In the past three issues, High Performance Pontiac brought you to the edge of your seat with the drag-racing excitement from our Pavement Pounders Shootout in Norwalk, Ohio. We hand-picked select racers from across the country and asked them to arrive at the Summit Motorsports dragstrip the day before the Ames Performance Tri-Power Pontiac Nationals and lay down their best-ever quarter-mile times, experiment with tuning and technique, and observe whether their choices helped or hurt their Pontiacs’ e.t.’s.
For Part IV, we feature two ’60s-era Pontiacs--one is a restored, full-size head-turner that makes its journey down the quarter-mile track for the first time, while the second is a street/strip scorcher that is making it’s roost at the Summit racetrack for the first time.
John Glasgo of Uniontown, Ohio, comes from a family of Pontiac restorers/racers, so it’s no surprise that his stock-appearing ’65 2+2 looks at home either at a judged car show or on a quarter-mile track. It features a 421/453ci engine with No. 77 heads, a Muncie M20 wide-ratio trans, and 4.11 gears.
Jeremy Wyborney of Waterloo, Iowa, spent 10 years of his career in GM dealership service departments as a transmission and driveline technician, but he left for greener pastures--a product development specialist for a major farm-tractor manufacturer. He plows down the field in a ’69 Firebird, which features a 455/467 with Edelbrock heads, a Turbo 350, and 4.10 gears.
The temperature at Summit Motorsports Park during our Shootout ranged from 78.5 to 88.2 degrees. Barometric pressure was measured at 29.74 hg and the dew point was 72.6 degrees. The track is 853 feet above sea level and density altitude ranged from 2,424 to 3,245 feet, so we will give each racer his own correction factor based upon the density altitude at the time of his best pass. John’s occurred at 1:18 p.m. with a density altitude of 3,099 feet, so he will receive an altitude-correction factor of 0.9627 for e.t. and 1.0395 for mph. Jeremy’s occurred at 3:14 p.m. with a density altitude of 3,357 feet, so he’ll receive an altitude-correction factor of 0.9588 for e.t. and 1.0437 for mph. The correction factors are designed to chart the theoretical best performance at sea level, and will be done on the best pass only based on e.t.