1959 Belvedere Convertible

[Dick Koch]

Hi Bernie - Good to hear from you again. The Belvedere Convertible I'm restoring right now I think, in its former life was a drag car also. When I got delivery from Californis it was the same blue as this car. It was originally white and will be again. The reason I think it was a drag car was the inner fenders had been cut out for headers, but then again it had four mufflers. So who knows ????.
Dick.

[JMG.Sr]

This car was not a well know drag car...I built it for SS/MA in 1970....I had a brand new 4 spd, Hemi GTX at the time and it factored lousey into A/S...If it had bigger exaust tips, I swear it would have been a B Stocker...The "68s and '69s were very similar to the '70, and they were B Stockers...Anyway....I was watching some guy with a '59 Chevy, 348 tri-power car making by-runs in Super Stock II and taking home $100 every weekend....I knew where this "59 Plymouth Cvt was setting (Mountainville Pa., right next to Allentown Pa.) and checked it out in the NHRA factoring book....It factored at 10.01 lbs per hp with the 305 hp 361...which is "dead nuts" in SS/MA, And I had a "thing" for '59s...So I bought the car, dropped a 361 in it, stuck a roll cage and some 4:30 gears in her and that was the end of that guy making $100 bucks for a by-run..Yes, that 305 hp 361 could eat a 348 with three dueces..

I raced it as "The Blue Goose" at Maple Grove, Numedia and Island Dragway for a couple of years (70 & 71) but that steel torqueflite was a handicap....and I liked jerking 4 spds...(those New Process 844 4 spds were not easy to power shift)So I set up a '70 six-pack Road Runner and ran C/Stock with that..The Six Pack Road Runner was "The Car" for C/Stock it factored at 9.01 lbs per hp...and one of them still is the C/S record holder today....Couple of years later I put Flossie back on the street with the '64 Fury running gear....So I was still jerking that 4spd...I did have a scrapped out "58 with a good 318, 3spd torqueflite and rear end.... I was going to restore it with that, but then a family disaster wiped me out and I had to sell all my old iron....I still have a '72 Gran Coupe, 2 dr with a 440 and bucket seats, that I am trying to find a good home for...

[Bernie B.]

Interesting info about your car... what kind of times did it turn back in your racing days?

My convert was just set up for bracket racing (for those not familiar with drag racing, It is trying to predict your elapsed time -after a few time trials- to determine your handicap start compared to your competition) and it was pretty much stock except for home made tri-y headers and a roadrunner cam, and other minor mods. With 4.10 gears it ran mid-14's at 96 mph and I know there was more to get out of it but then a flat-towing accident curbed my enthusiasm. It would rev to over 6000 rpm in first gear then second to third shift happened around 5400 with it running about 5200 rpm at the finish line, seemed a bit lazy at the top end. I went through the cast-iron TorqueFlite over 40 years ago and it always worked beautifully for me.

I too had a 1970 440+6 roadrunner and know what you mean about shifting the beast. It ran a best of 14.3 at 103 mph, both cars always ran on street tires, never on slicks. Had to ease the roadrunner off the line just above idle, or you would go nowhere fast.

I do follow NHRA drag racing and know a couple folks who just competed at the US Nationals in Indianapolis this past weekend.
One of them is a 50 year racer, and a multi time national event winner and record holder in stock and super stock, and by coincidence remembered my car (about 15 years ago) from when it was brand new, as the original owner was the father of one of his high school classmates, class of 1959, naturally!

Bernie

[JMG.Sr]

Flossie actually was faster than my Hemi GTX....But the GTX was a bone stock street car....Low 13's for the '59 and 13.7s for the X...This was before bracket racing started to become popular and class racing was the norm...The major difference from Super Stock to Stock was that Stock meant stock...You had to run it the way the factory made it...In SS you could run wider slicks, a high rise and stiffer cams...Carbs had to be stock same as heads and compresssion...I had an Edlebrock high rise with the stock AFB, the .509 "purple" cam...Doug Thorley headers...the Super Stock springs...90/10 shocks on the front and 4.30 or 4.56 gears..with a 9" slick...Although the steel torqueflite was a stiff shifting unit, the problem was that you could not get a high stall speed torque converter, or the manual shift valve bodies....

The '70 Road Runner was more of a pure race car....You did not drive that thing on the street!!...Actually it started out as a wrecked GTX, that I used the body from and just badged it as a Road Runner...I don't know why...Sounded good at the time...Getting those monster carberatots to work together was a nightmare....They actually were 3 Holley 4600 4bbls cut in half, and they flowed 1350 cfm of air...(the two AFBs on my other GTX were a couple of 550s and that was "only" 1100 cfm on the Hemi)....But, like you found out, the big job was to get that torque-monster 440 to hook up to the street....I Pulled all kinds of tricks lightening up the front of the car....six cylinder torsion bars, 90/10s, SS springs....That thing could actually twist the body when you launched it.....So bad that the tops of the inner front fenders had wrinkles in them above the shock mounts...But these motors were all bottom end torque....they made no power over 5400 rpm.....with 28" tires and a 4:30 rear I hit the traps at 5600rpm at 11.95 @ 108 mph...

Then the kids came along....

[Bernie B.]

Thanks for the additional notes on your cars and the good old days (I tend to over use that term, but there is truth there.)

There is a listmember who has some video of his Viper-powered Belvedere going down a track out west on YouTube, and maybe even linked through this website, not sure. Maybe other folks have some videos posted too. And you've probably also seen many videos of these finned cars being abused on the street, strip, and other places, plus many in-car views of modern, ultra-high revving drag cars on the web. But for me there is nothing like hearing an original one wind out with original or non-glasspack mufflers, with that sweet chirp from the tires when the TorqueFlite hits second.

(Nothing against glasspacks behind a 318 or especially a Y-block Ford, but the B engine sounded best stock long, long ago, IMHO.)

Thanks for joining in the group!

BB

[Dick Koch]

Bernie - My green SF with the 361 CI engine to this day will light up and then chirp the tires when shifting into second. Have not found a 50's Chevy with original engine that will do that.
Dick.