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

John Batto (near lane) vs. Denny Miliani - Nor-Cal rivals. Folks tell me Batto ran like this all the time. He's in his '70s now and drives a Firebird Bonneville car that runs over 320.

As far as I know, there are no pictures of Miliani with the wheels in the air. - At the time of his death in August of '65 at 24 years old, he drove this... The fastest Top Fueler on earth.

 

...a couple more pictures lifted from wdifl.com

The car's number changed from #10 to 110 and finally to #19.

 

here's a semi-educated guess: if we had the ability to look at the left bank we would probably see that it, too, is missing a plug (#5? #7?).

this is not a 299 c.i. v-8.

it is a 299 c.i. v-6.

i have no guess, educated or otherwise, on the intent of the plenum.

 

I'd say it's a Daimler Hemi originally from U.K. We raced against Steve Read's brother (don't remember his name, just remebered, Robin REad) in the late -80's at the Hockenheim track in Germany, running a rear engine dragster with the baby hemi on nitro. He said in a very english manner before getting in the hot seat. "Would you chaps kindly do your burnout first as my engine is a little bit off, won't get it to warm." Oh, the memories.

 

Wow - that is wild - anyone know what it is? Looks like a cross between a Cheetah and a Kellison??

 

Being an old Bonneville racer, I'm thinking Cagel pulled a salt flats trick to drop a class by eliminating 2 cylinders. A 392 with a slight overbore is right at 400 inches. That's 49.83 inches per hole X 6= 298.99 cu.in.

 

I know back in the day if you were still in eliminations and you had a hurt hole it wasn't uncommon to leave the plug out of that hole and run it. JC

 

Exactly what Fred Larsen did to drop classes with the streamliner's SBC.

 

Jim Dunn

Cool Movie

 

I'm floggin units here - I was at the race where these two appeared and have original pics and a shot of it restored on the track in my book at left - available from pitstop.net.au

 

Big Jim Dunn will be celebration his 75th birthday this Saturday along with 60 years in drag racing.

 

I'm with you, Choppintops and I've told Ross before that the best looking slingshots have enclosed cages. I'll have severe words to him at the nostalgia drags in Sydney this Sunday and chastise him until he sees the error of his ways.

Hey Skywolf, you are freak, mate. I thought I had a reasonable collection of old mag's but it's nothing compared to what you must have. I'm pretty sure I'm going to the Tin Tops at Willowbank (definitely the Winternationals) and I'd love to catch up with you. Possibly view the "collection" and drool, hmmm???

Thanks to all who are keeping this thread the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Cheers.

 

Hey all: I am just a new guy here on the HAMB (my first post ), but I think that this really was a 299 ci Hemi. Cagel ran this combo in his older car which ran CF/MR and sometimes BF/MR in early - mid 60s. The engine was created by using a 55 Windsor poly block (299 ci) with 56 New Yorker heads - he notched the block for the bigger valves of the Hemi heads. It ran 8.50 at 184.42!! I think that he may have used the same engine combo in the newer car and that would explain the painted 299 ci graphic on the car. In this shot he may have had a dead cylinder. There is an article on the older engine in the 1965 Petersen Publishing Complete Book of Engines. Any of you Hemi guys know if anyone else used something like this? Bill

 

The Surfers did it once, after the car threw a rod out the side of the block! They just pushed up the dead piston, removed the rod and placed a rag on the journal held by a leather belt to maintain oil pressure, cleaned the side of the block up with acetone and patched it up with cardboard and duct tape! She went about a 1,000 ft. before she totally let go!

They did this only because the car made it to the finals, but they obviously did not win the race.

No spare engines or parts, just run what ya'brung!

 

Yes, the push starts were a beautiful sight, but your description was not quite right . The push car would NEVER back off and then the dragster start, the dragster would always start and pull away from the push vehicle. This saved the push bar, grille, whiplash and bent pipe on the rear of the dragster. I never liked breaking in a new driver for the push vehicle, I would walk them thru the routine numerous times before actually allowing them to do it.

408 AA/D

 

The e.t. that was with this pic said 8.39 at 184.16 on gas

 

In the 1965 Hot Rod Book of Engines there is a pretty good description of one of Gary's 299 engines. It was in a different car so I can't say for sure about the car in the picture but here's what the book describes.

"The engine in Gary Cagle's roadster originated in a 55 Chrysler Windser and at the time was the only Chrysler engine smaller than 331 cubic inches. The Windser block uses wedge heads, but can be converted to a hemi. It is 299 inches to be exact, and features polyspherical (wedge) combustion chambers in the heads. Cagle, however, uses only the block and crank from the little Windseer. He runs 56 heads from a Chrysler New Yorker because those are the only ones that do not feature hard seats. Had he used 55 heads with their hard seats, it would have been necessary to remove the seats to install lare racing valves. If this were done the block would have to be ground (into the water jacket)to make room for the much larger valve pattern.

Combustion chamber diameter in the 56 New Yorker heads is 3-15/16 inches, while the bore in the 300 (actually 299 inches but referred to frequently as a 300) block is only 3-5/8 inches, causing the face of the block to create a shoulder at the combustion chamber where they meet. Cagle has retained stock New Yorker valves, which are larger than the Windser valves. Because of this larger valve size in the heads, small reliefs must be ground into the face of the 300 block at the bore edge for clearance."

That's probably more than anybody wanted to know and I'm not sure that the engine in questions is setup the same way but it makes sense to me.

 

that's no damn daimler!

it is not uncommon on the salt flats to see v-8s to become 6-, 4- and even 2-cylinder engines (funny how those keith blacks sound like harleys when only two holes are firing. fortunately, they run like 2-cylinder chysler/aftermarket hemis and not harleys). the names of the practitioners and the records they hold/have held are many.

 

I'm pretty sure it's a Kellison. Here's another shot of it. I'll post some other Kellisons.