When you’re building a race car, you have to consider weight. That’s not a suggestion, that’s a requirement. Take any kind of racing, and the weight of the machine has to be considered. It’s the biggest reason why people complain about late-model Mopars…800+ horsepower is nice, but not when it has to move over two tons of bulk in the process. In the 1970s, the move to smaller, lighter cars was going to hit the Pro Stock ranks in short order, but local racers picked up on that almost immediately. If you were a small-block racer and you wanted to keep your powertrain alive for a while and didn’t want to eat up other parts, you started with something fairly featherweight to begin with and did as much as you could to make it competitive.
Tommy Lee Byrd is a friend of BangShift and plays with quite a few neat old rides most of the time, but this 1971 Ford Pinto is especially cool. This isn’t an old Pro Stocker that has made it into the next century, this is an old 1/8th mile car that was parked after the local track shut down for a bit of time. It’s got that killer Gapp and Roush-like look, with the U.S. Indy mags and fat rears, but take note of where the air scoop sits. Not over where the engine should be, is it? Nope…that engine was set far back into the body, and that’s just one trick to this machine that you need to see more of. Click on the video below to get the full scoop!
Paul Peyton (Paul Peyton Chassis…the originator of the Econo Altered design) ran a similar set-up in the old AHRA version of Competition Eliminator. Pinto with a funny car/door car hybrid chassis. Center steer within a stock dimension Pinto shell. His had a full tubular chassis, though. Small block Ford power. The car run up until the late 70’s. Not certain what became of it after he moved on to a different combination.
I stuffed a 215 aluminum Buick into a ’61 Bugeye Sprite. Even with a 2.76 rear end, it jumped. 220 hp, 1750 lbs – with a power-to-weight ratio like that, who needs gears?
Being an old Pinto fan, I’m interested in what the future might be for this car. I may have room for it.
copy the 351 build that Freiburger did for the Clevo Commando . C4 with about a 5k converter …
4.10 gears … have all kinds of fun with that thing
Cool stuff like it