I havent been on any Farts tours, but I have toured on Red Rock Rendezvous, Transcontinental Reliability Tours, HCCA tours and CCCA Caravans with a lot of the Farts. I love touring, I hope to have a brass car one day to tour with myself.
T-Head, Great photos of the Budd Wheel Co. Many famous individuals came and went through that place. Even the girls got in on the action.
The first and forth show pictures of the car at races in England. I have met the owner and his driver at Goodwood, he is a very good driver. This is the same car as in Gene's photo from his garage tour. His brother runs the shop here for him as he lives in England. I talked with them the other day about it. He has had this car for quite a while so you may notice some changes in the car. It only takes and hour fenders and running boards come off of these cars.
This is a favorite of mine. Carl Jorns aboard the 1903 Opel 12-2/4. near Frankfurt Racecourse. He would later finish 3rd in the 16hp Class and a year later he would take his first victory. In '07 he finished 3rd in the Kaiser Preis. He became an employee in 1902, mostly test driving and in '03 he became the company works driver. Notice there are only four clean shaven indviduals, the rest are sporting the fashion of the day.
Yes, i noticed that too. It's only a small 1885cc-115ci. 4 valves per cylinder. 12hp @ 1200rpms. Good for about 45mph. Somewhere i have a better photo of the engine i will find.
That looks like an early Model A Ford oil pan with the oil pump removal cover. If it is Fronty equiped it would have a stagger valve twin cam head with twin exhaust pipes and twin carbs.
How many T Head MERCER Raceabouts are there in England? Is this the former Gene Zimmerman car? Is there a MERCER master list? I just find it interesting to trace the cars ownership from the late 1940's to the present.
Yes it was Zimmerman and before that Garganio who had the early Princeton Mass. museum I this is the only one that spends much time in England. I had the same thoughts about the two Fords in Kurtis's post #2844 as you.
Does anyone know anything about these 1912 Warren racers? The exhaust is on the opposite side to the production 40hp this Mr Warren testing his helmet cuts a dashing profile too but otherwise has nothing to do with it.
In 1906 Walter Koehler surprised everyone by winning a 100 miler at the New York Empire City track for stripped touring cars. It beat cars 2-3 times more powerful because of Koehler's determination and Walter Marr's brilliant two cylinder OHV design.
That's correct. It didn't take T-Head and yourself very long to notice something wasn't right. I came across the pic and knew the Fronty desription was wrong. The only Bowes Seal Fast car i know Schneider drove in '31 was the Stevens-Miller at Indy. I have been slowly educating myself on this era and i initially thought it was a Skinny Clemons car but without any documents at hand i'll wait for a proper answer.
Amelia Island Concours d' Elegance photos are up if anyone is interested. Starting with the #25 Duesenberg. www.supercars.net/gallery/119513/2364/8.html
Spying on other race teams is nothing new. The first photo shows Walter Marr (Buicks engineer) in front of a wrecked Benz at Savannah intently examining the front axle construction. He reportedly also went to the wreck scene at night with lanterns so he could study more that evening. He also hired a photographer who somehow got into the Benz camp and took these and other photos of the car after it had been moved back there. He was the first to also set up his own train cars with a full race shop on board so they could work on cars in route and also have the facilities handy once they arrived. Kurtis, thanks for the photo link.
Yes, that would be a great find. Another great set of photos T-Head. Here are some different photos. 1st pic is Walter Marr in his office. 2nd pic is the Buick racing team. Marr is seated and looking away from the camera. The gentleman in the drivers seat looks familiar. The 3rd pic is a 1903 Marr Autocar chassis and the article below it describing the 1904 Buick in some detail show the similarities between the two cars.
That is Lou Schneider's Stagger Valve Fronty, probably the very first one built (late 1931). It was also driven by Shorty Cantlon, Herman Schurch and Bob Carey, probably others as well. The car wasn't really much of a success, although Cantlon won a 10-miler at Cobleskill (NY) in it, Sep 26 in 1931. Other Stagger Valves were bought by Jim Frankland and Mert Harris, and were successful in non-AAA racing until the mid-to-late forties, with drivers like Mike Salay and Carl Scarborough, amongst others. The Stagger Valve was the last Frontenac design to keep up with other Ford conversions, but no match for the Millers or Offies. The usual problem was that the bottom end of the Model A couldn't keep up with sustained power excess. I don't think they sold a lot of them, perhaps only a handful, and it was the end for a once leading manufacturer. The other Fronty is the (apparently) last works car that was campaigned by Art Chevrolet, and the driver is Howdy Wilcox. Both Schneider and Chevrolet went west with their cars in the fall of 1931, and I'd guess that these pictures were taken in California.
A Walter Marr creation that got Buick in trouble. Marr really bent the rules on this Buick "stock car" for 1910 which was fairly common at the time . This car with Burman behind the wheel was built for racing at Indy. It was supposed to be stock yet the chassis was built at Rainer with a 597 CI engine that was almost two times the displacement of the largest production Buick engine. The AAA Contest Board disallowed it but after wrangling by Durant the master magician produced enough hastily created paper work to enter them as Marrqutte-Buick's. The other car they ran at Indy that year was the Bug that we have looked at before. Buick was not the only team to get caught cheating as several other teams cars were disallowed that year.
1915 Wow! A very sophisticated design that would not have looked out of place on the Indy grid for nearly 20 years.
We have covered the early four cylinder Duesenberg cars like the #25 above so maybe we should look at the eights. The 1st photo is believed to be Jimmy Murphy and Ernie Olsen at Sheephead Bay getting the car set up for Tommy Milton to run it in non competitive speed trials. This was in 1919 with the then new straight eight with which Milton set 20 new speed records. This is one of the three cars the Duesenberg's brought to the track outside of NYC. This is the 300 CI straight eight which was the post WWI engine used for a short time and ran at Indy in 1919. One of these cars had the new 183 CI eight and O' Donnell set marks in class C up to 125 miles. These engines came after the 16-valve four that was in the #25 and the other fours that were in the early straight frame cars. The first five racing cars they built had the double drop frames which was the type of frame that was used on the earlier Mason's. An interesting fact about the front axles is they were made by Timken and identical to the axles used in four cylinder Cadillacs, the last which was built in 1914. The same axle can be seen in this photo with aero dynamic wooden strips taped to the front and rear of the axle. The 2nd photo is Milton at Indy in 1919 although his car was #9 in the race and he went out early with a burnt rod bearing after 50 laps. This was the only car that they managed to hastily get together for the race. The 3rd photo is Murphy in the new 183 car in which he did 98 miles in an hour. This is the car O'Donnell also ran there.
Michael, Thanks for the Fronty Ford info. I came upon an article about Fred 'Skinny' Clemons recently but i can't find any info of the Masin Tires Special in the pic below. Can anyone help? link here: www.historic-racing.com/clemons.htm
A cut away drawing of the Duesenberg 183 CI engine which came out in 1919. It is SOHC with one intake and two exhaust valves. By late 1921 HP was about 115 at 4000 RPM. The 2nd photo shows the DOHC 4-valve head 183 that was used for only a short time in 1922 as the following year engine size dropped to 121CI. The 3th photo shows an experimental rotary head that Fred tried on a 183.
Ralph DePalmas nephew Peter DePaolo who learned the trade with him and went on to win the Indy 500 in 1925. These photos are also from 1925 at a board track which is possibly Beverly Hills. In the second photo he is pointing to his good luck charm, his babies shoe. The 4th and 5th photos are of surviving sidewinder supercharged 121 engines.
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