At the end of the season we loaded the big wagon up and drove down to Woodburn Dragstrip, south of Portland, for the Division 6 Bracket Finals, where the best racers from all the tracks in our division compete for bragging rights. We were representing Shelton Dragstrip, a tiny little baby of a track that just started operating again after a 40 year hiatus. They only had two events this year so all the other tracks gave us a ration of shit, implying that we didn't belong there. We proved otherwise when Matt wheeled our big wagon all the way to the quarter finals, beating 174 other sportsman racers and earning six points for Shelton, running 15.5's at 95+ mph. Shelton itself came in fourth in the track competition, ahead of all the other tracks from Washington and Canada. It was one of the best performances ever for Wagons of Steel. Seeing the Bradymobile come back victorious for round after round, putting a bunch of "champions" on the trailer was enough to bring tears to our eyes!
There were still a couple more local events so I kept working to make the wagon faster. I gutted more weight out of it. I switched carbs from our old 625 CFM vacuum secondary to the spiffy new 750 CFM HP series "double pumper" from our fast car. I replaced the factory cooling fan with an electric unit. I made some slicks fit and we hooked up a line lock. Then I took it to Bremerton Raceway on a test and tune night to see if I could get a 13 second pass out of it. I made my first run in "Drive" to get used to it. With no interior and open exhaust, this thing is louder inside than my Max Wedge stocker! Wow! I laid down a 14.22 at 97 mph, good numbers but I knew there was more. The next pass I shifted the creepy column shifter myself and was rewarded with a 13.88 @ 101 mph. I backed it up with a 13.86 @ 100 mph. With a steeper gear set and a higher stall converter we might even get it into the low 13s with the original motor!
I still have many more tricks up my sleeves and I will share them with you as we implement them next season but here are some of my thoughts so far. The weight gets harder and harder to shed but I still have a couple hundred more relatively easy pounds to take off. We want to relocate the battery to the old spare tire well behind the passenger side back wheel. Then I'll be able to remove the bolt-in inner fender wells after we connect the sub frames and install a roll bar. That will make the engine compartment really slick. While I'm at it, I'll probably totally rewire the thing. We have a custom C-body manual steering set up that we made years ago and big manual drum brakes. We'll pull out the stock fuel tank and replace it with a 5 gallon fuel cell in the trunk area. While we're there, we'll set up the new fuel system with all new lines, filter, regulator and electric pump. I want to make this thing run high twelves, the very bottom of Sportsman class.
It lives! Here is our 425 horsepower 12.5:1 Stage III 426 Max Wedge purring like a big angry cat on the run in stand under the watchful eye of stock legend Dan Dvorak. We've still got to finish paying for it, ship it, and install it in our Savoy but this is pretty cool. Dan fired it up for me while I was down visiting Florida in August. This is going to be a wicked wagon, maybe even the fastest stocker wagon on the planet! Say what you will about Mopar--they offered their hairiest motor in a wagon, at least in early '64.
