Citazione:Cristiano no....ti sbagli e ti spiego subito il motivo.No Lament in the Indian Nation Jim Taylor reveres big-bore Pontiacs and their tribal traditions Â
Le auto che secondo te scimmiottano le auto da drag sono quelle che la sera si sfidavano su strada. Non sono casi isolati come le 126 da te citate...una 126 rimaneva una 126...una muscle con big block veniva modificata da gomme e cerchi a blower...dagli headers alle barre di trazione. Questo non veniva fatto per estetica ma per rendere più performanti le auto sul quarto o ottavo di miglio...o per strada.
Non gli interessavano le curve...
Infatti nei 70s potevi trovare fifties e sixties con lamierati presi in autodemolizioni ma con meccanica curata e modificata. Si spendeva prima per un blower e gomme posteriori che per una verniciatura.
E non credere...ci sono molte foto di auto con slick circolare su strade normali.....e ti assicuro che lo fanno tutt'ora :-)
Le foto delle auto da drag racing sono inserite perchà fanno parte di quell'epoca...dalle decorazioni alla carrozzeria alle modifiche meccaniche ai cerchi.
Quello che per te non ha senso, in quegli anni un senso ce l'aveva eccome! ;-)
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The single-story shop off Route 22 in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, just an early morning jog from the Delaware River, looks like the last place where any sort of ritualized salutation might take place. Jim Taylor Engine Service is, as its name states, a place where engines are built and, tangentially, where cars are restored.
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On the garage floor, on one recent day, were a 1970 Dodge Coronet R/T awaiting restoration, a 1953 Ford Customline sedan that may, or may not, eventually see the drag strip, and even a Chevrolet engine being prepped for demolition-derby utilization. Yes, there indeed is such a thing as a specialized engine for demo cars. Here's the hot ticket: Fill the engine block with as much block-filling compound as will fit inside and still leave enough room for the crankshaft to rotate, and redirect all the water passages so that any coolant is aimed right at the top of the piston as it reaches top dead center. Simple, and the additional mass can be very helpful in frontal impacts.
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The daily workload, however, can be deceptive. The walls of the shop office and the dyno cell reveal immediately what Jim Taylor is all about. Framed photos depict the violent, vertebra-tormenting launches of his 1965 Pontiac GTO that's legal for competition in the NHRA's Super Gas category, heads-up racing on a 9.90 dial. The car is decidedly off the wall by today's Super Gas standards in that its body is largely stock. No wheel tubs or aero 'glass for this guy. The 3,385-pound GTO has a fully stock frame, a big-bore 455 block with a 428 crank, displaces 448 cubic inches, has cast-iron Ram Air IV heads, a single 1,050 cfm Holley Dominator, a TH 400, a 12-bolt rear out of a '65 Chevelle with 4.30 gears, and no trans-brake. The numbers: A dynoed 700hp, 625 foot-pounds of torque, and a best of 9.79 at 136-plus, with a 1.35-second 60-foot time. From a footbrake car.
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That's stunning performance from a heavyweight Pontiac. But then, despite the fact that he has built everything from flathead Fords to AMC performance engines, Taylor is at his heart and soul and bone marrow and DNA the hardest of hardcore Pontiac guys. He has raced them, legally and otherwise, for most of his lifetime. An important element of this business now is as a powertrain subcontractor for John Kane Restorations out of Bedford, Pennsylvania, doing everything from radiators to rears on Pontiac rebirths budgeted in six figures. Taylor estimates that he builds two big-bore engines every week, and adds that "I've probably built more Tri-Power setups than anyone in the United States."
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It's a fitting outcome for a onetime kid from suburban Philadelphia who found out very early in life what a performance Pontiac could accomplish.
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"I love cars, I always have," he said. "I guess it all started when my dad traded a '57 Chevy for a 1960 Pontiac, a white Ventura that had Tri-Power. I was 12 years old and I didn't know it had Tri-Power. My father didn't know it had it. The salesman didn't know it had it. All I knew was, the car went like hell. I remember we used to go down to see my grandfather on the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and we'd beat him racing next to the beach. I got to Simoniz the car, and as I was doing it, I took off the air cleaner, and my father asks me, 'Where did those three carburetors come from?' He thought I'd put them on the car."
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By age 16, Taylor was hooked, and embarked on building a series of full-size Pontiacs that would galvanize his reputation as one of the Philadelphia area's most feared racers. The first was a 1959 Catalina with a 389 bored .060 over and dual quads, essentially a home-hewn Super Duty. Another was a 4,100-pound 1962 Catalina that won the 1978Â CARSÂ magazine championship at Atco Raceway with consistent 13.0s at 105-plus, remarkable numbers for such a big bruiser with 4.10s. As a sidelight, he managed to buy a 1962 Catalina 421 Super Duty, in perfect condition, from a South Jersey classified ad in 1975, for $800. Taylor raced the car for several years, and sold it around 1980. It has since been documented as one of the original "Flying Carpet" cars raced by Blackwood, New Jersey's Bobby Harrop, and it sold at Barrett-Jackson this January for $80,000.
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Taylor became known around Philly as the guy to see if you wanted a really strong Pontiac. Very well-regarded shops in the area such as the Trenton Speed Shop and Langhorne Speed Shop began steering customers in his direction for specialty work. His client base eventually became national in scope, and then some.
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"I got an inquiry to rebuild a W-35 Oldsmobile with a high-output Pontiac engine for somebody in the royal family of Kuwait," he said. "They said they needed to go very fast, a steady 120 mph on the highways across the desert, even though it gets very hot. I thought it was a joke at first, but I tell you, I had a $10,000 deposit in my hands the very next day."
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To any journalist, Taylor would be a highly satisfying interview. The alternating solemnity and poignancy that punctuate his dialogue about his beloved Pontiacs are genuinely eloquent and unforced. Passion is an intangible until you put your hands to it, and Taylor can deliver an impressively stout Pontiac customer engine at surprisingly reasonable cost, born of simple principles he developed during the street and strip wars.
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"First off, you have to know that we do things right here, and the customer always gets more than what he paid for. Everything mechanical we do here is 100 percent guaranteed, both parts and labor, for a year. If I can't do that after 40 years in this business, I don't deserve to come to work," he said. "Next, Pontiac is our niche. I love them, and the Pontiac engineers who built them were tremendous, absolutely at the top of their game."
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Another key element of any Taylor Pontiac is its strong reliance on stock, albeit thoroughly tuned, Pontiac components, regardless of their development cost in dollars.
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"I can buy a 455 crank made in China for $295, but I won't do it. My dad worked in the metallurgy lab at U.S. Steel for 35 years, and he told me that, with these cranks, the Chinese are throwing in tin cans and skate keys and all kinds of other junk just to get the mix up," he said. "It won't meet the Rockwell hardness numbers for automotive applications. With my guarantee, I can't afford to use anything that's inferior, anywhere. I won't use anything that's offshore."
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Taylor also shies away from the use of aftermarket long-stroke cranks, explaining that, "That's just for guys who can't make horsepower by flowing a cylinder head. When I build up a 455 as a strong street/strip engine, I use the original block and the original crankshaft, because that Pontiac crankshaft is the best that was ever made. I know guys who have really extreme Pontiac engines who have never broken a nodular-iron Pontiac crankshaft. It's never happened. You can have an engine failure, sure, but it's usually some other underlying problem that causes it, like a connecting-rod bolt or a rod failure itself, not the crank. And I won't use nitrous under any circumstances, because it's destructive."
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The recipe that produces a beefy Taylor 455 includes a 4.250-inch stroke crankshaft, with Crower 4340 forged-steel rods rated at 36 to 37 on the Rockwell hardness scale for severe-service automotive usage. Taylor shoots for 9.5:1 compression on 93-octane unleaded for streetable performance engines, and specifies TRW flattop forged-aluminum pistons, which allows him to use the head's combustion-chamber capacity as the primary determiner of the engine's static compression ratio.
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Speaking of heads, Taylor has some very specific ideas about how to measure their performance. For this application, he prefers a D-port Pontiac 96 head originally developed for the 1971 GTO, with a 91cc combustion chamber, but said airflow study involving the entire breathing capability of the engine is essential for gathering data that has any legitimate value.
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"I have a SuperFlow flow bench and it's everything to me," he said. "But flowing just the cylinder head itself is the most worthless thing you can do. It tells you nothing. I was one of the first people to flow the entire intake system, and now, we base it on flowing everything from intake to exhaust. If a guy doesn't have a velocity probe on the side of his flow bench, he's not doing anything. You put your head on the bench just to get a baseline. What we know, after years of research, is that if you use a 6-inch pipe, you'll get about 5 percent more exhaust flow, and depending how hard it is to get a header on the car, we may use a Pontiac H.O. exhaust manifold, or a header that we already know will work, based on our research."
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As Pontiac did, Taylor relies solely on hydraulic camshafts, one produced by his self-owned TFX Cams, with a proprietary grind. For the streetable 455, he'd likely specify .470 to .500 inches of lift and 224 to 232 degrees of duration, with another 6 to 8 degrees of overlap on the exhaust side, if needed, and either Crower or Crane Gold roller rockers. Taylor can use either a stock Pontiac intake and Rochester Quadrajet, or perhaps an Edelbrock Performer intake with a 750 cfm Carter AFB.
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The price, including a two-hour pull on the test cell, is about $6,500, with a delivery time of around 90 days. With the Q-jet and factory intake, the dyno sheet should read around 420hp at 5,200 rpm, and 520 foot-pounds of torque at 3,200 rpm. Installed in something like a '67 Ventura hardtop, weighing around 4,400 pounds, the engine should be capable of consistent 12.80s at around 105 mph with 3.42 gearing.
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"You really don't want to run anything shorter than a 3.42 because, with this kind of torque, you'll just smoke the tires," he said. "This is a torque engine, and it recovers much better from an upshift with those gears. You're going to be shifting at 4,800. You've got to have a strong transmission, and it's very important that you have Positraction, because with this combination, you've got to have a good 60-foot time. Also, you need to fit Dana or Eaton solid U-joints that aren't cross-drilled for oil passages, because the Pontiac torque will just spit those out."
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Taylor likes to discuss his business ethics but is more reticent about his generosity. Normally, guys with speed knowledge this specific guard it jealously, but Taylor is grooming a partner and potential successor, a quiet 23-year old from Pennsylvania named Mark Erney, who is now pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering.
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"I put him to work, at first sanding and degreasing parts, and Mark didn't know what a distributor or a spark plug was," he said. "At one time, I was stingy about sharing knowledge, but he's earned it. He deserves it. He's doing the right thing with the information I'm giving him, giving everything he knows to the customers; so he's doing the right thing by them."
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This article originally appeared in the September, 2004 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.
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