Do you remember your first actual street race?

[FESTER665]

First time was in my 1989 Escort GT against a buddies Plymouth Laser Turbo....

Last time I street raced was more "fucking around" with my Cobra against a buddies Z28... Got caught flying down Schaumburg Road (luckily the officer didnt have any radar or anything on us) but he caught up to use a few lights down and after seeing the cars on flat beds and paying all the lawyer BS that was the last time.

 

[cap42]

Not sure if it was my first as I had a few cars before then but this is the first street race I remember.

1995-ish with my 70 buick skylark, it had a sbc 350 296 cam worked heads and 850 dbl pumper holley running through a turbo400 and 12 bolt with 3:55 gears. I used to take this car out to 4 corners and Franks looking for street races. I mainly picked on 5.0 foxes and camaro's if they were stock I never had an issue.

I lined up this race with a SHO at 4 corners thinking it's a 6 and I could take him easily, I was so cocky I never asked him to pop his hood. I think the race was for $200. Needless to say I never lived it down from my buddy who rode out there with me on how this SHO walked me by a few cars, to this day I still never knew what that guy was running.

 

[Blownbyyou]

My first race....

I was in my 91 lumina 3.1 that had a horrible stumbling issue off idle. I mean you would literally press the gas too hard and bam the car would shut off. To make matters worse the starter needed shims in the worse kind of way so I could never "hide" the car shutting off.

Well my friend in his moms 96 caravan wanted to race, so I thought there is no way I am loosing to this fucking mini van, so we come up to a light that's red and decided its go time. As the other light is turning red I am brake torquing to around 2,500 rpm, as soon as the light turns green I hammer it and I hear a squeech of the tires and then boom the motor dies, I instantaneously restart and try to catch him but it wasn't worth it, I had lost.... My passenger later stated he almost didn't know I had to restart, thats' how fast I was lol.

However my favorite race was when I was like 17 or 18 years old....

Cars:
Him:
1996 dodge ram pace truck, 5.9 with forged internals, headers, intake, cam, quasi built trans, and 4.11 gears... Then they topped it off with a powerdyne blower (no gears, runs via a belt) so he couldn't boost over like 5 psi it was quite sad...

Me: 1969 Ford Torino 428 Cobra Jet with a 4 speed, recently restored by my old man and myself. Nothing major, hell if I remember correctly it had 3.2x gears and no posi lol... Oh it did have dumps which sounded awesome!

So I don't know what prompted the race, other than they were two of the faster cars at school and we were all kind of friends so we went down to i believe the stockyards at like 9 pm (didn't want alot of people there). So there we were lined up, all I remember is looking at the a column mounted tach at about 4k, then the arms dropping of the flagger....

As you can imagine right off the line all I do is spin the tires, badly..... so finally I grab traction in second and slowly pull on him, slam 3rd as hard as I could. I was slowly starting to reel him in but unfortunately we ran out of real estate....

The best was when we came back to the start line we had about 10 people with us who were wondering who won because there was sooooo much smoke...

I later went to my buddies house that night and moved the right rear tire to the left front to hide the fact that the car did a massive smokey (my dad was a manager of a firestone at the time so he looked at that stuff). He ended up replacing the left front tire a month later and did an alighment lol!

 

[Gone_2022]

lol I used to do 1 tire fires in my moms Honda Odyssey. God how did women ever talk to any of us lol

 

[Mook]

I used to race [MENTION=7]IDAFC21[/MENTION] a lot in my 3rd gen...so I guess those might have been my first real races but two 16 second cars racing to wendys doesnt really count.

 

[cap42]

My first race....

I was in my 91 lumina 3.1 that had a horrible stumbling issue off idle. I mean you would literally press the gas too hard and bam the car would shut off. To make matters worse the starter needed shims in the worse kind of way so I could never "hide" the car shutting off.

Well my friend in his moms 96 caravan wanted to race, so I thought there is no way I am loosing to this fucking mini van, so we come up to a light that's red and decided its go time. As the other light is turning red I am brake torquing to around 2,500 rpm, as soon as the light turns green I hammer it and I hear a squeech of the tires and then boom the motor dies, I instantaneously restart and try to catch him but it wasn't worth it, I had lost.... My passenger later stated he almost didn't know I had to restart, thats' how fast I was lol.

However my favorite race was when I was like 17 or 18 years old....

Cars:
Him:
1996 dodge ram pace truck, 5.9 with forged internals, headers, intake, cam, quasi built trans, and 4.11 gears... Then they topped it off with a powerdyne blower (no gears, runs via a belt) so he couldn't boost over like 5 psi it was quite sad...

Me: 1969 Ford Torino 428 Cobra Jet with a 4 speed, recently restored by my old man and myself. Nothing major, hell if I remember correctly it had 3.2x gears and no posi lol... Oh it did have dumps which sounded awesome!

So I don't know what prompted the race, other than they were two of the faster cars at school and we were all kind of friends so we went down to i believe the stockyards at like 9 pm (didn't want alot of people there). So there we were lined up, all I remember is looking at the a column mounted tach at about 4k, then the arms dropping of the flagger....

As you can imagine right off the line all I do is spin the tires, badly..... so finally I grab traction in second and slowly pull on him, slam 3rd as hard as I could. I was slowly starting to reel him in but unfortunately we ran out of real estate....

The best was when we came back to the start line we had about 10 people with us who were wondering who won because there was sooooo much smoke...

I later went to my buddies house that night and moved the right rear tire to the left front to hide the fact that the car did a massive smokey (my dad was a manager of a firestone at the time so he looked at that stuff). He ended up replacing the left front tire a month later and did an alighment lol!

That torino sounds familiar, it wasn't yellow with ghost flames was it?

 

[Blownbyyou]

That torino sounds familiar, it wasn't yellow with ghost flames was it?

Oh helll no lol.... looked like this..minus the wheels of course....

Man I miss that car....

 

[IDAFC21]

I used to race [MENTION=7]IDAFC21[/MENTION] a lot in my 3rd gen...so I guess those might have been my first real races but two 16 second cars racing to wendys doesnt really count.

oh the memories. I remember it felt like i was in a race every day after school the way everyone used to tear out of there and blast down the back roads Swanberg Rd by my house was like a god damn top speed test every day

 

[duramax302]

swanberg rd is my backyard lol needs to be repaved bad

 

[Fish]

I did a few funzie races in HS in the late 90s with my 3.1 STE Grand Prix. Probably my first "races".

 

[Pressure Ratio]

Back in the mid 90's I built a 1983 Capri. It had a rebuilt 302 with Winsor SR heads, large solid roller cam, single plane intake, 750 double pumper, 9:1 compression , t5 trans, 25x8 cheater slicks, and 4:30 ring and pinion out back. Back when my engine builder was under the "bigger is better" logic. All but that low compression killing the combo. lol

Thinking it would like spay we took a NOS cheater system pilled for a 300 shot and put it on my car. We took the car to a local spot and threw a new device called a Vericom on the windshield. It was like the first V box available. I had driven the car to a high 13 on a street tire at the Grove at that point. I launched the car and it left harder than anything I had felt. The steering got light so I think it pulled the wheels. But the tach climbed soo fast by the time it was ready to shift I wasn't ready. So it was a slow 1-2 shift. Same with the 2-3 & 3-4 shift. I was catching my breath between shifts. Went like 11.8 @ 125 or so according to the Vericom.

A couple weeks later we are at 4 corners and a guy comes up to my buddy with a 1969 Riviera trying to get him to race his 1965 Impala. We looked at the car and it looked very familiar. It looked a lot like Nick Scavos car. For you who don't know about that car, it was a big inch BBC that went 8's @ 155 at the time. But looked stock. It even had a custom column shifter that was a ratchet shifter. We walked away to think about the race. Well, a guy came up and confirmed it was a twin to Nicks car but toned down to be a better street car. His brother's car if I remember correctly. Rod's car was like a 11.9 at the time on it's best day. Which was damn quick for a boat of a car back then. But we figured it wouldn't be enough for the Impala. So Rod convinces me to go behind the Sears and throw the Cheater kit back on my car. We had some tools and my car still had all the wiring on it from a few weeks earlier. The car also had a 26x10 bias ply street tire on it by this time. So we figured with the bigger tire and me hitting the shifts better and quicker that I would be at least a mid to low 11. So we went and installed the cheater kit

We go back and the Impala is gone. But a guy with a Mopar comes over and wants to race. So they threw my car at him. The Mopar sounded healthy as fuck. It was a BB Mopar that also had spray on it.

So we go race. I was so nervous! We line up and I got the hit. I left, the car seemed to have lifted the tires a little and I was off. I was better prepared to hit the shifts this time at least. I made good gear changes and now was along for the ride in 4th gear. I was ahead of him by about a car. Until I was bouncing off the rev limiter! AGGGH! I lifted before the finish line and he came around me. He won by about a fender. I was so pissed! When we got back to the spot a few people told us the kid's dad has a few 9 & 10 second Mopars. And they assumed that this car was probably a solid low 11 high / 10-second car. All in all, it was something an adrenaline rush, made me extremely nervous, and I could tell why it was so addicting. haha




Here is a cool video about Nick Scavos car. It starts about 44 seconds into the video.

 

[The Bluegrass Nomad]

Raced some poor kid from a stoplight in a 94 S10 Blazer with my 50 hp K&N filter.

pulled up next to two kids about to race each other from a stoplight. it was a late 90s jetta vs a Sentra SE-R. i pulled up next to them and revved my motor lol. all left at green only to pass a cop a bit of a ways up with the sentra in front of me and the jetta behind. Sentra was the only one he pulled over and I got away spot free that night.

 

[Dan00Hawk]

swanberg rd is my backyard lol needs to be repaved bad

I grew up in The Windings right off Empire back in the 80's. Swanberg was always fun to rip down with only 1 farmhouse to worry about (back then).

 

[IDAFC21]

I grew up in The Windings right off Empire back in the 80's. Swanberg was always fun to rip down with only 1 farmhouse to worry about (back then).

Yup, Windings is where I lived from birth till i was about 18!

 

[duramax302]

Wow small world. It's been 2 years since this xmas. Awesome neighborhood and nice and quiet.

 

[GLIGTO]

I was really excited as I started to think about this... But I slowly began to realize that I've had so many street races from age ~14 on, I honestly can't remember my first! Earliest one I can remember clearly was when I was driving in my first Taurus SHO, white on black Gen 1 I had at age 16. Friend of mine in HS had gotten a brand new Durango V8 (4.7 iirc) for his 16th bday. He was pretty convinced he had the fastest truck in the universe and we met at a stoplight (in Mexico). Light goes green, he jumps out ahead but only for the first 60ft, once those Secondaries came on I was literally running by him. Slammed 2nd, 3rd, then let off. I saw him catching up like he was going to do a ricer flyby so I jammed it back into 3rd, pulled on him again up into 4th lol. When I think back that stuff, it starts to make sense why it costs so much for insurance on the younger lads...

 

[IceCreamAssassin]

Dropped a crate 350 in this turd. Had it about a week and some dude in an Impala SS was at the light and we took off. Got beat buy a couple car lengths, went home and maxed out credit card on performer rpm intake, cam, and carb. Got some headers as well. It was game on from there. Did that cruising 14 thing for a few years as well in Crystal Lake till cops had enough of us.