The Unbelievable Story of How AMC Won a Trans Am Championship

[69Z28-RS]

This very interesting article in Hemmings is primarily about how/why AMC got into TA racing, but also involved the complete story culminating in their contract wtih Penske/Donahue and a championship in the waning year of TA racing...

http://www.hotrod.com/articles/unbelievable-story-amc-won-trans-championship/

[exracer29]

I read that article yesterday in my weekly e-mail from Hot Rod. It was really interesting read- would be nice to find a book that dived further into the development pre Penske/Donahue, since that's covered pretty well in the Unfair advantage. Especially interesting was the "special" part numbers for Mustang front ends and Lincoln brakes. I enjoyed too, the efforts to combine the big block four bolt bottom ends with higher decks to run Chevy rods- wow, that must have been a fun period to be in trying to figure all that out.
I built a 72 Javelin with my brother and it was fascinating the amount of standard part outsourcing AMC did. Steering column was straight out of a second gen Camaro. Auto trans was basically a Chrysler 904, etc etc.
Very neat stuff- have always been impressed with AMC and the things they accomplished just from a manufacturing standpoint, let alone racing, compared to the big three and there bottomless pits of free cash flow.

[69Z28-RS]

Actually it appears I 'mis-attributed' that article to Hemmings.  I was reading my daily Hemmings email when I came across that article, but it appears to be a 'relinked' HOT ROD article... My apologies for the misleading Hemmings reference...

[1109RWHP]

The part about Ford using an external oil pump is misleading. The stock pump had a second section added to it that would recover oil from the back of the pan and pump it to the deep front end of the pan. It did not pump oil through the motor. There was no pump outside the pan.

[Jon Mello]

The part about Ford using an external oil pump is misleading. The stock pump had a second section added to it that would recover oil from the back of the pan and pump it to the deep front end of the pan. It did not pump oil through the motor. There was no pump outside the pan.

Thanks. Nice clarification. I had wondered about that.

[group/7]

I think this was mentioned here before, and that is the reason I purchased the hard cover book " It Was A Cinderella Story Nonetheless" by Ray Larson, 115 pages, published 2015. limited to 500 copies, some of the proceeds go to Ronnie Kaplans wife.  It's about the '68 & '69 seasons with Ronnie Kaplan and the Javelins.
 It's an OK book, mostly personal stories from Kaplan, and the author's memories. who was not involved with the team. not to much technical stuff. lots of SCCA results reproduced. some photos are from Kaplans personal collection, and others that Larson put together. reproduction is so so. an interesting book, that I've added to my collection of Trans-Am stuff.

Mike

[crazyamc]

The Larson book is good. It contains lots of reflection from varying, and aged memories.. I really hate the fact that Ronnie's explanation and John Martin's of the '69 "super-motor" are vastly different.  Ronnie has always been quoted and described it as a short-deck motor that was made by hand filing the water jacket cores down, so that the stock block casting had a really thick deck enabling the block to be shortened "about 5/8 of an inch".   John describes it as an extra tall deck, to be able to run a "long 6.0 Chevy rod"....       The math and the parts, in my opinion, really only fit Ronnie's description.    A stock 1969 AMC block deck height is 9.175....    taller already than a stock Chevy.    The AMC T/A crank is 2.906 stroke, which is shorter than the 302 Chevy at 3.0...  What this means is, you don't need to cast a taller block to run a 6+ inch rod in a stock AMC block.    A block with a 5/8" SHORTER deck height lowers and narrows the intake valley; the rare T/A tunnel ram for the Dominator carbs is 1 inch narrower than a stock AMC intake...   My T/A crank (NOS) has 2.20 inch rod journals which are are not a standard AMC size, but are standard big block Chevy size (6.135 standard length).  There are no mentions anywhere of any "extra tall"AMC blocks; but there is a handful, literally, of thick-deck or short-deck blocks.... I have 1 with 4 bolt mains... Ken

[1109RWHP]

https://revslib.stanford.edu/catalog/rt020nf0445

Look at the spacers under the intake next to the head.

[crazyamc]

Yep, they're about 1/2" thick.....  which is exactly what is needed to space an intake manifold that is 1" narrower than stock to a stock 9.175" deck height  block.   I own several '69 (9.175") blocks, several '70+ (9.205") blocks, and one very rare, 4 bolt, 8.6??? short-deck block.  I also have 2 of those intakes; one is being prepared now and is ready to run, the other is straight out of the mold, with only the top blanchard ground..   They're narrow intakes.....  designed originally to be run on a short-deck block.  The revslib pic is from about mid-season, Mid-Ohio I think.....   the short-deck block was only run at the first race, which was Michigan. It was deemed illegal and not allowed again..   The spacer plates allow the trick intake to continue to be used on a production height block...   Increasing deck height over what is already a "plenty tall" block to build a 305 inch motor makes absolutely no-sense, in the rotating assembly or induction design.   There's a web page about the 100 special edition Trans Am Javelins that has a short Ronnie Kaplan interview where he describes his motor; I'll try to post a link.   Ken

[Trans Åm]

There's a web page about the 100 special edition Trans Am Javelins that has a short Ronnie Kaplan interview where he describes his motor; I'll try to post a link.   Ken

That'd be awesome to see!

[crazyamc]

It's  tajavelin.com    Click on the " Kaplan, Penske, and McNealy "  button....     Ken