The Camaros won because they introduced 4 wheel disc brakes, Ford still had drums on the rear
The Camaros won because they introduced 4 wheel disc brakes, Ford still had drums on the rear
Last edited by John McKechnie; 08-15-2013 at 07:46 AM.
Hi John. I think you may be referring to the 68 season. In 69 they ran Lincoln Continental discs all round.Originally Posted by John McKechnie
Aw heck, installed 4 wheel discs and still cant beat those pesky Chevs, tsk, tsk.
There is always a reason why some one wins.
Ford had a hard time with tyres, look at Bathurst and the GTHOs
Chevrolet didn't need to beat Ford in the 1968 Trans-Am. Ford did a pretty great job of beating themselves, with their powerful but chronically unreliable tunnel-port 302 motors. Shelby Crew Chief Lew Spencer was quoted years later as saying every weekend in the Trans-Am for the factory Mustangs was a 6 engine weekend. The two factory cars would each blow an engine in practice, qualifying, and the race. That was a bit of an exaggeration, they did finish races, but you get his point.
Not sure why I wrote 390....knew it was 351...thanks for the correction
Yep, the two Bud Moore Mustangs in the '70 Trans-Am were Schoolbus Yellow. I'd be interested to know if Bud Moore got a say in what the colour schemes would be, or if the decision was made at Ford. I've been researching various articles for an upcoming story on the factory Plymouth Cuda's and Dodge Challenger's that ran in the 1970 Trans-Am, and it was Chrysler who told Autodynamics they would run the green coloured Challengers that year. The manufacturers had the final say, and it all came down to marketing.
Steve,
My understanding is that Ford wanted a colour that stood out more for colour TV than what they ran in 69. The rational behind school bus yellow was that it was cheap and stood out! I believe this was Bud Moore's decision.
Look forward to the upcoming article. Those Mopars often qualified well but had more reliability issues than Ford, GM or AMC.
When u say the fords kept blowing engines. Do u know specifically what was letting go? I know the rocker gear was a weak point even in 69/70.
Can completely agree John, that is what I wanted! I tried to put the music in only as a background, so you can hear the tones but the movie program was lagging heaps and it wasn't working.. well definitely have it fixed for last time!!! i'm getting a lot of feedback from different people, will try something different for the next round, which i'm sure you will all like!!!!
Next round was to be Wakefield Park in September but that has been cancelled, it is likely to be replaced by a Lakeside round, but i'm not sure if that is a replacement in september, or an additional round in November or December.. keep checking this thread for more news!!
Thanks for that!!, that's basically what the majority of the feedback has been, I've been messing around a bit (with the longer videos + interviews when the HMC was over for QR and Lakeside, to shorter ones... am trying something different again for the next one, which is in september or october, so stay tuned!!Yeah, unfortunately Dewi I have to agree re the music. I am a frequent griper to other forums (fora?) when for some reason the Poms in particular mix naff music over fruity exhaust tones : their favourite is to defile the music of the V12 Merlin with computer pop : tragic.For what it's worth, I reckon music works over the intro and even the interviews, but when we're in the car or trackside during the race, the engine noise does it all, for me anyway.
I feel like a bit of a curmudgeon whinging about this, because your camera work and editing, and even more so your enthusiasm for the task, are clearly top-drawer, so please accept this as a constructive criticism, rather than a gripe.
And keep the vids coming, apart from this they tick all the boxes and the TransAm guys are lucky to have you on board.
Well done.
I think the problem for the videos so far is that i'm making it as if I was at the round, heard all the engines roaring, and want to see a review, but I should be (and will be from now on) thinking as if I wasn't there at all, and with these muscle cars.. the noise is what attracts the fans!!!
Your feedback was great!! I first started doing these because I thought.. "i'm going to be at the track anyway (helping out Dad racing his Mustang last year.. we weren't racing this year, but have been building another one to race next year or year after), so I may aswell do something productive while the car is on track and I have nothing to do!!"
That's exactly right.. it was an idea that just popped up about racing Trans-Am and group N... but Dean Neville has proved that to be a success, in a ex Grant Wilson 69 Camaro, he won two races in Trans-Am in one weekend last year (the only weekend it raced) and then dominated the whole Group N field this year at the Bathurst Motor Festival!! I think he got a 2:26 around Bathurst!!
We are still weighing up the option, to be competitive in Trans-Am.. or have the option to race around Australia.. but with the Trans-Am series expanding, who knows, maybe there will be a Trans-Am round at Bathurst in the future!!
Tenkate Plant Hire Australian Trans Am Championship Points (End of Round 4)
1st – John English – 1972 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 - 364 points
2nd – Ian Palmer – 1970 Pontiac Firebird - 220 points
3rd – Tobias Lord – 1974 'Channel 9' Chevrolet Camaro - 169 points
4th – Shane Wilson – 1970 Parnelli Jones Replica Ford Mustang - 165 points
5th – Anthony Tenkate – 1967 Ford Mustang Coupe - 144 points
6th – Nick Paradissis – 1966 Ford Mustang Fastback - 107 points
7th – Shane Cowham – 1967 Ford Mustang Coupe - 81 points
8th – Col Warrington – 1964 Chevrolet Camaro RS - 75 points
9th – Martin O’Kane – 1972 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 - 65 points
10th – Andrew Knight – 1967 Ford Mustang Coupe - 62 points
11th – Johno Hourigan – 1972 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 - 43 points
12th - Harry Charalambous – 1966 Ford Mustang Coupe - 40 points
13th - Michael Grimes – 1969 Chevrolet Camaro LT - 30 points
14th – John Samios –1969 Ford Mustang Fastback - 26 points
15th – Craig Harris – 1970 Ford Mustang - 6 points
16th – John Lord – 1974 'Channel 9' Chevrolet Camaro - 5 points
17th – Mike Collins – 1965 Ford Mustang Coupe - 4 points
18th – Ross Grimes – 1969 Chevrolet Camaro LT - 4 points
Hey Dewi,
What year Stang are you and your father building? I know the ex Wilson mustang you talked about but have not seen it run against Russell Wrights 68 or Fraser Ross's 67. The times these cars can do show there's more than one way to skin a cat so to speak.
Quite impressive really when you think about the added weight compared to transam. Seeing the transam class grow year by year is really positive.
I've spoken in the past to the organiser of the muscle car masters about them being on the grid for one of their meetings. I think there's the usual red tape but he agreed that they are the type of car the crowd want to see..
Wouldn't that be great to have the Transam / Kiwi cars at the MCM and then run Bathurst a few weeks later....
Cheers
Kyle
This what I said in a post on HMC- a real Tasman Cup for real cars.I would be a starter
It was a camaro, here are some pics of it: One is him leading the group N field at this years' Bathurst motor festival.. and then leading John and Woody at QR at the end of 2012
We will probably build to Trans-Am spec, as we originally planned, and wait for Australian Trans-Am to expand.. which it definitely will!! It's only just the beginning, there are big things planned for Trans-Am!
Good work Dewi. Young fella, you just keep on doing what you been doing, good on ya. You will get the vids sorted, along with your home work, and helping dad with new car. Don't let your guard down and look sideways at all those girls that will be hanging around, plenty of time later for them to tie you down.
Thanks Dewi, great pics again. I was thinking of a red 69 fastback that used to race transam. I have seen the 69 camaro race in the past with transam. Tough looking car! Look at the size of the field at Bathurst!
Actually 1968 was the first year the T/A Mustangs ran 4 wheel discs....
Last edited by zombie289; 08-18-2013 at 03:44 AM.
Discussion started about tyres letting Ford down on post #41.
Just quoting this source-
.camaro-untoldsecrets.com/articles/rpo_jl8.htm
*As it turned out, the four wheel disc brake system is recognized as being one of the largest contributing factors responsible for establishing the Camaro as the 1968 and 1969 TRANS-AM champion and forever into the hearts and minds of Camaro enthusiasts..*
And zombie 289 is correct on 68 T/A running 4 wheel discs, in fact research shows some were being built in December 1967
Just a shame they never fitted rear disc brakes to HK Monaros
Last edited by John McKechnie; 08-18-2013 at 07:17 AM.
It seems to depend on who is telling the story. Vintage Motorsport magazine ran a brilliant multi-part series on the Trans-A series, and said this of the tunnel-port motors in 1968:
".....The general layout of these new heads was derived from the heads Ford supplied for the 427ci big blocks raced in Nascar.
"Instead of curving around the pushrod holes, the intake ports went straight from the manifold to the cylinders. The pushrods were housed in tubes that literally went through the intake ports, ie, a tunnel through the port. This tunnel-port design created less restriction, plus allowed larger intake valves. Topped with a new dual-quad intake manifold, the tunnel-port produced a useful 440hp on the dynamometer.
"Unfortunately, when you raced the tunnel-port V8 on a curvey track and subjected it to high lateral loads, the new heads trapped oil and the engines seized".
However, Lew Spencer, Shelby team manager, when interviewed in the same article, tended to lay blame at the feet of Ford, rather than the design. Thats not to say he liked the design, or thought it could work in a road-racing environment, but he appears to lay blame for the poor reliability on the set-up that Ford and Shelby had going. He said:
"1968 was a bad year. We didn't have any engines. Well, we had the tunnel-port engine, which was a disaster. The tunnel-port engines were built by Ford in Dearborn and shipped to us in a crate. We were not allowed to open the crate without a Ford engineer present. If an engine blew - and the engines blew every time we ran them - it went back in the crate and back to Ford. In 1967, we built our own engines and had not one failure. In 1968, we used Ford's engines and had failures at every race. It was very frustrating".
He later went on to say:
".....even though our paychecks came from Shelby, we felt we were Ford employees. We had Ford engineers working right with us in the Shelby shop. Whenever there was a failure, the Ford guys would run to the phone and call their boss. If the engine failed, the engine engineer would call the engine vice-president and say, "The engine failed, but it was the transmission's fault".
"If the transmission failed, the transmission engineer would call the transmission vice-president and say, "The transmission failed, but it was the engines fault!" We all thought it was pretty funny. But of course, since nobody from Ford ever admitted there was a problem, no problem ever got fixed. So that was kind of sad".
So, reading what Spencer said, it sounds like Shelby were caught in typical large corporation politics, where the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, and everyone is guarding their own back. Whether Shelby's own guys could have got the tunnel-port motors to run reliably will never be known.
Lew Spencer also spoke of getting a "Ready to run" engine in a crate from Ford that were missing it's rocker arms! Apparently at the end of the season, Shelbys team built a TP engine behind fords back and It was fine...( I even think IIRC that Kwech won a race with said engine)
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