Cheers Steve,
Interesting attitude by Ford given the growing importance of winning these races at the time. You'd think reliability would be top of their list seeing the race duration. Hard to win while sitting in the pits!
Thanks for the info.
Zombie - Hard to believe no rocker arms! It must have been assembled late on a Friday afternoon....
In 68 they (Shelby) were contracted to Ford ,and were not allowed to touch the engines...
Quote Bobby Boxx from from Dave Freidman Trans am Book........
"and we blew 57 of those pieces of junk over the course of the season"
"I had an engine (ford built) hot off the press sitting on the floor and I pulled the valve covers off
and I called one of the engineers over and said...am I supposed to run this piece of shit?. He said Yes
..I said ..There aint any pushrods in it, does that matter any ?
The start of another 6 engine weekend as they used to call them.
The Crew ran bets on which lap the engines were going cut themselves in half.
No wonder they snuck in an in house Shelby built one in the end.
Last edited by Ellis; 08-20-2013 at 01:56 AM.
History has shown that a dedicated race team with factory funding but the freedom to get on with the job is more effective than when an auto manufacturer tries to get directly involved. Even when Ford started out on the GT40 program, they just kept spending money until they achieved success, but there were a lot of mistakes made.
That is so true SteveOriginally Posted by Steve Holmes
With the Mustang Tunnel Ports is sure proves having a great heap of horsepower (up the top end) and little torque leads to having to rev the engines to bits..
One tongue in cheek quote years later was that with a tunnel port on the dyno doing 4000 rpm you could grab the harmonic balancer and stall it.
Last edited by Ellis; 08-20-2013 at 01:54 AM.
Ive always been mystyfied at why the 302TP was considered so bad, driveability wise... I'm no engineer or race engine guru, but I always thought a BOSS 302 would be heaps worse (for lower & mid range torque) than a TP engine because they have so much more port volume... What am I missing here?// Dale?? Maybe the Boss 302 design just worked a whole lot better. Also the TP race block was basically the same as a Boss 302 IIRC (4 bolt mains etc) , so why were they more prone to exploding at high RPM??
My bad, Ellis had it right, no pushrods.... may as well have had no rockers though! Its been a while since i thought about TP stuff..sorry
Now after much shilly-shallying here's a video of the Lakeside weekend - "Thunder By the Lake" to follow up on Dewi's excellent effort.
I can't recall a weekend of motorsport I have enjoyed more, great setting and a camaraderie absent in most forms of motorsport these days. Thanks to the Jones boys of Qld for their help with downloads and in-car cameras and to all the HMC and ATA guys who couldn't have been more approachable and helpful - you guys rock! Thanks also to legend JR and Mike of HealthHouse and anyone else I have forgotten.
Quick Trans-Am Update:
Brilliant video by Murray from Lakeside.. I will be posting a video soon.. a bloopers video from the first half of the 2013 trans-am season (including Hampton Downs in January and Queensland Raceway with HMC.. the lakeside round will be included in the 2nd half of the year).. Muscle Car Masters at Eastern Creek this weekend, many trans-am members going down to watch.. one of our association members Dean Neville (His #69 Camaro pictured on this thread already) racing in both Group Nc (in his camaro) and in Touring Car Masters (in a different camaro).. For those on Facebook, the Australian Trans-Am Championship has a new facebook page that will be updated just as regularly as this thread.. because of the same person posting updates (hmmmm).. so if you are on facebook give a like to https://www.facebook.com/pages/Austr...762856?fref=ts ... Next round is scheduled for 19/20 October at Queensland Raceway..
Here is the Bloopers Video
Below is a preview for the next round, got some new cars debuting next weekend 19/20 October at Queensland Raceway, and John English's Son, Sean taking the wheel of the 72 Camaro with John driving the Barkley-Griffin #43 Mustang.
AFTER a quiet period, the Tenkate Plant Hire Australian Trans Am Championship will be back louder and faster than ever before at round five of their series at the Queensland Racing Drivers Championship (QRDC) meeting at Queensland Raceway on Saturday October 20th and Sunday October 21st, 2013. Compared to the previous round there will be more competitors on track with more than fourteen beautifully prepared American muscle cars set to grace Queensland Raceway with their presence.
Series sponsor, Anthony ‘Ace’ Tenkate is itching to getting back behind the wheel of his 1968 Ford Mustang. “With no racing for almost two months I’m having severe withdrawal symptoms such is my passion for our Trans-am racing series,’ said Tenkate.
Geoff ‘Famous’ Fane is confident that he can take it to series leaders John English and Ian Palmer. ‘The GFR Industries Mustang is back from the wreck at Lakeside and hopefully we can go one or two better this time at Queensland Raceway and push up for a win. After coming from dead last in the third race to third we should be competitive. A good strong qualifying should put us in the right place this time enabling us to compete head to head with English and Palmer,’ said Fane.
Series leader and category president, John English is handing over the controls of his championship car to son, Sean while he will take the wheel of the 43 Barkley-Griffin Mustang. ‘There may [also] be a guest driver in the Craig Harris Mustang. At present we have entries for fourteen cars with a few more expected,’ said English.
The Tenkate Plant Hire Australian Trans Am Championship aspires to celebrate the rich history and tradition of the 1960′s – 1970′s style U.S Trans Am Racing Series, while providing motorsport fans with exciting door-to-door racing action. The Australian Trans Am is one of the more exciting motor racing categories in Australia and is a crowd favourite among spectators.
Written by Iwan Jones
Nice new website for Australian Trans-Am. Check it out here: http://www.australiantransam.com.au/
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