What Makes Tony’s Pro Street ’57 Chevy Run?

Tony Christian is gonna win it all. Don’t believe it? Just ask him.

He’s confident that his ’57 Chevy will emerge top dawg in the HOT ROD World’s Quickest Street Car Drag Racing Series by season’s end, and he’s well on his way. Christian won the first round of the series at Moroso Motorsports Park, and the Saturday night Quick Eight program, as well. He did this with a car he feels is at a serious aerodynamic disadvantage to most of the others he routinely wastes. On top of that, he’s about to debut the new car, which he boldly proclaims will be untouchable. Christian will be king, and everyone else will be racing for second place.

Christian bought Mark Tale’s ’95 Camaro Pro Streeter after it had seen very limited action. The “new” is a reference to updating the car from automatic to Lenco status, among other things, though the date of completion is still uncertain—maybe by summer’s end.

Sharp readers will note the bullets on the Bel Air’s hood in this photo, but not in the other. One hood is used for the single-carb engine, and the other for the eight-barrel version.

What put Christian on the Pro Street map is his nasty ’57 Bel Air.

We featured this car when Stan Shaw owned it (“The Evil Twin,” May ’94). At that time, it had run 7.68 at 178 mph with a 747ci Donovan, sans nitrous. At legal weight and with a Warren Johnson-built 648, the car ran deep in the 7s and to a Top Ten spot at the ’94 Fastest Street Car Shootout in Memphis. Shortly afterward, Christian, with partners Jim and Randy Chappel (C&C Motorsports), Richard Rainwater, and Darla Moore, bought the Bel Air. Premier engine builders David Reher and Buddy Morrison decided to show everyone how it’s done.

Christian’s car is a ’57 Chevy in silhouette only. A full tube chassis (built by Tommy Mauney) draped with a fiberglass body and Lexan windows wasn’t on the option list in 1957, but it sure looks like a shoebox Chevy from the grandstands, and that is its essence. A technical overview includes a Reher-Morrison 638-incher with one or two Dominators (depending on the race) and loads of nitrous, a five-speed Lenco transmission, and a Ford 9-inch housing with Strange 4.11:1 gears. That’s standard issue in Pro Street these days, but what Tony does with it makes the difference.

Reher-Morrison builds the 638-inch engines with cast-iron Bow-Tie blocks, Dart Big Chief heads, and one or two Holley Dominators (modified by R-M’s Pro Stock driver Bruce Allen) on a cast aluminum intake. For the HOT ROD series, Tony runs a four-barrel engine on 3,350 pounds, reserving the dual-quad motor for match races. The iron block helps the car make weight and is more stable than the aluminum casting. NOS supplies copious “juice” through a pair of Fogger nozzles in each intake runner. Here’s 1,100 hp without spray, and roughly 2,000 with both stages flowing.

Christian lives in Florida, but the Bel Air resides in Arlington, Texas. Tony’s buddy Buz Post owns a mammoth Pontiac/lsuzu dealership in Big D, and donates a portion of his race shop to the effort.

Anybody can drive one of these cars. It’s just now you separate the men from the boys, and it’s all about how good you are.” While the population of Pro Street increases at every race, Christian’s only concerned about a select few. “I see three people as my biggest competition: Pat Musi, Landon Jordan, and Mike Moran. They have the power to stay there and come back and race you the following week if something goes wrong. All three of ’em are good drivers, and any one of them can trip me up at any minute. Hey, even Annette (Summer) can come and beat me…she could. I hope it never happens. If so, I’m walking home. I’ll walk to Texas, no matter where we’re at. So Annette, if you ever beat me make sure it’s in Atlanta so I only have 500 miles to walk home. Don’t do it in New Jersey or somewhere where I have to walk 1,200 miles, ’cause my old ass won’t be able to handle it.”

Yeah, the rivalry between Tony Christian and Annette Summer recalls the old Connie Kalitta/Shirley Muldowney squabble. They project a public image of despising each other, and, quite frankly, they do. But that only adds to the drama, which is one of the things that makes this type of racing so enjoyable.

Christian has been very successful. He’s been beaten, certainly, but his winning percentage would make an NCAA basketball coach drool enviously. As Christian points out, ‘Two years ago 1 won 49 rounds in a row. Nobody beat me. At the first meet, I screwed up and Bob Giertuga beat me by .001 second: then nobody beat me that whole year.” Win-lust, however, dictates the swoopier Camaro.

Behind every successful racer is a good pit crew. Scott Wolter (left, a.k.a. Doc, the Brain, and D.W.) does the dirtywork, keeps the car in tune, and provides an island of sanity in the between-round mania. Jeff Hefler (middle) helps out at some races, and competes with a Firebird in NHRA Stock Eliminator action. Christian says it wouldn’t be possible without the help of Richard Rainwater, Darla Moore, Buz Post, and Jim and Randy Chappel.

“With some of these new cars that are out now. 1 just don’t think a shoebox can be competitive. I believe a ’69 Camaro is competitive, because if you compare a ’69 Camaro to a ’95 Camaro, the difference in frontal area is only about 1 square foot. But the difference between a ’69 Camaro and a ’57 Chevy is night and day. My ’57 has 29.5 square feet of frontal area. Those (late-model) Camaros and Firebirds are down there at 23 square feet, and with a laid-back windshield to boot. I think you reach a certain point where the ’57 just can’t go any faster. I don’t care how much horsepower you put into my car, it won’t go much over 190 mph. When I went 6.98, we only went 193, and it should’ve gone 200. We run 190 on a typical 7.20-second pass. It’s just a big cinder block, and the air stops it. And everybody says ‘Well, speed is nothing,’ but speed is something. Every mph you pick up is a hundredth from the eighth-mile on. A car that will run 6 or 7 mph faster than yours, that’s giving up 6 to 7 hundredths from the eighth on. You’ll pick some up in the eighth too, just not as much.”

The Bel Air is unique in Pro Street and enjoys immense popularity because of it. The Camaro probably won’t enjoy this celebrity because it’ll look like a current Pro Stock car. Frankly, we’d rather Tony stay with the ’57 because it’s our style, a traditional street machine with lots of reader appeal. But Tony’s a racer and he wants to win. Even with more weight on the newer, smoother sheetmetal, he feels the aerodynamically challenged ’57 is no longer competitive.

“I have a big jump on most of these guys because I’ve done this stuff a lot longer than them. They’re catching up, but not for too long. That big billboard I’m pushing down the track—I’m going to change it to an arrow. When we get the ’95 together we’ll see just how fast these new guys are. The World’s Fastest Street Car title will be mine again.”

If you followed drag racing in the ’80s, you know about Tony Christian the professional. In his best season, he ran in the top ranks of NHRA Pro Stock and finished third in points in 1988. He entered Fastest Street Car racing in 1995 with the ’57 and won the Memphis Shootout on his first try. The message was that everyone had better step up or get the hell outta the way. Many racers did improve and became competitive. Others simply walked away, complaining that the whole deal had just turned professional.

Fiberglass body panels allow a striptease in a matter of seconds, providing easy access to the vital organs.

Effective clutch management is the key to success. Connecting 2,000 horsies to the Lenco five-speed is an AFT twin-disc clutch. The Allen-head screws (A) adjust static pressure, and the weights (B) (bolts, nuts, and shims, on the clutch fingers) control the amount of centrifugal force. As the clutch spins, its clamping force increases depending on the amount of weight on the fingers. The addition of each 1-gram washer increases clamping force by 15 pounds, times six fingers. Ideally, the clutch slips on launch and gear changes to keep from blowing the tires off, and to stay out of tire shake. As engine speed increases, the clutch locks solid. The ideal is a perfect balance between static and centrifugal pressures, as well as launch rpm.

The engine in the foreground is the normally aspirated 648 Christian ran before he saw the light. “Pat Musi came out to a race with two stages and just cleaned my clock,” he says. “That’s when I realized I could no longer be competitive without nitrous.” The single four-barrel engine in the background is for the HOT ROD races, a configuration that fetches the ’57 a 100-lb weight break (compared to the 2×4 combination).

Computer output: The darker line is engine rpm, the lighter one represents input shaft rpm. Where the lines separate indicates clutch slippage. When Christian shifted into Fifth gear (arrow), he did it too early. The motor sagged to an rpm level where the centrifugal clamping of the clutch wasn’t sufficient, therefore it slipped all the way through the lights. Christian says, “You have to have total lockup by 7,400 rpm. Any more and you’re just giving up too much.” Acceptable slippage is .5 percent through the entire run.

Pro Street racing has certainly progressed far beyond its initiation in 1992, but that was expected. Cars with back-half modification and some semblance of streetability have evolved into tube-framed race cars with barely a hint of civility. Despite the drift from the honest street machine, the race-day crowds keep increasing. Undoubtedly, Pro Street has evolved into the top dog class, and by definition top dog does not connote low-buck.

Christian: “I think this racing is progressing well. I think in the next few years you’re gonna see big rigs. Pro Street’s turned into some pretty serious racing, and people are starting to think you need a lot of money to do it. I hate to tell ’em, but you do. If you wanna compete, anyway. If you just wanna come out and have fun, there’s still a place for you, but if you wanna win, that’s a different deal. It’s on a professional level now.”

A few years ago, we agonized over how to control Pro Street and its evolution. Prohibit tube-framed cars? Ban Lencos? Limit cylinder heads? All were the core of heated arguments, but in the end we decided to let the series evolve by natural selection. Christian and his ’57 are an example of that evolution.

Wolter doesn’t have to rely solely on Christian’s seat-of-the-pants assessment because a computer records the rpm for engine, transmission input shaft, and driveshaft.

Strange Engineering supports Christian’s ’57 with strut suspension and lightweight four-piston brakes. Brakes are adequate for the eighth, but parachutes are required on a quarter-mile pass.

The Lamb gauge reveals the amount of line pressure to the front brakes. Christian normally stages with 400 pounds of brake pressure, then sets the line-lock.

Rear suspension is Pro Street standard: four-link with Strange coilovers and Lamb brakes. The rear axle is a Strange 9-inch packing 4.11:1 gears and wheelie bars. See the “Suspension Science” sidebar on page 35 regarding Christian’s techniques.

The alternator gets power take-off from the third member. With no alternator, the electrical system experienced a 1-volt drop when nitrous was engaged, thus affecting the performance of the fuel pumps. Christian: “A half-pound drop in fuel pressure on the nitrous system will really burn stuff up. And the voltage drop also affects the operation of the fuel solenoid with the nitrous, which also burns stuff up. “

A racer can really screw himself up trying to optimize a four-link. Misery loves a bunch of adjustment holes, so Christian rarely messes with the bars at the track. Instead, he tunes the chassis with the shocks, wheelie bars, and clutch. He sets up the rearend in the car with everything as neutral as possible (no preload). “Make your car work with everything in an even position. With everything neutral, go to the track. If the car goes to the left, there’s too much weight on the right side. Lengthen the top right bar one or two flats. [Editor’s note: ‘flat’ refers to the six-sided adjustment nut on the four-link bar. One flat is % of a turn.] That takes weight off the right rear and puts it on the left rear. If the car goes right, shorten the top bar. Never touch the left bar: adjust the top right bar only.”

Once the car runs on a string, weigh each corner. “By the time you get it going straight, when you scale it you may be shocked to find that you have 100 pounds more weight on the left rear than on the right rear,” warns Christian. “The stiffer the car is, the less the weight difference will probably be. My ’57 doesn’t have the double framerails that some cars do, so it’s not as stiff. The engine torque twists the chassis and puts weight on the right rear, so I have to run 125 pounds more on the left rear to make the car go straight.” Christian adds “weight” by adjusting the suspension, not with ballast.

The wheelie bars are a very important tuning tool. “Without them, this car won’t move 2 feet before it’s standing on the rear bumper. Instead of running all that negative preload in the four-link, I’ll try to make the car as even as possible and run the right wheelie bar a little lower to the ground so that it unloads that side first. When the car launches, the right bar touches the ground first, and it picks up the right rear tire and puts weight on the left.” If the wheelie bars are set too high, the front end comes up farther and the wheelie bars hit the ground I harder, which unloads the tires and either spins them or shakes them. “The smoother the run,” Christian summarizes, “the faster the run.” For reference. Christian paints the wheelie bar casters with shoe polish. When the car launches, the casters contact the pavement and leave tracks on the starting line, graphically revealing how far the car has travelled on the wheelie bars.

The coilover shocks are adjustable for both compression and rebound. Finding the right balance is just as critical as tuning the four-link and wheelie bars. “The tighter the bottom (compression) of the shock is, the more the tires will spin. The car locks up so hard that in effect you have no suspension. If you can’t crush that shock down, it’s gonna spin the tires.” The front struts are also adjustable for stiffness. Christian says. “I generally run the front as tight as I can. If the front strut is loose, it picks up the front of the car, throws the car on the wheelie bars, and unloads the tires. I like to leave the front end tight and just touch the wheelie bars and ride ’em out. That makes the car much smoother.

Growing weary of coaching his barn-door Bel Air to literally punch its way through the air, Christian bought a sleeker sheath. The arrow is a Camaro last raced by Mark Tate and Mike Matheos at Memphis in 1995, with Rod Saboury driving. Christian dragged the Camaro to Kim Smith (middle) at Smith Race Cars for a Lenco-fitting and updating. Though the current drivetrain will be used, Christian feels the Camaro advantage will be 6 to 7 mph faster and .06 to .07 seconds quicker than the ’57.

Chassis type: full-tube, Tommy Mauney

Chassis material: .095-wall chrome-moly

Suspension: Strange struts front; four-link, Strange coilovers, wheelie bars rear

Differential: Ford 9-inch with Strange spool

Wheels & tires: M/T tires, Weld wheels front; 17x34x16 M/T slicks, 16-inch Weld wheels rear

Body: fiberglass reproduction, U.S. Body Source

Engine: 638-cid Reher-Morrison

Compression ratio: 14.8:1

Rods: Giannone aluminum, 6.625-inch

Pistons/rings: Venolia pistons, Childs & Albert rings

Heads: Dart 14-degree Big Chief 2.500-inch intake, 1.880-inch exhaust

Cam: Crane (PN 159199), .845/.810-inch lift

Induction: Dart intake manifold, Bruce Allen-modified Dominators, NOS Dual Fogger two-stage nitrous system

Headers/exhaust: 2⅜-2½ step headers, Flowmaster 5-inch mufflers

Transmission: five-speed Lenco

From the grandstands it looks easy, and reading the following account will lead you to believe that it really is easy. The test is to do it quicker than the other racer, and doing what must be done at exactly the right time is another deal altogether. Here’s a sample run:

“I begin the burnout in Fourth gear, and as soon as the tires start to spin, I pull Fifth. I keep the rpm down to about 7,000, and go about 100 feet past the starting line. Then I stop and wait for Scott to come and open the door to clear the smoke. Then we back it up behind the line. Scott flips on the nitrous and makes sure I do everything—turn on the computer, purge the nitrous, turn on the second stage. Depending on who I’m racing, I’ll stage first, last, or maybe not at all. There are some people that I won’t stage against until they go in. Once I’m prestaged, I’ll bring the brake pressure up (to 400 pounds) and set the line-lock. When I’m ready to stage, I’ll let the clutch out slowly, roll in, and just turn on the stage beam. As soon as the car’s staged, on the floor it goes. As soon as I see light, I lift up on the clutch, let go of the line-lock, and the car launches.”

Christian pulls Second gear 1.24 seconds after the launch, Third at 2.24 seconds. Fourth at 3.24 seconds, and goes into Fifth gear at about 4.60 seconds, which is right at the finish line in an eighth-mile race. “In a full quarter, you’re in High gear at just under 3 seconds.” After crossing the line, Christian pulls the parachute release (for a quarter-mile run) and gently gets on the brakes until he can exit.

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