I agree with NY Twin Turbo and Chris Kirk. If everyone did it twice it would be cheaper, but has anyone paid attention to a 7, 8 or 9 second race motor. They are definitely pieces of art, we have taken the "fast with class" to another level. Do not get me wrong here but my first 7 second twin turbo motor back in 98 looked like a crude mechanical hack job. I would consider myself the exception because I had less than 15000 in the whole project including a trailer. This was when I was getting complete Goody Dash, ASA , Busch motors for 2 grand with the 390 carbs that everyone wanted. My roller that I purchased was a completely tubbed and gutted out true WE4 car, looked just like a GN to me. Here is a lot of the differences of going fast in the past compared to now. My gutted roller with full sportsman style 12 point roll cage with big tires and 9" was 5K. I didn't have tubular a arms. Every body panel on the car was as it came from the factory with its inner support removed. A cage certified to run 7.50s would cost about 7 -8 grand now? You didn't need a rollerized 2.10 turbo 400 that cost 6000. I paid 1200 for standard geared turbo 400 with a standard heavy duty sprag including a shiny new JW bell housing and 4.56 gears. I swear I think that 400 came out of a '68 Caddy. FAST XFI 2.05 did not exist. How do you guys think that we went that fast? Light weight cars of course but electronically and mechanically. My first motor had a stage 2 Edelbrock tunnel ram with NOS and mechanical fuel injection and a MSD distributor. Stage 2 heads with Jesel Rockers stamped 1991 on them. I still have it all to this day. You only had 1 option of cylinder heads with the exception of Kenne Bell who ran a production style head in the 7's. Does anyone want to take a guess of how many near $10,000 sets of stage 2 heads there are out there floating around on possibly some of our cars.? I have seen one pair of Reher Morrison prepped heads and valve covers that approached that number. NASCAR and Indy dumped a ton of money in R&D , stage 2 heads are more than capable to get the job done. No coil on / near plug systems. My first digital fuel system was the FAST SEFI8LO and 120lbs injectors upgraded to 160lbs once I got my first carb converted intake. 160lb injectors and two SX performance fuel pumps and a red plastic 15 gallon fuel cell filled with purple leaded cam 2 gas was all it took to get into the 7's .It's hard to believe that a big Weldon 2345 can barely feed a set of Moran 550lbs on a car running exotic blended fuels of E85/98, M1 or oxygenated Q/C 16. A 15" Weld Drag lite was the ticket with any 185/70/15 PepBoy tire special. The Weld rim that I want now is around $600 ea with no tire. My stage 2 engine rebuilds were done by your local dirt track engine rebuilders. An average rebuild and assembly was $1000 max with them supplying hard parts. On one, a new 3.625 BMS crank was needed and they charged me 400 extra. I had to work extra overtime on a $10 an hour job to pay that off, whew! I contacted a not so well known engine builder and he told me to send him the parts that I had and $7500 to get started. Most people on this board now that wants to build a 10 second street car wouldn't touch a BMS crank because they would be scared that it would break, 7 second power is greater than 10 second power but that is the mindset that we are in now. But in 99 you had BMS, Hank the Crank, Scat, LA Billet, King, Moldex , and Winberg. Many finishing the BMS forging or making their own billet piece. I have seen it on nearly a 1:1 ratio of windowed stage 2 blocks with a few broken cranks ( many of the journals had too much meat taken off during rebuilds) but more from broken rods. The old 6.5 Carrillo was present in about 98% of them. The rod technology is up there with current crank technology now. Maybe the days of windowed blocks are done and over. One trend that is disappearing on the TR's of old is big wings and big tires. A mini tub and some 275 pro's can get it done with supporting suspension mods.
To this day I scratch my head when I read some signatures of people combos and see all of the latest and greatest gadgets to make them go fast, and keep them in a comfort zone. It's too expensive to tear rare parts up. I bet if I post a virgin stage 2 4.1 on center block for 3 grand now it will sell before the end of the day. But would the person that buys it immediately max out the bore and build it with the intention to have a 7 or 8 second race car. I seriously doubt it. We are overall safer to run at speeds now. To run 10's safely on a track you must have driveshaft loop, fire jacket and so forth. The same applies to 9,8 and 7 second cars.
I agree 100% with the current trend being exponential as you step into each speed zone. Sorry if the rant was long and veered off topic but I did want to get one point across that the same hard parts that were around in the 90's to get you to the 7's is still around in 2018 that can get you in the 10's, 9's, 8's or 7's. Maybe it's a lost technological art like the Great pyramids.
