2009 Tech Talk Posts
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.
Best of luck with all your racing
Bryan Metz
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 
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.
Thanks,
Bryan www.metzperformance.com
Tags: 10.5, Bryan Metz, Bryan Metz – Metz Performance Metz Performance, Great Lakes Dragaway, Jegs, Nitrous, Outlaw Drag Racing
