[jim_howard_pdx]

They do make carbon driveshafts now, but they didn't back then in the 70's. Carbon graphite was mostly military until the mid 80's and 90's. Man it makes great body panel material.

Denny's drive shaft service is really tops. I think that they prefer large tube, medium wall aluminum for drag racers. The graphite would not have taken our torque. We pressed in the aluminum shaft to meet the engineering requirements. Graphite is not good torsionally, and is was used first for Porsche 924's and 928's if my memory serves me....... Aluminum is much better for drag racing. So we combined the two.

Just when will they come out with titanium, light weight alloy, or composite type axles? That is where we all lose the most horsepower. That and the gears. They weigh a bunch too.

You have no idea how much horsepower the slicks suck up. They are heavy monsters. Problem is your times suffer without them.

There are good import street slicks out now. I wish I had these to play with back in the 70's. Light weight 15 inch VOLK rims at 14.6 lbs and a light weight import slicks might have worked to get even more horsepower to the ground. Going from 48 lbs of rotating mass to 31 lbs of rotating mass makes a big difference in parasitic power loss. You can see this clearly on a chassis dyno.