I’ve gone to Beaver Springs Dragway with my Pop since I was a teenager during the late 90’s to see the races and swap meets for aircooled VW’s. The FE meet has been outstanding since its start. Thankfully, I’ll be able to go with Dad this year. He’s owned plenty of Fairlanes, Galaxies, Falcons, and Mustangs through the years.
Well I think you did a great job with the video I could read most of the ETS. I was raised on the fe series engine. Never had one built didn't know they could sound so good. Love it.
I grew up in the sixties and I was never a Ford man but they made some of the coolest and some of the fastest cars to come out of Detroit at that time I like all makes and models from the sixties and early seventies !!!
Really enjoyed sitting back ..spectating, reminds me of Fremont drags back in the 60's. In fact, one of those red 1967 Fairlane's reminds me of Ed Terry's Hayward Ford (Ca.) sponsored 67 Fairlane.
Charles Eller's '64 Thunderbolt FE powered clone that has gone 9.80 with stock suspension and 10" tires, unaltered from factory Thunderbolt specs, held the Nostagia Superstock record for several years, circa 2008.
True respect to these guys. How many times you think 100% of these guys have been home on a Monday night to 11pm before work putting their fair lady back together after all these years. Ford guys aren't made, they are born with it in their blood...
Heck yeah finally some real men who not only have Seriously cool and rare cars, but they actually drive the piss out of them! Don't get no better than this man!!!
starting at .50 is where you see the badasses. love the Mach 1, but the fairlanes and comets and torinos and the galaxies are gorgeous. then a 68 1/2 CJ!! pinto! fucking awesome!!
FE engine block is significantly stronger than the stock block and is ideally suited for both restoration and high performance purposes. It has a larger bore capacity, allowing for much larger displacement engines without the cylinder wall weakness issues that have plagued the stock OEM blocks.
This is an awesome video, something we don’t usually get to see. My only wish is that just 1 second longer showing the time/speed towers for both cars. You showed the winner long enough to read the numbers, but the losers number just not a smidgen longer please. Again, great video from a Ford guy, thanks a lot!
Steve Boros, but it was barely shown, considering that it was the fastest and quickest car there, why wasn't it shown more often, at least a once over in the pits!
The 65 Comet Cyclone "seems" to have the aero or SOMETHING- sumptin- that shows it loves to race, like a coonhound loves to tree. I wonder if there is a book that lays out all the aeros and stock weights. I just gave away a great idea!
Where where the early Ford Falcons at I don’t recall seeing any of them and the coolest car on that track was the Henry J I haven’t seen one of those ole Fords in a long time !!!
Can someone explain the method of showing reaction time at the top end? Lights are .500 apart, what does a 1.50 reaction time mean? Cant be one and a half seconds beyond the .500 just curious thx
I'm not saying that some of these reaction times are slow, but it's less than optimal when the other guy is finishing the race before they react to the light.
It would be VERY NICE to see all the times posted. You cut away so much, that 25% of the times are ignored. I'd love to see what stock cars are really doing, but you NEVER EVER see those times. Makes this love of drag racing hard to watch honestly. Raceway Park Englishtown NJ here.
bensunki; I would've enjoyed this video a tad more seeing the times of the 69 GT500, 65 T-Bird,(I know,it's dialed in on the windshield) 67 Cougar and the track cleaner. Hope I can go in 2018. Thanks for the post.
JW, thanks for taking a look and posting an intelligent comment. The main reason that I take the time to put this together is so the folks that can't be there from the FordFE forum and the FEPOWER forum are able to get a little taste of the event. I AM guilty of favoring the faster and more 'visual' cars, but I really appreciate every single vehicle that shows up. I try to show as many of the different vehicles as possible, even if they aren't racing. I also tend to focus on the cars of folks I know, sorry! I try not to show anyone that might be having a bad day with missed shifts, breakage, or engine problems; I don't see the need to put someone else's hard luck up for folks to comment on. Sometimes a car just can't get in a good run and I try to edit those out, even if the car is very cool. There are some very sharp cars that just have trouble and I would rather not show their bad luck. I'm not a photographer/videographer and am using a little Panasonic Lumix camera, just a little point 'n shoot. I spend most of the event looking at the back of my little camera and sometimes I can't really see what I'm shooting, the camera has a hard time holding focus at times, and there are times when the wind noise overpowers the audio. I try to use the best footage from everything I've filmed to make something that isn't too annoying to watch. The event has grown a lot and if I was to try and show every race to the end with the ET board, it would be a really, really long video.....a LOT of work editing and such. As it is, I spend a major part of the weekend looking at the little screen on the back of my camera. I intend NO disrespect to any of the participants if their car isn't shown. I encourage you to try and be there for the next one, I've been going since the very first one and love it!
bensunki; Boy, do I feel like an idiot. ("intelligent comment"sounds a little sarcastic)These videos are fantastic! There's no need for you to apologize. It's just when you turn the camera to the slower time's, you cut it short just a "tad". I know Fords are quick but not so much my eyesight. How often do we get to see a 69-70 GT500 and the track cleaner drag race?(kidding about the track cleaner) Do you happen to know the times? Would love to attend but the April weather in Pa.....? In the middle of May, we use to ride our Harley's for Jerry's Kids Muscular Distrophy. We'd leave Maryland and head to Kenoble's Pa. amusement park. Every time it was cold, freezing rain. I stopped. I currently own a fastback 69 Fairlane Cobra with the original 428cj, 4spd. 09 GT500, 69 Roadrunner and 13 Challenger RT. Anyhow, keep up the good work and I just subscribed. Thank you again! John
John, there was absolutely no sarcasm intended, and no attempt to make you feel like an idiot. Tone and inflection sometimes get lost in internet comments. My apologies for the poor writing, if you read a couple of the earlier comments you will see why I wrote that. I get that some folks would like to see all of the ETs, I'll try to work on that...... if my memory is correct, that GT500 has been there a couple years, nice car. I agree with your weather assessment, it is almost always cold, breezy, and wet, but 2017 had the weather we've been waiting for. Always a roll of the dice that time of year. I had a '68 Coronet R/T that I sold to buy my '64 Galaxie, loved that R/T. Sounds as if you've got some nice cars, would love to see the Cobra there!
I too would like to see about 1/2 second more video of the score board. Most of the time the other cars time got clipped off. There were a Ton of red lights so those cars lost, we saw their losing time but not the time of the winning car. I understand you want to keep the length down and only show your friends cars, but there are many Ford fans that can't make it to the race. We would like to see the times for both cars. Thanks for taking the time to edit and post the video and thanks for taking the time to read my reply :-)
I always hated the Y blocks. Boat anchor Engines. I always swapped in a FE and went faster and more reliable. Still have pile of FEs. One is a 390 four bbl from a 62 T bird and also have a 428 from a 67 Bird. Keep thinking the 428 needs to be in one of my 64 fairlane Htps.
Those are "altered wheelbase" cars that Mopar and Ford "loved" because they allowed them to run way larger, more powerful engines in shorter wheelbase "production cars" and helped Ford especially with its horrendous front weight bias problems. The only reason it was "legal" is because those cars were considered 2-door hardtops rather than sedans and they had full frames and Ford and Mopar claimed they were "handicapped" compared to lighter unibody GM vehicles of the same wheelbase. Their goal was to get a big cubic-inch/horsepower advantage based on wheelbase even though the unibody GM cars of the same wheelbase weren't much if any lighter. And of course GM wasn't about to hack up its cars like that and didn't EVER "support" drag racing at the "factory" level or even encourage dealers to race, since the stupidity of competing against current and potential customers is obvious. So GM never had a "corporate" interest one way or another and didn't challenge it. Neither did the "private" Chevy and other GM division racers who knew bitching would get Ford and Mopar right where they thought they wanted to be, but not the way they intended. So NHRA let them shorten their wheelbases but then considered them "altered" and they were no longer legal for factory stock or super stock classes and had to race each other. And since they bitched about WEIGHT and wanted other teams penalized with LESS POWER rather than MORE WEIGHT, it was obvious they had all the power they could make and use and since they wanted everything "fair", the NHRA started "penalizing" THEM by making them get heavier as they went faster. because they were suddenly WAY FASTER than those stock and super stock GMs they WOULD HAVE BEEN COMPETING AGAINST if they'd gotten their way. And what made the altered wheelbase "trick" really STUPID is that by moving the rear axle forward, they GOT better weight transfer, which is what they wanted. But suddenly they had TOO MUCH and had to go to higher gears, weaker engines and softer launches to keep from wheelstanding or breaking parts. And there was NO WAY TO GO BACK once they'd hacked up a car like that and ended up with their own little special safe place. The bottom line in any kind of competition is that if you can only succeed and compete and WIN by HANDICAPPING THE OTHER GUY and THAT is your "goal", you've already lost.
