Phil Patterson writes: >...it reminded me of the 1960 Nascar compact car class race at Daytona. The > Valants so totally dominated this race that they cancelled the race and series > completely. But does anyone else have any more info, or pics of these cars? The only picture I have ever seen of a '60 NASCAR Valiant was actually Lee Petty's #42, so if Richard had a #43 as well that'd be two. The picture I saw was a B&W but it appeared to be painted like the big ones. I believe the NASCAR Valiants ran the "Hyper-Pak" setup, which was a dealer option in the early '60s for the /6. This included a 4v carb (IIRC Carter AFB) and manifold (heavily influenced by the B/RB crossrams), a radical grind cam, and I'm pretty sure some kind of header. Contemporary reports say the Hyper-Pak was a screamer but too radical for "normal" street use. It was also quite expensive when new, and if you can find the parts now, think $trato$pheric. Not sure what NASCAR's rules were in that class at that time, but the Petty team may have even been able to legally get away with dropping in a cast-iron 225, which was not supposed to be available on a '60 Valiant, but was certainly a regular production MoPar engine (and would've bolted in just fine). I do know in the early years NASCAR's biggest question was whether or not a part had a factory part #; this allowed Lee Petty to run Dodge truck axles in his '50 Plymouth for example. This would've given the Valiants a displacement edge in addition to their other advantages, since neither Corvair nor Falcon/Comet shared engine blocks with the fullsize Chevies/Fords. There is a book out now covering all Petty Enterprises race cars, including IIRC the borrowed Buick that Lee rolled over when first starting. Great pics., including a shot of Richard's '59 Savoy showing sponsorship by a DeSoto-Plymouth dealer (and a great F>>L logo!) and the '65 Barracuda Richard ran on the dragstrip. I'm pretty sure the Valiants are covered here as well, but I can't remember the name of the book... ----------------------------------------------------- Get free personalized email at http://email.lycos.com |