Exactly that and more. The fiction of truly street-able 7-8 second streetcars has been perpetuated by internet wonder cars ( more fiction than fact) and super high budget truestreet/drag week competitors. Go ask what the budget of one of those guys cars is and you would be shocked... most easily spend over 100k,some approach200k.... My own experience with taking my 93 from a bone stock daily driver to a 9.0 track car can illustrate the issues of carrying/ maintaining street equipment for a quarter miler.
First and foremost weight is the enemy ...my car went from a 10.6 second street car to a 9.0 track car by removing 300pds of street equipment, mild increases in power, and changing to a purpose built transmission from a street transmission. Second street equipment is expensive to maintain. That expense is multiplied by the increase hp needed to haul it down the track and the issues that weight creates to get the chassis to work(hook up).
Hauling a drag car to the track is a necessity. Most races are two day events or a distance from home. If you want to be competitive, taking tools, generators, cooling fans, and fuel etc is required...try getting all that in a fox body trunk!
Lastly far more foxbodies have been lost to street driving(accidents/neglect/scrapping) than drag racing conversions....many drag cars are actual saves from the wrecking yard... just because you don't like it or get it doesn't mean its bad. To each their own.
PFFFT.
http://www.theturboforums.com/threads/362857-1979-RX7-LS-5-3-S400SX3-(75mm)
These "examples" are all over the internet. (If this guy has 10k in the entire car, I'm Bill Gates)
He throws a JY LS in the car (documents it)
Goes after a 8 sec ET while driving the car to get it there, Shatters the stock Hypoucraptic piston in one hole, fragments the stock powdered metal rod in the other. (Documents that too)
Replaces the two damaged pieces w/ equally stock junk out of an entirely different JY engine, and proceeds to drive the 2850 LB car to the track and beat on it. ( AND Manages an 8.97 while doing so).
Mean while, there is nothing "pretty" about this car. Conversely, it's exactly the hack type drag racing I'm talking about.
I already qualified that a really nice drag car is sometimes better in the category it ended up in, but by far and away, most "drag cars" are wrecks that haven't happened yet, and even the pretty ones are just waiting for their appointment w/ MR. Right........turn into the wall.
It doesn't matter whether the car was towed or not really. Once the car becomes so obnoxious that the simple act of driving it to get it there is a hot, sweaty, noisy, smelly experience. Idles to the extent that it doesn't really "idle" at all.....and sports a bone jarring ride that rattles every single thing in the car (including your teeth), then it stops being a car.
