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School me on Zoomies


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Discussing a couple of the car build shows with my son the topic of "Zoomies" came up. One both shows they put them on a El camino and a van, both coming out the side just in front of the rear fender well (I thought both looked silly). I am trying to define what a "Zoomie" . I was thinking separate pipe (one per cylinder) headers that are up swept. A google image search showed several different types. Could not find any real definitions on line.

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Hi Jon, while I was researching a mid 60's fuel dragster project, I found out the zoomie pipes on those cars were a maximum, mandatory 18" long.  There were limitations for sanctioned drag racing.  I have no idea what the rules were for your application though.

I agree too they were single tubes from each exhaust port, mostly bound by a welded on strap at the lower bend,  towards the end.  The rule here though is unknown to me, just info from many pics.

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Interesting tidbit on the length of the zoomie headers.  I would have thought the individual exhaust pipe lengths would have been determined by track and dyno testing.   I remember reading several sources where the rear pipe on right and left were angled and cut many times so they shot the hot exhaust onto the slicks to help warm up and or keep the rubber hot and sticky.   The other function of the exhaust angle was an attempt to gain the advantage of needed downforce at full throttle, top fuel cars were starting to sprout wings as weed burners gave way to zoomies.  Don't remember them being referred to as zoomies in print then either, they were just headers.  If you go back and dig up the Hot Rod issue with Ohio George's Mustang Gasser, I seriously doubt they were referred to as zoomies as it was well understood what zoomies were and were not!

The whole thing is like a lot of the terms used to describe styles of cars like gassers for example, which were understood to be jacked up no higher than 24 inches from the center of the crankshaft to the pavement per the NHRA Rulebook.  Then came the jacked way beyond ridiculousness Street Freaks as dubbed by Car Craft Magazine around 1972 - 1975 timeframe (give or take a few years).  A few of which were legitimate Gassers recycled back to the street, where they came from in the first place.   Street Freaks were all about getting the widest rear tire under the car, no matter how high it had to be raised to do it, (this was before rear axles narrowing became common).  So now you have a whole generation of younger people who weren't around then who call anything that's loud, jacked up, running a straight axle a Gasser, fast or not!  By their definition a Jeep could be a Gasser too!!

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Interesting tidbit on the length of the zoomie headers.  I would have thought the individual exhaust pipe lengths would have been determined by track and dyno testing.   I remember reading several sources where the rear pipe on right and left were angled and cut many times so they shot the hot exhaust onto the slicks to help warm up and or keep the rubber hot and sticky. 

The length of the "zoomie", up swept pipes were limited to 18", not longer.

Some builders, later then the mid 60's all builders, used the "Tampa dump, read Don Garlits" as the non plus ultra.  This was the tilted front rake of the engine in relation to the riding surface.  These dragsters had a minimum of only 23" from rear axle to flywheel.  With the evolution of the slicks being used, the necessity to shorten, or better said to alter the end of the rearmost exhaust pipe to conform with tire size was mandatory, or else the pipe would rub against the slicks.  Mostly, a vertical cut was used to make a safe clearance for the rear pipe to the slick.  The rearmost pipe had an opening that was completely vertical to the ground.

Dyno testing for proper header length was for sure in the full body classes necessary, I have no idea though of all of these rules.

Just for zoomies, a dragster type exhaust, there were limitations, and the above mentioned is what I've gathered for a very exact future dragster build.

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Then came the jacked way beyond ridiculousness Street Freaks as dubbed by Car Craft Magazine around 1972 - 1975 timeframe (give or take a few years).  A few of which were legitimate Gassers recycled back to the street, where they came from in the first place.   Street Freaks were all about getting the widest rear tire under the car, no matter how high it had to be raised to do it, (this was before rear axles narrowing became common).  So now you have a whole generation of younger people who weren't around then who call anything that's loud, jacked up, running a straight axle a Gasser, fast or not!  By their definition a Jeep could be a Gasser too!!

Even before that, Rod & Custom had a "HIghboy of the Month" contest running every month for one year, it was either 1968 or 1968. Tallest car submitted to the reader pic section won, with a grand prize awarded at the end of the year.

Not all of the Car Craft "Street Freaks" were jacked up, though many of them were. I think CC's first Street Freaks issue might have been in '70 or maybe even late '69, I forget, although I have it. It was definitely after the R&C Highboy thing, though.

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Even before that, Rod & Custom had a "Highboy of the Month" contest running every month for one year, it was either 1968 or 1968. Tallest car submitted to the reader pic section won, with a grand prize awarded at the end of the year.

Must have been '68 rather than '68. ;) I don't have a complete set; just found and scanned these from June and December of that year, but I don't know who won:

28587250841_9229809319.jpg

28048450234_3f9a5350b1.jpg

That two-door must have been a real squirrel; good thing it was only running a stock 283!

Edited by ChrisBcritter
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Must have been '68 rather than '68. ;) I don't have a complete set; just found and scanned these from June and December of that year, but I don't know who won:

28587250841_9229809319.jpg

28048450234_3f9a5350b1.jpg

That two-door must have been a real squirrel; good thing it was only running a stock 283!

Thanks for posting those. I have the issue with the Nomad but am sure I hadn't seen that AWB '55 before. Radical! I think whoever designed the first-gen AMT funny cars must have used that thing for inspiration (or he used the AMT models--have to check the timelines there). If he'd taken it to the drags, it would have been illegal for Gasser class, even with stock 283, and would have been put right into Altered.

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Even before that, Rod & Custom had a "HIghboy of the Month" contest running every month for one year, it was either 1968 or 1968. Tallest car submitted to the reader pic section won, with a grand prize awarded at the end of the year.

Not all of the Car Craft "Street Freaks" were jacked up, though many of them were. I think CC's first Street Freaks issue might have been in '70 or maybe even late '69, I forget, although I have it. It was definitely after the R&C Highboy thing, though.

Yeah, I knew about the R &C "Highboy of the Month" cars but what I was pretty much referring to was that many of the high aerial acts were never refeferred to as "Gassers".  Which your post further proves, magazines and writers went out of their way to not call those cars Gassers, because they weren't.  Just like the hi-jacked cars posing as pseudo-gassers are being called Gassers by ill-informed people who weren't around when the real Gassers rumbled!  Which is why I rather like the descriptive term "Street Freaks".  

Then again, I remember seeing (in print), this kind of car referred to as a "Street Funny Car", whip that term around and see how many guffaws and outright laughter that one generates!!

By the way, some of them pipes are pretty laughable when you look back at them now!   They must be in the magazines that the rat rodders are reading, every once in a while you see a rat rod sporting something similar.  Thankfully just like rat rods those long upward straight pipes (I remember them referred to as "Organ Pipes) were the exception to the rule!!!  

Just think, 50 or 60 years from now some kid is going to build a rat rod, thinking that's what every one was running in the 2K's because he has two or three rat rod magazines with "cars" with bizarre looking straight pipes!!   Just sayin' , kinda the same...

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