“As far as the way it’s built, it’s within the guidelines, within the two inches that they allow,” the Maryland-based team owner says. “I mean, we built the car as we were told. Gary (Naughton) at Vanishing Point, he was in touch with ORSCA and their tech guy pretty much coached him through on how to build the car. In my eyes, we’re done with it.” After a brief pause he adds, “We do need to fix the hood, plain and simple, and we will. We don’t have a problem with that.” Regardless, to allay critics, during ORSCA’s recent visit to Atlanta for the second time this year, Fenn and his tech crew took the tape measure to all Outlaw 10.5 entries in the staging lanes at “Georgia’s House of Speed.” The primary measurements to determine “stock” body and chassis dimensions originated mostly from the door jamb because “it’s hard for them to screw around with that location,” according to Fenn.
“I’m not going to hold Gil Mobley’s car to any different level than any one here,” he states. “That’s why we measured every car here, just to see where we’re at as a group. I’m not going to hold Gil any more to these rules than I will for anyone else out here.” As it turned out, Mobley’s GTO passed the test, coming within the plus/minus two-inch allowance on overall body length, wheelbase, door jamb-to-front spindle, and door jamb-to-rear spindle distances. The same couldn’t be said for every car in line. “The reason we measured cars here is that we have a rule that calls for stock dimensions on the body—no altering, chopping, channeling, sectioning, that’s plainly written in the rules—but if you move the body lines on a car out five inches that’s clearly not in compliance,” Fenn points out. “But here’s the problem, a lot of the guys that are quick to jump up and scream about it are now finding out that their car doesn’t meet those standards either. So if we come down hard on one car, we’ll have to do the same on all the others.”
In May, Richard Sexton steered his Gil Mobley-owned GTO to its ORSCA debut at Atlanta Dragway. Here, he departs after passing ORSCA’s tech inspection for the first time. |
Gary Naughton is one of the shop foremen at Vanishing Point Race Cars and handled most of the fabrication work on Gil Mobley’s Outlaw 10.5 ’06 GTO. At the recent ORSCA race in Atlanta, he agreed to explain to DRO some of the work he did on the car.
Naughton: At this point I think they’re almost going to have to have rules for every different year Camaro, every different Mustang, every combination because everything measures differently. In the case that so many of these cars are done already, I think there ought to be some kind of grandfather rule put in, including those cars that are being built now.
Naughton: In building the GTO, and with every 10.5 car I’ve built recently, I was in contact with ORSCA because they’re the ones with the rules that everybody seems to follow across the country. So it’s not like we just went with our own deal.
Naughton: The rules they had and that we followed when this car was built was that it had to maintain a stock wheelbase and a stock overall bumper-to-bumper measurement, and the car is right on the money. Naughton: As far as moving the wheelbase forward, we did that mainly for header room. Because the towers are so close to the firewall we did move them forward, but just a couple of inches. The car would’ve been nearly impossible to build if we didn’t do that because there’s no room for the exhaust to come out. We actually looked at doing a Cobalt or a Cavalier, but that would’ve been even more of a headache. So that’s why we chose the GTO.
Naughton: It’s just a couple of inches, not nearly as far as a lot of people are saying. As I said, the rules we followed said stock wheelbase and that’s what it is. The towers aren’t even as far forward as possible; I did slide the struts forward to where they’re mounted forward in the towers. I was trying to keep everybody happy, so I moved the towers as little as possible to gain the needed header clearance.
Naughton: The firewall is in the stock location, but what it did is it hung over the motor quite a bit, so what I did was cut it back just like we’ve done on the ’02 Camaros and cars like that. The windshield area actually hangs out over the top of the motor, so we just did like everybody else has done, even on some Mustangs and stuff. We chopped that part back, but the firewall itself is pretty much in the stock location.
Naughton: All the Pro Stock (body) pieces that I used did not fit the car. I actually cut the wheelwells out and moved the wheelwells forward so nobody would be upset with a 45-inch overhang because the (factory) car doesn’t have that; it’s stock dimensions from the spindle to the front of the nose. I was more concerned about the overhang and somebody complaining about that, rather than what has happened now. And like I said, a lot of the Pro Stock stuff wouldn’t fit. As an example, I had to widen the decklid seven inches, the front end was cut down the middle and I widened it four inches, I made it taller, I moved the wheelwells. I’ve probably got five weeks in that front end, trying to make it acceptable for the rules and make it fit the car. Pro Stock body parts are a lot smaller and narrower, but that’s all that was available to me. Nobody makes full-size parts for a factory GTO right now, so I had to make the Pro Stock stuff fit. I really had my work cut out for me in making the doors fit, making the decklid fit, making the front end fit. It’s got a steel roof, steel quarters. We started with all-new sheet metal because we couldn’t find a suitable wrecked car at the time. |
Is it even possible to have rules for a class like Outlaw 10.5 that cover everything?