DIRT TRACKIN

I started building my dirt car, a 1966 Pontiac GTO, I was working at a Pontiac dealership in Columbus Ohio at the time and the sort of semi sponcered me with engines and a few odd and end parts.

Along with a couple of mechanics I worked with and a few friends we got the car built and was ready for the spring races. We were anxious to get started on the dirt, and we soon found out we had our work cut out for us.

During the first race things were going pretty well for us and about 10 laps into the 50 lap feature race the engine let loose and exploded into more pieces than you could count.

This was our first experience with Pontiac engines and it was not to be our last. The engine was a high output 350 cubic inch V8, it seemed to perform pretty well on acceleration and had some power but the engines just wouldn't hold up under high RPM's for any lenght of time.

After several attemps with the 350 CI Pontiac engine we tried going to the 400 cubic inch engine. We had a little better luck and was able to finish a few races in the top 5. But we were lacking the power and durabilty out the Ford and Chevy powered cars we were racing against.

We decided even though we were getting pretty much free engines we had to try a Chevy in the Pontiac. So a friend had a good 427 cubic inch Chevy engine that he had had in a car he wrecked. We got the engine installed in the GTO and talk about a difference WOW, this was a whole different car.

With the powerand durability of the Chevy engine, we had to completely change our set up and by late in the season we were finally finishing 2-3 and even won a race.

Over the winter we completely rebuilt the GTO again and andded some goodies to the 427 Chevy engine to get even more power out of it and we were more than ready for the next season.

We were very competitive for a few years and I was really enjoying racing but the cost of racing was starting to get out of hand and the time and money was affecting my personel life. After a very bad crash with the GTO pretty much completely destroyed, and with the time and cost of building a new car I decided to sell everything, and I became a spectator. Even though racing was still heavily in my blood and it was hard not to be in the car driving, I found just being around racing and helping in the pits and watching was fulfilling my needs.

My adiction to racing is still strong today and I still go to races when I have the time and watch on T.V. I will always remember "Back In The Day".

In further accounts of "Back In The Day" I will start with the begining of NASCAR and bring it up to present day.