I'm a big Nascar fan, and today I was flipping through a book about the history of Nascar. Leave it to Smokey Yunick to make a 7/8ths car. It sounds like nascar started mandating a template to make sure cars were the correct size after this went down. I have to imagine that would have taken some time to build? Does anyone know if it was just Chevelle's that were being run? In some of the pictures out of the books, it looked like some Impala's were being run too? I know GM stepped out of nascar for a period in the 60's so this was all done by teams with no backing. Just some food for thought!
bowtie said
May 16, 2014
That car is legendary in the Chevelle world, lots of info (right and wrong) on the net, especially on Team Chevelle.
Smokey was quite the innovator, many of the rules in motorsports racing are because of his creations. Too many to list, but I remember him writing about the days when they had to limit the size of your gas tank. He decided that he would just make a tank that would bow out once the fuel was inside, and when the car came back for post-race inspection they would slide the floor jack under it and push it back up. Once they caught on to that he ran larger diameter fuel lines, when that was restricted he went to longer fuel lines-way longer lines. Long enough to hold extra gallons of fuel.
He helped develop racing parts for all the manufacturers at one time or another. Several books out there he wrote too.
Dave Seitz said
May 16, 2014
Bowtie that is wrong, Smokey NEVER used an OVERSIZED TANK! He was accused of that at Daytona and after the race he pulled the tank out and handed it to the inspectors. Outraged he was being accused of breaking the rules on tank size he jumped in the car and drove off to his garage down the street. NASCAR had NEVER mandated the size and length of fuel lines until AFTER Smokey left the track that day.
bowtie said
May 16, 2014
Dave, That is definitely one of his stories, except for the gas tank part itself. He did have it out of the car, and did storm off with it removed, but he did use an oversized tank. I didn't read the whole article, but I believe at that point, he was using a legal tank, just questionable lines. It seemed like there was a procession of things over time that would be deemed illegal, so he'd go to the next innovation.
Here's a photo from an article I have from Hot Rod September 1976:
When I get a chance, there's also a quick single page article about the '67. They call it the 15/16 scale one, but he claims he did some things, but not a re-size of it.
I'm a big Nascar fan, and today I was flipping through a book about the history of Nascar. Leave it to Smokey Yunick to make a 7/8ths car. It sounds like nascar started mandating a template to make sure cars were the correct size after this went down. I have to imagine that would have taken some time to build? Does anyone know if it was just Chevelle's that were being run? In some of the pictures out of the books, it looked like some Impala's were being run too? I know GM stepped out of nascar for a period in the 60's so this was all done by teams with no backing. Just some food for thought!
Smokey was quite the innovator, many of the rules in motorsports racing are because of his creations. Too many to list, but I remember him writing about the days when they had to limit the size of your gas tank. He decided that he would just make a tank that would bow out once the fuel was inside, and when the car came back for post-race inspection they would slide the floor jack under it and push it back up. Once they caught on to that he ran larger diameter fuel lines, when that was restricted he went to longer fuel lines-way longer lines. Long enough to hold extra gallons of fuel.
He helped develop racing parts for all the manufacturers at one time or another. Several books out there he wrote too.
Dave, That is definitely one of his stories, except for the gas tank part itself. He did have it out of the car, and did storm off with it removed, but he did use an oversized tank. I didn't read the whole article, but I believe at that point, he was using a legal tank, just questionable lines. It seemed like there was a procession of things over time that would be deemed illegal, so he'd go to the next innovation.
Here's a photo from an article I have from Hot Rod September 1976:
When I get a chance, there's also a quick single page article about the '67. They call it the 15/16 scale one, but he claims he did some things, but not a re-size of it.