Boy, those were the days, huh? You could get a rebuilt carb for $25.00 and a box of plugs was like $5.00. Back when you could afford to work on your own car.
My boyfriend when I was in high school had a '68 Dart GTS that he used to take drag racing. I had my '69 Coronet at the time. We were out of school a couple years by then. My Coronet had a 318 small block in it, but his Dart had a 340 six pack (he was an ace mechanic and it was running well). So one night at the drags, I had turned out (DQ'd) early on, and was sitting in his car with him in the staging lanes, when he suddenly decided he needed a hot dog. So he LEFT! I had to move the Dart up in the staging lanes, and was anxiously waiting for him to come back, but he didn't. I think he was hiding behind one of the other cars.
All of a sudden, it was my turn to go, and I had to go. So I pulled up to the line, all rumpty-rump, and got staged. The lights came down, blink blink blink, green, and I took off. That sucker had racing slicks on it, so it pulled a hole shot like I'd never experienced before, yowza. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for handling an unexpected situation, when the Dart started fishtailing and I couldn't correct it. Next thing I knew, up and over the divider railing I went! I was shaking like a leaf, because I just wrecked my boyfriend's car! Said boyfriend was hoofing it down the track as fast as he could run, and I think he intended to kill me, but lucky for me, Roger the starter got there first in his truck. He made sure I was OK and helped me out of the car, but the best part was he put his hand on my boyfriend's chest when he finally got there, and told him to go cool off, it wasn't the end of the world. Whew! Roger saved my life that night. (Sounds like an Elton John song....)
Turned out, the car that ran in my lane right before me had run over the timing light at the finish line and broken it. I don't know why they didn't shut everything down and replace it, but maybe they didn't notice in time. Anyway, if I'd been in my car with regular street tires, nothing would have happened, but those slicks were paper thin and the broken light just sliced them all to hell. It was $400 to replace those two slicks, and that was back in the mid 70s. I was lucky that the boyfriend didn't want me to pay for the new slicks. I think he was THINKING about it, but he didn't ask me to. Another big whew! As far as the Dart, the only damage was the front bumper got pushed in when it hit that steel guardrail. Amazingly, there was no other damage.
And people used to tell me drag racing was boring. That was just ONE of my adventurous days at the drags.