71 Challenger Pace Car - Value? - Page 2

**MosportGreen66** · #11 03-02-2009, 11:57 PM

wow. was anyone hurt?

**njsteve** · #12 03-03-2009, 12:08 AM

A bunch of the reporters were thrown around and injured, but not seriously.

Imagine the final scene in Animal House when the Deathmobile crashes into Dean Vernon Wormer and friends perched on the grandstand. That's basically what happened.

**SmallHurst** · #13 03-03-2009, 12:16 AM

[ QUOTE ]
A bunch of the reporters were thrown around and injured, but not seriously.

Imagine the final scene in Animal House when the Deathmobile crashes into Dean Vernon Wormer and friends perched on the grandstand. That's basically what happened.

[/ QUOTE ]

RAMMING SPEED!!!! Oh boy, this is great!!!

StealthBird · #14 03-03-2009, 12:39 AM

Steve, watch the video again, and you can see ol' Eldon is ACCELERATING down pit lane!! While the story about "no cones" and a "drum brake car" may be true, there was absolutely NO reason for a driver to continue accelerating a Pace Car down pit road after coming off the track! Indy has a looooong pit lane, and ol' Eldon should have been doing about 40 mph when he passed the start/finish line.

What's probably more believable is that ol' Eldon was excited, he was showing off in front of hundreds of thousands of people, he thought it would be cool to "run with the pack" for a couple seconds, and unfortunately he lost control. There may have been a "misplaced braking cone", but when you've supposedly rehearsed this a dozen times, you'd have to realize something was seriously wrong as you pass the start/finish line bricks at 100 mph!

I think a better story is that because of Mopar's horrible 1971 build quality, the throttle stuck wide open, Eldon slammed on the brakes, the rear end hopped violently, and he lost control.

**njsteve** · #15 03-03-2009, 02:37 AM

The problem was he did practice for weeks with a power disc brake equipped car. He didn't find out that the race day car didn't have them til he pressed the brakes hard while coming down pit road. Back then there was a big difference in the lack of stopping ability between those two systems.

I've had a few 71 E-bodies with that exact same 11x3 four wheel manual drum brake setup. You had only one good five second heavy application of brakes at any high speed before they would fade to nothing.

From a forensic accident reconstruction viewpoint, the violent yaw of the front to the left side (into oncoming traffic) was a unique idiosynchracy of this brake system. Trying to stop a fully loaded 4,000 lb car with that setup from 120 mph would have been a completely futile effort.

It is a scary thing, and from experience, it would happen at any speed over 40 mph or so. My old 71 hemicuda ragtop had that same brake setup. I ended up replacing the linings with full metallic shoes at all four corners. Took a while to heat up but it gave me at least 5 panic stops before they would fade out. (That was one of reasons I sold it - too dangerous to drive.)

The actual pace car had a 383/300 horsepower engine - not much power at all to impress anyone. Good for about a 15 second 1/4 mile.

StealthBird · #16 03-03-2009, 04:07 AM

Steve, I agree about the braking system

The 71 Pace Car Challenger in the video appears to be doing in excess of 100 mph when it passes the camera, and it seems like Eldon should have been slowing well before that point. I'm not sure how long the Indy pit lane is, but I believe the straightaway is 5/8 mile, so I'm guessing the pit lane is at least 1/4 mile long? Maybe 1500 ft? I would think that even a drum brake Mopar, doing 100 mph, would take around 400 feet to come to an aggressive stop, maybe 600 feet for a nice controlled stop. Eldon (in the video) seems to be going full throttle going past the camera.

The 1971 Challenger 383 (with pdb) is one of the old road test videos I have up on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMCoRhsPCG0 Check out the 70-0 mph braking at 3:11 into the video. It took 211 ft to bring it down from 70 mph, and sideways at that!

**njsteve** · #17 03-04-2009, 12:30 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Steve, I agree about the braking system

The 1971 Challenger 383 (with pdb) is one of the old road test videos I have up on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMCoRhsPCG0 Check out the 70-0 mph braking at 3:11 into the video. It took 211 ft to bring it down from 70 mph, and sideways at that!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yup, That's what we call in the legal trade: "Evidence"

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