inched of BBC (that makes 961 HP) and toss a fogger on the top (with the “big boy” 400 HP jets in place) and you have a recipe for 8.77 time slips !!! The legendary green beast is the test mule and gets plenty of street miles in between the 100 drag strip passes over the past couple of years. She aint pretty but she sure is fast !!!
The “white car” is a true work of art. This 22,000 mile original was put together about 10 years ago and started out as a genuine L72 (425HP 427) with a bench seat/4 speed stick and some steep gears when it left the General’s assemble line. Every detail has been attended to and it is now one of the nicest B-body cars in the country. A very healthy 615 BBC now resides where the old 427 used to be many years ago. Still maintain the stock suspension this baby is a handful when you hit the single stage fogger.
“Top Gun” just about says it all. Having watched this street racing legend over the years Pat set his sights on owning this bad boy and when he had the chance jumped on it. Now this was back in the late 90’s and he had a street/strip car that was capable of running deep in the 10’s.
Kelly Landry was the original owner of the Nova and had every conceivable combination between the fender wells (including a blown BBC) that he ran with a 5 speed. This car was often seen cruising around the Milwaukee area (sometimes as late as 2am in the morning…I wonder what he was out doing at that time of the night?). Oh, the good old days….
The “First Car” happened to be a Camaro that was a original “MO” code 1968 Z/28 !!! Yep, hiding behind those groovy side pipes and spoked wire wheels was a real collectible muscle car. Dig those shackels man….
Pat’s Dad had a bunch of cool cars back in the day. This late sixties/early seventies street rod was the one that a heavy hitter on the streets of Milwaukee. Powered by a bullet proof 327 that could spin to big RPM….this baby was light weight and could clean the clocks of many of the street bruisers of the day.
Contact information: Rod and Competition Specialties #262-781-9044
Brian Hansen- Owner of 10″ Wide Racing (“Motor Head” from the start)
I was born in 1966 and showed an interest in hot cars at an early age (it probably has something to do with our family car being a Dodge Super Bee with the “Drag Pack” option.
This picture was taken in 1970, standing next to our new 1969 Dodge Super Bee, with my mom and sister Kim.The Super Bee coupes quarter mile time was in the low fourteens at over 100 MPH (and was tested at the local “proving grounds” near our house).
Nice “Family Car” complete with roof rack and trailer hitch !!!
Our other daily driver, a 1965 Mustang with a 6 cylinder and “three on the floor”. Not a muscle car at the time but would be nice to have now and put a nitrous assisted big block Ford in it.
Early Car Interests
It was not long before I started talking about the kind of car I would like when I got my drivers license. I was always talking about a V8 that I could hop up (of course)
My interest in hot cars was “nurtured” by Art Lutzke, the automotive teacher at Waukesha North High School. He was an avid hot rod enthusiast himself and a great mechanic. During my high school years there was a 1968 HEMI Road Runner that lived in our auto shop (and we got to help work on it during class). Pretty cool stuff…
I did ask my parents to save the 1969 Dodge Super Bee so that it could be my first car when I got my license. Needless to say, they did not think that was the kind of car a 16 year old should have for a first car. They were probably right…
Brian’s first “Hot Rod
Shopping for this car was quite an experience. I wanted a V8 and my parents said whatever I bought had to have nothing larger than a 6 banger.
Well, I ended up “reluctantly” choosing a sort of “clapped out” 1968 Chevelle with a 6 cylinder engine and a 3-speed stick shift. The motor sounded sort of sick and smoked a lot. This did not bother me because I already had “other ideas” on what I was going to do with the car.
It was not long before the modifications began. I found a heavy duty 6 cylinder truck block and began working with a local engine builder to make a 6 banger that would scream. This replacement engine featured a huge solid lifter cam, ported & polished cylinder “head” with larger small-block Chevy intake & exhaust valves and two carburetors.
The engine also featured split headers with dual exhausts that sounded pretty wild. The end result was a “fire breathing” six banger that once beat a 1968 Olds with a 455 CI V8 in a street race. They could not believe that they were beat by a six cylinder!
The 3 speed on the floor was quickly changed to a Muncie M21 4 speed (complete with Urst shift) out of a 1966 GTO. I had to scrape up the $75 for the complete package but I thought it would be worth it to have the 4 speed (those were the days).
My Second Car – The “Cuda”
The Cuda’ had a stock 340 Magnum and an 727 automatic transmission. I was the third owner and the purchase price was $1,000 in 1987. I spent a little over $4,000 to restore the car to original. The car was gorgeous !!!
The Cuda was drag raced in the Muscle Car Nationals at Great Lakes Dragaway in 1988.
“The Blue Nova” Drag Racer
In 1989, I bought a 1968 Chevy II Nova that already had a 427 CI big block V8, a modified Turbo 400 automatic transmission and a 9” Ford rear end with traction bars.
The car had a roll cage and a 5 point racing harness (it had everything that a good “street car” needed). My friends Bob Hood & Tim Jakus thought I was nuts for wanting a 10 second street car.
The car was driven to the track and ran low 12 second ¼ mile runs through the full exhausts as it was bought (3700 pounds). But that was only the beginning. I added a nitrous oxide system during the spring of 1990 and got the car in the tens (through a full 3” exhaust including tails pipes).
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Then the fun really began. I had to go faster. A set of Merlin BBC cylinder heads, a bigger Lunati cam and a 250 nitrous plate system was installed in the same old short block.
In this configuration, the car ran 10.47 second quarter at 123 MPH through full exhausts. The trap speed was limited by lifter pump up at 6,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM was needed to get to the end of the track.
Then the quest for more speed continued — One of my friends Bob Hood sold me “take off” parts from his car. A big lift solid lifter cam was installed. The car ran the quarter mile in 11.70 @ 114 MPH on horsepower (no nitrous). For a few months, he went to their “test-n-tune” highway and tried out more modifications that included a Nitrous Works 325 HP NOS system. Now the car was a “real animal”! I was ready to go to the home track, Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, WI and make a pass before winter set in.
I knew that the car could 60 ft. mark in the 1.40’s and thought that it could maybe I could get the car in the 9.90s. I put in a 325 pills in the Nitrous Works plate and staged the car at the starting line. The lights came down,matted the throttle and simultaneously pressed the “magic button”. The car stood up and planted the Mickey Thompson 11.5*29.5’s on the sticky starting line and I was off!
I watched the tach hit 7,200 RPM and clicked the shifter into second and heard a loud bang and the car immediately unloaded the suspension. The engine was still running so I pretty sure that it was a tranny, convertor or rear end. It turned out that the trusty Turbo Action 9″ race convertor had given up the ghost from too much action !!!
This was the Nova coming back from Great Lakes Dragaway on the back of a truck (the first time that it had ever been on a trailer in 7 years).
Then, I married my Wife Kim and the Nova was sold and the money was used towards the down payment for a house. I still know the current owner of the Nova (Brian Chelf), who lives in Iowa.
Current ride 1967 Impala 396
It was not long before I got the itch for another car. I found the pictured 1967 Chevy Impala 396 Sport Coupe advertised for sale in one of the local papers and located near our house.
The elderly gentleman, who owned the car, was the original owner! He was a retired policeman from the Chicago area. The car had been kept in a climate-controlled garage since it was new!
I even had to have an “audition” before he would show my Wife and I the car (since it was under a car cover). It was over an hour before we could even see the car !!! In the end our patience paid off…
Genuine original one owner 74k mile big block 1967 Impala as we bought it in 2000. Not very fast but very cool.The Impala has all of the toys (power windows, seats and even Comfortron air conditioning) and they all still work – quite rare for a 1967 car. The interior is bright red vinyl and in perfect condition, and amazingly, still smells like new! The big block 396 runs nice but is not this is not race car at 4400 pounds!!!
The next car…
Someday I would like to build another fast street car. Hanging around guys like Pat Spangenburg and Kevin Ribbens who have “big cars” that are capable of running in the 8’s has “influenced” me and I think I’d build a Impala, Biscayne or Caprice. Nick Scavo’s 1965 Impala (now owned by Joe Penze) was also a big influence in my facination with making 2 tons of fun run in the 8’s.
The engine of choice would be a 540 BBC with a F2R Procharger (so that I can still run a flat hood or small cowl hood). Stock suspension and 10″ slicks of course !!!
Steve Morris (of New Era Racecraft) is one of the premier engine builders in the country and when he sets his sights on having one of the baddest street cars in the country you can bet that it will be a contender.
The “Detroit of iron” of choice…none other than a Caprice station wagon. You may ask, “why build a 4 door station wagon?” Well, when you have over 2,220 horsepower of Procharger big block Chevy weight and girth are not a major concern. Besides that….when was the last time you saw a 3500 pound station wagon with stock suspension and drag radials run 7.51 @ 193 MPH !!!
No wheelie bars…no problem when you have 4 feet of overhang out back. Steve has been know to hang the front skinnies 300 feet out before getting the monster to settle down (and still can produce a low 8 second time slip). If you are walking through the staging lanes and see the wagon sitting there (with all four doors open) you’ll just have to stop and take at the “4 doors of fun” station wagon from the New Era Racecraft. Different is GOOD !!!
Feature Car October 2009 - Bob Kernwein 1988 Mustang GT
I must have been born under a luck star because when I turned 16 my parents took me to the local Ford dealer and told me that I could pick out a car for my birthday. I thought that the 5.0 liter Mustang GT looked pretty cool and said “how about this Mustang ?”. They reluctatntly agreed and I drove that car home (I’ve got the coolest parents in the world) !!!!
Once I had the car at home I began, like most kids, to try to make it go faster. By the time i was a senior the car was pretty quick had even done a little street racing (even though I probably should not have). In May of 1989 I had my dad go with me to Great Lakes Dragway for my first time to a drag strip. I had all the bolt on stuff and stock suspension stuff on the car with a little hidden NOS dry kit. It ran 12.10 not bad for my daily driver.
When I went to college i worked the whole summer to buy more go fast parts for it. By the time I graduated college it had a aftermarkey cam, heads, intake, injectors and a cage in the car and went 10.70 (all with still a stock untouched short block from Ford). Now that i was working I decided i wanted to go faster and wanted a bigger small block. I had Bob Alexander from Performance Transmission(217-935-5352) build me a 372″ yates headed cleveland motor with NOS– That got me into the 8.90’s.
Bob
The whole Fastest Street Car scene was coming on strong in 1994 and my friends and Dad went to Memphis and saw some of the baddest guys in the country (most which were from Chicago area). I decided then that I need more money if I wanted to run with the “Big Dogs”. Fast forward a few years-new motor from Fast Times Motor Works. We race that motor every where ( Byron, Da Grove, St louis, Memphis, Orlando) and it was fast having run 8.40’s. However the heavy hitters like Spiro, Samuels, Scavo were in the real low 8.0 range… engine transplant time again.
New engine builder Pete Robertson (CPS racing Engine- 708-479-7383) who ran the Modified Super Stock series just started a 10″ tire program with the Modifieds and they raced more local tracks so I was on board for this new group. Pete built me a new 398″ yates headed windsor motor and redesigned everything in the car-fuel system, ignition, and started to help me understand more about a NOS motor than what I already knew. Pete was instrumental to me and helping me go faster. In 2002 I won the Modified Super Street Series and went as fast as 7.86@179.87.
At this point the writing was on the wall that all cars 8.50 and faster were going to need some major chassis updates to be legal. I enlisted my friend Eric Miller of Next Generation Race cars of Streator Illinois(815-672-9226) to build a killer baby promod style 10″ tire car. Eric built me a a perfect work of art race car. It is 25.2 legal (6.0 and slower under 3200#’s) chassis with my original mustang gt. The car is ultra-low, clean and smooth body lines for aerodynamics. The tubes are all laid out nice and clean and precision tin work and carbon fiber inside the car makes it look awesome. Eric built everything on the car himself, rear end housing, designed his own four link brackets, parachute handles, door release handles, nos valve handles etc. One look inside and all you will see is Quality!
I now have 2 motors for race car 1 was a used motor I bought with the blue thunder heads and its a tiny motor 392″ and the other is a 427″ brodix neal headed small block that Pete built for me. We went out the first race and had some good test passes 8.20’s spinning the tires to a 1.13 60′ and burnt a piston in the semi finals. Oh well, new car blues. Pete freshened the used motor and changed some stuff to his liking and we went testing at Rt 66 a few weeks ago. With a small jet in the nos fogger we went a 1.14 60′ and a 7.74 @ 178.86–not bad for only 8 passes on a new car and motor. once we get it all dialed in we expect low 7.50’s @ 185 mile performance. I would like to thank Eric Miller of Next Generation Race Cars for all his help, Pete Robertson of CPS Racing Engines, Gil @ Speed Wire Systems, Bob Alexander from Performance Transmission and my wife Jamie for the countless hours of dealing with my speed addiction.
September 2009 Feature Car – Tony Crisostomo 1979 Z-28
A lot of guys these days say that they have a real “8 second street car“. “Ya’ I drive it all over the place and it runs at 180 degrees all day long…blah…blah…blah”. Well Tony’s Z/28 actually does get driven all over the Waukesha area (a suburb of Milwaukee) and does run at 180 degrees in the middle of summer, has DOT tires, a comfortable interior including a killer stereo system, and runs 8.70’s at over 154 mph when the NOS Cheater plate is flowing !!!
Tony’s brother bought this car new and it has evolved over the years from a small block screamer that was cable of 11 second quarter mile times to the 8 second stormer that you see here. The goal has always been to build a car that actually can be driven for hours at a time so he chose a Miezere electric pump and a Be-Cool aluminum radiator to keep the 1,000 hp combo happy during the dog days of summer in Wisconsin. The 540 BBC has all the good parts in it including a Callies crank, Ross pistons, Oliver rods, Lunati SOLID cam (yes a solid cam), Dart aluminum heads, topped off my a 1050 Holley Dominator.
Gebhardt’s out of Jacksonville, Illinois did the chassis which includes a 9″ inch rear end, Aerospace brakes, wheelie bars, and parachute (to stop this 3,600 lb beast). Tim Jakus helped with the engine program and made the whole deal work on the street & strip. If your ever in the Waukesha area and see a silver Z/28 Camaro cruising next to your car you may want to think twice before trying to run him off a stop light. This car is loaded for bear and the bottle is always on…..do you feel lucky ???
Max Chevy Magazine Feature- Paul Tadin’s 1967 Chevelle
8.40’s @ 170 mph on 9″ slicks
OK, you see this pretty black Chevelle parked at your local Saturday night hang out and take a look under the car. It has a mundane stock GM suspension and a nice pair of aftermarket shocks. Then you notice that the thing has FOUR mufflers under it (two of which are cheap 3″ turbo style muff’s). The hood is closed but you see that it has 396 flags on the front fender so you assume it is a big block.
Then Paul Tadin fires the thing up to head home and you hear some serious hardware idling under the hood. Mind you the exhaust note is really minimal (with those 4 mufflers trying to tame the beast within) but the gig is up, this is a nasty street machine !!! You ask your buddy what he thinks it runs and he immediately tags it is a 9 second car. Close but no cigar…this 3600 pound street car has run 8.48 @ 170 MPH through the exhaust on the 9″ skinnys. Check out the video !!!
Hey all of you door car racers out there…we’re also looking for some good editorial to post in our “Tech Talk” section of the web site. If you have an idea for an article based on a project that you are working on, or some technical information that you would like to share with your fellow racers, send us an e-mail.
Fastest Street Car Drag Racing on and then….
Since the early days of street legal racing the cars have exceeded anyone’s wildest dreams. Who would have ever though that a radial tire Mustang would be able to lay down a 6.90’s pass…thank you Dave Hance !!!!
When racers started taking their street race cars off the street and gotinvolved in organized street car shoot out’sthe 9 second car was a heavy hitter. Nowadays we have cars that are running on stock suspension, with 10″ tires, andcan click off a 8 second pass with a mild tune-up. The serious cars are well into the 7’s at a buck eighty…pretty stiff competition.
Chuck Samuels low 9 second El Camino (then)
This old El Camino was a terrorizing force in the early days of street car drag racing. This baby had a flat stock hood (very cool), little 9″ Goodyears (yes, they were used in the early days before Mickey Thompson took over) and a nitrous ingesting big block Chevy that Chuck built & tuned. This was a low 9 second ride and it must have weighed 3,500 lbs (including the ballast in the tail gate). Check out the helmet that Chuck was wearing during these 140 mph blasts down the quarter mile.
Bryan Metz & Mike Rees (Now)
The progression of street racing to drag racing from the 1990’s till now.
The best comparisons would be a car like my Malibu through its changes, then to our current Camaro. In the 1990s we raced at much heavier weights than we currently do under SFI and NHRA rules. When I first started Heads Up racing we weighed 3400- 3500 pounds. My Malibu started life as a ladder bar back-half pro-street car that would do 200 foot wheelies and always dead hook. I was running a 500” big block Chevy with Pontiac heads and a Big Shot plate NOS system. We were going 8.40’s.
As the technology around us improved so did the et’s. One of the first major upgrades to the Malibu was the installation of a round tube back-half and 4-link. With no other improvements we ran 8.20’s on our first hit. Two tenths from a suspension upgrade and I had no idea how to properly tune the 4-link, obviously leaving plenty on the table. Soon after came the digital ignition boxes with individual timing control. I started working on my engine tune-up and getting the most out of my jet-limited plate by controlling the individual cylinders timing, we seen significant gains and ended up running in the 8.0’s with no other changes.
We used to be somewhat limited in our engine tuning to the worst cylinder, sure you would put a colder plug in it, open fuel holes on the plate to that cylinder (or so you hoped), file the lugs in the distributor cap to retard timing but then came the digital msdbox, now I find myself with 5 degrees of timing difference from my worst cylinder to my best, all done with the stroke of a keyboard. Others used their ignition systems to ramp power and aid with launching.
It was about this time I bought my first Racepak, a SC1000. This technology has the ability to teach us about our cars, and stop us from burning them up. The following season our racing series allowed us to use Fogger systems. At our first race armed with my Racepak, digital 7, and a fogger I was going to fly. I wanted to be the first to the 7’s in my class. I was strapped in for my first qualifying attempt, only one car left in front of me, and don’t you know it, he runs a 7.99. DAMN IT, so close. I pull up to the light and let go of the transbrake button and go on the ride of my life, right down the middle and it felt fast, 7.97. I jumped out at the end, went to pull the plugs and swap them before my drive back to the pits, but I can’t get the plug socket on the plugs.
After thinking about it for a moment, I wondered, could I possibly have gotten them so hot they swelled up? YES… there was one plug that didn’t burn, #8. We towed my car to the scales, there is some good news, and the guy that ran 7.99 was 100# under weight. I am the first to the sevens. All that great technology couldn’t give me a tune-up starting point, but it did give me the info and tools needed not to do that again.
Now a state of the art car, like the Metz Performance Camaro is built to perform at a maximum level. The car is aerodynamic , light, andsits 3 inches off the ground. It has considerable front-end overhang for tripping the finish line beams, and uses all the lightest of materials from carbon fiber body and interior panels to carbon fiber brakes to help keep the reciprocating weight down.
The aerodynamics’ and front-end overhang of our 1992 Camaro are a major improvement over the 1979 Malibu. Using the same driveline, ignition, Racepak, wheels, tires and carbon brakes the Camaro ran a best of 7.56 180 mph @3150# with a .044 jet in bad air. The Malibu in comparable air ran a best of 7.62 180 mph @3050# with a 048 jet.
We have become much more efficient in the ways we run the cars thanks to tools like a Racepak, used for data acquisition. A Big Stuff 3 fuel injection system that can tune the entire fuel and spark system through a keyboard and even electric shocks. Technology and knowledge can be awesome.
Fast forward 15 years. Electronic Fuel injection, Big Stuff management, 1,500 horsepower on 10.5″ Mickey Thompson’s. Performance…well in testing this year here was one of the test blasts with this new car:
Sixty Foot: 1.06, 330 feet 2.99, 1/8th mile 4.54 158 shut off at 5.6 and still ran 7.14 168
PRI show
The 2008 Performance racing Industry Trade Show was held in Orlando December 11-13th, 2008. The place was filled with high performance racing parts from all over the world. We spoke with numerous vendors and racers during the three day show.
Andy Jensen was there with the “Giant Killer” 1968 Camaro. Feast your eyes on the baddest single turbo small block Chevy on the planet…when you are done looking at the other scenery. This little 427 SBC has taken Andy’s new Camaro to 3.87 @ 191 in the 1/8th mile. www.jensensenginetech.com
While we were hanging out at the Edelbrockdisplay we noticed this monster big block. Just out of curiosity we asked whet the going price was for this Pat Musi 632 BBC bullet. Since the Edelbrock guy did not know he walked us over to none other than Pat Musi himself. He was busy talking to Tony Christian but took the time to tell us the complete motor was about $26k. The 18 degree Big Victor CNC headed beast made 1209 hp / 939 ft pounds of torque on nuts n’ bolts. When the fogger was unleashed this combo belted out 1666 hp/1408 ft pounds of torque. Nice street engine….
Bryan Metz on building a race car (2008 article)
I was asked by Brian Hansen (who owns 10” Wide Racing Videos) to be one of the contributing editors in the new Tech Talk Forum on the web site. I feel honored that Brian thinks enough of me to allow me to share my experiences in building race cars with all of you.
First I’d like to give you some background in how I got into the race car building business. I have known Brian for over 20 years and we used to be street racers when we were younger. As the cars got way too fast and unsafe to race on the public roads we turned to our local race track to test the performance of our cars.
Great Lakes Dragaway (GLD) www.greatlakesdragaway.com offered us a place for us to run our cars in a class called the Outlaw Super Stocks. Instead of racing on the streets (which in hindsight we should not have been doing in the first place since it is not a safe place to race) we now had a safe place to compete against other street racers.
Since GLD is in between Milwaukee and Chicago we had guys like Nick Scavo and Chuck Samuels to learn from. They would often help us when we were having problems getting our cars to work and we learned a great deal from them. All the Chicago guys raced and tested at GLD (like: Chuck Samuels, Spiro Pappas and Marty Buchand (some of the other the baddest of the bad street racers). In the early 90’s along came the NMCA and that’s when their names became well known across the entire country (and world). At the same time I choose to race my 1980 Malibu in the Modified Super stock class at GLD (their personal test-bed for the NMCA classes).
For me the love of racing has always remained a constant. It went from putting a big motor in my Malibu to back halving it with ladder bars and then cutting that out with my now right-hand man “Spike” (Mike Rees). Eventually the back half was replaced with a four link (that is still in the car today). The building of the Malibu started in 1986 when I thought that running 10.50’s was really fast (ow the cars runs 7.50’s in its current trim). I spent way to much redoing the 2nd back half myself (but I learned a lot from the experience).
Currently I own Metz Performance and I also work for Troy Coughlin(Jegs) on their drag cars. I have worked for Troy on his race team in many different capacities for almost 8 years. Spike, who works for me at Metz Performance, also works with me at Jegs and has for 3 seasons now. I feel very fortunate to be in the situation that I’m in building cars (even though we sometimes work really long hour’s week after week). But I love it !!!
At Metz Performance we build state-of-the-art “outlaw style” cars along with many other services (like building roll cages and other custom fabricated components). The one thing that I have learned over the years is that I could have saved a lot of money if I had built my car years ago by thinking ahead to how it might eventually be raced in faster classes.
My suggestion is that before you start building a race car that you first pick a class that you can afford to race in over the long run. Then start looking at other sanctioning bodies and look for other similar classes (so that you have the option to run a number of different events). Lastly make sure that you build a race car that will allow you to go faster (By building one that will allow you to meet the requirements of going faster: roll cage, chassis, safety equipment, ect).
I know most of you build a certain car because it’s your dream car, but if you plan to race competitively, and go very fast, pick the correct car. Preferably something aerodynamic and can be lowered.
I’d like to wish everyone a great racing season in 2009.
