Smokey Yunick

[JPope]

I took this quote from Rusty JC in another thread and made me wonder:



"To put it in Smokey Yunick's "good ole boy" vernacular - He was asked about hopping up an engine and what it would do to life expectancy. His response was, "An engine design only has so many horsepower-hours built into it. You can take out a little horsepower for a long time, or a lot of horsepower for a short time. Ya pays yore money and ya takes yore choice!"



Rusty"



Is he still alive and doing engine/car work? He always was tweaking and testing the limits of the race car rules and regulations.

Really enjoyed reading about him and hearing his quotes/facts/theorys in magazines etc.

 

[RustyJC]

Smokey died a few years ago. His kids are selling off the equipment from "The Best Da** Garage in Town", and the property is being sold as well.



Rusty

 

[Rman]

A shame, that guy is a legend.

 

[Shovelhead]

Here is his website.

http://www.smokeyyunick.com/

 

[SKargo]

I remeber a legenadary tale about him, at least i think it was him. back in the earlier days of nascar, he was going through tech insection, and they were wondering how he was getting the fuel mileage he was getting. They pulled his tank, yet he was still able to start the car up and drive away.

 

[Bill Lins]

Originally posted by SKargo

I remeber a legenadary tale about him, at least i think it was him. back in the earlier days of nascar, he was going through tech insection, and they were wondering how he was getting the fuel mileage he was getting. They pulled his tank, yet he was still able to start the car up and drive away.

Yep- it was him. At that time, there was no rule restricting the size of a fuel line. He put a line in his '67 Malibu that held about 5 gallons- looked like a tailpipe! His theory was that if there wasn't a rule prohibiting something, then it must be OK to do!



My favorite Smokey story is the one about the hidden supercharger.

 

[RustyJC]

Remember his 7/8 scale Malibu back in the late 60's? That's why they have templates in Nascar today. He would never park it near any other car because, sitting by itself, it looked perfectly normal. All the dimensions had been scaled down to 7/8 of actual, however.



Rusty

 

[Mike Ellis]

What a character, smart as a whip and as sneaky and cunning as an angry woman. I always thought he would have made one heck of an aerospace engineer, loved his common sense approach to things and the articles in the old magazines when I was younger.

 

[RustyJC]

Another thing he did was drill something like 3/32" holes in each header pipe just where they came off the cylinder head - right in the first bend so that you could look in the hole and see up the exhaust port. Competitors thought it was for "air pulse reversion tuning" and other such exotica. Smokey, of course, let them go on thinking that. Some time later, he said that he did it so that, if the car came into the pits with a dead cylinder, they could look into the holes and tell which cylinder was dead.



Rusty

 

[Bill Lins]

Originally posted by RustyJC

Remember his 7/8 scale Malibu back in the late 60's? That's why they have templates in Nascar today. He would never park it near any other car because, sitting by itself, it looked perfectly normal. All the dimensions had been scaled down to 7/8 of actual, however.



Rusty

Lest y'all think Smokey was the only cheater, be advised that Richard Petty's 1967 Belvedere was also 7/8 scale!

 

[Shovelhead]

Once after being "caught" by the Techies for having a car that didn't "quite" match Nascar's body roofline template, he took them into the parking lot and showed them it didn't match a "stock" Malibu either. :-laf





Now Smokey wouldn't have "planted" that other car out there would he? :-laf

 

[Sled Puller]

Pettys 67 that won 27 races? Come on now, sounds like urban legend!!



Smokey was awesome.

 

[Bill Lins]

Originally posted by Sled Puller

Pettys 67 that won 27 races? Come on now, sounds like urban legend!!

More like a Mopar legend!

 

[SGibson]

GM needed a guy like Smokey to make their dyed in the wool racing engine be competitive against Chryslers adaptation of an old pass. car head on a new pass. car block. And still got beat.