Pavement Pounders Shootout: Lone Star Edition

My, how fast a year goes by. It would seem that we just finished last year's Lone Star Shootout series and here were are once again reporting from the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas, regarding how fast these Pontiacs are getting. For this series, HPP once again culled various entries with a lot of help from Randy Allen, Rob Bender, Floyd Hand, and other members of the Dallas Area Pontiac Association to provide a varied group of shootout Pontiacs for you to enjoy. We will run this year's events as a three-part series beginning with this installment, which will present five very different Pontiacs with combinations that can be emulated by the readership--should you so desire--once you see how they run. Enough with the chitchat, let's meet our participants.

Mickey Wheeler arrived with his son Joey and is hoping to make some 12-second passes in his 400-powered Carousel Red '69 Judge that was built in Mickey's hometown of Arlington, Texas. Joey has a potent '66 Goat at home, so dad wants to be sure that he is just a bit quicker.

Josh Hurt rolled in from Mesquite, Texas, in his menacing black '01 WS6 Trans Am. With a 200hp shot of laughing gas and trans, rear, and suspension mods designed to put the power to the pavement, deep 10-second e.t.'s are a real possibility. The most interesting aspect of his combination is that the engine itself is essentially stock except for an airbox and headers and exhaust mods--stock block, crank, rods, cam, heads, intake, etc.

Jonathan Burchmore made the trip all the way from Ramona, California, with his 486-cubed '69 Firebird featuring a 421 block stuffed with a 4.50-inch stroke Moldex billet crank. This engine seams to be getting faster with each trip to the strip. High 10s just may be possible on this day.

Our late-model front-drive representative is Dave Stuntz who drove in from Lewisville, Texas, with his '01 Grand Prix GTP featuring a heavily modified drivetrain looking for 12-second e.t.'s. How he will fare with all of these V-8 rear-drive Pontiacs should be interesting to see.

Scott Templet's Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based '77 T/A showed up, but Scott couldn't get the day off from work, so his brother Chad stepped in to race and tune the machine for the shootout. Though it appeared rough on the outside, this F-body was built to run high 11s, so we'll see if some prodigious driving and tuning will get it there.

Now that you have met our cast of characters, it's time to go racing. Will the weather cooperate? Will the strip be prepped to our liking? Will these Pontiacs stay together under the stress? Will this introduction ever end? The answers to these questions and some I forgot to ask can be found over the next six pages, so let's get to it!

Owner: MICKEY WHEELER

Owner Bio
Mickey Wheeler has been in Autobody repair since 1966 and has owned his fair share of GTOs and Corvettes, not to mention a few other specialty cars. But the '69 Judge that competed in this shootout has its own story. Mickey related, "My son Joey [who appears with dad in the owner photo] and I had just finished a '66 GTO that he began drag racing. I wanted to race him but needed a Pontiac. So I found this Judge disassembled just a mile from the Arlington, Texas, plant in which it was built." The 55-year-old autobody professional built up the Judge and ultimately ran a best of 12.69 at 107.75 at the Motorplex in October of 2003. Son Joey's '66 Goat so far has seen a best of 12.74. So the father/son rivalry is on--but just on the dragstrip.