TOYOTA RACING BAJA TRUCK FUN STORY NOT PONTIAC RELATED

This is a short useless story that has nothing to do with Pontiacs at all but thought it might be a fun read. Just skip it if you don’t want to read it. Hopefully it’s in the right area.

Somewhere around the summer of 1984 I was testing a Kawasaki 3 wheeler on the tt course at saddleback mx park in in so cal. It was around 11 am and about 50 feet away from me this big truck pulls up and parks. I went back to testing a bit more and when I came back this very cool baja style Toyota pickup was sitting on the ground behind the truck. I was pretty busy right then so I went back to testing. When I came back they were just getting ready to start it. Well they fired it up and it made the strangest sound. Now keep in mind I was very familiar with baja and score off road trucks and the sound they should make. Anyway I sat and watched as they drove it down to test it on the same track I was using. It’s open to all and nobody hogs it to themselves. Well as I sat there and watched, the guy nailed the throttle and this thing sounded like a jet turbine screamin and wailin away and throwing a pair of monster roosts whille plowing a pair of 12” wide trenches in my nice previously smooth track. Well while watching I noticed that it had a horrendous burble just off throttle.  Well they brought it back in shortly after and I had a spare minute, especially now that my nice track was plowed like a corn field after harvest. So I took a minute to go over there and asked what they were doing and they said that Toyota  decided to go baja racing and didn’t have a motor specifically for that purpose so they just shoved in the nearest racing motor they could find. It was a full on 12,000 rpm indy racing motor that they actually use in their indy cars. I said you guys are _____ nuts do you have a clue what you’re doing. They said, not really. I laughed my ____ off, but they were very nice and not trying to hide their secret project at all. Well I took a brief moment to check it out then went back to testing, came back, they went out, same results, big burble big noise big roost more big trenches, thanks guys. They pulled back in and I went back over and they were complaining because they couldn’t fix the burble off idle so I said what carbs are you running and I don’t remember what they said but I knew what they were at the time and said  well this is easy you just have to do this and that and such and such for jets etc. they said uh.. we don’t have any of those parts. I said, well why, is Toyota broke? No, we just thought it would run fine the way we had it set. So they ran it one more time and then packed it up and went home. Never saw them again but I thought I read about them winning some big race that year. Can’t imagine how that happened, I thought they were a little underpowered at only 12,000 rpm. Don’t know if they ever did fix their carb problem but I really don’t think it would have made much difference anyway.