Australian Trans-Am Association

[John McKechnie]

Discussion started about tyres letting Ford down on post #41.
Just quoting this source-
.camaro-untoldsecrets.com/articles/rpo_jl8.htm
*As it turned out, the four wheel disc brake system is recognized as being one of the largest contributing factors responsible for establishing the Camaro as the 1968 and 1969 TRANS-AM champion and forever into the hearts and minds of Camaro enthusiasts..*
And zombie 289 is correct on 68 T/A running 4 wheel discs, in fact research shows some were being built in December 1967
Just a shame they never fitted rear disc brakes to HK Monaros

[Steve Holmes]

Steve,
When u say the fords kept blowing engines. Do u know specifically what was letting go? I know the rocker gear was a weak point even in 69/70.

It seems to depend on who is telling the story. Vintage Motorsport magazine ran a brilliant multi-part series on the Trans-A series, and said this of the tunnel-port motors in 1968:

".....The general layout of these new heads was derived from the heads Ford supplied for the 427ci big blocks raced in Nascar.

"Instead of curving around the pushrod holes, the intake ports went straight from the manifold to the cylinders. The pushrods were housed in tubes that literally went through the intake ports, ie, a tunnel through the port. This tunnel-port design created less restriction, plus allowed larger intake valves. Topped with a new dual-quad intake manifold, the tunnel-port produced a useful 440hp on the dynamometer.

"Unfortunately, when you raced the tunnel-port V8 on a curvey track and subjected it to high lateral loads, the new heads trapped oil and the engines seized".

However, Lew Spencer, Shelby team manager, when interviewed in the same article, tended to lay blame at the feet of Ford, rather than the design. Thats not to say he liked the design, or thought it could work in a road-racing environment, but he appears to lay blame for the poor reliability on the set-up that Ford and Shelby had going. He said:

"1968 was a bad year. We didn't have any engines. Well, we had the tunnel-port engine, which was a disaster. The tunnel-port engines were built by Ford in Dearborn and shipped to us in a crate. We were not allowed to open the crate without a Ford engineer present. If an engine blew - and the engines blew every time we ran them - it went back in the crate and back to Ford. In 1967, we built our own engines and had not one failure. In 1968, we used Ford's engines and had failures at every race. It was very frustrating".

He later went on to say:

".....even though our paychecks came from Shelby, we felt we were Ford employees. We had Ford engineers working right with us in the Shelby shop. Whenever there was a failure, the Ford guys would run to the phone and call their boss. If the engine failed, the engine engineer would call the engine vice-president and say, "The engine failed, but it was the transmission's fault".

"If the transmission failed, the transmission engineer would call the transmission vice-president and say, "The transmission failed, but it was the engines fault!" We all thought it was pretty funny. But of course, since nobody from Ford ever admitted there was a problem, no problem ever got fixed. So that was kind of sad".

So, reading what Spencer said, it sounds like Shelby were caught in typical large corporation politics, where the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, and everyone is guarding their own back. Whether Shelby's own guys could have got the tunnel-port motors to run reliably will never be known.

[zombie289]

Lew Spencer also spoke of getting a "Ready to run" engine in a crate from Ford that were missing it's rocker arms! Apparently at the end of the season, Shelbys team built a TP engine behind fords back and It was fine...( I even think IIRC that Kwech won a race with said engine)

[STG69]

Cheers Steve,

Interesting attitude by Ford given the growing importance of winning these races at the time. You'd think reliability would be top of their list seeing the race duration. Hard to win while sitting in the pits!
Thanks for the info.
Zombie - Hard to believe no rocker arms! It must have been assembled late on a Friday afternoon....

[Ellis]

In 68 they (Shelby) were contracted to Ford ,and were not allowed to touch the engines...

Quote Bobby Boxx from from Dave Freidman Trans am Book........

"and we blew 57 of those pieces of junk over the course of the season"

"I had an engine (ford built) hot off the press sitting on the floor and I pulled the valve covers off
and I called one of the engineers over and said...am I supposed to run this piece of shit?. He said Yes
..I said ..There aint any pushrods in it, does that matter any ?

The start of another 6 engine weekend as they used to call them.
The Crew ran bets on which lap the engines were going cut themselves in half.


No wonder they snuck in an in house Shelby built one in the end.

[Steve Holmes]

History has shown that a dedicated race team with factory funding but the freedom to get on with the job is more effective than when an auto manufacturer tries to get directly involved. Even when Ford started out on the GT40 program, they just kept spending money until they achieved success, but there were a lot of mistakes made.

[Ellis]

History has shown that a dedicated race team with factory funding but the freedom to get on with the job is more effective than when an auto manufacturer tries to get directly involved. Even when Ford started out on the GT40 program, they just kept spending money until they achieved success, but there were a lot of mistakes made.

That is so true Steve
With the Mustang Tunnel Ports is sure proves having a great heap of horsepower (up the top end) and little torque leads to having to rev the engines to bits..

One tongue in cheek quote years later was that with a tunnel port on the dyno doing 4000 rpm you could grab the harmonic balancer and stall it.

[zombie289]

That is so true Steve
With the Mustang Tunnel Ports is sure proves having a great heap of horsepower (up the top end) and little torque leads to having to rev the engines to bits..

One tongue in cheek quote years later was that with a tunnel port on the dyno doing 4000 rpm you could grab the harmonic balancer and stall it.

Ive always been mystyfied at why the 302TP was considered so bad, driveability wise... I'm no engineer or race engine guru, but I always thought a BOSS 302 would be heaps worse (for lower & mid range torque) than a TP engine because they have so much more port volume... What am I missing here?// Dale?? Maybe the Boss 302 design just worked a whole lot better. Also the TP race block was basically the same as a Boss 302 IIRC (4 bolt mains etc) , so why were they more prone to exploding at high RPM??

[zombie289]

Cheers Steve,

Interesting attitude by Ford given the growing importance of winning these races at the time. You'd think reliability would be top of their list seeing the race duration. Hard to win while sitting in the pits!
Thanks for the info.
Zombie - Hard to believe no rocker arms! It must have been assembled late on a Friday afternoon....

My bad, Ellis had it right, no pushrods.... may as well have had no rockers though! Its been a while since i thought about TP stuff..sorry

[Murray Maunder]

Now after much shilly-shallying here's a video of the Lakeside weekend - "Thunder By the Lake" to follow up on Dewi's excellent effort.
I can't recall a weekend of motorsport I have enjoyed more, great setting and a camaraderie absent in most forms of motorsport these days. Thanks to the Jones boys of Qld for their help with downloads and in-car cameras and to all the HMC and ATA guys who couldn't have been more approachable and helpful - you guys rock! Thanks also to legend JR and Mike of HealthHouse and anyone else I have forgotten.

[video=youtube;E3oHPyHQxBs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3oHPyHQxBs[/video]

[DewiAusTransAm]

Quick Trans-Am Update:
Brilliant video by Murray from Lakeside.. I will be posting a video soon.. a bloopers video from the first half of the 2013 trans-am season (including Hampton Downs in January and Queensland Raceway with HMC.. the lakeside round will be included in the 2nd half of the year).. Muscle Car Masters at Eastern Creek this weekend, many trans-am members going down to watch.. one of our association members Dean Neville (His #69 Camaro pictured on this thread already) racing in both Group Nc (in his camaro) and in Touring Car Masters (in a different camaro).. For those on Facebook, the Australian Trans-Am Championship has a new facebook page that will be updated just as regularly as this thread.. because of the same person posting updates (hmmmm).. so if you are on facebook give a like to https://www.facebook.com/pages/Australian-Trans-Am-Championship/473355822762856?fref=ts ... Next round is scheduled for 19/20 October at Queensland Raceway..

[DewiAusTransAm]

Here is the Bloopers Video
[video=youtube;iHZ_ElnmcD8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHZ_ElnmcD8[/video]

[DewiAusTransAm]

Below is a preview for the next round, got some new cars debuting next weekend 19/20 October at Queensland Raceway, and John English's Son, Sean taking the wheel of the 72 Camaro with John driving the Barkley-Griffin #43 Mustang.

AFTER a quiet period, the Tenkate Plant Hire Australian Trans Am Championship will be back louder and faster than ever before at round five of their series at the Queensland Racing Drivers Championship (QRDC) meeting at Queensland Raceway on Saturday October 20th and Sunday October 21st, 2013. Compared to the previous round there will be more competitors on track with more than fourteen beautifully prepared American muscle cars set to grace Queensland Raceway with their presence.

Series sponsor, Anthony ‘Ace’ Tenkate is itching to getting back behind the wheel of his 1968 Ford Mustang. “With no racing for almost two months I’m having severe withdrawal symptoms such is my passion for our Trans-am racing series,’ said Tenkate.

Geoff ‘Famous’ Fane is confident that he can take it to series leaders John English and Ian Palmer. ‘The GFR Industries Mustang is back from the wreck at Lakeside and hopefully we can go one or two better this time at Queensland Raceway and push up for a win. After coming from dead last in the third race to third we should be competitive. A good strong qualifying should put us in the right place this time enabling us to compete head to head with English and Palmer,’ said Fane.

Series leader and category president, John English is handing over the controls of his championship car to son, Sean while he will take the wheel of the 43 Barkley-Griffin Mustang. ‘There may [also] be a guest driver in the Craig Harris Mustang. At present we have entries for fourteen cars with a few more expected,’ said English.

The Tenkate Plant Hire Australian Trans Am Championship aspires to celebrate the rich history and tradition of the 1960′s – 1970′s style U.S Trans Am Racing Series, while providing motorsport fans with exciting door-to-door racing action. The Australian Trans Am is one of the more exciting motor racing categories in Australia and is a crowd favourite among spectators.

Written by Iwan Jones

[Steve Holmes]

Nice new website for Australian Trans-Am. Check it out here: http://www.australiantransam.com.au/