PHR Musclecar of the Year 2013 event features DoctorDiff products

This year’s Popular Hot Rodding “Musclecar of the Year” competition was held July 15, 2013. One of the chosen competitors was Kevin Wesley, of Green Brick One Lap of America fame. Kevin’s 1970 Plymouth Satellite ran DoctorDiff 13″ front brakes, 11.7″ rear brakes, and 8 3/4″ housing and axles. Below is Kevin’s summary of the event. (pictures at bottom)

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The 1970 Satellite known as the Auto-X Taxi attended its first invitation only event this week. It was invited to participate for the Popular Hot Rodding Musclecar of the Year. Originally slated for 20 invites, there were only 14 cars that ultimately made the call and arrived at the event to participate. This event was broken into 3 phases of competition – Drag Race, Speedstop Challenge and Autocross. For each participant, the 3 best timed runs from each portion of the event were totaled and averaged to come up with the winner. The best average of all 3 events was determined to be the overall winner and Musclecar of the Year. There was some pretty stiff competition and some very high dollar builds in attendance. We were holding out for a good finish, but knew it would be an uphill battle with our garage built project car.

Drag Race

At the drag event, the Satellite held its own with an average of 12.77 @ 113 mph. The drags are definitely not the strong point of the Satellite and traction off the start was a big issue with its stiff suspension. We even pulled some old tricks and ran with the tool box and a couple spare tires in the trunk to try and get it to hook, but nothing seemed to work. Ultimately, this was good enough for 8th place and the cars overall were much faster than prior years. The best participant ET was 11.65 @ 133 mph.

Speed Stop

The Speed Stop event would seem to not be suited for a big 3,850 lbs. B Body Plymouth. A standing start acceleration to the 1/8th mile and then stopping in a 40 foot long stop box didn’t look like it would favor our big beast. On top of that, looking at all the 6 piston calipers and 14” rotors in attendance, we were a bit concerned that our combination of tiny factory 11.75” rotors and OEM Viper front and OEM Ford rear calipers might not be up to the task. Ultimately the combination of a well sorted system with an aggressive pad compound gave us an advantage over most of the field. We were able to place 4th in the Speed Stop contest with an average of 9.36 seconds and that started our move back up the standings.

Autocross

During the drivers meeting, the autocross course was described as “more like a small road course”. Which would be great for our big car. When we walked the course, it was another story. The first section was long and flowing, but the last half of the course was very tight and technical. Very tight is probably more of an understatement.

Luckily, again we had a good combination of parts on the car that could get us a good result. We had laid down some competitive times, but needed a little extra edge to finish out the runs and we made a couple big changes. The rear swaybar was adjusted to full stiff and a couple turns were put into add more rear brake bias. Anything we could do to try and get the car to rotate around some of these tight corners. Well, it worked. The big Satellite was able to finish 2nd in the autocross event and post the second fastest time (48.074) of the event as well.

Wrap-up

Ultimately, the drags cost us a better overall finish. We did manage a very respectable 5th place overall. The way scoring was calculated, the drag portion really carried a lot of weight in the final overall results and the fast cars really put it to us in that event. We clawed back and gave it a shot, a very good result in a car that really shouldn’t be doing any of these events.

I would really like to thank everyone that has helped with this project and I will keep everyone updated as we attend more events in 2013 and 2014. If it wasn’t for all of the great products that are on the car, none of this would have been possible.

Link to full results and event coverage.

1970 Plymouth Satellite major suppliers: