Ok, I know that's Hayden in the Micky Thompson Pontiac. Who is in the four door A/FX Nova?
A/FX
- Thread starter Dick MacKenzie
- Start date
Ok, I know that's Hayden in the Micky Thompson Pontiac. Who is in the four door A/FX Nova?
George Klass
Well Known Member
The A/FX 4-door Chevy II was raced by Dick Rutherford (out of New York I think). I believe that the car was mis-classified, and probably should have been in B/FX like Dyno Don's Chevy II wagon. The '62 Winternationals was the very first event for the F/X class, and there were several other cars at that event that might have also been incorrectly classified...
Back in the 90's I use to go down to Gurley Alabama to see my Sister and Brother-in-law. On one of my visits we were out driving around I found a 64 Chevelle at a little car lot that the owner said was an old A/FX car. The Chevelle had a tube frame and was center driven ,altered wheelbase ,tube front axle Oldsmobile rear-end .It had spokes up front and had slots on the back the roof and quarters were steel and everything else was fiberglass. The owner said it came out of Detroit he wanted $2K for it I wish I would have bought it now it would have made a cool street machine. I called the guy later on and he said it had been sold and it went back to Detroit.
Mark
Mark
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George Klass
Well Known Member
Look what I found, after searching for several years...
Here’s a rare color photo of the same car from Larry Davis’ most excellent book “Quarter Mile Muscle” and the car has been re-classified as B/FX with possibly a subsequent owner.
George Klass
Well Known Member
Actually, the 409 engine fit fine in the '62 Chevy II. I have always been surprised that no one swapped a 409 engine into the Chevy II in 1962, or the Z-11 engine into the "63 Chevy II. Either combination would have made a great A/FX car in NHRA Competition in those respected years. Strangely enough, other than Hayden Proffitt shoving the 421 engine into a Pontiac Tempest for the '62 NHRA Winternationals, no one else attempted to swap a big engine into a smaller car for the A/FX class at the time. And even after Hayden's success with the Tempest at the Winternats in '62, the only other Pontiac team that did it was Royal Pontiac and that was just before the NHRA Nationals on Labor Day Weekend. I can't remember any Chevy racer installing the 409 engine into a Nova in 1962, even for the NHRA Nationals. It's as if the entire GM Super Stock community went brain dead when it came to A/FX in '62 and '63 (except Proffitt and Lloyd Cox, who drove the Tempest at the Nationals in '62).
Chevy never did offer a true A/FX car, even in 1963. While it's true that the '63 Z-11 Impala could be competitive in A/FX, that car (like the Pontiac Swiss Cheese Catalina) was actually designed to fit into the Super Stock class, and not the F/X class. But, the Z-11 engines were available without having to purchase the whole car, and the same was true about the aluminum body panels. If you didn't want to purchase the Z-11 Impala, you could have purchase the engine and the light weight body panels, and installed them on a '63 Biscayne 2-door sedan. A Z-11 2-door sedan would have been less weight than the Z-11 Impala, and still legal for NHRA A/FX class. Or, you could have installed the Z-11 engine into a Chevy II and cut even more weight out of the combination, even without an aluminum front end.
The F/X class caught alot of S/S racers by surprise in '62, and I think that very few of them knew what to do with the class or how to respond to it.
George Klass
Well Known Member
I was mistaken about one thing I mentioned above, that nobody other than Hayden Proffitt attempted to install a big engine in a smaller car for the A/FX class at the 1962 NHRA Winternationals. The Dragmaster company in San Diego did install and race a 413" S/S engine in a '62 Dodge Lancer. They also raced it at the '62 NHRA Nationals if I recall. I saw the car up close and it was a nice looking piece, and very well crafted. It should have been a serious threat in the class, and it might have been except for the fact that they used the 3-speed manual trans instead of the Torqueflight automatic. That and the fact that those guys were not regular S/S competitors, Dragmaster was a dragster chassis company...
George Klass
Well Known Member
How well does the 409-427 Z-11 fit into a Chevy II? You tell me.
No problem with the headers. And in the F/X class, NHRA was pretty lenient about cutting holes in the side panels for "header clearance". This would have been a relatively easy engine swap for any of the Chevy S/S racers and I'm sure it would have held it's own in '62 against Proffitts Tempest and in '63, with the Z-11 engine, would have been a potential winner against any of the other A/FX racers. Unfortunately, we will never know because nobody tried it...
Here is a build shot with the radiator in place. Lots of room all around.
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George Klass
Well Known Member
All the photos I used came from this site, it's a great stroy...
http://www.348-409.com/forum/threads/65-chevy-ii-409-swap.30696/
http://www.348-409.com/forum/threads/65-chevy-ii-409-swap.30696/
George Klass
Well Known Member
It's just kind of surprising to me that none of the Chevy S/S racers at the time ('62/'63) didn't consider building an A/FX Chevy II using the 409/427W engine. It obviously could be (and was) made into a successful B/FX machine pretty easily with the small block. Most (or almost all) of the early ('63 & '64) "match race" Chevy II's and '64 Chevelle's had 409/427W engines in them, switching to the 396 engines in '65. If anything, it shows how far advanced Hayden Proffitt was in '62 with the Tempest and the 421 engine...
Said Chevy two .........was for sale not that long ago.......
George Klass
Well Known Member
In looking through my site at the early model Chevy II's, I found several that could have been built as A/FX cars, with 409 or 427 Z-11 power. The Bill Thomas built Chevy II driven by Dick Harrell was almost certainly built as an F/X car, stock wheelbase location, no big wheel well modifications, and the OEM front suspension (not a tube axle). I found several others like that in that section, also. Bill Thomas did plenty of work directly for Chevrolet (including building the engine for Hayden Proffitt's red '62 bubble-top S/S car). The problem was that there was money to be made in match racing, and you did not have to keep the engine NHRA legal stock, as you would have in the F/X class. Since Chevy had stopped giving "their" racers any kind of support, I think that many of them just "followed the money" and went match racing instead or screwing around with NHRA and the A/FX class...
George, I'm only going off of memory here, but didn't NHRA not authorize the W motors in Chevyll's. They authorized the small blocks for conversion because of the V-8 conversion kit sold over the GM parts counter. Although the W motors would set down in the engine compartments the same , with some oil pan, and exhaust work, the fact was that GM did not authorize that installation, making it not a legal install for NHRA's F/X class. AHRA did have a class called super/stock experimental. This is where Dick Harrell's Z-11 powerd Chevy ll ran in 64 & early 65, before it evolved into the straight axled, altered wheelbase car of late 65, when it became the injected big block match race version. AHRA was somewhat more relaxed with their rules . This era of drag racing just fascinates me. A mid 65 match racer is kind of what I've tried to recreate. Somewhere there is some pictures of Dick Harrells Z-11 Chevy ll with the stock front suspension, and classed as S/SX at an AHRA race.
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