danb@teneron.UUCP (Dan Ball) (08/27/84)
This is in response to all those who think that you have to have a 60's muscle car to have good performance. I've got some interesting news. I have a friend who recently purchased a 1984 RX-7 equipped with a 134 hp. 13B wankel. As an experiment, he used his performance engine expertise and rebuilt it (opened ports and turbocharged with after-cooler) and somewhat increased its performance. It dyno tests at 386 hp. After taking it to the PIR for a few test runs he discovered some surprising performance results. 0-60 in 3.77 seconds, 1/4 mile at 127.5 mph. and tops out at 196 mph. (With oversized tires and non-standard transmission). He knew that with those kind of results that blowing the doors off of 400-500hp 60's tin-irons would probably be fairly easy even with standard equipment. So... after returning to the standard transmission and tires and backed the 13B down to 300 hp. for some semblance of street legality and fuel economy he faced the real world of high horsepower 1960's street racers. He knew that finding worthy competition would be a tough challenge but one day did find a victim. A black 1968 396 chevelle that was later found to have slightly in excess of 400 hp. They paced each other heading I-5 south exceeding 100 mph. My friend followed him until they reached 140 pushing 145. Finally, after fooling enough John kicked in the second bank of the ported out Holly 4 bbl. and left the doors of the 396 flopping in the wind. Unfortunately state troopers had been following the event quite closely and set up a road block near Salem. After pulling both vehicles over, one of the state troopers immediately recognized John (He is a well known performance engine rebuilder for racing Mazdas and Datsuns) and chided him for his past warnings. "What were you doing racing that 396 chevy. I thought I had told you enough times John... No racing on the state highways." Johns reply was simple... "What 396 chevy? Where? If I would have been racing that 396 chevy you would have known it because I would have been on the south side of San Francisco by now..." Putting aside high performance mazdas, remember that the worlds fastest production cars are still European sports cars. From the porsche turbo 930 to the new 400 hp. Ferrari, there is still not any big American muscle cars that will match them in styling, looks, handleability and quality. P.S. If anyone wants to give me flames about 386 hp. in a 2000 lb. car not being fast enough, John will gladly challenge any U.S. muscle car and burn nitro through his rotary. This ups the hp. to 668 and 1/4 mile time to 177 mph. (This with non-standard equipment of course!).
an@hou2h.UUCP (A.NGUYEN) (09/06/84)
- Can't you guys move to net.bench_racing or something? I can't tell where the bad craziness stops and bad silliness starts! Au