75 Monza Drag Car

[Choppachris]

Just picked up a '75 Monza to run at the local drag strip. It's an older build that hasn't been ran on the track in a long time. It has a 350 with 10:1 compression, .510 lift cam, Trick Flow heads, narrowed Dana 60 with Strange axles, tires are 31x13-15. 10 point cage, and everything looks to be track compliant except for the old tires and expired belts. It runs great, stays pretty cool, hangs around 180. It has front and rear line locks, but the front stuck on us pretty good the first time.. sticky valve. The drivers door sagged pretty bad, yanked that off today and welded up some tears in the door, and installed new bushings in the top side.. bottom was fine so didnt mess with it. The only thing bothering me is the car sits higher on the passenger side, and after a little crawling around I found that the crossmember is bent on that side.. I found one online for a '79, not sure if itll interchange but I didnt want to pass it up for the price..

[Choppachris]

[johnk]

Nice

[1975monza2+2]

That's an awesome Monza! Perfect for bracket racing. I want to see a picture of a burnout when you go to the track. I'm guessing you will be running at least 11's on the motor. Maybe high 10's. Have fun!

[Choppachris]

Thanks guys! I'll post a video for sure when we finally get to run it. I just received the crossmember that I had ordered, it's out of a '79 but looks like it will fit nicely. It is much beefier than the one that's in the car now, I like that. I also just received my new tires today, new 14" rubber for the front, and a set of new Hoosier 31x14-15s for the rear. If I can get everything done this week, i'll try to get it to the track this Saturday. Also got a piece of Lexan to redo the rear window. The original glass was missing when we got the car, so we tried to make one out of some plexi-glass from Home Depot.. As you can see in the pics above it didn't work too well, it cracked when trying to cut it, and also with the drill. The previous owner said he was running low 11's to high 10's, but self described himself as a "novice" and has only ran it a handful of times. This will be my first experience drag racing, so I expect to run slow for a while until I get the hang of things.

[Choppachris]

I can see now on the replacement crossmember that the lower control arm does not bolt through it, and I may have more damaged than I initially thought. I'll have to wait and see how it looks when I get everything torn apart, but I am thinking the lower control arm bracket may be bent also. The crossmember that is in it now is noticeably bent upward on the passenger side, and I believe this has something to do with the car not sitting level. (Sits higher on the passenger side by about 2"). I cannot seem to find any good pics of the body where the control arm bolts to, if anyone has a good shot of this area please share.

[Badsunbird]

I don't know if this will help you or not, but on pages 4 and 5 of my project journal I have pictures of my front end and the lower control arm mounting brackets on the frame. Take a look, I hope this may be some help to you.