The RetroRacing Super Beetle as most competitors see it, all aft-end. Standard stinger on duty.
The drag race crowd doesn't have the problem of some Rice Grinder trying to draft you at a foot off your tail. Racing LeMons, we've lost a few stingers over the years. And length is not the only problem. Even at the track, a stinger makes us among the loudest cars out there, and we're above some decible limits.
Rather than go by theory, we decided to modify a stinger or two, trek to the track in our HSR Ghia,, and see what happens. By the book, if you cut down a stinger on a 4-into-1 collector, you loose low-end torque. Wide open throttle power is largely unaffected. So we cut a stock 17" EMPI stinger to about half length and bolted a short (3") motorcycle baffle into it. The motorcycle baffle had a perforated center pipe in it,
The engine was a high-winding 1915, 42x37.5 valves, 1.25 rockers, Engle W140 cam, dual Weber 48IDF's, on 38mm venturis. This was our Bonneville engine from last year, the compression dropped from 11:1 to 10.3:1 for road racing.
With the short stinger, we had no power above 3000rpm.
Fitted with the standard length stinger and a standard EMPI baffle (but no fiberglass batting) the Ghia was soon flying as per normal, 6500 in 3rd . The Grand Prix track is too short for our 3.88 final drive.) There was no reason to make more laps with an unbaffled stinger.
FJC
