History Bring Out Yer Board Track Pics!

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October 1925, Laurel

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Great topic love the show .
Just wanted to share with you a fellow club members board track motorcycles ,pretty historic and he still runs them , restores them and well ... they pretty much kick ass.

1920 Excelsior Big Valve run during the nicknamed "outlaw" series by Rosare Trodell circa 1930's or so.


"Ol Crusty #5 --- Mike's personal ride. Raced in early 30's and at Chicago worlds fair in 1933 also one of the tri -state outlaw series bikes 74 Cu. In





Peep the 1924 and 1927 FHAC Harleys in the background of the above pic. The one with the #24 is a factory twin cam and the one with the #27 is a 1927 1/2 mile 8v race bike.

And that leads to this 1925 FHAC factory twincam painted up like a privateers bike .







Sorry for the somewhat crappy pics as I just finished masturbating to his factory "WR"
Bikes that were behind me at the time of these photos.

Mike fricking RULES and he has some mean ass squirrels on his property.

 

<TABLE height=350 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=750 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width=363 height=239>[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]500 victory in 1963.[/FONT]
</TD><TD vAlign=top height=239> </TD><TD vAlign=top align=left height=239>[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Volvo powered speedcar (driven by Sid Middlemass) sits outside the Sydney Showground pits, next to the ex-Leroy Warriner Offy which ended up in the hands of the Australian ace of the early-sixties Jeff Freeman.[/FONT]
</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=363 height=290>[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]An interesting drawing this. It shows the Nutley Velodrome during the peak of it's short life. Playing before up to 12,000 spectators, the short wooden bicycle track (banked 45 degrees on the turns) was based in New Jersey, USA, where three drivers met their deaths. The 'bowl' ran for two years, closing in 1939 after the town commission branded the circuit as "homicidal". The book "The Fantastic Nutley Velodrome" was written by Ernest 'Crocky' Wright and published by Carl Hungness Publishing.[/FONT]
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Nutley Velodrome

<HR>A 1/7 mile wooden high-banked oval bicycle track used for midget racing. It was built in 1933, but closed in 1937 after interest in bicycle racing dropped off. It was reopened on the 3rd April 1938 for motor-racing by Jack Kochman, and continued through until the 26th August 1939, when it was shut after a series of fatalities. The track was demolished in 1942, and the Father Glotzbach Park built on the site in 1950.

 

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You want to be the guy in front with all that oil flying in your face! Full throttle running, on the kill switch to slow down. These guys had big balls!

 

must have been an interesting sound to hear,,racing on wood

 

Miller91, welcome to the HAMB and thanks for starting this excellant thread. As you can see in Rootie's pics there's no front brakes on several of the cars. Most motorcycles at the time were lost oil lube, so there's plenty of oil on the track. Is the 8 valve Harley the one that shows up at Oley?

 

There are so many stories of the board tracks and if I could time travel it would be my first stop. There were some good posts and pictures in the past on another thread entitled -- board track races? at http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=118596&highlight=board+tracks. I thought that was a pretty decent thread.

There are some other good threads on the boards as well. Good to always try and bring back up these topics though as they may generate some new stuff. Welcome -we can always use more early racing nuts anyways-Jim

 

Like your new avitar Jim! Good to have you back posting on the HAMB.

 

Here's a really cool movie of some of those guys in the '20's...

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=5561686

Woah. When men were men and tracks were made out of wood. No "Safer Barriers" there....

 

WELCOME TO THE HAMB! That was really great to watch!

 

Are you kidding me - sidecar racing on a board track. Balls of steel...great film thanks for sharing.

 

Incredible video!! Calculator says 212 is 127 Miles per hour. Welcome to the HAMB!

 

Like the video for sure. All of those guys did have a healthy pair. Bob, on the aviatar figured I may as well have DePalma in the 299 and how appropriate it was a board track racer to boot. I have seen some videos of the cars on the boards-all of it great stuff-Jim

 

Killer thread, thanks for posting.

 

That is an AWSOME video!!!

-Saint

 

There is a great book on board track racing. Dick Wallen's "Board Track" guts,gold &glory. copyright1990 loccat #90-090464. If anyone is interested this book tells not only the board track history but a time also refered to as ''THE GOLDEN ERA OF AMERICAN RACING".

 

more! and check out this awesome site: www.rumbledrome.com! Wow!

 

The book from my local library that started my interest was Griff Borgeson's "The Golden Age of American Racing", secretly wish I stole it!

 

And seeing that there is interest in board track bikes...

 

more...

 

I had no idea there was a board track in springfield mass! look at the painting on the wall.


"AN MOTOCYCLES" betcha that said "indian" notice the misspelling of motorcycles too.

anybody know what hendee mfg. was??



edit: just searched and found that was the name of the company that built the indians apparently

 

More

 

That is Ira Vail's 1919 INDY 500 Hudson that he drove to 8th place. He sold it to H.D.Carpenter in Philadelphia. It wound up on a used car lot in 1948, Cameron Peck, Lyndly Bothwell and then Bill Harrah owned it. Tom Barrett had a restoration done on it and last I knew it was in the Blackhawk collection. One of my Top Six cars I want to own if I win Lotto.

 

With the house building industry down as it is now, I bet this would be a dream job for a lot of today's carpenters. Great thread!!!!

 

Thanks for posting this photo, I tried to find it on the web the other day. I believe this was shot at Goodwood in England, the exEd Roy Miller that still carried his restoration at that time. It was later sold and rerestored to the green car that won Pebble Beach 2-3 years ago

 

it might be from Monterey Historics which featured Miller in '93?