Beauties: Cherie Saxton & Gayle Huff www.ocpanteras.com
November 2007
Jan
9 TPOC mtg 7PM at Mimi’s on Brookhurst Fountain
Valley.
Willow Springs Event story and pics by Cherie Saxton. West Coast Racing with the help of TPOC and the Ferrari Club pulled off an exciting and successful weekend. Jim and Cherie put in hundreds of hours for the event. 500 event forms are mailed. Some require follow-up phone calls, e-mails, and faxes to place the drivers in the proper class. Arrangements go well beyond just the track. Forming teams of corner workers, pre-grid, professional instructors while purchasing of insurance, trophies and supplies are all part of the preparations. This year’s TPOC volunteers were Bob Singer, Bob Culpepper, Bill Wright, Rod Kunishige, Ron and Gail Huff with Chris Qualls and Colin Haney doing car techs outside.
Beasts: TPOC gang “Mind
the Gap” must be a Brit owner. But who?
The first lap of the day brought an adrenalin rush as a red
Ferrari spun around to rest 3" from the pit wall. His progress was all of 10 feet on cold
tires. The mêlée of cars slipping and sliding forced a special meeting before
this class could return to the track again.
The actual 12 lap race at noon was super exciting for both drivers and
audience. Watching race trucks spar
against each other as they lapped the slower cars brings a good deal of renewed
respect for the drivers. There were so
many off road excursions during the race that one would think that this was a
SCORE meet. A 70 Z28 Camero driver
speaking with an accent proudly pointed to a “Damn British Drivers” slogan
painted on his car’s rear. He gave
American race drivers an opportunity to improve their reading skills as he
passed them during the race. The
spectrum of vehicles in the four classes ranged from completely stock including
a rental Lotus from San Diego to purpose built track cars like the new Lotus
offering. It sported race ready
features like a full cage, all safety equipment and even an intercooler the
size of a large ice chest fed by a monster turbo. At days’ end, everyone met for free beer and awards. All the drivers were so very pleased with
the trophies earned by their performance!
West Coast Racing will enter the 21st Century with a fantastic
Web site by January. March event
entries will be emailed for the first time.
Why
not gather a small group to cruise out to the track March 1, 2008? Plan for a 10AM arrival to allow time to
stroll though the open pits prior to lunch. Just let Cherie know you’ll be joining us for her free lunch and
enjoy the noon race. The track is
normally open to all cars for a lunchtime parade at highway speeds with no passing
so you can drive the track with your street car. YOU ARE ALWAYS WELCOME!
ED: Two things sadden me about this
event. First is that there were NO
Panteras in the race so there was no show of cat power. Second despite walking around with my
helmet, no ride was offered. Perhaps
March will be better. One can only
hope.
Cleveland vs Windsor November
28, 2007, Rod Kunishige
Before
addressing this continuous topic, let’s dismiss the Modified block known as
351M/400M. They share many of the same
features of its predecessor, our 351C open chamber2V, yet they stand 1.1 inch
taller, use a different motor mount, and demand a big block Ford (429/460)
bellhousing pattern.
The
Cleveland stands alone but it does have some interesting variants. It comes in two basic flavors of canted
valve heads: 2V and 4V are named for the production two and four barrel carbs
they carried. Each require their own intake and exhaust manifolds. The first variant is the famous Boss
351C. It uses the 4V heads but with
adjustable valves. The second is the
Australian heads. These feature a 2V
design with smaller chambers and slightly larger intake valves
(2.065int/1.655exh vs. 2.03/1.67) to give us both excellent flow and burn
characteristics; whereas, the 4V and BOSS 351 have large 2.19/1.71 valves.
Windsors
come from the early 60s through the 80s sized as 221ci, 260, 289 302 and
351W. They share the same cylinder-head
bolt pattern, bore spacing, motor mounts, and bellhousing with the
Cleveland. Heads, intakes, exhaust
manifolds, fuel pumps and most bolt-ons do not interchange. A variant worth
considering is the BOSS 302. Here a
302W was mated with the canted head that is the forefather of the Cleveland
head. It boasted the canted intake
valves of 2.23 reduced to 2.19 in 1970.
Now here’s the head-flow (CFM) comparison. Let’s assume the same bottom end, matched cam/heads, rocker arms
and 10:1 compression:
