Super Stock Stash

Antique stores and “junk shops” that have no sense of order are always good for a couple hours of entertainment, as well as our dust-triggered allergies. Old rundown barns, or better yet, abandoned warehouses, draw us like moths to the flame. Show us a junkyard that’s been “closed” to the general public for thirty years, and you won’t see us for two days!

So you can only imagine our glee when we pulled into Max Wedge racer Dan Dvorak’s shop, Dvorak Machine, in Waldo, Florida, a couple of months ago to drop off a 440 for machine work. We must have looked like grade school kids on their first trip to the museum as we walked around his shop. It seemed everywhere we looked we spotted something special—a Cross Ram here, several sets of Max Wedge heads there, and complete front ends hanging on the walls we just knew were aluminum without even asking.

Besides the treasures that we practically tripped over at every turn, there were the other things that made the trip lots of fun. Walking into Dan’s shop is like stepping back into the ’60s. To go with the pair of Max Wedge race cars he has inside, he has ’60s-themed Muzak piped in for ambiance. The crowning touch is the reading material in the, um, reading room. Chiltons and Motor Manuals on the book shelf (all of which are vintage), and a stack of Hot Rod Magazines from the early ’60s that look like they arrived in the mail yesterday.

Inspiration
Dan started racing back in the early ’60s, when 426ci Max Wedge cars were the cutting-edge, state-of-the-art machines. His first dedicated-effort car was a ’62 Dart station wagon with a 413ci/410hp Wedge that held all the local track records and ran under the National record routinely in ’63. Next was a new ’63 nine-passenger station wagon with a complete aluminum front end built for the ’65 racing season. “I bought the aluminum parts before I had the car,” says Dan. “I studied the rules real close, figured everything out, and decided a station wagon would be the best. We were only running on 7-inch slicks back then, so anything we could do to put weight on them to get them to hook up was the idea. That particular car, mathematically, was the best car for the class with a weight break of 8.51 pounds-per-hp on an 8.50 pounds-per-hp class minimum.”

“Yes, having the best car for the class was better than being fast, at that time,” says Dan. “Back then, you couldn’t add or subtract weight to your car to make a particular class, so you could be 150-200 pounds heavier than other cars in your class, and there was nothing you could do about it.” Since then, Dan has earned a NHRA Division 2 Championship, Mid-South Nationals Championship, two dozen or so class championships (his most prized positions), has held more national records than he can remember, and lots more.

Of course, not only does this kind of effort require extreme dedication, it also requires extremely strong family support. Tanya (who was too shy to get in front of our camera) and Dan have been married for 13 years, and their families have known each other forever. Tanya is as much a part of Dvorak Machine as Dan is. “I can’t add anything to that,” Dan says.

Sheer Entertainment
Have you ever hung around Stock racers? They’re nuts! They are simply more fun than any other group of people we know. One of the things Stock racers are famous for is their creative interpretation of the rules. For example, Dan says, “The rules say the heads must have the factory three-angle valve job. But they don’t say which three angles, and they don’t say I can’t add my own to them. So the second, forth, and sixth angles (on the valve seats) are from the factory. The other three angles are mine, for a total of six angles.” When you follow the letter of the rules, the tech inspectors can’t argue—Dan’s six-angle valve jobs are legal. Then there are the real stretches: Dan showed us a crank that’s passed tech, and explained that “the balance holes in the counterweights were plugged with upside down freeze plugs—strictly to reduce windage.” Looked good to us, until we saw it next to a stocker that Dan hadn’t played with yet. We don’t envy tech inspectors.

Then there are the cool tips we picked up on race engine assembly. It’s no secret that not a single part of a Stock-class engine goes in without being reworked. For instance, Dan modifies the piston rings heavily, including machining the inside radius of them to take the tension out of the ring. Then he puts a spacer into the ring land to fill the top-to-bottom gap (when added to the thickness of the ring) of the land, which is how the pistons get the seal. It’s the same low-tension piston ring technology that Detroit is starting to use on the no-service-for-100,000-miles engines, except that Dan’s been doing it for decades.

More tricks include tapping and restricting the oil passages to the cam bearings with carb jets to limit the amount of oil that rains into the bearings and then through to the rest of the rotating assembly. Epoxy gets laid into the top edge of the pan rail on the block, getting rid of the “shelf” that’s there. Why? So the oil coming off the crank doesn’t hit it and splash back into the reciprocating assembly. We’re sure there are a million other tricks and details that find their way into these engines, but we only had one day.

We thought the trip was interesting, educational and fun, so we took some pictures while we were there. Now, you can share our dream.