My buddies talked me into it, for 10 bucks all the runs you want plus all the food was free. What a blast!!!! I did three runs each was around 16.05 ok not fast but this was the first time I ever did that. I'll tell you the bird really caught alot of attention. Mainly we never see these around here!!! It was hot around 95 degrees and man the bird never missed a beat. I did not have one starting problem(un like others),long staging lines.Like I said I never did this before but I'm going back.

Several of the HALF`ers have gotten hooked on that too..only problem is..you`ll be spending "speed money" on the car after that...ea second costs money and the lower you go ,the more those seconds cost! LOL
But when you come back down here , and might get a chance to meet up, may get a few pointers from the "second chasers"...lol

i hear its a blast ,but dont want to start something up for myself... I used to do that in early 60`s (rallying)...

Bjorn, I am getting down there thats a promise!!! There were a couple of guys there a little older than myself from one of the Thursday cruises who offered to come over and go through the engine set up. The only thing I changed up top was plugs and wires since I got the car. One of the guys even raced the cammer engine way back then. He actually wants to see that car too, he's bringing his note book if he can find it. I know seconds cost money, but believe me I have two girls that are going to College that comes first. Talk soon Ron!!!

that is definitely on my list of things to do. Sounds like a blast!

Don't forget, not that long ago 5.0 Mustangs and Z-28s were running 15.5s off the showroom floor and feeling good about it! A bit of tuning and some practice should get you into or below that.

What exactly is your combo?

Ron , maybe put an electric motor in it???
lol

see this clip!


PORTLAND, Ore. -- On a recent Friday night at the Portland International Raceway, John Wayland scanned the dragsters, looking for an opponent for his geeky looking 1972 Datsun sedan. Finally, he challenged the owner of a souped-up 2005 Corvette, the hottest-looking car at the track, to a quarter-mile race.


See how an electric car dubbed the Zombie is leaving conventional muscle cars in the dust. When the starting light flashed, the Datsun, known as White Zombie, shot silently past the Corvette and kept widening the lead as the two cars faded into the distance. "Oh man, right off the [starting] line he had me," said the Corvette's owner, Robert Akers, shaking his head.

Electric cars are typically known for their fuel efficiency and environmental bona fides, not for their speed and muscle. But Mr. Wayland, 47 years old, is changing that, and has become something of a hero to a small group of hot rodders dedicated to humiliating gasoline-powered cars. The night White Zombie beat the Corvette, it also trounced two other "gassers," as Mr. Wayland calls them -- a blue BMW and a bright orange 1964 Pontiac Tempest.

The electric-car racers, who go by nicknames like "Father Time" and "Electric Louis," hope to jump-start public interest in electric vehicles. "Getting electric cars going in the U.S. has been like shoveling sand into a tsunami," says Roderick Wilde, who sometimes races here in his electric-powered Mazda.

White Zombie and the other electric cars compete in the most popular drag-racing category: the one for cars that can be driven on regular streets. Anybody with a hot car and a safety helmet can drive up and compete in this "street-legal" category. White Zombie can go from a standing start to 109 miles an hour in 11.9 seconds, making it one of the fastest street-legal cars in the nation.

Sometimes, given White Zombie's renown as a speed demon, other drivers avoid a face-off. The night he went to the raceway, Mr. Akers, the 35-year-old owner of the Corvette, had just gotten back from a two-year stint in Iraq working for a private security contractor. He says he knew that the Datsun had an electric motor but didn't realize what that meant. The boxy looking Datsun was driven by Tim Brehm, who is a mechanic for a local forklift distributor; Mr. Wayland, the car's owner, is a mechanic-instructor at the same company.

Mr. Wayland is a former bass player in a rock-and-roll band who says he barely made it through high school. He got interested in electric gear while running a business fixing broken amplifiers and television sets. In the 1980s, he drove gasoline-powered Datsuns in illegal drag races on the streets of Portland. "I had lots of speeding tickets," he says.

In 1985, he found the white Datsun sedan in a junkyard and bought it for $585. He intended to use it to drive to work. But in the early '90s, with General Motors Corp. beginning to tout the electric car, Mr. Wayland decided to convert the Datsun to electric power. Today, after several modifications, White Zombie has two powerful motors normally used to operate forklifts and 36 12-volt storage batteries crammed into the back seat and trunk. In daily use, most electric cars in the U.S. are little more than souped up golf carts with fewer batteries and much less power.

In electrifying the Datsun, Mr. Wayland had as his goal building a car that could beat most of the big gasoline-powered muscle cars around Portland. "Getting beat by a little Japanese car back then reflected on your manhood," he says.

Unlike gasoline engines, which take a few seconds to build up turning power, or torque, for the rear wheels, electric motors deliver it instantly. The sharp jolt of power was a problem for Mr. Wayland in his first few races. "I hit it and it was on full power," he says. "You just held on." He has since installed a controller, a kind of giant dimmer switch that phases in the battery power more gradually.

At first, skeptics abounded. One day, Mr. Wayland found policemen measuring a long skid mark the Zombie had made the previous evening. (Before a drag race starts, drivers often do a "burnout," spinning their tires furiously on the asphalt to make their treads sticky so they have a better grip on the road.) The policemen had heard rumors of a fast electric car but dismissed them. "There is no electric car that could lay down a strip like that," he heard one declare.


John Wayland, standing next to his drag-racing, electric-powered Datsun.
The disbelief began to disappear in the mid- to late '90s, after Portland made drag-racing legal on a cordoned-off downtown street and later at the race track, and White Zombie prevailed over and over.

Around the country, other electric cars started beating gasoline-powered favorites, too. In 1996, a few tracks began to ban the electric cars, calling them unsafe because they went so fast and employed unfamiliar technology. In response, Mr. Wayland and others formed the National Electric Drag Racing Association, which now has about 50 members, and drew up safety rules for electric dragsters.

Those regulations satisfied the National Hot Rod Association, the world's largest promoter of drag races, which a few years later invited the electric drag racers to take part in its competitions. Now the electric cars routinely participate in drag races in California, Maryland and other states.

Still, even with tough safety rules, the cars can pose special hazards. When installing an array of batteries in a car, Mr. Wayland lays a rubber blanket on top of it, and connects one battery to the next, one at a time, to avoid short-circuits.

But in March 1998, feeling elated after installing 28 batteries in preparation for a race, he whipped off the blanket before he was finished. He leaned down to connect the last battery to the array and dropped the brass connecting rod, which bounced from battery to battery, creating a trail of sparks and flashes. A superheated cloud of gas, called a plasma, formed and flickered over the batteries as the heat generated by 336 volts melted the brass and fused the batteries together.

"I could feel the skin burning on my face," recalls Mr. Wayland, who wasn't seriously injured. A colleague threw a wet towel over the blaze. The towel was vaporized. Fire extinguishers had no effect. Finally, a fireman wearing a hazardous-materials suit disconnected the batteries, and the cloud disappeared. "The Zombie looked like a roasted marshmallow," Mr. Wayland says. The car was quickly repaired, and Mr. Wayland has since been known as "Plasma Boy."

The accident fueled Mr. Wayland's mystique, which has spread far beyond the drag-racing set. Last year, a Washington state police department -- the Clark County Sheriff's Office -- invited him to show off White Zombie in a fast-driving course for young officers. Mr. Wayland did a massive burnout, leaving a squad car, with lights blaring and siren screaming, far behind. "Somebody, please arrest me,' " Mr. Wayland recalls saying. "I'm having way too much fun."

Saw a hybrid go yesterday, cool just quiet and moved.

This reminds me about racing against a 5.0 Mustang. It was a clean white one. I was running between 12 and 13 seconds at the time. It was fun blowwing his doors off about 2 or 3 times. Until he started turning in 11's........ Consistently.

TOHcan, My combo is a 73,400 block and 76-6x heads edelbrock preforma, holley carb, cfm unknown,msd 6al plus msd electronic dist.I know there are roller rockers under the covers.Inside I know the pistons and all are new. The guy who built it still never returns my calls to send me the invoices so I know whats inside.He built it for the previous owner. Oh yeah and and open rear. I don't know the gearing yet but at 65 mph i'm doing 25-2600 rpm. But when it comes down to it the car always starts hot or cold no matter the temp. It has never let me down. I'm just going to research more into tuning it so to speak.

OHHHH I know what you need Ron: The mantra: Nitrous, nitrous, nitrous, nitrous....... You are built for it. Can you image whatn it's like to push a button and that 400 comes await and you run a 12 second quarter mile?

I push that button on my wallet and I may not be alive, according to the wife, according to the track guy if I run under 13.8 i need a roll bar on the vert. I guess you only get one shot at it. Fbody69 you could be a bad influence on me, lol

Ron

Nitrous is the very cheapest horsepower you can buy. The best part, you still have your cruiser when you aren't racing.

I used to "street race" (not really , but at stop lights sometimes) 5.0 Mustangs all the time in my SEBRING MX (62 Austin Healey fiberglass replica) , it had a 302 in it (5.0L)and was an 11 sec car,but with about 1800 lbs I`d blow those Mustangs away....when they asked "what do you have in there?" , my answer was always "same as You,but half the weight"

Ron,
Sounds like you have the same plant as mine: 400, 6X #8's, 600 Edelbrock, Performer intake, cam and HEI, 2.78 open [was a 2.78 but now 3.55], TH350 Trans.
With that old setup I ran 15.02. Car was tuned pretty well but not perfect, Late OCT and about 60-65 outside so the air was a bit better.
Havent ran since I put the 3.55's in.

68BLKRD, Yeah thats what i have here. How do you like the 355's ? I do some cruising with the car, will the three 355 give it a little more snap off the line? Here i go three runs under my belt and talking about off the line , lol. It was over 94 outside when we ran. I did notice everyone that ran took all the stuff out of the trunk I never did, mine is loaded with the spare ,tools, jack and assorted stuff. Can that make a difference? Thanks, Ron

The 3:55's lighten the car up quite a bit and I like the feel a lot better,,, just need more compression to really make it come alive. But I like it. Oh and every pound counts

What are you wait'n on?

What are you wait'n on?

Under whose rules? NHRA has relaxed rollbar requirements for convertibles to faster than 13.5. I'd challenge with the track officials. Print this out and ask them to prove their statemetns:
http://www.nhra.com/contacts/tech_faq.html

Then dial the tune in to rip off a 13.2 and peeve them off.

Ron Take the junk outta the trunk. You gain a .1 for every 100 pounds.

Dont know, but I have to tiddy up some things on the car before I get it out to beat on it again. I just have to get around to it.