Stanley & Weiss Racing, The Newest Addition To Our Team
By Camp Stanley
Hagerstown, MD – When last the Stanley & Weiss Racing team visited you we were all bummed out and financially distressed to say the least. But being the never say QUIT, never say ENOUGH we hid out up here on The Hill and worked
on our latest endeavor to bring us back in among the elite of the ADRL.
We finally did it! We had no choice if we want to be competitive! We went over to The Dark Side, but never fear Obi-Wan is still among us! We fitted a hemi between the frame rails of the Appalachia on Steroids Camaro in an attempt to make us competitive once again. This was done by selling off our primary AJ Olds and some of our spare bits and pieces for enough funding to make this drastic move. A “Road Trip” was planned to fill our coffers with bits to make this new project happen. The first call was to Jeff Burnett of Composite Specialties to see about purchasing the short block that we knew he had stashed under a bench in his workshop. That proved to be a very successful trip to Brownsburg, Indiana because as we always do we wheeled and dealed and I left there with lots of extra frugal and some freebie bits that would come in very handy.
The next stop was to a suburb in Nowheresville near Cleveland, Ohio to see our parts sponsor, Mr. Kenny J. as I call him from Motorsports Unlimited to acquire PAC valve springs, Motorsports Unlimited retainers, keepers and some gaskets to get the process started on the assembly of our heads.
And speaking of heads I have been watching the progress of the hemi heads the last few years and the best heads on the market today are the NRE X1 heads that are manufactured in Brisbane, Australia. NRE is Noonan Race Engineering founded by Jamie Noonan, son of my old friend John Noonan. And since I have known them both for over 20 years I saw no other way except to call my old friend John who is the sales guy at NRE about getting a set of these heads. Let me tell you all something that John can attest to, I whined, cried, moaned and complained like the World’s Biggest Baby, all the while giving him the Poor Us, Poor Us sob story as well!!! And it worked we got 4 sets of NRE X1 Outlaw heads for the sum of $500 USD!!! Never mind, I lied. That was a really big lie! But the NRE people saw fit to help us out in a great way with a set of heads that we could afford.
But I have digressed from the road trip, sorry. After leaving Kenny J’s homestead I made my way eastward towards my next stop, Jan-Cen engines in Elma / Buffalo, New York. After a night’s sleep in a comfy motel I arrived at Jan-Cen where we disassembled the short block so it could be freshened for assembly. And while there in talking with Mike Janis about rod/piston combos he remembered some hemi pistons he had “upstairs” (one of those places we all have) left over from some other endeavors. I picked Door Number One and got another GREAT deal as always from Mike to help out us “little guys”.
And three weeks later the engine had been picked up at Jan-Cen, assembled by John Stanley and fitted between the frame rails. The headers had been fabricated by John and I and all welded by John while I was out traipsing the world over.
All that was left was a source for a test session before the next ADRL race. And that our friends is another story.
