Ramblings About Fate and Today's Stock Eliminator

4/8/04

itting in my shop (and stripped to the bone, bolted to my rotisserie) is a pretty nice 1970 Nova. The car had just over 35,000 miles on it when I blew it apart. It's your typical little old lady sled - original, sprayed by Fisher Body lacquer paint, some minor parking lot rash, zero cancer and the only factory option is power steering. It's so plain, it makes a vintage Road Runner seem positively luxurious. The original plan was to turn it into a nice street machine - paint and detail it, maybe install a big block crate motor, and drive it. Then fate intervened.

The NHRA, in all of their wisdom, decided to "enhance the Sportsman Racer's experience". That meant some National events would effectively lose categories - as we all know, rotated out one year and back in another. So if you had, for example, a SS car, you might be able to race at say, Phoenix one year, but not the next. Plenty of folks were (and still are) bummed out. I would be too if the event was in my back yard, and I had a $75,000 SS car parked in a trailer waiting to race.

Some astute racers figured something out. Over the years, the index system for both Stock and Super Stock has actually become pretty soft. In fact, some seasoned veterans can probably remember when the indexes were actually tougher in days of yore than they are today. Given today's index system, it is possible to run something like a Stocker in Super Stock, and go-rounds. Radial tires have helped, but so have the more liberal rules in place for Stock Eliminator. Look at it this way: A 1970 Nova with a 375 (400 factored) HP 402 is a natural B/Stock Automatic combination. The same combination in SS (395 factored) is a natural Super Stock/F Automatic combination. It can also fit in SS/GA. Now,

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the index in B/SA is 11.55 while the index in SS/FA happens to be 10.75. SS/GA is 10.85. Seems like a stretch, until you figure in the fact that plenty of strong B/SA cars can run 10.30's all day long - that's almost a half second under for SS, and more than competitive.

What's needed for a Stocker to make the SS program is a full roll cage and a window net. That's the reason why so many new Stockers are getting "legal" roll cages (or why so many older Stock Eliminator cars were retrofitted with cages over the past winter). The bottom line here is, a decent Stocker can run SS pretty easily, particularly when you figure the real numbers of true SS/F and SS/G cars at certain events (at some events, those cars are almost non-existent). Given the newly "enhanced racing experience," it seems certain Stock Eliminator cars are actually better bets for National event competition than an SS car (the point being, you can't race Stock with an SS car).

I know this is all old news, but hang in for one minute. Next, I took a look at what happened to the fuel injected car rank and file. They've disappeared from the "what's hot" radar screen. What was once the flavor of the week isn't so fresh anymore, considering that they now have their own dedicated EFI classes within Stock Eliminator. Plenty of folks built these cars, and to be truthful, plenty of the rules were liberally stretched.