History Drag cars in motion.......picture thread.

Push starts could get very interesting. Sometimes weird (like this one). Pretty sure things got tore up on both rigs. Another bad thing about these incidents was the ride home. Anyone ever involved with push starts knows how everything can go to hell in about one second. Not as easy as it looks.

 

One year I was at the salt Irmie Imerso had a blown ford liner that did want to light off from being too rich and a tall gear, so they asked Tom Beatty to push start the liner since he had a fast push truck

Well they were way down the course and weaving all around, so i'am sure Tom figured this thing was about ready to spin out

So he pulls out around the liner and ran his blown olds 40' panel right on to the lights and went 140 mph, the salt people were not to happy since it was not a race car

Just another cool thing that happens in the racing game, long live the salt

 

must be a sunday winter race.......notice the tower-side grandstands are gone. They'd tear 'em down every December and put them up along the parade route for the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade........then, they'd put them back up again for the next 11 months.

 

Wow all the years I went to the beach I guess I never went in Dec, and never knew about that thanks for the info Maz

 

Pretty sure that this is Karnig Karadesian, who took this 426 on a tour of the country...didn't win a lot of races, but did come back with a trophy from Bunker Hill Dragway, Muncie, IN...the trophy sat on Blair's counter for years...the last I heard, he is still doing some dry lakes racing....(Once at Irwindale, the announce tried to pronounce his name, which I have probably misspelled, and, giving up, said, "oh, well, I'm just going to call this guy 'alphabet.'"). Karnig worked at Blair's for many years, started out with Doug Robinson in a '40 Chevy altered, progressed through 'Vettes to SS class.

 

In A.F. boot camp we had a guy that had a long name like that and the D.I. could never get right, so that is what he called him too ' Alphabet ' and made him the chow hall runner

 

I never noticed. I was stuck in the float barns, putting flowers on the damn things. Never been so cold in my life. Always ended my New Years sick with flu/colds. Youth!

 

Learn something new everyday. Never saw the fields, too busy in junk yards finding axles for our next run.

 

Yaa me too as I broke 7 axles before getting smart to get a pair of ' Henry's ' and never broke one of his, I painted a 1/8 line on them to see if they twisted at all and they did about a 1/8 and stayed right there

 

Many years ago I heard that one year at the salt they 'trashed' the motor in the tank and swapped in the push truck motor to back up a record or something then swapped back and towed home. Must be true 'cause I heard it at Bob's Big Boy. Either way I wouldn't doubt it. Tom Beatty was another hard act to follow.

 

From what I had heard back in the day is that Tom built a new engine for the tank each year , then put the used piece in his 40' panel

All those early guys were a hard act to follow, real racers and no 18 wheelers then either

 

Sounds about right.

 

With Henry's axles, a Valley clutch and a LaSalle trans. the only weak link was your tune-up.

 

Henry built my clutch can and shaft, I broke everything else, but never Henry's stuff...(while Henry was taking my order, he ranted and raved about the dummies who came back to complain about his parts breaking when it was their fault in that they didn't know how to set them up..."don't you be like them!" --- so I knew better to complain if it had failed!)

 

Ah yah Tom Ridge and his Valley street clutch's had one in my 57' streeter , and one slow pass down Hollywood blvd and your left leg was junk as they were pretty darn stiff but did not slip

 

On the subject of Henry's Axles, I ran them in my '55 with a spool that wasn't legal in the mid '60s. 5.57 gears in a Pontiac housing and 8500 power shifts. That was real drag racing, no rev limiter and a 4-speed was what we all worked with. Here's a shot from '66 of my '55.

 

NHRA Jr. Stock...looks like the '55 came out of Bill Jenkins shop


Maple Grove, no ID


in the lights, no ID on car or track...mountains in back, maybe Utah? Anyone?


ID?


OCIR, no ID on car or driver...looks like an SPE chassis


Phil Miller on left, Richie Broughton on right...I'm not sure if Broughton's car is the same one involved in a spectacular crash, picts earlier on this thread?


Sidebotham Engineering, at Sanford ME


Sanford, ME...rear engine cars have been around a long time


No ID, anyone? given the angle of the front wheels, maybe too many wheelstands?


Adams and Stewart?


I remember this A/A in a magazine, late '50s...Cad powered, maybe from Maryland? Anyone?

 

The 56 crown vic is Glen Patrick at Lakeland International in Memphis Tenn, He later ran a 64 Thunderbolt which was the #1 car

 

After many broken axles, we too ended up going downtown and had Henry's Machine Shop built us a bullet proof set. Everything in his shop was heavy duty. He even de-arched a set of Willys front leaf springs to get the stance we wanted. People who can work metal like a turn-of-the-century blacksmith are rare and scary to watch working.

 

Dick you ever have Henry Valasco straighten a new crank for you, the small block one's were good but the BBC were bent so a trip to down town to see Henry

You could hear him using a rounded cold chisel in the crack fillet, then he puts it back on the rollers to see how it looks then more banging with a big ball peen hammer hitting that chisel

After years of working with cranks he knew just where to hit it to bring it back straight, then you hear a die grinder that he used to chamfer to oil holes

The last deal was to use a long very fine belt sander machine to polish the rods & mains, back in the box 20 bucks and you are on you way and lay her in the block and she was dead on the money

Those new BBC cranks were out about .005 right out of the box, and Henry would make them right

He had a wall in his shop so you could not see him banging on your new crank, with that big hammer but it sure did the trick [ like they say what you don't see won't hurt you ]

 

10-4 on the stiff part. Remember that well.

 

Fogger, check out the South East Gassers, bringing back Gasser racing like it used to be.

 

Was Richie Broughton from R.I.?

Jimbo

 

New York, at least according to this:

http://www.draglist.com/draglist/category.php?SORTBY=MAKE&ASCDESC=ASC&page=4

 

View attachment 3040800
in the lights, no ID on car or track...mountains in back, maybe Utah? Anyone?

I'd bet my paycheck that's Bakersfield -- mid 1960's when you could still see the mountains.

View attachment 3040813
Adams and Stewart?
Could be McEwen, Broussard, Purcell, et.al.

 

I thought it was Bakersfield, but think the mountains are way too close and too tall...I used Google Earth to look at the perspective today, go to the track, then use street view on the road north of the track, look how far away the mountains are...seem farther away than in this shot....but the track is really wide, like Bakersfield...any others?

 

Great shots...the other car in the picture is the Hartzler-Steiner-Schmidt twin that Gary Gabelich often drove...here is a picture of the engines:

 

What an incredible shot! Crispy and perfectly exposed. And that engine looks like it was built by a Swiss watchmaker. Can't say I've ever seen a scoop like that one before though. That had to save him a few pounds...